During your undergrad, how much time did you put into assigned journal readings?

I'll answer in such a way as to incorporate the difference between my undergrad and grad experiences; hopefully that will help justify keeping your question open and relevant. However, I'm trying to keep this relatively objective, because you don't want to get flagged for being too opinion-based.

I probably spent very little time reading as an undergrad, except of course when a test was around the corner (it's a fixed interval "reinforcement" schedule; this is to be expected). I could usually get away with just studying all night the day before a test (that might work out to about 10 hours/month/class), but as a psychologist, I've since learned that this is a pretty poor way to study (at least in terms of how effectively you'll learn), so I wouldn't recommend it, unless it's the only way for you to balance your need to learn with your need to do other things with your life. There's something to be said for finding your natural style early and not fighting it too much just because it's not the best by some specific criterion like information retention.

As a graduate student, my very first class seemed to make a point of swamping me with reading. It was ridiculous, and somewhat infuriating. Lest this seem like I'm diving further into personal anecdotes and opinion, note that I'm not the only one who felt this way, and I know my program wasn't the only one to adopt this sort of pseudo-hazing strategy, which I once heard referred to as the "Harvard Method." (Of weeding out the not-so-die-hard students I assume?) Can't find any internet info to corroborate this, but I'd love to hear if anyone who actually went to Harvard—like the professor of this class of mine did—noticed whether professors like to assign entire books to read on a weekly basis there.

My later classes weren't quite so bad, but I partly perceived them to be better because that first professor was really over-the-top with tremendously long reading assignments due every week, and I had to learn how to skim effectively just to "survive" it. In retrospect, that was a good lesson (albeit learned the hard way), because my graduate studies involved much more reading in general, and more in-depth, weekly accountability. I couldn't just cram from a textbook for a test every month or two; I had to read (skim) enough of multiple separate articles (often denser, with disparate writing styles, and not uncommonly longer than your average textbook chapter) to get a sense of what I could talk about in a seminar-style discussion with much fewer other students to hide behind, all of whom knew my name, as did the professor. I definitely did more reading as a grad student; anywhere from 3–15 hours/week/class when I had classes (not counting reading to prepare as a TA, or studying for my own research purposes). I suspect these experiences are fairly common, but I don't really know.

Other factors affecting my reading time included how interested I actually was in an article, and how messy my personal life was on any given week, of course. I should also add that I sometimes felt I needed to study less than the average student, yet I also felt that I read a given amount of text more slowly than the average student, so I may not be the best representative (probably a multivariate outlier in any case). Empirical summary statistics from educational psych literature might be of more use to you, though I don't have any sources on hand.


Is co-first author or co-corresponding author better for a postdoc's job prospects?

If possible, you should aim to have both in your portfolio. Your goal as a postdoc is to show that you are as versatile and as talented as possible. First-author publications demonstrate your ability to do research; "last-author" or corresponding author publications show an ability to oversee research (although the former effect is stronger than the latter).


Ethics of a journal requiring that submissions cite existing articles in the journal

There are no explicit regulations regarding impact factors; the definition is too simple. (In terms of complexity, it's a lot like calculating a slugging average in baseball. So it's open to a lot of manipulation, and all of it is permissible. However, permissible does not mean ethical, and this is clearly a situation where, if true, the journal editors are trying to manipulate statistics to make their journal look better. Such a policy, if done with the intent of manipulating statistics, is deplorable, and should be denounced—via web campaigns, blog posts, open letters, and so on.

That said, there is a counterargument that is less nefarious in aim. It is possible to argue that you should, in general, cite some article from the journal you're submitting a paper to. If you can't do that, why is your article suitable for submission to that journal (let's call it journal X)? Presumably, there are a number of other journals (A, B, C, etc.) whose works you have cited instead of X. In that case, the journal could argue that your paper is a better fit for journals A, B, and C instead.

Since it's not clear for which reason the journal has the self-citing policy, I would make sure that you can determine it convincingly, one way or the other, to avoid embarrassing yourself. The last thing you want to do is spearhead a campaign that turns a molehill into a mountain.


Showing proficiency in a subject without taking a course

If showing proficiency in this one area is so essential to your application for graduate study that without it you would fail, then you are already in trouble. It would be different, of course, for a required undergraduate course such as Algorithms. If your general record is strong without this, then don't worry too much about showing proficiency for application to a program. You can mention in your CV or elsewhere that you have also studied machine learning on your own and it will be noted as a plus, even if unverified.

The problem in general with evaluating self study is that it can vary so widely. It is hard to verify that you've studied in sufficient depth, but also that you have covered the ground that would be expected in an UG course. Of course, if you have written machine learning algorithms and tested them, then your code and results can speak for the depth, but not necessarily the breadth.

However, if you want to study machine learning as a dissertation topic, then you need to convince one person, your advisor, that you have the necessary background. You can probably do that in an interview, which might have some aspects of an informal oral exam.

In general, though, some advice to self studiers. Don't think that you have learned something just because you have read about it or were a relatively (or completely) passive participant in an online course. Solve a lot of problems, and save your working papers. Build yourself a portfolio, which can just be a stack of paper, that shows that you have engaged successfully with the subject. Attend to the breadth issue. If standard textbooks exist they can be a good guide to breadth and their exercises and suggested projects a good verification of depth, provided that you do them.


Why was Roy Fielding's thesis on REST not adopted immediately?

If someone claims that (s)he found something good, then that alone is not enough. Mistakes happen, even without mistakes correct conclusions given the evidence present can later proof to be incorrect. So a single publication alone is often not enough, it needs checking by others, replications, etc. before a conclusion is widely accepted. That takes time.


PhD: Should I choose a topic out of a comfort zone?

Pick the ones who interest you to meet with.  Probably some function (topics I like, big names).  I.e. y= f(x,t).

Who you meet with is not going to make your final decision on what school to go to.  But for sure you need to meet with those who you think are seriously "in zone" for being your advisor.  You need that scoop.  I would even make a stink if you don't meet with a key guy (their time is limited but so is yours...you are only making on visit...have seen candidates get a breakfast or lunch meeting or at least meet with grad student representative).

In terms of what work you should do, I strongly recommend to do something you are confident in.  This stuff is hard enough so you need an edge.  Also make it something you are interested in.  This stuff is hard enough so you need some enjoyment.  See.  Multifactorial.  Not f(x) versus f(t) but f (both).  maximize, maximize.  but each variable needs to be above average.  Say above 7 on a 0 to 10 subjective.  Don't let a 10  on one allow a 5 on the other.


First author added random co-authors to our paper without informing me (second author)

There are a lot of different issues here so let me try and unpack them a bit.

First of all, it is not ok for your coauthor to add others to the paper without your consent (or that of everyone involved for that matter). This is especially true if the paper has already been accepted for publication. In fact, some conferences expressly forbid this practice as it can lead to very bad behavior on the authors’ side as was noted in the comments. I would check the conference submission guidelines to make sure your coauthor isn’t violating them.

Should you consult your fellow coauthors on this? I think so. The criteria for coauthorship can vary widely across disciplines and labs. My personal view is that proofreading doesn’t warrant it, but that may depend on its extent. I honestly doubt that two people had so much to contribute that they had to be added as coauthors in the last minute, but I could be wrong (it is very weird though).

What can you do about it? Your options are are basically getting other coauthors to support your claim, and having a conversation about the new authors’ addition. Your nuclear option is to contact the conference chairs and inform them. This alternative, however, has a very good chance of having the paper withdrawn from the conference altogether. If you’re interested in joining graduate school then this is not a good idea (though it is arguably the ethical thing to do). Remember, you could also just flat out say that you’re not willing to have the paper published with their names on it (if one coauthor objects the paper can’t be published), but you’ll be burning bridges if the professors on the papers don’t have your back.

What should you do? If you want to get into graduate school then swallowing this ethical pill is your best bet. I’m guessing this was something your coauthor banked on when they pulled this stunt. Try to chat with your professors and see what they think, maybe you can figure it out.


Should one stick to the organization of a paper while teaching a subject?

Even if the authors are excellent writers, there's no reason to assume that the organization the authors chose as best for an audience of specialists is also the best one for your class.  (At least in math, it's very rare for the editors or reviewers to call for organizational changes.)

I'd feel quite free to present the material differently if I thought a different order emphasized the points most relevant to my students, would be easier for them to follow, or I just preferred it. Indeed, I think there's some benefit to intentionally giving a different structure, since I think students benefit more from having access to multiple explanations than from repeating one slightly better one.


What constitutes plagiarism when writing a textbook?

It's the words.
Speaking as a mathematician the formulas and calculations are all common knowledge, even if it's new to undergraduates. But the words you use to explain it need to be your own.  The style you use will uniquely identify you.  For examples check out Carl sagan's cosmos and Stephen Hawkins a brief history of time. Beautifully worded explanations of complex mathematics.


How far do you commute to graduate school?

Indeed, it matters if it is just a course-work based program or if it requires research, lab work, etc.

You'll need to check with your program to be sure what's expected of participants, and if you reach out and contact an enrolled student (or if their admissions office has a student they could direct you to for such questions) you can ask them for their experience of "what it really takes", and what options you have.

For one example, all around the USA there are "weekend {MBA/etc}" and sometimes "executive" programs. These are designed precisely for people like you, people who are working full time during the week, who live far out of town, etc.

The first step is determining what is really needed - is that one day all you really have to be there for, in person? Are there demonstrations, oral reports, projects, group meetings, etc, that must be done on any other day of the week?

To continue with this answer, we must assume the answer is "yes, the program really only requires you to be here Saturday, and everything else can be done at your home, email, web, etc".

As a matter of my experience, I have not done this myself, but I've worked with about 4 people who were doing exactly this. They would finish their work on Friday, commenting about how they had a long drive ahead of them. If they had a morning class some would go down on friday night, stay in a hotel (or couch surf, or stay with a friend/family), and then go to their classes. When they were done they'd drive home and be there in time for dinner.

Some others drive down early on Saturday, did class, and drove back all in one day. This is doable - they were doing 3 hours each trip, so 6 hours of driving in one day. But I must warn you - according to psychological/cognitive research, people do not habituate to commutes of this length. If you find a way to enjoy the drive as an experience, like your chance to listen to audio books, loud music, be by yourself to meditate and think, etc, then that's fine. Most people just always hate it - it's one of the few things we, as human beings, suck at just getting use to.

In the experience of my coworkers, none of them liked the drive. But in the case of all of them, they decided that the unpleasantness was worth it because their degree was important to them, and all it cost them was a chunk of their weekend. They didn't like it, they always looked a bit down to have to make the drive the next day, but they did it anyway. Another coworker stayed with family/friends and stayed the whole weekend, driving back Sunday night.

My father was actually going to do this for his PhD in English Literature, but found 1.5 hours back and forth while working 50-60 hours entirely too unpleasant, and stopped before even really starting it. Your value and personal situation - and how you handle long stretches of time in the car - will heavily influence your experience.

In short, "Your Mileage May Very". There is no "too long" or "too short" to commute. Commutes suck. As humans, we universally tend to hate them, especially while driving. As a personal note, I've found that anything over 20 minutes per day (if every day) starts to wear on me, and anything over 45 minutes is very displeasing (unless I'm on public transportation, which I find relaxing and can easily do double the time). Meanwhile, some people drive an hour and a half and just "deal with it" temporarily. I find road trips for 3 hours ok, but the ride back is rough even if I did very little that day, and I spend most of the next day tired. You'll kind of have to find this out yourself - might I suggest some trial runs to scope out the campus?

Finally, you could also try to find creative solutions, which will depend on your personal situation. Some couples, if they are both off during the weekend, will travel together and one will go to school while the other has a Family Fun Day. Since this is almost always done on trips to a larger city than one lives in, there are often museums, parks, movies, etc. This can be anywhere from relatively cheap (pack a cooler and picnic, choose low/no cost fun things to do) to prohibitively expensive.

As to online classes, that really is a separate question you might want to search for, with lots of good answers all over. To give you an executive summary: it depends on who you ask - but some people say they worked for them just fine, and there are some people who give them no value. What percentage of hiring decisions will consider them a negative? No one seems to offer good data, and I'm aware of no quality comprehensive studies for any area of degree. Education is strictly "let the buyer beware" in the USA, with little exceptions. (They are starting to crack down on some aspects that involve federal student aid, but only on the worst offenders.)


Are the conferences organized by WASET legit or some type of scam?

There are many, many different red or orange flags that you can use as signal to identify whether a specific conference may be spam, but the simplest algorithm is as follows:
Have you previously read high-quality, relevant papers from this venue? If no, is there some other specific reason for you to believe that this venue is reputable (e.g., trusted colleagues believe in the conference, or you are aware that this is a new conference bootstrapped by trust members of the community)? If the answer to both of these questions is "no", it's likely spam and not worth further investigation.
In the specific case of WASET, I would be surprised if this is anything else than a scam. They seem to be doing the same "conference" many times a month in many different "places" (although all virtual at the moment, apparently), and even though they seem to have a bunch of software engineering related conferences I can't for the life of me recall ever reading, or even seeing, a paper published there. Clear pass.


What to do if international student exchange supervisor doesn't answer my email?

Professors are often very busy and receive many emails, sometimes more than a hundred a day. It is not uncommon that an email gets forgotten, especially if it was sent from a stranger. Since a week has passed, it is certainly appropriate to send another polite reminder. However, other strategies might be more effective:

Ask your local teacher about the issue or ask her to contact the Romanian teacher, explaining that you could not get a response although the issue is urgent.
Write an email to the Romanian supervisor's secretary/the secretary of the institute.
Call them on the phone

When writing email, make sure that the issue can already be understood from reading the subject line.


Name of section dedicated for explaining subjects that are not 100% related to main subject of thesis

If it helps the reader understand your process or your findings then the material should remain. That being said, an extra five pages of material not clearly related to your central concept may be distracting. Placing this material in its own appendix section sounds like a great idea though you do risk having the reader not realize it exists. So, for the sake of overall clarity, introduce the additional material briefly in your introduction or background sections - perhaps for a paragraph at most - then refer to the appendix section for the remaining details.


Is it justifiable to closely mimic the structure/organisation of another thesis for your own thesis

Generally, as the purpose of the thesis is to convey information and as you are not plagiarizing the content, it should be fine to follow the organizational structure of another work, especially if it serves that purpose.

After all, most publications encourage or enforce some kind of organizational or structural guidelines in their papers.


How to Shop for a Good Advisor (In the sense of a Good Person and an Advisor)

With a few obvious exceptions, a "good advisor" is totally dependent on the fit with the student. You have some opinions already on what you are looking for, which is good, but not everyone may share your opinions, for example, I disagree with "choosing topics for them so that they themselves can profit" - I would much rather work with an advisor who expects to profit from the work I do (giving the student appropriate credit, of course), and would highly value the guidance on choosing a fruitful direction of study from a seasoned mentor rather than follow blindly my own naive assumptions. (note: I'm not saying your opinions/qualifications are wrong, just supporting my assertion that "good" is relative)

That said, here are my suggestions:

1) If your field allows it, I would highly recommend a graduate program that has some sort of "rotation" system where you spend time(1-3 months) with 2-4 different advisors so you can learn their styles and interests. Of course this isn't always an option, so...

2) Be honest about your expectations with any mentors you are interested in. You will get the most helpful response if you don't include value judgments in your expectations - don't ask "are you good at meeting regularly with your students?" Instead ask, "How often do you meet with your students? What does a regular meeting with you look like?"

3) Talk with current and former students of your advisors of interest; make your personal interests and expectations clear. Ask about all phases of their project, from initial planning to final writing. Find out how successful they have been publishing their work and if their expectations related to publication were met.

4) Make sure your methodological approaches agree with your advisor, not just research interests - if you believe strongly in quantitative methods and statistical analysis, but your advisor publishes on anecdotes and case studies, there is going to be friction and your advisor may not be equipped to mentor you.

5) Most of the stories I have heard about professors who are inflexible with their students or who have taken unfair credit for their students work are related to pressure around the time of tenure or in very large labs where projects are pre-defined - these situations might be fine for other students but given your concerns you may want to avoid them unless everything else makes it a great fit.


How to react to the retraction of a conference acceptance?

If you're willing to register by the stated deadline (and that deadline hasn't already passed), then you could call the conference chair and explain that you would still like to present at the conference and that you're willing to register before the deadline.  This is not the kind of problem that you'd want to resolve through emails.


Would I be disqualified from academic positions in mathematics if my PhD is in cognitive science?

In mathematics in particular, the question that search committees will have about you is your willingness and ability to teach a variety of undergraduate mathematics courses.  If you have significant experience teaching main stream undergraduate mathematics courses, then you should make sure to highlight this in your application.  If you have no such experience, then it will be a significant negative factor in your application.


Selecting a Thesis - Are there lists of interesting or open questions?

You have two questions here. Addressing the broader one, of how to pick a thesis topic when none is jumping out, Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis is a surprisingly practical book. It takes as the premise that you have only six months left to write a thesis (Italian roughly masters-level thesis), with limited scholarly resources at your disposal. It's fairly short and encourages you to work with whatever you have. It does not assume you have much oversight available.

The answers to another question on finding (masters) thesis topics point to conversations with faculty.

The existence of a dissertation database has been addressed in previous questions (e.g. Worldwide Dissertation Database? or French, German, Italian ones?). That thread doesn't list Proquest, which indexes dissertations from many universities. (It's interesting to see the most-accessed Proquest dissertations.)


What is the norm in PhD internships in terms of their duration, tasks, and location.

For research internships I think doing a bit longer will result in better outcomes. In my experience it takes 1-2 month to get into a new work environment/topic and doing serious research in 2 month is unlikely.
The best way to find out is to talk to your supervisor (at the internship) about this. The internship should not be a pure engineering task (it is still a full-time position though). It is probably to be expected that you do some hands-on work but you can ask about the topic and the probability that this will result in a publication. Depending on what your PhD topic is, you could also see this as an opportunity to get some real-world experience.
This is quite normal (I moved to the US for 6 months, I know a lot of people who did this). Of course if you do not want to do this, your supervisor should not be pushing you.

It would be best to consult with your advisor before searching for something else yourself. Maybe he just wants the additional funding for you but maybe there is something else about this internship that makes him think it is suitable for you.


If I have dropped out of a Masters can I then go on to do a PhD?

I assume you are applying for a Computer Science PhD. The following answer is based on my application process (Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, George Mason) in interdisciplinary departments that included CS.  I had two interviews with Universities where I was not subsequently accepted, so I learned something about the decision criteria and process.

That you have Masters-level course work is a positive. That you didn't finish your Masters is probably neutral-to-slightly-negative.  Your published paper is a positive, but your patent will be irrelevant unless it has relevance to research.  Your industry experience is probably also irrelevant to being accepted into a PhD program in CS.

All of these are less important that other aspects of your application: 1) GRE scores (esp. Math), 2) your research goals and 3) recommendations (by one or more academics or researchers).

What I learned is that Math GRE score is a "hurtle" -- you have to have a score above some threshold level to be considered.  They won't tell you what the threshold is, but you should assume that it is the average for their accepted PhD students.

Most important of all are your research goals (and your preparation to achieve those goals) and whether they are aligned with a particular professor in the department. Most PhD students are funded through Graduate Research Assistantships or Graduate Teaching Assistantships.  In CS, it's mostly GRAs.  Mostly, professors admit PhD students that they believe will be good "worker bees" to support them in their research projects.  You may be the most wonderful, inspired, gifted, hard-working applicant in the World, but if your interests don't align with at least one professor who has research funding, then you won't get admitted.

Related to this is recommendations. Admission committees respond especially positively to recommendations from people who are important and relevant to the specific area of research.  Glowing recommendations of your many personal and professional qualities will mean less than specific recommendations that substantiate your aspirations to do research in your proposed area from someone who is important and well-regarded in that field.

Finally, each University has it's own rules about whether they offer credit graduate-level course work.  Mostly it's related to how long ago you got it and where you got it.  Given that it's just 5-7 years ago, you should be fine.  You can position this as: "My previous graduate course work will accelerate me through the PhD program, and allow me to focus time on courses that relate to my research focus."


What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam?

This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand.  Professors are humans and make mistakes.

You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.

That's about all you can do.  It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything.  They might:

Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.

In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority.  This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that.


How does 'accepted' but not published paper look on my CV?

Submitting work to a conference, having that work accepted, and presenting that work at the conference has value, such accomplishments should appear on CVs.
Withdrawing an accepted work from a conference due to no funding shows lack of foresight, perhaps even disrespect (by wasting time), and likely shouldn't appear on CVs.
Seek other funding sources, e.g., the conference itself or a national funding body, perhaps ask your advisors for suggestions.
Whether you and co-authors pay yourselves depends on personal factors, e.g., can you afford to?


Is it immoral to read scientific articles if you find them as pdf on Google without having access to some official libraries?

There's nothing morally wrong with reading blogs and most online sources, so I'm going to assume you mean published articles and books.

When it comes to journal articles and books, it depends. Many articles that are freely available online are legally published / published with the author's permission. Others are not. Obviously papers posted on the author's website, or websites like arXiv are okay, but for other listings it's a lot less clear. It's up to you to make your best judgement as to the legality and the morality of the access you have.

This also of course presumes that you think it's moral to support closed-access journals. Some people feel that closed-access journals are a bad thing and should be opposed. To those people, doing anything other than seeking out illicit versions would be morally wrong.


How can I ease in to the research arena?

Find an advisor and shadow them.

With the help of an advisor find a problem that interests you. Plug away constantly and incessantly on that problem. Read a lot of related work. When you get some results decide, along with your advisor, what to do with them? Paper? Thesis? Repeat as necessary.

Once you have some success, replace/augment the advisor with other colleagues. Repeat.

It is actually what about 90% (maybe more) of grad students do. There are a few that don't need the advisor, but I've not met any of them. The advisor is at least good as a sounding board.


Is it ethical to refuse enrollment of a previously dishonest student if you are the sole instructor for a required course?

It's not up to you

It's reasonable for an instructor and syllabus to specify what happens in that course in certain circumstances. However, going beyond your particular course (including future semesters of it), any further academic punishments for plagiarism or cheating, including being restricted from taking or retaking certain courses, are up to the wider department, faculty, study program, or however your institution organizes things. There should be a universal (not made by and for a single course and instructor) policy on what are the wider consequences for certain acts of plagiarism. Perhaps that policy prescribes that being forbidden to retake that course (or some time limit) is an appropriate punishment, in which case your actions are valid. But if it does not prescribe that students will be prevented from taking future courses, then it's not up to the course syllabus or the instructor to unilaterally decide whether the student is eligible or not.

Note that I'm not saying that you should waive the policy just because it disrupts the path to graduation - there certainly can be academic dishonesty policies that may prevent students from graduating in case of plagiarism. But the question does not mention any specific wider policies, and if it eventually does come to a ad-hoc decision regarding a particular student, that still would not be your decision to make, this should be escalated to your superiors.


Can a personal meeting with a scientist be referenced?

Strictly speaking, yes. The APA style, among others, does have instructions on how to cite private conversations (see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/ for an example), but in practice I've never seen it been used in psychology (or natural science) papers. This is probably because a personal conversation cannot be easily verified, which makes such citations less useful. One thing you can do is to track down the relevant papers and thank your colleague in the acknowledgement section.


I think it matters much less than you think. A recommender speaks for your past work and for your future potential. The specific field is less important than that they respect you for both aspects. The other elements of your application will show your basic suitability, such as courses taken and such. But the recommenders need to assure the admissions committee that you are serious and hard working as well as adaptable and creative. The specific field matters less.

Their specific field isn't all that they know. People who specialize in some field also know some things about the requirements of other related fields. So, the examples you cite seem less important than what they will say about you.

A good letter from a person, in a related field, who is widely known and respected, can be a very positive thing.

But even a recommendation from a Language professor can be positive (wildly different field) if it supports your suitability for study and making progress. "This person can really think and write" is a good thing to have said about you. (Don't take this as a suggestion that all your letters should be from "wildly different fields", of course)


Can I enroll in just the second year of a master's degree program in Germany?

The best way to answer your question is to explain that it's a two-step process:

First, you need to be admitted to the master's program. If you're coming in as an international student, this can be in and of itself very difficult, particularly if you are applying to what is known as a "consecutive" master's degree program, for which the usual prerequisite is a bachelor's degree in the same field from a German university. If you are coming from a different field, or from outside Germany, you need to have the university recognize and accept your credentials as substantially equivalent to the bachelor's degree in question.
After you have gained admission, you can then proceed to establish that courses you have taken are equivalent to the master's courses offered in the degree program of interest. Normally this has to be approved by the instructor of each course you're interested in getting "transfer credit" for.

Thus, you won't be admitted into the "second year" or "semester n" of a given master's program, but you can get the equivalent credit, which will thus shorten your overall time-to-degree accordingly.


Do authors normally check their own papers for plagiarism?

I've never put such an assertion in one of my own cover letters, and would find it very strange to do so.

It's assumed that I should be behaving honestly and avoiding both plagiarism and self-plagiarism.  Saying: "really, I'm not plagiarizing!" just makes me wonder why the person felt they needed to say anything.
If I'm not behaving honestly, why wouldn't I lie about the results of plagiarism-checking too?

If I saw this as a reviewer, I would think it reflected an odd but almost certainly irrelevant thing about the authors, and then proceed to ignore it.


How can I cross-list an article on the arXiv?

My account -> Change user information -> Group(s) you would like to submit to and you check the relevant categories. A hint might be (from the help): "Also note that you are unlikely to know that a cross-list is appropriate unless you are yourself a reader of the archive to which you are considering a cross-list". I had to write an e-mail to arXiv some time ago to learn how to cross-list.


Is it acceptable to modify the format when republishing an article?

There are many types of rights related to intellectual property, and it is important to understand them correctly. The one you're dealing with here is copyright, which covers the text, graphics illustrations, and other possible graphic media (video, if your paper include any).

However, the copyright which you transferred to them does only cover these elements. Once they give you permission to reproduce the text and graphics, you can reproduce them in any way you want, following the license. But the presentation (fonts, page layout, etc.) is not part of the copyrighted material.


Molds of PhD thesis from more than one idea

This varies a lot from field to field, so take this with a grain of salt. Before I started my PhD, I envisioned doing lots and lots of stuff. Unfortunately (or fortunately actually), that isn't how academia works. Developing a (good) project takes time. Also, more often than not, easy and good ideas have already been explored which means that, if you want to work on a particular topic, you have to build on top of what other people have already done. For instance, during my PhD, I developed 4 different projects over a period of 4 years. And that is considered above average in my field. Talk to your supervisor once you have one (or if you already have one). They are there to guide and will provide with the answers that you need.


Copyright of microscopy data acquired by myself

Copyright law varies over the world, but in many places data itself can't be copyrighted, but interpretations of it can be.
From the Wikipedia article: "Copyright may apply to a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or "works"."
Your best action is to contact the source and ask them. It may be that what you have is "data" or it may be something else to which copyright does apply.
And copyright doesn't necessarily mean "no use whatever". There are permitted actions also.


Across a large part of the landscape of scholarly publications, pre-prints are (confusingly) regarded as unpublished draft versions of manuscripts that happen to circulate prior to their full-fledged publication at journals (or other outlets). It follows that to many journals & publishers, it is fine to disseminate pre-prints even prior to the first submission or during the review process.
However, it seems to me that ACM follows a bit of a stricter policy. At ACM CSUR, the Author Guidelines state:

Publication, or republication, of a (perhaps revised) paper that has been widely disseminated is permitted only if the editor judges that (a) the revision contains significant amplification or clarification of the original material or (b) there is a significant additional benefit to be gained from journal publication.

With such a wording, I would be cautious, as you cannot know whether you will need to integrate major revisions or not during the review process. I would recommend you to talk to the editor directly and ask about their stance with regards to your manuscript. (Perhaps the editors are more liberal regarding pre-prints than the wording of the ACM policy on prior publications.)


My Professor thinks class ends 30 minutes earlier than it does

Who said it was 2.5 hrs?  The schedule?  It is not uncommon for professors to reserve a longer time than is always necessary, just to give themselves a bit of lee-way, in case they sometimes need a bit longer.  A 2.5 h time-slot it not necessarily a commitment to hold class for that long (but check your institutional rules if you feel cheated).  The first class of a term is also often shorter.

The above is true at least for the Australian National University.

In any case, if you will ask him, it pays always to be polite and not to come across as though you are accusing him of intentional wrong-doing; but rather as if you are ignorant of their traditions.


Should I notarise my transcript or attest it?

When a US university asks for official transcripts, they are asking for transcripts to be sent directly from the institution at which the coursework was completed or the degree earned.

If your previous institution cannot send transcripts directly, find out from the US university what their specific requirements are. For example, see this FAQ from the University of Mississippi, which also describes how to get officially certified transcripts in case your institution cannot directly issue official transcripts.


Can affiliated university claim ownership of ideas presented in your paper?

The question is a legal one, so it would depend on what legal system you're subject to. Ideas per se cannot be legally owned, but via patent and copyright you can own the expression of ideas. With a patent, there is a legal process that you need to go through, to gain legal ownership over, say, a method of converting speech to text. If that's the case, you better get on filing right now. In the case of copyright, you basically don't have to do anything in the US, except if you need to sue for infringement and plan to go for statutory damages, then you need to register the work (also, registration is prima facie evidence of ownership of the work). But, you will have a copyright transfer or licensing agreement with the publishing venue. If the journal requires a transfer, you don't own the work anymore.

And, at any rate, your university can't claim ownership of the work, unless it can prove that this was a work for hire. The closest it could come would be if there is a condition in your employment agreement saying that anything you create is their property, then they could fire you and maybe sue you for not assigning the copyright to them. I am not a lawyer, but I seriously doubt that any clause that says something broad like "anything that you create is automatically our property" would be upheld in court. They can forbid you from claiming an affiliation, but you listing an affiliation does not create any property right for the university.


What are the best criteria to take into account when creating groups of students, to maximize their efficiency?

Having seen this be done in various ways, I'll suggest 2 successful approaches I have seen used.

The first is to split students into groups based on a combination of class performance to date (from mini tests or assignments), and attendance at class. Obviously this requires we have attendance records, but these are available on account of the main class activity being a programming lab, where attendance on lab computers is recorded during a scheduled class.

We found the by considering class performance alone, students could end up in groups where they were of similar ability, yet one (or more) had significantly better work ethic and attendance than the others. I won't go into correlation between attendance and work ethic here as I feel it's off topic for this question. I will add that we see a clear and undeniable correlation between attendance and class performance, but work ethic is obviously difficult to quantify or measure.

I suggest you also group students by course for logistical reasons, as it makes it easier for students with similar timetables to meet outwith the class. This may be less appropriate or indeed unnecessary if your students have free choice in classes, or if you use the American style "major" system, rather than the UK-style where a "course" is the major, following a somewhat prescribed curriculum.

An alternative approach (to which I do not claim any credit over whatsoever, but alas am unsure of the originator of), which I shall not express an opinion on, is to offer the class a choice - either I (instructor) assign your groups, or you can. If you pick your own groups, that's it - final. No mark reallocation and negotiation and peer assessment. Alternatively, I (instructor) pick groups, but we have a peer assessment phase and divide marks according to contribution.

The rationale of the latter approach (which I again highlight I unfortunately don't know the originator of) is that it forces students to think more carefully as to who they work with, rather than just a friend. Obviously your own policies may prelude this, or require peer assessment of contribution etc.

My experience is that in the latter case, students prefer to have the instructor assign groups, when faced with the prospect of having to select groups based on ability, rather than blind loyalty and friendship. By giving the students the choice over how the groups are decided, they have had input into the process, and we receive significantly less complaints regarding group allocations when doing this, compared to setting groups without offering the "choice". In the event the students chose to pick their own groups (which is incredibly rare), you simply need to ensure everyone has a group, and that you stick to your policy on the group mark being final (note there are many considerations as to if this is valid or if it perhaps allows weak students to be carried, but I shall avoid discussing them for now as I feel they are relatively obvious to any instructor)

In terms of student efficiency, I find the ability/attendance composite works nicely. I don't have experience of the other criteria for grouping on, other than anecdotally where (by coincidence) a group of international exchange students asked if they could be split up, as they wanted the chance to try working with other people than their own cohort (from the same university and course). In that case it was simply a coincidence due to a group of exchange students performing best in the class.


How bad is a B+ for master's application?

GPA is not only the major criteria for master's application, there are many other things that will make your profile good. More specifically for masters application, GPA weighs upto 30-40% of consideration and the rest goes with your GRE & TOEFL scores, SOP, LOR and publication/research interests.

Upto my knowledge, yours is a good profile. Your GPA will definitely qualify for most of the universities, just start working on rest of the things. And don't compare GPA with others in your class, no one cares about it especially US grad schools.


Is it commonplace for students to feel anxious about graduation?

This is common. Any coming future you are unsure of will make you feel anxious. You know you can succeed in college because you have experienced it but you don't know if you can succeed in the workplace as you have not experienced it. You may be a more generally anxious person like me. I graduated top of class from my small state college and was super anxious about going to a well known grad school.

I've learned a few lessons since then. The best advice I can give is this: (1) Be committed to practicing thankfulness and contentment and (2) be committed to adapting and learning in whatever situation you face.

If you know that you can still recognize the good things about your future work situation and come from a place of humility instead of entitlement (which is easy to do even when you aren't a jerk) you will be more at peace with the future. Be thankful for the success you've had in college. Grow amazement of the possibility of things still going well.

And if you are committed to being flexible and finding solutions to things that aren't working out as well as you'd like, you will be more at peace with the future knowing that you have some power to improve things. You aren't going to know everything you need to know for you job. But if you know you can learn, that is enough.


International Math conference rejected paper without any comments!

Remember that for any journal or conference, it is ultimately the editors (or organizers, program committee, etc) who decide whether to accept a paper.  The editors assign reviewers to help them make that decision.  But if the editor is already convinced that the paper will not be acceptable for publication, then they may reject it without sending it to a reviewer.  This is called a "desk reject".  In such a case, it can happen that no further comments are given, or only vague comments such as "not of sufficient interest".

This is certainly frustrating because you get no indication as to how to improve your paper.  But keep in mind, ultimately it is your job to write a good paper, and it is not the job of editors or reviewers to help you do that.

About all you can do is to reread the paper afresh, address any shortcomings that you find (or already knew about), and submit it somewhere else.


How important is it to note, in a citation, where a book/paper was published?

I've generally omitted the locations of publishers in the bibliographies that I prepare. (When co-authors assemble the bibliography, I go along with whatever they want, as long as it's consistent.) I haven't (yet) gotten any complaints from editors or publishers about the missing locations.

Looking at the situation as a reader of other people's papers, I don't recall ever being hindered from finding a publication because the publisher's location wasn't given, nor do I remember being helped by the location when it was given.


How do traveller academics get reimbursed for accommodation shared with families?

Usually, you will explain the specifics of your travel and provide some documentation about

the actual expenses for travelling with your family
the expenses you would have had, had you travelled alone

You should then be able to make a case for getting reimbursed for the (lower) expenses listed in item #2, even though all your bills show the (higher) expenses from item #1.

If there was anything that cost the same, or even less, for the whole family compared to what you would have paid alone, make sure to provide good proof of the hypothetical 1-person-price and you might even get reimbursed some of what was used by the entire family :)


Selecting references for PhD applications: are industry references OK?

Industrial references are fine when your colleagues have good academic credentials.  It may suggest that you will be good at finding applications for research.

Generic references are not fine in academia: unlike industry, academics generally aren't interested in verifying that you have held the posts your CV says you have held, and they do mark down candidates whose references are less than stellar.  It is well worth asking a referee what they will say about you.

The easiest way to avoid referees writing something generic about you is to tell them what you have been doing, ideally in writing, when you ask for the reference.  Referees generally appreciate this kind of help when writing references, which is a quite significant drain on the time of many academics.


Advisors who always insist on one particular idea: How to deal with this?

One suggestion is to use a kind of "red herring" strategy: Work on two directions in parallel.

The one direction is the idea that your supervisor wants you to follow, and that you will mainly discuss in meetings, thus giving him the impression that you buy into his game.

The other direction is the idea that you think will actually lead to results. The time to first mention this direction is when you have made some substantial results - you may then calmly announce that you plan to submit them to a specific publication venue.


Why do most tenure at an institution less prestigious than the one where they began teaching, and than where they received their Ph.D?

This is called the "law of descending prestige."

Most universities hire the most prestigious faculty they can.
The number of PhDs from the top universities is larger than the number of job openings at universities.
Therefore, so long as PhDs seek employment at universities, most of them will get jobs at less prestigious universities than their PhD university.

It is not "inexorable," just probable.


Do Statistics PhD programs require their undergraduate / master's applicants to know measure theory?

Measure theory is essential for higher level probability.

However, I believe most graduate schools will have a graduate course on measure theory. Thus it is not absolutely necessary to have learnt measure theory before entering graduate school.


How should paragraphs be formatted in a thesis?

The library at your institution can probably provide you with a thesis or two from your field. You can use those as a source of guidance.
Your advisor probably also keeps copies of the theses of former students. Again, those samples can guide you and you know they were acceptable in the past.
Some universities and some departments separately have style guides that are either suggested or required.
You can also get some feedback from your advisor on early drafts and use that as a guide. You don't have to do it "blind". But a locally accepted solution is probably he best.


What is the difference between volume editors and series editors?

I guess this is a paper in conference proceedings that are published in the LNCS series?

Usually volume editors = programme committee chairs (or at least the PC chairs are a subset of volume editors).

Just put the names of the PC chairs; it is close enough. The series editors are something completely different (related to the entire LNCS series, not this particular volume).


Should I inform my potential advisor that my paper got rejected?

I don't think that being rejected by a top tier journal of your field should reduce your chances to get the PhD position in any way. Your potential advisor most likely knows this all too well. This is part of the scientific professional life. I would assume that s/he can judge the work you did regardless of his field of expertise our whether it got accepted or not. But if it was well written, presented in a clear and structured way, he or she will appreciate that because it is such an important skill.

You don't need to mention it yourself if you feel uncomfortable about that. However if you want, you can say that you got rejected by X, but think that with the feedback you got you can really improve the manuscript and will try to publish it elsewhere. This will show your motivation. Most likely your advisor will be happy about that.


What are the possible causes of a faculty position not being filled?

You will probably never know the full reason, because departments are not quick to air their internal issues with job candidates. But here are a few possible reasons:

The search was halted by higher administration. One possible reason to do this so late in the process is because of funding changes (e.g. the funding for the position disappeared or was reallocated elsewhere).
The search was halted by the HR department due to some violation of hiring practices.
The search committee was unable to come to an agreement about who to bring to campus for an interview, or the dean rejected all the candidates before they were interviewed.
Although this is less likely, someone who had planned to retire might have decided not to retire, or someone from another department may have been moved into the department (e.g. for legal reasons to settle a complaint).


Can my UK PhD permit me to use the title "Dr.-Ing." in Germany?

One important thing you need to know about the German Doktorgrad is (alongside other non-academic titles) that its use is restricted by federal law. Adding a Doktortitel to your name in public without being entitled to do so is a punishable offence. This means that you should not trust any answer that you get from the Internet on this topic. Make sure that you verify whatever answer you get with an official side. One way of doing so is pointed out in @Cachapa's useful answer from the point of view of someone who already went through this.
Having said that: First of all, a British Doctor of Philosophy is indeed considered equivalent to a German Doktorgrad. You can verify that using this database (unfortunately only available in German). This means that you're fully qualified for whatever position or task that requires a Dr.
However, while you're entitled to use your PhD in public as an academic title, it is not possible to convert your PhD into a German Doktorgrad, and doing so might be an offense according to German law. This is based on a statement issued by the Kultusministerkonferenz (the "Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany"). These are the crucial points:

Akademische Grade sind in Deutschland rechtlich geschützt.
Der ausländische Grad muss ordnungsgemäß verliehen sein.
Die Umwandlung eines ausländischen Grades in einen deutschen Grad ist nicht möglich (…).

My translation:

Academic titles are protected by the law in Germany.
A foreign title has to have been granted lawfully.
It is not possible to convert a foreign title into a German title.

This statement is very explicit in my opinion, and it means that you cannot just add Dr.-Ing. to your name if you haven't been granted the title by a German university. It also means that no German university can grant you a Dr.-Ing. simply because you have a foreign equivalent title.
Yet, you can use your PhD in public, because it's acknowledged as an academic title. Plus, the Kultusministerkonferenz has decided that EU members can also choose to use Dr. instead of the designation used in their country of origin, this is regulated in (2) in the "Vereinbarung
über begünstigende Regelungen der 'Grundsätze für die Regelung der Führung ausländischer Hochschulgrade'" (thanks to @Pont for pointing that out), but this does not include the "-Ing." part. To quote:

Hochschulgrade aus Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union (EU) oder des Europäischen Wirtschaftsraumes (EWR) […] können in der Originalform ohne Herkunftsbezeichnung geführt werden.

This means that academic titles from the EU, the EEA may be used as part of the name in their original form without stating their origin.

Inhaber von in einem wissenschaftlichen Promotionsverfahren erworbenen Doktorgraden, die in den in Ziff. 1 bezeichneten Staaten oder Institutionen erworben wurden, können anstelle der im Herkunftsland zugelassenen oder nachweislich allgemein üblichen Abkürzung […] wahlweise die Abkürzung „Dr.“ ohne fachlichen Zusatz und ohne Herkunftsbezeichnung führen. […] Führung beider Abkürzungen ist nicht zulässig.

This means that a holder of a doctorate from one of the countries described in (1) may decide to use the abbreviation Dr. instead of the abbreviation that is usually used in their country of origin, but without the addition of an abbreviation indicating the title-granting discipline – that's the part referring to the -Ing. suffix. Also, it's not possible to combine both abbreviations, i.e. "Dr. Schmuddi, PhD" is not allowed.
Edit (March 2021)
The answer above reflects the state of affairs from 2017, a time at which the UK had already voted in favor of Brexit but was still a EU member. Now that the UK is not a member state anymore, paragraphs (1) and (2) don't apply to UK PhD holders. Consequently, the "Vereinbarung" was revised in 2019 by adding the UK to the list of exceptions in paragraph (4) (alongside Australia, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the US):

Inhaber von folgenden Doktorgraden [...] Vereinigtes Königreich: „Doctor of ...“ mit jeweils unterschiedlicher Abkürzung [...] können anstelle der im Herkunftsland zugelassenen oder nachweislich allgemein üblichen Abkürzungen die Abkürzung „Dr.“ jeweils ohne fachlichen Zusatz und Herkunftsbezeichnung führen.

According to this revision, any scholar from the UK who holds a PhD (which is an instance of a „Doctor of ...“ degree) may still use Dr. in their name, but as before, you may not add the degree-granting discipline. So, at least as far as the regulations concerning using an UK PhD in Germany is concerned, Brexit didn't cause any substantial change after all.


Possible to return to a PhD years later (at the same or a different uni?)

Whether your university (or another) will allow you to pursue your course in a particular fashion is something you will have to ask them.

The key question to consider though is how your research will be impacted by the delay. I guess ancient history may move slowly enough that it's unlikely someone else will do the research while you are waiting. But how well will you be researching while doing something else/after you haven't thought about your topic for a long time?

A more common approach in your situation would be to transfer to a shorter qualification (some sort of masters) that you can complete reasonably easily using the work you have already done.


How to write an introduction for a conference or journal paper efficiently?

Write it last.
I'm in CSE too. I always start my papers at Section 3: Methodology. Then I write subsequent sections, only interrupting to fill out bits of Section 2: Related Work whenever it becomes apparent that I need extra contextualization. I carry on until the Experimental Results section is complete.
At that stage, if time permits, I like to let the paper lie for a few days, and get busy with other tasks. On the backburner of my brain, ideas will form on how to frame the paper. That framing is represented in the paper by the trio of Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions. Of these, I've found that it works best for me to write the Conclusions first (iterating over the main message of the paper, and how that message is evidenced by concrete results from Tables and Figures), and then write the Introduction such that it matches the Conclusion. Finish it off with the Abstract.
This is my process, and you mileage may vary, of course. But I've learned that if you write the Introduction of the paper first, it takes forever and the result will not be very good. You most likely need to change the Introduction anyway once you have written your Conclusions. So keep it for last.


How does one try to make a journal cover?

I emailed the editor and suggested I had a beautiful and relevant graphic for a special issue. That worked.

Edit: Image attached. Also, note that I did go about it incorrectly, but it worked anyway. I emailed the editors when I submitted my paper. I should have waited until it was accepted.


A bibliography with entries in several scripts

For non-Roman scripts, it's common to have separate bibliographies. I imagine that this was especially the case when switching languages required switching codesets or linotype font sets.

So you'd have:

English language bibliography
Chinese language bibliography

and so forth. There's even a question on the TeX.stackexchange on how to do this: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/343307/put-chinese-language-entries-before-english-language-entries-in-the-bibliography

These days, it's easy to mix the two together as unicode solved many of the font issues. But separating them allows you to use the name ordering system most appropriate for that language.


Does a 3-year PhD experience in a non-German EU university count in determining the salary for a TVL-13 (100%) position?

I worked for three different universities in the same Bundesland (state) in Germany. Although they all followed the same general regulations, the interpretation was rather different.

one considered my PhD (on a scholarship, so not employed) as relevant experience, one not.
one said my Cambridge University (UK) degree was a Fachhochschulabschluss, one considered it as full university degree.
one was willing to negotiate (not with me, but with the institute that I should work for), one was not.

So you need to talk to your future boss and to the university that wants to employ you.


Among the students at my university, it has become common practice to write a passage of text and later figure out if someone else has done something similar and attribute it to them

Indeed, that seems to be a constant part of paper writing: A portion of what you have made up has been done by others the same way before. In my opinion, this is often because it is simply impossible to always know all details of previous work (that is by no means always "related" to your own work in its overall topic) by heart, and because it is often more straightforward to just do something oneself rather than dive into the literature that may or may not contain something vaguely similar.

Sometimes, it gets apparent even only afterwards that an aspect of one's work is non-obvious enough to be mentioned elsewhere.

In the end, it is simply a question of benefits vs. drawbacks:

Drawbacks

You do attribute your own work to someone else. Thereby, even though you may have spent some energy to develop or define something, you

falsely pretend to have relied on someone else's work
misrepresent the effort you may have invested for your work

Benefits

You secure yourself against claims of plagiarism. While you cannot possibly copy anything you do not know, the suspicion that you did actually know some previous work but failed to mention them can arise when certain of your ideas resemble those mentioned in other papers. As such, it is less cumbersome if you just pretend you are replicating someone else's work.
Usually, the statements subject to this phenomenon do not nearly seem complex enough to warrant the mention as a contribution. Hence, you do not lose much by not mentioning you were the actual source for a specific aspect of your work.
Citing in such situations strengthens your work. While the contribution of the cited aspects would be minor, showing that you build your actual contributions on top of proven practices makes your actual core contribution more convincing.

In particular, the last point is a major benefit compared to the drawback. This is reflected in your observation that some are

  changing the original text if necessary

Given that the original ideas are not a significant contribution that needs to be promoted, anyway, replacing them with a possibly better method that is truly taken from another source is fully reasonable and can help to further improve the overall document.

EDIT: To put this answer in relation to jakebeal's answer: I mainly interpreted the question to refer to the "third branch of possibilities":

They are writing down original text that they think is novel. Only later, they realize or find out others have done the same (possibly, in a completely different field or context, or with a completely different terminology, so finding the other work is likely a result of pure chance rather than an expected event).


Letter of Rec. for future University application

Your letters should preferably be written by one of your professors, that will hopefully be aware of the protocols on how to write them. Also, usually you don't get access to your letters, but provide the university you are applying to with the contact of recommendation writers that have agreed to write your letter. The idea is that letters are supposed to be blind, so the recommender can freely express their opinions about you, and also make sure you haven't tampered with it.

I would advise against getting a letter from the police chief. He can certify that you did that job (and that should be attached to your application), but he doesn't have the technical skills to evaluate your job beyond "it works", and he cannot put you in perspective compared with other students. Plus, industry letters are usually a string of cold facts:

  This person worked here from November to April developing the system C.

Whereas an academic letter is on the line of:

  I strongly recommend the student for the program because... as he showed working on ...
  [And some paragraphs more saying how awesome you are].


How to handle non-published thesis work from previous co-workers in a publication?

Even if not "published" in some sense, prior work can/should/must be cited. E.g., cited literally as "... Ph.D. thesis 20xx, University of X, (unpublished)."

Unless they literally help you significantly change what they'd already done, they should not be authors on your work.


How common is a must-pass-final requirement?

If someone argued that case (a) was "rare" in higher education, respond by:

asking for the data they used to come to that conclusion
determine if sample size is large enough to make any reliable conclusions
determine what 'rare' means
measure if the number of pass/fail final exams is greater than or less than the rare threshold

If they don't have data, then respond by saying that their personal experiences probably do not represent a national average.


Level of award - International/Institutional

The standard definition, in my experience is if an award is only available to individuals at/applying to a specific single institution, it is institutional. If the award is only available to individuals in/applying to a particular country it is national, regardless of citizenship requirements. If the award can be used at any institution in any country it is a international award, again regardless of citizenship requirements.

The Gates Cambridge fellowship is open to anyone, but can only be used at Cambridge and is therefore a national award.


Is it possible to do research in several branches of mathematics?

It is definitely possible to do research in several branches (if you are good enough that is). But the people do so generally took decades to get to where they are. If your plan is to start in all of them at once, you are doomed to fail.

For the sake of the argument, let me arbitrarily distinguish different levels of knowledge in a topic.

Textbook knowledge (what you learn in classes; definitions, big theorems, general ideas)
Working knowledge (given a new problem (not a textbook problem, those are designed to be solved), knowing what could be done to solve it and the ability to do so)
State of the art knowledge (what are the current problems in a topic, what are other people doing, what are new ideas, etc.)

Since you just finished undergrad, 1. will likely be the highest level you are at in any topic. Getting there is by far the easy part. It does not seem so in the beginning, but learning a new topic to that level gets easier the more you know.  Level 2 is the minimal level needed to do actual research if you have someone to guide you. Getting you there in a single topic will take you the next few years. Level 3 is what you need to be an independent researcher. Even assuming that you are a dedicated, above average student, getting you there in a single topic will take you your whole Phd, if not a bit longer. The last level is also one that requires upkeep. Expect to spend several hours each week just to keep up with what other people are doing in a single topic.

Now the simple truth about academic careers is that you can't be a PhD student or post-doc forever. You'll need some sort of permanent position to survive, which requires you to be an independent researcher, which requires state of the art knowledge. This is why you see so many people specializing on a single topic, to get to that level and to stay there.

I don't think that is the only way, but note that you'll need some focus. If you try to work in all topics on your list at once, you will never get anywhere and likely not even finish your PhD before you have to drop out. But if you first focus to get one to the highest level, you might still at some point find that you finally have enough free time to look at some of the others. From there things can develop naturally.

Personally I like to read textbooks on different topics in my free time. I even have some collaborations with other people on topics where I have working knowledge but wouldn't consider myself to be at the state of the art. But the reason that they work with me is that I can contribute ideas from the topic I spent most of my time in and where I am at the state of the art.


Professor asked for details of letters I need

The professor wants you to help him/her write the letter. You know what the institution needs and the prof doesn't want to have to explore it separately. You have an opportunity to let him/her know just what you would like emphasized in the letter.

Some professors even ask for a first draft of their letter and may send it out pretty much unchanged. Make sure you include enough to cover the needs of the granting institution and enough to highlight your own work, especially as it is known to this professor.


I don't think Proquest is really a publisher so much as just a repository.  They don't make any editorial choices about the material they host.

I don't have any information about their financials, but accessing dissertations through them is moderately difficult and expensive.  (I think getting a copy of a thesis from them is on the order of US$50.)  I think of them as the dissertation archive of last resort - I would only order from them after exhausting all other options (author's website, university's library, etc).

My feeling is that you might as well submit your thesis to them, since it is good to know that future researchers looking for your thesis would always have Proquest as a fallback option.    However, you should make an effort to make your thesis available through more convenient (and free) means as well.  Post it on your professional web page.  If your field uses arXiv or a similar open access repository, upload it there as well.  (Since you will presumably be publishing papers and/or books based on your thesis, check first that the relevant publishers are okay with having your thesis available for free online.  Probably the major journals/publishers in your field will have similar policies.)


How does a standalone honours degree work?

I am familiar with the situation in NZ. Since Australia and NZ share many commonalities in higher education, i suspect that things are similar.

A normal bachelors degree is a three-year degree and by itself not sufficient for getting into a PhD program. An honours degree adds a fourth year to the bachelor degree and is normally open to very good students (there are GPA criteria for entry). In particular, an honours degree often involves a research project and is deemed sufficient for PhD admission. Most if not all people do the honours degree immediately after their bachelor. Generally, you need a four-years degree to get into the PhD, which can either be an honours or a master degree.


Would lackluster grades in Applied math hurt an application for Pure Math PhD programs?

The GPA is certainly one of the competitive aspects of an application for a graduate program in mathematics (and presumably, in most other academic fields), so anything which brings down your GPA hurts your application some positive amount.  Lackluster grades in applied math and CS are probably going to hurt more than lackluster grades in history and cinema studies.

As is often the case with admissions advice, it's hard to be more precise because the individual admissions committee gets to make up its own mind on how strongly to weight everything.  (And this may not be a bad thing: this is what allows one school of a certain caliber to accept your application while another school of the exact same caliber rejects it.)

For this issue, the structure of the department and university may play a role.  Namely, for undergraduate programs at US colleges and universities (your profile lists you as living in the United States) it is relatively rare for pure math and applied math to be truly separate majors.  In my department for instance applied math is an "area of emphasis" within the math major.  Yet more commonly, there's just one major and students show where they fall on the spectrum by their choice of classes.  If the graduate program to which you're applying is really just a pure math department (again, relatively rare at American universities, though my own graduate program was like this), then they may (perhaps) be used to ignoring or discounting applied math courses. If there's just one math department then admissions faculty who look at your transcript are probably going to view the applied math classes as math classes, and the amount that you will get dinged for your performance will probably be non-negligible.

Now comes the time to say that I find your overall approach curious.  You should not major in a subject for which you have "little passion".  If you know you are not interested in something then the obvious -- a bit narrow-minded, but strategically sound -- plan is to take the minimal number of courses required in that subject but make sure that you do well in them.  (Most often required undergraduate level courses at US universities are not too challenging for the type of students who are going on to graduate study.)  You don't like applied math or CS but you might, as a consolation prize, want a career in them?  This doesn't really scan.  I think it is much better to pursue serious career goals one at a time: if you don't get into graduate school for pure math you can still get a real world job with a major in pure math, and if at that time you discover that necessity has given birth to interest in these other fields: so be it, you can learn more about them then.

You ask whether you should address this in your personal statement.  Perhaps, but since I find your explanation a bit strange I'm not sure what you should write.  Consider providing less pointed information: e.g. you were considering a technical / industrial career until you discovered the depth of your interest in pure mathematics....Yeah, I find it tough to put a good spin on your situation that is faithful to the information given.  So a brief "sorry, these grades are anomalous; what I really like is this and notice how stellar my performance is there" may be the way to go.

Good luck.


Is it required for a supervisor to understand the technicality of his PhD student's research

Both types of mentors can be good.  A good mentor of the second type will make sure that there is expertise somewhere that a student can go to for advice and help if called for.


Use of Wikipedia images I created myself

I think the problem here is that you (a) don't feel like you should be citing the source of this, since you made it yourself but (b) think this will be viewed as plagiarism from Wiki (or, at least, laziness). It seems to me the best way to resolve this is to cite your source, and cite it as yourself via Wikipedia. A short note like (Wikipedia, Original Artist Jane Doe) makes it clear that yes, this is the image from the Wiki page but also that you made it.


Citing one paper in consecutive paragraphs in a thesis

Just open with:

This section summarises research by A et al. [1].


In research proposals, why do investigators need to claim a certain fraction of their salaries, from the proposed budget?

There are several reasons in the US. Most faculty are paid for 9 months of the year not 12. They may choose to spread out their pay into 12 payments a year, but their base salary is for 9 months. Grant funding is one way to supplement their pay up to a full 12 months. Unfortunately, the National Science Foundation, which funds a lot of academic research in the US, only allows a maximum of 2 months to come from NSF, so professors must diversify somehow as well.

Additionally, some faculty may choose to buy out some of their required teaching. Many departments will allow you to teach less if you can bring in even more of your salary. Sometimes this is done with grant funding, but I think more often it is done using endowed chairs.


Conducting exams in which a computer (but no internet) is available

My university in the UK provides such "locked down exam mode". Students log in with special "exam accounts", while their normal accounts are disabled for the time being. Exam accounts have limited access to network, permitting access to the University network (including submission servers, licensing servers, and other necessary infrastructure), and restricting access to anything else. This has been working well for the last 10-ish years at least, and I have not heard any major complaints from IT staff about it. For comparison, the same IT staff found it difficult to install TexLive on all university computers and were reluctant to perform this task.


What would be the grad program for studying Paralegal in the US?

In the US, there isn't any standard- there are associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree programs for paralegals along with shorter certificate programs.  There are also professional certifications that you can take a test for.

If you really want a master's degree, there are lots of programs offering a "Master's in Legal Studies" for paralegals.


How long does it takes to receive a master graduation document (degree)

It depends on the university you attend and how many credits they require for a master degree. In out university, 30 credits (10 courses) needed to complete a master degree. But finishing time depends on you. You can take all these courses in one year (spring, summer, fall) or do it in two years or even three. Its totally up to you.

The graduation document, I mean the degree, would be awarded the last day of your last semester. That would be your official "master" title date. The will mail the document to your home address. Plus you can also collect the document on graduation day at the end of spring semester. If you have graduated in Fall 2013, you can attend graduation day in May 2014 and get the degree with fancy clothing.


What are reasons to update your website and CV frequently, when not on the job market?

A CV in academia is useful to you and others in many different contexts.  Applying for jobs is a very small component of that.
CVs are useful to you and others. Keeping an academic CV up-to-date will often make your life easier, other people's lives easier, and may also open up opportunities for you.

Here are a few ways that having an up-to-date CV is helpful:

Communicating achievement to others: The decision of others in relation to you may be influenced by perceptions of your experience and achievements. Your CV documents this (although google scholar profiles and personal websites can also serve this purpose). There are many examples that could be given: (a) another academic is working out whether to invite you onto a paper and wants to understand your expertise, (b) potential phd students are looking for a supervisor and are trying to understand whether you've supervised before or how much and how well you are publishing, (c) your colleagues at your own university are trying to understand what you do.
Grants: When you apply for grants, you will need to incorporate information about your track-record and achievements. Your CV can be an up-to-date source of this information. Furthermore, you might be part of a grant that others are leading. The grant will often require a lot of information about the investigators on the grant. These other people may be able to fill out relevant sections directly from your CV.
Annual performance review: If you have an annual performance review, it is often helpful to share your current CV.
Internal promotion: Systems for promotions and levels vary throughout the world. In Australia/NZ/UK you typically have levels A to E. If you want to move up a level, you need to document your achievements. Having an up-to-date CV can help.
Course accreditations and related matters: In some cases, your department or university might be seeking accreditation as an educational provider in a particular area. These often require documenting number of staff, educational attainment of staff, evidence of research active status.
Annual or other reviews of programs: In addition to performance reviews, programs, larger research groups, and departments often compile documents reviewing annual (or other timeframes) achievements (e.g., publications, grant funding, outreach, etc.). Administrative people can go to your CV to get this information. Or it may be that you open up your own CV and copy and paste a bunch of things.


Literature Review Tables: Plagiarism or Fair Use

First, please note that plagiarism is a different concept from copyright infringement/fair use. To summarize what I will explain here: as long as you put quotation marks around everything that is copy-pasted AND you clearly cite each instance, I don't think you have any problem with either plagiarism or copyright violation; this would be fully morally acceptable and within your fair use rights.

Here are my detailed comments:

Plagiarism: In general, as long as you properly cite your sources, there is no issue about plagiarism. (Plagiarism is strictly about copying words from other people without giving them credit. It has nothing to do with copyright violation.) However, your scenario is a bit tricky because even if you cite your sources, copy-and-paste almost always requires quotation marks; however, you might possibly get away without quotation marks in a table (if it were copy-and-paste into regular text, you would most certainly need quotation marks). To be safe, I would just put quotation marks around everything that you or your colleague copies-and-pastes AND also cite the source each time. If you do this, then there is absolutely no concern about plagiarism.

It is also very important to understand that "paraphrasing" does not let you escape from claims of plagiarism. If your paraphrase is still too close to the original quotation, some people might still consider it plagiarism, even if you quote the source. (I personally disagree that that would be plagiarism because you quote the source, but,  unfortunately, I know for a fact that some people do consider it to be plagiarism just because the paraphrase is still too close.) So, according to what you have described, I think paraphrasing would be a waste of your time: simply copy-and-paste, put quotation marks around each copy-and-paste, and cite each quotation clearly--if you do that, there is absolutely no concern about plagiarism.
Copyright violation and fair use: I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I understand, copying bits and pieces from several different articles (even entire paragraphs) and assembling them into a table is fully within fair use limits. Fair use will generally let you copy entire tables, so assembling your own table from various sources should definitely be within your fair use rights. (And note that fair use is your right; the copyright holder has no right to restrict people from making fair use of their copyrighted work--copyright is not unlimited.)


Applying to grad school where I've been on exchange

I know that many universities in the US and an increasing number in
  the EU are against taking on their own graduates

I assume you mean for grad-school ? This is the first I've heard of it. We encourage our undergrads to search widely, but I'd love to take my own undergrads for grad school if I could persuade them to stay.

The sentiment you're referring to is more prevalent at the faculty hiring level: namely, universities are less likely to hire their own Ph.D students as faculty (at least not without some time spent elsewhere first)


Now, it is my understanding that poster sessions are normally works in progress.

Not quite. Poster sessions normally readily accept work in progress. However, I have yet to see a poster session that requires the presented work to be in progress, or unfinished.

The reason why you normally see much work in progress on poster sessions besides few finished results is that authors who have complete, final results will rather aim for something more reputable than "just" a poster, by trying to publish a regular conference paper.

However, it is completely acceptable to present final results on a poster, if you deem a poster to be the best way to draw benefit from your results (e.g. get in touch with other researchers).

EDIT: As explained by the updated question, the "final results" are actually just final for a very early step in a research endeavour. It seems that they are meant to show a direction into which future research could proceed.

This kind of statements, especially when it refers to the future research that the author would like to start, is rather common on posters. Like this, posters serve two purposes:

On the one hand, they show a small contribution. Even though they are comparably abstract and superficial, the early conclusions on how several aspects can be combined and thus lead to new research questions may provide a good overview of the new topic to other researchers. In this interpretation, the content of the poster is a newly discovered research question that is possibly interesting to other people beside the poster author.
On the other hand, they serve as a request for comments on the author's work. Poster sessions are perfectly suited for finding opportunities to let experienced researchers have a look at one's work and provide comments or enter into a discussion with them. In this interpretation, the content of the poster is a kind of a research proposal.


PhDs in the UK: should you know supervisor beforehand?

It is not necessary to know a professor before applying for a PhD in the UK. I have so far supervised 8 PhD students, only one of whom I knew before they started their PhD.
There are two routes to a PhD in the UK. First is to apply for an advertised position or program. This is how the majority of PhDs are recruited, but it is also usually only open to home students. The second is to find the funding yourself (either through a non-UK government scheme, an NGO or a wealthy benefactor) and to write to the supervisor laying out your experience, your desire to do a PhD (and why with them), and what your source of funding is.
I don't take unpaid interns as I feel it unfairly advantages those that can afford to do an unpaid internship at the expense of those that can't. My university runs several schemes that fund summer internships and my professional society also has a summer studentship fund. Unfortunately, I only have the capacity to take one, or at a push, two summer students a year, and I would normally recruit these from our own undergraduate body. While I try to reply to all requests for internships, I get several a day during some parts of the year, and sometimes they slip through the cracks.


Reference a web page by author and year: which date to use in citation; publication date or revision date?

I searched for your question and found these content which may help you. I found that, in citation of web pages or online resources, it is better (not a must) to cite with the updated date and the date when the reader has accessed the online content.

In this web pages about APA, Chigago and CSE styles, under the update date it is written:

  This date is when the page was last changed. The last update date of a
  web page is usually given at the bottom or top of a page.  A posting
  date may also be given on the page one level higher (such as a page
  that is an index of articles).

Also, as a recommendation I read the following content on this webpage:

  Date of publication or date of last revision

  The date a Web document was created or last updated is frequently listed at the bottom.
  If a document includes both a date of creation and a date it was last updated, use only the latter.

It seems that as there is no general rule about the date included in online resources, the writer preferred the revised date.

However, I also checked the following book

The Chicago Manual of Style, sixteenth edition; essential guide for writers, editors and publishers; ebook, The University of Chicago press,
2010.

and in this section on the 1700th page of the PDF file,

14: DOCUMENTATIONI: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Chapter Contents >>
    Source Citations: An Overview >>  Considerations for Electronic Sources

the following guide is presented; as we see in the index of the document, this guide applies to websites and web pages:

  14.8 "LAST MODIFIED" AND OTHER REVISION DATES

  Some electronic documents will include a date on each page or screen indicating the last time the document was modified or revised. There are no accepted standards for this practice, and for formally published material the date of publication is generally more important. A revision date should be included, however, if it is presented as the de facto date of publication or is otherwise the only available date. Such dates may be particularly useful for citing wikis and other continuously updated works.

On the contrary it seems that in the APA style, the preferred date is the update date rather than the publication date in the previous quoted text. In the apastyle website under a blog content about The Generic Reference: When? we read:

  Online Documents

  Online material can be tricky to date properly. If the date is not
  apparent at the beginning of the document you’re citing, look at the
  end (e.g., APA Guidelines for Providers of Psychological Services to Ethnic, Linguistic, and Culturally Diverse Populations was finalized
  in 1990, so that’s the date to use).

  But look out for a footer that says, “This page was last modified on
  [date].” This is not the date to use! It could be the date that the
  document was published, but it’s more likely to be the date it was put
  online or the date when the webmaster added code for a dancing Freud
  to the page.

  Some sites place a copyright date for the website at the bottom of
  every page. Check a few pages on the site; if the identical statement
  appears on every page, it’s a site-wide footer, so that’s not the date
  you’re looking for either. (See "Zip, Zero, Zilch," below, for the
  best solution.)

As a conclusion; I found that if you want to cite an online content, pay attention into two dates; the date when you visited the online content and the date the content is created. If you have the date when the content is edited and updated, use this newer date. However, I recommend you to read the instructions of the style which you are using, they may have specific recommendations and guides on this issue. Also, be aware, it happens sometimes that the online content is written on an older date when the website update date is globally mentioned in the footer of the website's pages, you should use the date the page you are referring to is created or edited, not the date all the website is updated.


Is it a good idea to apply for PhD in Econ before finishing my Msc in Economics first?

Actually, it is the perfect time to apply for a start date of Fall 2020. Your background sounds pretty solid, but only the institutions will provide valid judgements on that. Waiting will only put off your possible acceptance by a year.

Don't worry about the current "lack" of research experience. It is pretty normal at your stage for applicants to US institutions.

Make your best case in any application. Show that you are a solid candidate with a high likelihood of success.

Note that most US doctoral programs are willing to accept candidates with only an undergraduate education. Of course at the top end of the scale the competition is fierce.


Would I look good as a Ph.D. applicant if abandon one graduate program and then pass from another program?

Normally, yes, but there may be possibilities with a "sister" institution running the same course or similar course with the matching courses / modules where you could then move - of course this has to be accepted by both institutions.

Moving to a completely separate institution will normally mean a new course and the parts you have completed may go towards full or partial credit for the equivalent courses or modules.

This would normally be evaluated on a case by case basis by the Dean / admissions officer or equivalent.

It is also very much dependent of which country or countries you are dealing with...


What types of administrative jobs can a faculty member get?

I feel this is a question that's almost better suited for The Workplace. My fear in your case would be that you, having been a department head previously, are seen as vastly overqualified for almost every non-leadership administrative position (and leadership positions tend to not be filled as quickly as you mention). It may appear surprising to meritocracy-oriented academics, but people are generally not prone to hire overqualified staff - motivation and job satisfaction can become issues, and they are expected to not stay on long (as you yourself also don't intend to do).

That being said, I can't help but wonder whether you have any contacts in the UK that you can activate. Maybe there is some temporary administrative role that would suit your skill set, or a temporary teaching position in courses related to your experience. To me, that seems like a more promising shot than blindly applying to regular administrative posts, and hoping that the hiring team sees your very unconventional background as a positive.

As a sidenote, I also wonder why you are confident that you will find a faculty position in a year unless you already have one lined up. As I understand it, senior-level hires in the UK are a pretty rare and long-running processes, and hoping for one within a year, which you then also need to win, seems to be putting a lot of eggs into a very specific basket. If you already have one lined up, talk to the people there about some temporary contract in the meantime.


Why do some journals allow their papers to be open access for a short period of time after publication?

I don't know about either of the two journals you specifically mention, but in math things like this are sometimes done to attract more high quality submissions to the journal to raise it's profile, particularly for new journals, since academics generally like open-access, and it can be a selling point when choosing a journal.  (From what I remember, with new journals what I sometimes see is that the journal is open-access for its first couple years.)