Is it possible to protect a paper before publishing it?

Now, consider the field of Mathematics. Say a mathematician has obtained a nice result, but for whatever reason can't publish a paper on it momentarily.

This bears further explanation.  Publication in mathematics does not happen so quickly, but if you have a "nice result," you should be able to submit it for publication.

  Can they do anything to hold some kind of priority over anyone else that comes up with it and publishes it before them?

If two different mathematicians or groups of mathematicians obtain results at approximately the same time, they should both be able to publish.  The gap between submission and acceptance of most math papers is typically 3-18 months (with anything less than six being quite speedy), and the gap between acceptance and publication is another 6-24 months or so.  So if a rival paper gets published before you submitted yours, there are three possibilities: (i) the other paper was in fact first; (ii) you delayed submission for a significant length of time, or (iii) you experienced substantial delays in the publication process (including rejections of your paper).

For most mathematicians, the best way to hedge against getting scooped is to (i) write up your results in a timely manner, and (ii) post the paper to the arxiv as soon as (or even slightly before) the initial submission.  In the mathematical community, an arxiv preprint will have the same effect towards establishing "priority" as a formal publication.  It also has the chance to alert a rival group to the overlap of effort before the works have been published.  When this happens, the two groups should examine each others papers and decide how best to proceed.  In some cases this means that each paper cites the other and they both get published.  In some cases the work is combined into one joint paper.  And yes, sometimes one of the groups decides that what they have done is "majorized" by the other group and decides not to try to publish their work.

From the way your question is framed, I have the suspicion that you are not very familiar with mathematical publication culture and may be thinking about things in somehow the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on what it is.  But in particular you write

  If so, what happens in practice if someone else does indeed publish it before them?

and

  That is, the practical result of this "protection" should be the ability to make the journal take your paper (which you should quickly write) instead of the one by the researcher who published before.

With regard to the first quoted passage: with very high probability, the prior publication will stand without formal comment and you will be left to try to explain/establish why your paper should still be published.  I have seen "statements of priority" published about math papers, but probably fewer than ten in my entire life.

With regard to the second quoted passage: first of all, no author has "the ability to make the journal take your paper" in any circumstance whatsoever.  I'm not sure I completely understand the situation you contemplate: if the journal has already published the other paper, then it is too late for them to take your paper "instead."  If you're saying that they should retract the published paper and publish yours instead...well, I have never seen that happen. The only circumstance in which I think that could even be plausible is if the authors of the other paper literally stole your work and passed it off as their own.

Also...what do you mean "which you should quickly write"?  If you see a published paper on work that you've completed but haven't even written up yet, then as mentioned above that other paper was probably written 1.5-3 years before yours.  So how could you have priority in this situation?


Applying to Canadian universities for PhD without a thesis based MS

In my experience this really depends on what the supervisor is looking for in terms of what projects they have in mind. But I have seen people begin a PhD program with no masters degree or undergraduate thesis. It would be particularly beneficial if the research assistantship involved working on research that was a focus of a prospective supervisor. Experience as a research assistant could provide more relevant experience than a masters thesis, particularly if the topic was appropriate.

I would suggest you make contact with prospective supervisors who focus on what you are interested in. Be prepared to let them know why you want to do research and why they should take you on as a student. But don't discredit yourself, it sounds like you have some valuable skills to offer. Enthusiasm to develop and learn goes a long way.


Does publishing on Arxiv diminish chances of publishing in a journal/conference?

In mathematics it is extremely common for people to post their papers to the arXiv before submitting them to a journal. The idea is that this allows them to get feedback on their paper before making the submission. For instance, several of my collaborators have posted all of their papers to the arXiv. Moreover, I have never heard of a journal not accepting a paper due to its having previously been posted to the arXiv. This doesn't mean that there aren't any journals with policies prohibiting arXiv posted submissions, but I cannot imagine any mainstream journal having such a policy as use of the arXiv is so widespread that there would be a big pushback. There are even well-respected arXiv-overlay journals like Discrete Analysis which do not host papers at all but merely link to the relevant arXiv posting.

The bottom line is that when it comes to well-respected math journals, having already posted your paper to the arXiv should have no affect whatsoever on the likelihood of its being accepted to be published by a journal.

Added: One potential exception to what I wrote above are journals with double-blind reviewing systems. Such journals are extremely rare in mathematics, but they do exist (e.g., The American Mathematical Monthly). Posting an article to the arXiv and then submitting it to a journal with a double-blind reviewing system runs the risk of ruining the anonymity of the author.


What is the minimum one should expect from the day-to-day supervisor?

I think it is reasonable to expect two things from a day-to-day PhD advisor. The first is a willingness to meet in a timely manner and discuss expectations and the second is a willingness to deliver on agreements in a timely manner. If there is something you need/want from your day-to-day PhD advisor, then ask him/her about it. If you are concerned that your request is unreasonable, then ask colleagues or here.

The problem with answering the question in general is summed up in the
UTS link you provided:

  At the outset it is important to acknowledge that the nature of the
  student-supervisor relationship cannot be mandated, largely because it
  needs to be flexible and take into account the particular
  circumstances of the research project, the student and the supervisor.

As far as the universality of formal guidelines about expected behavior in regards to advising students, all universities provide a faculty handbook that has some minimal guidelines, but generally it is not as long or formal as the links you provided.


Research results obsolete while publishing

There is no way to predict what will happen to your paper or whether
you will get credit you find satisfactory. If B is a decent person
he/she will choose to to make some acknowledgement of your prior or concurrent work.

This cannot be the first instance of such competing claims for priority.
Your journal may have a policy
on handing such situations, and it would not hurt to ask, as long
as your request doesn't appear to put blame on the journal for delaying
your paper.

You don't say what field of science is involved. Does your paper use
different methods than B's? Methods which are not made obsolete by
B's paper and might lead to other developments? Does anything remain
of your paper that is not superseded by B;s? If so maybe you'll be
asked to revise your paper to highlight what has not been 'scooped'.

In some fields I know of cases in which journal editors worked out
an arrangement for one or two joint paper(s), pretty much to the satisfaction of all. Obviously,
that would not always be possible.


Experimental research work on a similar experimental setup patented by someone else

You should probably consult an IP lawyer. Your institution probably has someone who can help with this. Depending on what you are doing you may be using the patent idea or not (ie violating). You might be able to get a license from the patent holder. Lots of possibilities here.

In one scenario, the patent owner may be interested in your work.

But there is too little stated in your question and too much implied to be able to give nay definite answer.


I'd like to use a figure from a paper; what's the best way to do this?

Unless the paper is available under a very permissive license, such as Creative Commons Attribution, you will need to seek permission.  (There may be other legal possibilities, such as fair use or fair dealing, but that's a little subtle.  See this story for more information on that.)

The copyright owner is the person you need permission from.  Who that is will generally be marked on the published paper (often it is the publisher, and sometimes the author).  If the publisher holds the copyright, then it is still polite to ask permission from the authors as well, although this is not legally required.

Big commercial publishers will often have a department for dealing with this, typically with a name like "Permissions".  If you can't find such a department, then you can try just writing to the journal in question (look at their web page to try to find e-mail addresses).

If you are lucky, they will quickly approve your use of the figure.  If you are not lucky, they will ask for money.

  And, finally, how does the answer vary for (a) those wishing to republish the figure in their own work,

There are definitely legal issues here.

  (b) those not wishing to publish the figure e.g. for student coursework.

If you never make the work available to the public, then it is hard to imagine that the copyright owner will ever learn about it or complain (and they would look foolish if they tried to sue someone for using their figure in a homework assignment).  However, you still have a moral obligation to cite the source of the figure.


This is more of a qualifying remark: What your eventual target might be should probably be different from your current target. Advising students is a skill you have to learn and learning this skill will take time. So I'd recommend starting small until significant parts become routine. Also, more senior students might be able to show new students the ropes, so staggering might be useful too.

There are of course a lot of other constraints, so don't take this as your only criterium.


Should I apply to grad school as an international or as a domestic student? (Canada, Engineering)

In most English-speaking countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand), "domestic student" means "citizen or permanent resident of the country" - regardless of where you graduated.

Please notice this definition may be different in other countries (for example, in Germany, grad school applications by anyone who completed their undergrad in Germany are considered "domestic" for all purposes - barring, in some cases, tuition fees...).


How to select the principal investigator in a group?

I'm not sure why you are asking. But if it is because there are disputes within the group it might be best, overall, to find a different group. Clashes at that level don't portend success, but rather a lot of frustration.

But all of your suggestions are valid (as is that of user Massimo Ortolano). If it is obvious that one of you would give the work an advantage for publication, do that. If one of your junior members needs a boost in reputation, do that (sorry Massimo). Anything can work as long as there is buy in from the group. If someone has a strong inclination to do it and no one else objects, he or she would be a good choice as they will likely commit to getting things done and organized. If someone has a history of successful grant writing, another good choice, unless the granting institution has rules limiting repeat grants.

But the most important quality is agreement.


Grammatical mistakes and minor typos made during grant application

Typos are always detrimental. Especially in a short submission they will stand out and broadcast to the reviewer that you are not careful or did not take the submission seriously enough. This is true in other areas as well. I vividly remember as a kid watching a friend's dad flip through resumes of job applicants for his company. He would immediately throw away any that had typos, complaining "how hard is it to make sure a 2-page resume is perfect?"
Whether they are detrimental enough to fully sink your application depends on the reviewer and your application's strength otherwise.


How do I maintain motivation in a completely awful grad program?

I think the first thing is to take a break - a week away from your department, in which you read no email and keep contact with no one there. From the text of the question, I understand you may be stressed and burnt out, so you do need the break. If you forget these breaks, burnout can become depression, which would complicate your life even further.

Other than that, try to hang out only with people who stress you the least, and if stressful people are in your office, work more from home, or switch offices. You didn't mention if you had an adviser, or not, but you said you had no support, so it could be an idea to go to an adviser with a less negative attitude, since you don't have a research assistantship to risk.

Another option, is quitting the department for a better graduate school. I had a friend who did that for the same reasons you state, and the fact that he had passed the qualifying exam helped him get into the happier graduate program.

I also want to say that doing research isn't always a happy process. You may work for two years on a project and seem to get good results, but when you do your final check before publication, you realize you had an error in your work and, without it, your results are trivial and useless. That's just a part of life as a researcher that will always depress you.


Is it OK to submit the same post-doctoral fellowship application two years in a row?

I did exactly this and was successful, but I'm going to recommend against it. In my situation, I submitted essentially the same project to roughly the same range of funding bodies two years in a row. In the second year, I tweaked my proposal, I had more publications, I had a stronger CV, and I finally had my proposal accepted re-applying for a very competitive fellowship. However, I also got flat rejected from all other fellowships to which I re-applied (including those that longlisted me in the first round).

In my situation, what little feedback I received from rejections universally stressed that the project was strong but that I needed more publications to appear a suitably reliable candidate. I had only one publication for my first round of applications, but 3-4 for the second year. For the fellowship I received, the initial rejection basically said they thought the project ought to be funded but that they lacked enough funds that year and waitlisted me. I didn't get it in the end, but then when reapplying next year I was successful. As mentioned, I wasn't even longlisted for the other fellowships to which I re-applied, three of which had listed me in the first round.

It seems this will be field-dependent (I'm in the humanities) but will, as noted, depend most on the funding body. The instutition at which I finally won the fellowship was very invested in the project and wanted me to resubmit the same thing. Everywhere else was mildly interested at best.

To conclude, I'd recommend against doing this unless you have a solid reason to believe the same funding agency is likely to accept a project they rejected the first time. Having lots more publications, though helpful, is unfortunately not enough on its own.


Different areas of work look differently. A mechanic, a tailor or a miner perform visible physical operations and deliver an objective and measurable result by hour. Compared with them, office work may seem lazy: people sit at their desks, they are not sweating, can have toilet and drink breaks whenever they want, etc. Also, the result of their work seems less tangible: we do not see goods or materials produced, only papers, and looking from outside, we often can not understand how good the  result is without taking their manager's word for it.

Academic teaching and administration work is very much like office work in a company. Teaching-focused colleges and universities often seem very similar to corporate organisations (with one important difference that they have  less support  structures and security for academics).

Academic research work seem even less organised and the results seem even less tangible. People either appear sitting at their computers idly (while they are in fact thinking on the problem), or stay at the whiteboard scribbling unreadable equations (still thinking on their problems), or stay at home (thinking about their problems). If you look around, you will see the result of their thinking process (e.g. a computer or smartphone in front of you, as well as many many others). But the results do not jump out of their heads in the same visible way how an ore appears from the mine.

Corporate culture portraits an idealised worker as an energetic, serious man in suit. There are many, many problems with this idealised picture, for example, the fact that it is relatively easy to make such an appearance without any real skill, knowledge and desire to produce a meaningful result. Academia, partly, shares this problem: there is an idealised image of academic (a person excellent in everything, highly introvertial but excellent in communicating complex ideas to different audiences, etc etc), which has little to do with the real academic culture. Many academics visibly change their behaviour when they have to present their results for promotion or appraisal. However, in their natural habitat, they still focus on solving their problems in the way which is most effective for them, do not act to impress you or match your expectations about how this process has to look.


Is it ethical to date a graduate student of the same university where you are a faculty member?

I hope it's ethical!  (My husband was a graduate student at the university I'm a professor at, in a different department in the same school, when we started dating.)

The core ethical issue in faculty/student relationships is the power dynamic: it creates an ethical problem if you have power over her career, either in a way that could favor her (leading to concerns about favoritism) or disfavor her (leading to concerns about coercion).

In separate departments, that's not likely to be an issue: most assistant professors at most universities don't have power over graduate students in other departments.  There are still situations where issues could arise - say, if you ended up on the panel choosing which grad student from the school would win a prize, and she were a candidate; or if you were asked to be the outside member of her thesis committee (at a school which picks outside members to be professors from other departments).

So, unless your school has a specific policy on the subject, it's probably ethical, as long as you make sure to avoid being in a position that creates a specific conflict.


Asking for a reference years in advance?

There is really no reason not to do this. I would suggest that you either get a reference sealed in a signed envelope, or, possibly even better, have the professor(s), leave a reference letter with the department office (secretaries) with instructions to send it out on request. The recipient will want some assurance against forgery, of course.

It is usually important that the date that the letter was written be included on it, so that it can be balanced against other, more recent things.

Unless you have several sealed copies, you will also need a protocol for resealing it and returning it to you.

When you ask the professors, explain the need as you have done here. I doubt many would refuse.

Another option is to maintain contact over the years. Some professors welcome this (others may not). Many like to hear from previous students with a quick update on successes and plans.


How to deploy a StackExchange-style question and answer site for a university subject?

Yes it's possible. Yes it's been done. There are plenty of StackExchange clones such as OSQA to use - there's a question over on meta-stackoverflow that lists them. You can pretty much pick your favourite platform, and there will be a StackExchange clone for it.

But:

You might well find that take-up rates are very very low (maybe one in 20 if you're lucky). And you need a lot of people to give a Q&A site enough critical mass to sustain itself.

They're all reasonably easy to use, for the end-users. As to how hard they are to install and maintain, that's a question of the kit and talent you have available. If you've already got a server serving Django apps, then OSQA is easy. If you've got a *AMP stack, then any of the PHP clones should be pretty easy.  Installation and management is the really easy part of the process. Drumming up, and sustaining, partcipation is the really hard part.


What is the best way to go about doing research as an undergrad (pointed question inside)?

There is no harm in asking.

To answer your tl;dr question, it depends.  "Research" is not a monolithic thing.  Some professors may be working on projects that would be accessible to someone without a strong background in the subject, or would be willing to work with you to bring you up to speed.  Other projects may need someone who already has a strong background in a particular area and can jump right in.

Clearly you would be looking for a project of the first kind, and the only way to know whether anyone has one to suggest is to ask.  If you hear of something promising, talk to the professor; try to get a sense of whether it seems like something that would be interesting and accessible to you.  Be honest with the professor about what background you do or don't have.  (Don't try to present yourself as knowing more than you do; if you end up working on a project that you aren't prepared for, the result will only be frustration for everyone.)

If you find something that seems to be a good fit for you, great; if not, try again next year, with more courses under your belt.


Why don't universities reveal the extra time they give to students with disabilities when taking exams?

You already gave the actual reason: to hide it from employers. Why? Because it is irrelevant.

Diplomas/grades from university are the same, for all students. Period. It does not matter how you acquired it, the university recognised you meet the criteria (skills, know-how, ...) for having this diploma. That's all the employer needs to know.

Edit from comments:

The employer just has to know the grades/diplomas are assumed to be given objectively.

Time is irrelevant, because extra time allowance is here to level the student impairments to give him a fair chance at proving his/her skill on the subject. Time is usually a factor because there has to be a point where it's finished. The duration is not a factor of evaluation. Diplomas and grades are the same for all students because they evaluate the skills/knowledge of the students and not his/her performance.

If an employer needs someone who can do things in some timely manner, they are the one who needs to test candidates on that criteria. Universities just don't do this.


What does a PhD application rejection mean for other applications?

Virtually everyone gets rejected from at least one of the places they apply to. I have never heard of anyone who got through the process without getting rejected somewhere. I even got rejected from several places that were lower ranked than the ones I did get in to!

So no, one single rejection is not a sign that you are applying to the wrong level of universities. In fact, you should probably expect more rejections. Depending on the subject there can be 5-10 qualified applicants for each spot, so lots of good candidates are rejected every year. If you discussed what universities to apply to with the professors writing your recommendation letters, you are probably applying to universities of the right "level". The sheer number of applications means that you will get some rejections anyway.

With that said: if your are really set on graduate school, it is a good idea to apply to a wide range of schools on different levels.


Can I quote a sentence from another paper?

You can quote it as long as you reference it properly.

If you do not provide the source then that is plagiarism.


Research assistant wishes to remain anonymous, what to write in the acknowledgement?

There are several reasons for which that person might want to remain anonymous (e.g. s/he has been a victim of stalking).

I'd then write something like:

  The authors would like to thank an anonymous contributor from Elance for their help in statistical analysis and...

Edit: I amended the sentence above as suggested by Jonathon Wisnoski in a comment ('his help' -> 'their help') to reflect the fact that the gender of the contributor seems unknown to the OP.


Two weeks prior to PhD viva, what should I do?

Here are some of my tips, coming from someone who had a Zoom viva in February (in the UK). My field is physics rather than social sciences, but I think all of these tips apply nonetheless.

Make a list of potential questions that you could be asked in the viva. I did some of this as I was writing my thesis, as inevitably you have to summarise or cut parts that are too long, so these are ripe topics for questions. I also made use of lists of viva questions that other people have prepared; a particularly extensive and useful example is at the end of this blog post: http://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/phd-viva-preparation-steps/.

Practice answering these questions out loud. Get someone to quiz you if you can. Especially practice the length of your answers -- don't just say yes or no, but don't waffle for five minutes either. Focus on answers to "soft" questions such as "tell us about your thesis", as they'll likely start the viva with something along those lines and it will relax you if you can answer that confidently and smoothly.

Summarise your thesis. I made notes on the key points/arguments of each chapter, as well as noting any key figures or tables that I might need to refer to. Since your viva is on Zoom, you can even add bookmarks and annotations to your pdf document, and have that open on your computer while the viva is ongoing (I did this, but in the end didn't refer to a single one).

Re-read key papers. I identified about fifteen key papers in the literature that my research was based on, or whose methodologies I had followed, or had key results that mine agreed/disagreed with. I made sure I knew the main points of all these papers and how they related to my work. I think this was the most valuable piece of preparation I did, as it made me very confident that I knew the literature, and I answered some questions in the viva very well by explicitly referring to these key works.

Have a mock viva. You can ask your supervisor to arrange this. It doesn't have to be as long as the real thing (mine was about an hour). It's a chance for you to get familiar with the set up (although we're probably all old hands at Zoom by now), and practice answering some of the more general questions. This really helped relax me and demystify the process. Make sure to arrange it about a week before the real thing, so you have time to act on any suggestions they might have.

Don't over-prepare! You know your own work better than you think. I was so worried that I needed to revise all of undergraduate physics and the background to every topic in cosmology, but in reality the examiners asked me very few questions that didn't directly relate to my research. It was also fine when I said "I don't know" (which happened quite a lot!); they guided me through an answer and seemed happy to hear my reasoning.

Other observations: the external examiner asked me the more "nit picky" questions, while the internal asked basically the same questions for each chapter: "tell me about this chapter", "what was your contribution?" for chapters based on multi-author papers and "choose a result or figure from this chapter and explain it to me". You will probably have an independent chair in the meeting too, though they will stay silent throughout unless there is a problem. The Zoom viva will probably be shorter than if it was in real life -- mine was barely over two hours and I left almost disappointed that it wasn't longer!
A great answer about what to expect in a viva and how to answer those "soft questions" is here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/59811/49043.
Good luck!


How to reference a work that I refer to on multiple occasions?

In short: Yes. For every quote or idea that is not your own, this must be made clear to the reader. However, depending on the citation style, this does not always need to be in the form of “Joe Bloggs said” (which I have never seen in academic literature anyway), but may, e.g., just happen via a foot- or endnote.
If you are intensively quoting somebody or following another work, it may be feasible to have one sentence explaining to what a citation applies:

The following overview of discombobulation techniques is based on Bloggs et al. (1987).
Unless noted otherwise, all quotes in this section are from Bloggs et al. (1987). [this requires that quotes are visible as such]

This meets the above requirement.


Should a math paper use non-alphabetical ordering of authors' names for unequal contributions?

Edit: this answer is about pure math.
It’s not common. In 25 years of reading math papers I‘ve only ever seen one example of a paper that had a nonalphabetical author ordering. It was an English translation of a Russian paper from the 1970s written by a PhD student and his advisor. I don’t know what the story was behind this unconventional author order, but all I know is that the advisor’s name appears first even though alphabetically he comes second.

In the situations of extremely unequal contributions, is it reasonable to break from this tradition?

No. Since you’re going against the overwhelming norm in math publishing, no one will have a clear sense of what exactly you’re trying to say. Also, consider the fact that it could be that the author order that reflects the actual author contributions might coincide with the alphabetical order (for example in the paper I mentioned, it was competely random that the PhD advisor came second alphabetically and could easily have been the other way around). In that case the signal will be lost entirely.
My conclusion is that the idea of forcing this signaling mechanism on a math publication culture that isn’t adapted to it is illogical, ineffective, and will lead to inconsistent results that are only very weakly correlated with the effect you’re trying to achieve. If I were a journal editor and I received a submission that tries to use this mechanism, I would tell the authors to find a different way to say what they want to say about the author contributions.


In a paper with a co-author who contributed one part (say, computer implementation), where should the contributions of the authors be outlined?

If the journal wants you to specify which co-authors contributed which parts of the work, then the journal's guidelines for authors will tell you that clearly, and give you instructions for where in the paper to do it.  If the journal's guidelines don't say anything about it, then you don't need to specify which authors did what.


It has been reviewed but a decision has not been made. So it is "pending".


How to follow up with potential PhD advisor met at conference?

Simply ask. Of course, your email should take in consideration PhD application instructions at his institution. If you can be admitted without an advisor, it changes the context.

"Dear Dr. X,

It was a pleasure to meet you at conference Y and to discuss about Z.

Since we met, I have read about your research area and [Insert question or comment].

Would it be possible to meet/skype to discuss the possibility of pursuing a PhD in your lab?"


Should I reply to a university admission offer email?

It isn't necessary to reply to an offer of admission until you decide whether you will accept.

If you feel you must reply, you can simply say something like "Thank you for letting me know.  I will be sure to let you know my decision before the deadline."


Is there a convention on how to write pseudocode in scientific papers?

As you are already stating: There is no norm / convention for pseudocode.

Personally, I prefer a python-like notation, but this is because I like python ;-). CLRS is fine for many purposes.

If your software is written in a specific language, it might be beneficial to use a code convention which allows you to express the specifics of your programming language - this reduces the risk of introducing errors.

Even more important then the code convention is, that you should ensure your pseudocode allows someone else to re-implement your code without room for interpretations. Sometimes, "real" code can be more appropriate (but yes, it can be lengthy).


"Electronics and Communications Engineering" equivalent in the U.S.A

Electrical engineering and (when it exists) electronics engineering usually cover telecommunications, as well as many other topics. Undergraduate degrees in NA are usually broader in scope than those in Europe.

But it wouldn't try to change the terminology of your own major: keep it as telecommunications engineering if that's what it is, and everyone will understand.


Contact Prof for Course-Based Master Admission?

I think it will depend on the structure of the Master's program. I'm assuming you'll still have to do some kind of comprehensive "project" which will require some kind of advisor. In which case, I think it would be helpful to get a willing professor beforehand to strengthen your application. It shows that you already have a direction you're interesting in pursuing (which would be aligned with the professor's research interests).


How should I prepare for a research assistant interview as a cs undergrad?

From my experience, the academic setting is more relaxed on the interview. The interview I had for my GRA position had very few knowledge based questions. They want to see that you are highly enthusiastic about your domain of research, and that you're eager to learn.

If you have industry experience that is a huge plus! It shows you can actually work. I think one of the biggest fears of the lab director is a GRA/RA that is not able to accomplish much, i.e. losses motivation. Your industry interview will be more nit-picky about experience in a specific domain.

Being a GRA/RA is not like a course where you are told what to learn and when to learn it. You will be challenged to motivate yourself to solve research problems on your own time. It can be harder than industry in some ways, because you are given more conceptual work with no 9:00am to 5:00pm schedule to keep you active and focused.

I would focus more on touting your academic accomplishments. This assures them that you can handle a full course-load and research concurrently. I told them that I could not see myself working anywhere else, and that this line of research is the most meaningful thing I could be doing with my life. I didn't have to prepare that, because I meant it.

If you really what to know what the interview is like you can: (1) look online on Glassdoor or Reddit, (2) ask someone who is already in the lab what the interview is like.


Is it rude to visit a professor's office during office hours after he/she doesn't respond to my email?

I'm with your parents on this. Go talk to him. The missed reply could be for a variety of reasons, including just needing time to think about it. But scheduled office hours are a perfect time for a conversation.

It isn't rude at all. Polite, actually, to go in person.


A thesis is not a place to solve grudges. It is a professional document that is eternal. As such, it should be handled professionally and gracefully.

Still, I am having trouble why you do not want to have an acknowledgement section. Do you really believe you have done the entire PHD entirely yourself? Even if your advisor did not help enough, you had some funding right? And someone provided that. Should not he be included in the acknowledgement section? Someone also proofread your thesis. You probably also had co-authors in your papers. As you see, there are multiple people that contributed to your success.

But on a more informal tone. Don't you wish to thank your family or significant other for the support? Or your PHD co-students? The people that you share your office with? You have finished a PHD and especially since it probably was a rocky one this a very good reason to celebrate. Do not spoil the moment with petty grudges. Do what you are required to do, be professional and move-on to better things.


First, we have 26 questions tagged phd+industry. Nothing that is a direct duplicate, but I'd still recommend you browse through them. This question and this question appear especially relevant.

Second, it will be hard for us to really answer your question, because we simply are not in your position. Yes, staying in academia and getting tenure is hard, and most people drop out. Until you get tenure, you will work your backside off. If you really love it, you can take the risk, but be prepared for a long, hard slog.

Third, that said, a couple of specific comments. You write that you love to teach. On the one hand, that raises a bit of a red flag to me, because teaching is not necessarily the top responsibility for a professor. Publications are far more important. If you want to become a professor, you will spend a decade writing papers and doing your teaching "on the side"... because you won't be able to get tenure based on your teaching alone. You can relax the research part and concentrate on teaching after getting tenure.

I am not familiar with the system in Italy. Im Germany, there are universities of applied sciences (used to be called Fachhochschule, nowadays Hochschule). You'll apply for a professorship there if you have a Ph.D. and at least five years experience in industry. Then you will do a lot of teaching. Teaching load at Hochschulen is twice as high as at "regular" universities and very applied, and conversely, you are really not expected to do a lot of research. If something comparable exists in Italy, this may be a potential career route for you.

Then again, if you just like to teach, you could try to go into industry and get a job as a trainer. You won't need a Ph.D. for that (in fact, you'd probably be overqualified with a Ph.D.). However, note that trainers are often on the road a lot.


I got the following comment from a reputed math journal. What does it mean?

My educated guess is that the reviewer is a native speaker of German and mistranslated some terms into English:

The German word Übung translates both to practice and to exercise.
In German universities, höhere Mathematik (literally: higher mathematics) was used as a label for mathematics courses for students of other scientific fields or engineering. At times, this only referred to the calculus courses (and not the linear-algebra courses). In particular, these courses usually focus on applying mathematical concepts and do not compare to courses for students of mathematics. (I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still find this label in use somewhere.)

If my guess is correct, the reviewers comment means something along the lines of:

  This manuscript is just a (demonstrative) exercise in undergraduate mathematics and therefore not suitable for publication in a high-level journal.

So, your manuscript was rejected because it allegedly does not feature any new mathematics.


What are the benefits of attending international conferences at student level

It is hard to tell - it depends on the conference!

Possible benefits (amongst others) can be:

Learning more about your field and getting more motivation for your studies
Learning about different countries and cultures
Learning how scientific conferences work
Preparing your own scientific contribution for a conference
Networking with well-known people in your field (usually there are some invited speakers)

I would strongly recommend to submit your own contribution to such a conference in order to participate fully.

For the "tips"-section:

Hang out with people you did not know before
Find a good mixture of new / unknown topics and things which are close to your fioeld of interest
Attend every social event
Don't hesitate to talk to foreign people.


I'm guessing that the intent of this is to determine if you are in the somewhat rare case of not needing funding. If you can say that you will be funded from other sources (scholarships from another country, for example) then funding is one factor the committee need not consider. But if you need funding, then they also need to find ways to provide it if you are accepted. Or at least think about that, since if you are accepted without any funding, then there is a higher chance that you won't actually come.

So, follow the rules of any scholarship application, of course, and answer this question honestly. Apply when you meet the criteria.

I doubt that they expect you to have funding already arranged. But they would consider it a plus if you do.


In all of the cases I have heard of, existing departments split. Sometimes not one, but sometimes faculty from several existing departments split to form a new one. For example, faculty from mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry, and maybe math may form a new department of materials sciences.  Or faculty from math, statistics, computer science, biology, and a variety of engineering departments may form a department of computational science. Oftentimes, such departments are born after there is already a graduate or undergraduate degree that exists in this area and to which the involved faculty members have previously contributed.

In the cases I know of, the initiative has always come from the bottom, not the top. Typically, this has to do with faculty members feeling that there is a critical mass of faculty in a variety of departments to create a new degree program, and they later realize that they may as well build a department around it. The other reason is that the members of such a group may feel that the department they are in does not value their work -- this is, for example, how many statistics and applied math departments started as forks of mathematics departments dominated by pure math faculty who did not appreciate the work or style of the stat or applied math researchers.

In all of these cases, new departments consist of existing faculty. So at least as far as faculty salaries are concerned, this is often not substantially more expensive than the existing structure. Where things get more expensive is that departments typically duplicate support structures as well, such as staff, web site maintenance, etc. But it is not necessarily true that this is "very expensive" as you state.


Workshop: What to put on CV when you had multiple roles?

Maybe you can create a heading for "Workshop Experience", "Workshop Facilitated" or something along these lines. Then include all your workshop experiences there. You may have responsibilities such as:

Wrote the proposal for the initial funding and organization of the workshop
Gave a talk on ... (if needed to include the talk's name)
Reviewing submissions
Serving on committees (or lead sessions)
Coordinating and organizing events and conferences
Making ...
...

You may also modify the format above and in front of each activity, name the workshops where you did that task.


Publishing erratum to arXiv and other best practices

Has the original paper been posted on the arXiv?

If so, I suggest updating it with a corrected version, and communicating clearly in the Comments field that this new version is a corrected one. (Also, I'd change the Journal-Ref to indicate that it doesn't exactly correspond to the publication.)

In terms of copyright, this may be in a grey zone in case you've signed away the rights to your preprint to the publisher. But if so, it is a grey zone academics have been comfortably treading for years.


Is is okay to write "awarded" when the selected list is released online, but final offer yet to receive?

In general I would say that this is perfectly acceptable (although the phrasing more accurately should not use the past, but the future tense - "I will receive the 2019 XYZ award, see ").

The only reason I see to be cautious about this is if it's not 100% sure yet that you will actually get this award. I would say if the respective agency or selection committee has already made available a public list I would count this as sufficiently certain, but if you for instance had learned about it through more informal means (e.g., your department head has received a phone call that one of his employees will receive additional funding, or something along these lines) I would be a bit hesitant to already officially brag about your award.


When does a PhD student officially stop being a PhD student?

As I say in the comments and djechlin says in his answer, one's official student status is entirely determined by the institution in which the student is enrolled.  You can ask them at any given time whether you are a student, and they'll tell you.  If you want to know when you will lose your student status assuming that you complete all the requirements and paperwork for the PhD, they should be able to tell you that.  This won't have any cosmic significance though: in practice, you are probably asking them about how the computers in the registrar's office deal with the boundaries between one semester, the next and/or the intervening summer.

In terms of your intended need -- i.e., continued membership in a society -- I suspect that you may be taking the "official student status" more seriously than others will and thereby worrying yourself needlessly.  I can't think of any society that wouldn't take the student's own word as to the completion of their own student status, even allowing a reasonable grace period.  For instance, there are professional societies in my field (mathematics) which students can join for special rates (sometimes free).  In these cases membership is determined annually and the renewal process takes place shortly after a given academic year is underway.  So if you get your PhD in, say, June, then you get to keep the student benefits until, say, September or October.

A big exception to the above is immigration issues.  For that: yes, ask the university for the precise date at which your student status expires!


There’s no single right way to do this. The important point is that you show you’ve “done your homework,” so to speak. If you prefer to do that in one paragraph as you talk about your future studies, that’s probably fine. If you want to make an initial reference early on, that’s fine, too. So is mixing the references throughout the essay. But don’t overdo it, and don’t come across as pandering.

Finally, make sure to save your work carefully, and be thorough in your edits. The last thing you want to do is send school X an SOP that has references to school Y!


Is it a red flag for a PhD program if their graduating students cannot find postdoc?

I'd recommend trying to gather some objective data on outcomes.  For example, in the mathematics genealogy project you can search by "name of school" and "year of degree" to find a list of people who graduated in 2014 or 2015.  It's not guaranteed to be complete, and it sometimes mixes together people who were in different departments at the same university, but it's usually pretty good (and sometimes easier than finding this information on math department websites).

Then you can start googling people, with "math" appended if necessary, to see what you can find.  If you can't find any indication that someone is working in academia, then they probably aren't.  If they are, then you can gauge how pleased you would be with such a job.

This should give more reliable data than self-reported difficulty of finding postdocs, because it avoid filtering through the departmental culture.  Some cohorts of grad students are optimistic and enthusiastic, while others are more apprehensive, and it's not clear to me that this correlates particularly well with actual success on the job market.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the relevant issue is job opportunities, not actual outcomes.  If one person complains about the difficulty of finding a job and another doesn't, you can't conclude anything without knowing where they were applying.  (Sometimes students at more prestigious universities apply mainly to fancier postdocs, because they wouldn't be happy with less prestigious jobs.)  Unfortunately, this is more difficult to gather objective data on, but I think it's a second-order effect.


What are possible next steps after the completion of a less-than-stellar PhD?

You are putting up your own roadblocks. Your GPA isn't material if you have a doctorate. The quality of your dissertation might be. The recommendations from your advisor and others might be.
But you should at least apply to a few external places, perhaps both for post docs and for regular positions. If you go to industry it might be hard to return to academia if that is your goal.
But, in the US, at least there are a lot of institutions whose faculty doesn't focus primarily on research. If you can teach and inspire undergraduates then you can probably find a position if you try hard enough.
The conditions and requirements in your "own place" can't be judged here. And much depends on the economy at the time. And now, the pandemic also.
But don't give up before you start.


How to prepare poster paper for conference that rejected full paper

I've been involved in a number of conferences that offer posters to rejected papers as well as other newer work that wasn't ready or acceptable as a full paper.  Usually they don't publish short papers in a proceedings, though some do, as in this case.  I think presenting a poster is indeed a good way to get your work out into the community and get feedback.

The poster is not usually "reviewed" in the usual sense and the bar is typically pretty low.  So if the conference said "this might make a good poster" then it probably will.

  Considering I have plans to publish a longer paper eventually, how should I go about preparing this 3-page (IEEE 2-column) "poster paper"? Shall I keep it more textual and keep the model / results in the poster? Or put the model with preliminary results in paper and all extra material in poster?

Regarding the question of what to put into the paper, I suspect some may want to close this question as depending on personal circumstances, but I will try and give more general suggestions.   I would not recommend putting results in the poster and not the paper.  That seems wrong to me.  Just like with a full-length paper, the paper and the presentation should be roughly in sync.

I'm not clear on what "all extra material" refers to.

In general, treat your poster as an advertisement for the work and for people to read the paper (even if it's abbreviated).  There should be more material in the paper than the poster, not the other way around.


What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students?

There are a lot of places you could go to learn about Islam, starting with wikipedia.  It could be interesting to do so: I recently read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and found his description of his pilgrimage to Mecca fascinating and moving.  Last semester when I talked about Gabriel's Horn in my calculus course I wanted to be more balanced in my allusions, so I mentioned that in Islam the horn is blown not by Gabriel but by Israfil, and I was strangely pleased to figure out for myself that Israfil is the Islamic counterpart to Raphael (whereas Jibrail's role is expanded from that of his Christian counterpart).
The point of that preamble was: I do not doubt that learning more about Islam would be a worthy endeavor.  Nevertheless I am skeptical that such knowledge would directly help you to accommodate Muslim students. Like most major world religions, there is considerable variation in the way it is practiced.  I recommend rather that you familiarize yourself with the policies of your university on religious accommodations.  Just yesterday I received the yearly memo on Sensitivity to Religious Practices from my upper university administration.  It reads:

Many of our faculty, staff, and students commemorate various events of importance to their particular religions. Our institutional practice is to make every reasonable effort to allow members of the University community to observe their religious holidays without academic penalty. Absence for religious reasons does not relieve students from responsibility for any part of the course work required during the period of absence. Students who miss classes, examinations, or other assignments as a consequence of their religious observance should be provided with a fair alternative opportunity to complete such academic responsibilities. Students must provide instructors with reasonable notice of the dates of religious holidays on which they plan to be absent.
As you plan your syllabus and begin communicating with students, please keep in mind that some religious holidays affect a significant number of University of Georgia students and might require a student to abstain from secular activities or attend a house of worship. Different groups within a particular religion may also observe holidays on different dates, making it difficult to provide a comprehensive list of all potential religious observances. You may wish to search online for a religious calendar resource to serve as a guide for the dates of common observances.
Thank you for your cooperation.

At least if you are in the US (as I seem to recall is the case?) it seems very likely that your institution has some equivalent version.  You could keep copies on hand and give them to a student like the one you described above.  You can direct them to appropriate university administration if they feel that they are not being accommodated within the stated rules of the university.  If you really feel strongly, you could try to speak to the relevant administrators yourself.


What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently?

A comprehensive review was conducted in the field of psychology in relation to publication rates and tenure. There is also a "fun" review related to beer consumption and publication in the field of avian evolutionary biology.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01889.x
Psychological Science April 2007 vol. 18 no. 4 283-286


When Are Fall Semester Grades Usually Issued?

Fifteen December is, indeed, a bit early. Final exams often come about then and professors have a week or so to submit grades. After that it goes pretty quickly with modern automation. But 31 December would be more realistic.

But even then, if you request grades formally, it may take a bit longer for them to be sent and received.

There are still some US schools in which the "Fall" term doesn't actually end until about mid January.


How to write about the history of a new line of research in a grant application?

Your goal isn't to write a history per se but to support future research funding. Keep that in mind. There may be only a few papers, but there may be many ideas. I suggest you focus on those ideas and, especially, what they suggest for the future.

Some things in the new field have been settled, but, I suspect, many questions remain unanswered, suggesting future lines of inquiry. Mention both of these things - what we know now and what we need to explore.

So, focus on the ideas, not the specific papers that contain them.


How do editors guarantee the quality of peer-review?

I think you're making a mistaken assumption that your supervisor's not able to generate useful reviews quickly.  How long it takes to do a useful review depends on a few things: (i) the paper being reviewed, (ii) the kind of review being done, and (iii) the person doing the review.

Yes, if you're reviewing a long technical paper with lots of details it takes a long time to read through it.  It takes even longer if you want to check all the details for yourself.  It takes even longer if you're not familiar with these calculations.

I would assume that because your supervisor continues to get asked to do many reviews, the editors asking him find his reviews at least somewhat helpful. It's true that editors, at least in my field, have trouble finding enough good reviewers, but I can't imagine they would continue to ask someone who's review are consistently worthless.

I don't know what reviewing is like in your field (doing 20-30 reviews/month in my field would be unheard of) but here are some possibilities for how your supervisor could be doing many reviews quickly:

he's only selecting reviews he can do quickly and/or only reviews papers he wants to read anyway
since he does so many, he's probably gotten very efficient about doing reviews
he knows the field very well, so he can read the papers very quickly (and possibly assess it solely on the introduction, particular if he's going to recommend rejection)
he doesn't check low-level details, and primarily gives high-level reviews (which are still useful to editors, and depending on your area may be all that's expected)
he works really long hours


Best ways to obtain a scholarship for a Masters in financial mathematics/ quantitative finance

I can't answer for the US, but it is highly unlikely that you would get any sort of funding in the UK. Unfortunately UK funding is very hard to obtain (even for British students) and is, in any case, largely restricted to EU nationals. Further any Masters level UK funding is generally awarded as a precursor to a PhD. This is known as "1+3" funding. Good luck though!


My paper was withdrawn from predatory journal after publication, what should I do?

The most important thing you need to do is figure out the copyright status. If you have given them exclusive rights to reproduce the work, then you may not be able to publish it anywhere else. It is likely that the copyright transfer was part of a publication contract where the publisher has agreed to publish your work in exchange for the copyright transfer. Hopefully, the publisher will given up the rights you transferred to them. If they won't, you may need to get a lawyer to explore your options.

Having listed the paper in a scholarship application is problematic. Paper-based journals and journals that generate DOIs create a permanent record of the published papers. In your case, it seems a published paper has simply disappeared. I would write to the places you have submitted an application and explain the situation. something along the lines of

  The paper XXX, which I listed on my application, was published by YYY. Unfortunately, YYY is a known predatory publisher and has since made the paper unavailable. I still stand behind the research; attached is a copy of that work. I am currently working towards resubmitting the manuscript to a reputable publisher. I am sorry for any problems this causes.


A few possible things you may do for a prospective collaboration:

Look for authors who published in the field which you wish to publish in (citing from this post). You ought to have researched on a set of papers from which you would have developed your idea or an enhancement to. The authors from those papers may guide you.
Contact in sites that facilitate collaboration and discussion like ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu. There are many who have collaborated this way and become from strangers to research associates.
Mail invitation; this may or may not work. A discussed in the comments, your mail may be tossed by a spam filter or even be ignored. But it has worked before for some people.

Having stated above, getting reliable co-authors, may not be so easy. This is one of the reasons why professional research ought to be conducted with a supervisor/advisor or a mentor who is established in the field. They ought to guide you along these lines.


How much does the reputation of the undergrad institution matter in top 10 graduate schools in Mathematics?

Unfortunately, this is not really a trade-off we are qualified to help you with.  There are just too many unquantifiable factors (we don't even know what country you are in!); I generally don't really recommend students putting off the rest of their lives for a year to try something like an entrance exam again.  Even if you can get in, it could be that going A and B will make a big difference, but you can't possibly know that (maybe Chicago had a really bad experience with the last student that came from A; you just can't control this stuff). Who can possibly guess what the general political situation for foreign graduate students in the US will be in a few years?

So my advice is to start at your current institution, and do the best work you can.  That's what you can control.


Will the PhD degree be retracted if the thesis is found to be not novel?

It would be very rare for such a thing to happen. However, it might depend on the circumstances behind it. If it was nothing more than a misjudgment by the candidate and the committee or some missed (but relatively obscure) information that wasn't included, probably nothing would happen. People would just say "oh well..." and let it go.

However, if some misconduct occurred, such as hiding information or plagiarizing other work, then it could result in withdrawal. But then, it wouldn't be for lack of novelty, but for the misconduct.

Novelty is a judgement call in any case. Looked at in hindsight something may appear to be not-novel when, at the time, it was. Even at the same moment, different people might judge it differently.

If you are the candidate in question, I recommend that you rest easy. Likewise if you were the advisor.


Should I ask my professor giving a lecture to switch languages?

You can ask, of course. But if the description states that it is in German, then you probably won't see a change. There may be others in the course depending on it being in German, of course.
But giving the professor a heads up that you are having a lot of trouble following because of language issues might possibly result in some accommodation.


Without knowing anything about the specific area, I'd say that you've set up a false dichotomy. I don't know if anyone ever consciously does one or the other exclusively. Sometimes you work bottom up (i.e path 2 -> path 1), and sometimes you work top down (path 1 -> path 2). Both these "paths" should be dimensions of your research.


What citation / reference styles explicitly tell the reference's type?

Well, as you see, such style exists, at least in your question. Remember that while references have to satisfy some minimal criteria, there is not much more rules and the styles vary a lot. So certainly, if you take any widely used style and you add (book), (journal article), (webpage) or whatever at the end of each citation, you create a new bibliography style that complies with the rules. If you really need to distinguish it like this, then what you shown looks usable, just please for Gutenberg's sake, don't make it all-caps.


Is it worth it to continue thinking about academia?

I am a Mathematician now working in Computer Security. Towards the end of my PhD, I gave a lot of thought to the problem you are suffering from right now, even though I enjoyed my PhD (for the most part ;-)). My conclusion was the following, and I think it still applies in your case; To stay in academia, you need to satisfy the following criteria:

You have to fairly evaluate your potential as a researcher, which includes your scientific intuition, the ability to execute on it, and your (social) network. Now deduce from this the potential position you can hope to ultimately land. You need to be ok with having that position for the rest of your life.
You have to be willing and able to go through the process of getting to that position, which I anticipated would include unpleasant post-doc experiences like the one you already mentioned.
Now comes the big one. In fact, you need to not only be "ok" with the position in (1), you need to be so incredibly dead-set on having that position that you are not deterred by the fact that (2) is not even the worst that can happen. You need to be so dead-set on it that you do not fear the possibility to end up in your mid-40s with absolutely no job experience and in a dead end that does not lead to new academic prowess.

The alternative is to get a job in the industry. If you do this, I want to give you one piece of advice: Do not look for a job that requires a lot of the specific subject matter expertise that you acquired as a researcher. Do not look for a job that is "like academia". In short, do not fall prey to a sunk cost fallacy. Instead, look for the job you would have wanted fresh out of college. You have proven that you can learn a difficult thing, you can learn a new difficult thing.
Now, chase that job. Industry jobs have a much higher density than academic jobs, so laying out a career path to your dream industry job is much easier. It might be necessary to first work less perfect jobs, to acquire new skills, or simply because you do not have the experience yet. Nevertheless, there is a much lower chance of just falling off the edge and not having any prospect job at all.
In any case, I sincerely wish you the best of luck.


How do I cite an article which has been accepted pending revisions, but the revisions aren't accepted yet?

"In revision" might be a good option for some venues, say when referring to the work in a presentation.


How independent is an assistant professor in Denmark?

Most Professors in Denmark are Assistant or Associate Professors (AP) not full Professors (FP). Even if you are deemed competent to become an FP, you can only get that promotion if there is such a position available. Otherwise, you remain an AP. FPs have higher salaries than APs, and they often have an extra budget for their research. They have become FPs because their topic is of strategic importance to the Dept. From that also often follow extra funds.

Both as an AP and FP you can graduate PhDs. You can carry out independent research under the given economic limits. Very often, maybe always nowadays, you (FP or AP) are expected to seek your own funding. That's a kind of independence too; you decide what to apply for.

Hierarchies are flat in Denmark. We don't think about who are APs or FPs (or Technicians for that matter) in professional work. Well, that's the case where I go (Natural Science). I have heard stories from Health Science where this is not so, and the Professors behave like kings (or Gods). The general Danish population scoffs at such behaviour; I believe they are a dying race.


Should I worry because I don't have Publications Yet?

Until your supervisor starts worrying, I wouldn't start worrying. Pure paper count isn't the best measure because some topics yield more papers and others much less. For example 2018 Nobel Laureate in Physiology & Medicine, James Allison, has a h-index of 127. Meanwhile 2018 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Romer has a h-index of 49. This doesn't mean James Allison is 3x more accomplished than Paul Romer; it just means they're from different fields. In the same way even if your labmate has published 3 papers and you have zero, it doesn't mean they're 3x as capable as you.

Your supervisor knows what is expected of a PhD student at your university. If you are performing badly, he/she will let you know (or it will come up during a performance review). Until that happens, it's not time to start worrying.

If you are really concerned, you can ask your supervisor if you're making expected progress, or ask him/her to set some targets for you to strive for.


Should I disclose academic misconduct on a grad application?

I don't see what the "bind" is.  You are being unambiguously asked to disclose something, so....you should disclose it.  If you just mean "Oh no, behaving ethically may not be in line with my purely selfish interests": right, this is how ethics usually work.  You shouldn't lie, cheat, steal, injure, rape, murder...even when you think you won't get caught.  That's what "shouldn't" means.

That they also ask you to explain your failed grades is a good break for you: you should explain carefully what happened.  If at all possible you should enlist a sympathetic faculty member to write something corroborating your story in their recommendation letter.  If you are fully believable then you have a shot that those who are evaluating your application will actually believe you.  They may well think that the professor went overboard and end up weighting the failing grade less strongly than a failing grade that was awarded because you (say) failed the final exam.  In fact, if there is something objective you can do to show that you have mastered the material of that course -- e.g. doing a reading course with another faculty member -- then I strongly encourage you to do so.

[I'm kind of annoyed to add this but...your academic dishonesty is not in any way protected information.  For all you know, your letter writers could bring it up independently of what you tell them.  Or -- much worse -- when you are N years into your graduate program, your old professor could meet someone in your new program and happen to discuss you.  If it transpires that you were dishonest on your application, that could be grounds for dismissing you from the program.  You sure don't want that to happen.  Sigh -- be good; big brother might actually be watching.]


Protocol for Submitting Fellowship Application where I need to see my advisor's Recommendation Letter

Just ask.  Tell him the rules of the fellowship application (with a link so he can verify) and ask if he's comfortable writing a letter that you would be able to read.

If he's not (and this would be an entirely reasonable position), see if you can work out something else.  For instance, you might be able to send all your other materials to your advisor, or to some third party such as an administrative assistant, who would compile everything together with the letter and submit it on your behalf.  Or you (or better, the professor) could contact the fellowship funding organization and explain the situation, and ask if they can suggest any alternative methods of submission.

In the worst case, if there is no way to resolve the conflict, then you simply won't be able to apply for this fellowship.  Seek out others.


Tips for revising manuscripts months later

Give working on the revision the highest priority within your research tasks. After all, this is the last step before getting your results published, so it's best to get that off your table as fast as possible!
As first step when you get the reviews, go through them carefully and note / mark every comment which you think requires you to revise something. Then, for each marked comment, make a plan how to address that point, and think about what a good sequence for working on the comments would be. For me it works better to first address the more large-scale points, but that may of course differ from one person to the other.
Deal with each comment one-by-one: make the required revision in the paper, and directly after (or maybe before) that write the corresponding response to the reviewer's comment in your response letter.

If you have a comment that raises issues with the overall flow of a section (for example something like "The introduction does not clearly lead to the problem that the author is dealing with."), it may be most efficient to rewrite that part from scratch instead of trying to revise it. Then you can also simply answer something like "The introduction was completely rewritten to address this point".


Do I have a chance at an academic career in North America or Europe?

My answer to this question of yours Does the time taken to do a PhD affect post doctoral applications? does also apply here: There is a chance, yes. How high that chance is depends on many factors. Your age, your publications, etc. are some of them, but others are for example the quality of your work, the availability of the position you are looking for, the energy you put into applying (e.g. do you contact every last university in all of North America and Europe?), what you want as a "career"  - e.g. are you happy with a postdoc position that is not limited, or do you want to get to dean of the department before you hit 60 - etc.

So yes, there is a chance and yes, it is somewhat lowered by the points you gave. If you want to take it or not is your choice, no one else can make it for you.


What are the legal obligations of "Editorial Board Membership Agreement"?

This publisher appears on the updated Beall list. John Baez (a famous mathematical physicist) reported that he got what looks like automatic spam from this publisher: an invitation to get on the editorial board of an architecture(!) journal. It's my understanding that it's very rare to be surprised by an invitation to an editorial board. It's also written in your bio that you are a PhD student; don't get me wrong, but PhD students are not qualified to be on an editorial board, and the fact that they invited you is a red flag. These facts combined would not make me want to touch this publisher with a ten-foot pole.

(There are further questions that you can ask yourself: do you know the current editors of the journals? Are they recognized researchers in their field? Do the publisher's other journals look legitimate to you? Etc.)

As for the legalese they have written - it looks terrible to me. It says that "ideas and improvements conceived by you in performance of your service shall be the property of the publisher". But ideas don't belong to anyone! So this text is just meaningless junk. Even if the publisher is legitimate (which I doubt), they should seriously consider hiring actual lawyers.


Can a letter of recommendation be rescinded after submission/acceptance?

Anything is possible, of course, but (warning - opinion coming), I think it would be very unlikely. First, I doubt that your mentor would do that, though I don't know the person so can't be definitive. I would not, anyway. Second, if you have been accepted (and told them you are coming) you have at least an informal contract that is unlikely to be broken. In some places it would likely be against regulations to withdraw an offer after acceptance. But again, I suppose it is possible that it would happen.

However, you might be questioned by your mentor or others about this, so be prepared to give an honest reply. People learn as they live and they change their minds about things. Other people generally understand that and accept it as long as it doesn't cause disruption.

But I think your worry is probably based on very little. (Sorry about all the "weasel words" here.)


In the UK, what you're looking for is called the "teaching and scholarship career pathway" (distinguishing it from the "teaching and research career pathway").  A jobs.ac.uk search for the word "scholarship" reveals quite a few vacancies on the teaching and scholarship career pathway.


The PhD is a test of your stubbornness, patience and grit more than it is a test of any sort of intelligence or ability.


How do you tell a professor you interviewed with you will be going to a different program?

Yes, that's a hard letter to write. But she will have gotten letters like this before. Thank her, say you would have enjoyed working with her but that you have found another position that suits you better or better fits your interests.
If you want to edit your question to show us a draft you may get useful feedback.
Write her soon, so she can offer the job to someone else.


Customary to offer a fellow academic a chance to rebut criticism in a paper?

This seems very field-specific.  In some fields -- e.g. philosophy -- "criticizing the work of others" is more than business as usual: it's a substantial part of what all papers in the subject do.  (Philosophy is probably the extreme case: though I am far from an expert in this area, I do have some familiarity with it, and my understanding is that a truly correct and unassailable philosophical argument would in most cases serve to show that the problem was not really philosophical at all!  This is a field in which the rank and file philosophers of today criticize the golden gods of the past two thousand years as well as each other...and everyone seems pretty happy about it.)  In certain other fields there is the sense -- and this can only be meant sociologically without opening up some truly deep cans of worms -- that "right" and "wrong" work is not a matter of individual opinion or belief: it is something that the community as whole must come to an agreement on.  For instance, two scholars can happily present rival theories on the meaning of Hamlet or even on its authorship.  Two scholars who report inconsistent physical experiments cannot coexist so happily: the community as a whole has a strong feeling that at least one of the experiments must be wrong.

If you are just presenting a rival theory to someone else's in the sense of philosophy or the humanities -- i.e., the community as a whole will have no a priori problem with allowing the two theories to exist and each gain their own adherents -- then it seems to me that this is business as usual and everyone can read about it in the paper.  But if you are working in a scientific, mathematical or other field in which the two works cannot coexist simultaneously in the community as a whole, then you are doing something that is potentially much more destructive to the other person.  This doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it -- on the contrary, if anything you are more obligated to bring the issue to light -- but I think it would be at least courteous to personally contact the person whose work would be specifically invalidated by yours.  On the other hand, whether something is "courteous" is clearly a matter of culture.  I think that scientific fields vary widely on whether and how discourteous this practice is.  For instance, there are some fields -- e.g. string theory -- in which large numbers of people are working within a very small and rapidly moving space.  In this kind of situation, it is my understanding that you just take a good, rapid shot and see how everyone else reacts to it.  If on Wednesday two contradictory string theory papers show up on the arxiv, then you know what people will be doing on Thursday: in other words, the community is so automatically and rapidly self-correcting that people think in terms of "good ideas that didn't pan out" rather
than "wrong papers".  Or so is my understanding anyway: string theory is quite an amazing field to me because it is technically so similar but sociologically so different from my own.

In my field -- mathematics -- the culture regards my publishing a paper saying "Your paper is wrong" as an extreme act to be avoided at many costs.  Much better would be for you to publish an erratum/corrigendum/retraction saying "Unfortunately the result I stated before is wrong; I thank [you] for bringing this to my attention."  Publishing a paper -- or even circulating a preprint, say on the arxiv -- saying that Author X's work without making any attempt to contact Author X would be regarded by some as being discourteous to Author X.  It could also be a strategically poor decision in some circumstances: when this happens, very likely some part of the community will mobilize to figure out "as a whole" who is right, you or Author X (or neither!).  This mobilization will probably involve several people having conversations with both you and Author X, to the extent that you may end up talking to each other through other people.  It could be more efficient and more seemly to have that conversation directly and privately with Author X.  In particular, for better or for worse (and I think it is somewhat for worse) if you publish a paper saying "Author X is wrong" and you turn out to be wrong, then you may acquire a reputation for being a bit of a troublemaker.

Finally, in very technical fields, it is often the case that the unique person who is maximally well equipped to resolve the discrepancy between your work and Author X's is...Author X.  So unless you have some reason to think otherwise, availing yourself of this resource sooner rather than later is probably a good idea.


How to write a personal statement if I change my interest?

A personal statement is set up to describe the development of your interests as they pertain to your graduate program. People apply to graduate programs for many reasons. The backgrounds of applicants may differ widely. The personal statement is an opportunity to tie together your experiences in such a way that they show the school that your skills and interests will likely lead to success in their program.

In your case, you need to talk about your previous experiences, show the research skills you mastered, and describe in positive terms how that led you to an interest in professional work. A few general tips:

List out how your experience in AI would help you in that school's CS program. Then, in your draft, describe previous projects in ways that highlight the transfer of skills. These can be general abilities - like time management and project delegation - or specific skills with development tools.
Think about the transition in positive terms. Don't focus on what you don't like in AI, because the purpose of a personal statement is not to write about why you don't study something else. Focus on what you like about software development. Then, as your overall narrative, convey from point to point how AI led you to pursue software development. (If you really have no positive reasons for pursuing CS, then you shouldn't be applying.)
Specify an achievable goal that the graduate degree would help you attain. In other words, if you go to this school and work with professors in X and Y areas to earn (for example) an MS, what do you plan to do? Setting such a goal will help flesh out your motivation.


Is it necessary to prepare a Power Point presentation for a 30-minute postdoc interview?

This could depend a bit on the field, of course. But I find powerpoint to be mostly very badly used. Someone once described the typical PP deck as the speaker's notes that shouldn't be shown to the audience. If that is what you tend to do - show a slide and then just repeat a longer form of that orally, then I wouldn't bother.

There are some people who are truly gifted in the use of PP, but not everyone is. You don't want to be boring.

But prepare the deck and, at least use it for your own notes while speaking. Depending on the field there may be other, more important, visuals you can use. Even a whiteboard.

And, given that it will be remote, you could prepare a deck and send it to them for possible distribution and then do something else rather than just show it during the presentation.

If there is a two way communication system (audio - video) where you can ask and answer questions it would certainly be better than just a lecture-like presentation. I suspect very few people will take notes on your actual content and will be interested in other things. Some students might, but not future colleagues.

And try to present it to a friend or colleague before you 'go live' to get some feedback and to be sure of the timing. I'd suggest a bit too short is better than one that is too long. Leave them wanting more, not exhausted.

But in an orthogonal vein, make sure you understand who the audience is. Researchers? Students? Graduate or undergraduate.


Fired from TA position without cause/notice, what to do next?

Even my PI in research wanted to contact them because he thinks I am
  not treated fairly. What to do next?

First, you should relax.  Being a TA is not a big deal.

Second, you should wait.  This is a situation where your PI ought to be responsible for helping you out.  They already said they would try, so let them try.

If your PI does not succeed in helping you, then you might follow the university's official complaint procedure.  Keep records of everything just in case.


Professor who I requested an LoR from told me to look for someone who knows me better, but would write me one if I couldn't find anyone

If someone suggests you find another person to write for you it is advice you should take unless you have no other options.
The best letters come from people who know you well enough to speak both positively and enthusiastically about you and your prospects. This professor has some reservations.
But in the case that you really have no other options, then try to follow up with them. A mediocre letter might even be worse than no letter at all, but it is hard to say.


Interested in doing Master's in ETH, how hard is it?

How hard is it to get into ETH?

The Times Higher Education World University rankings lists ETH Zurich as 14th in the world for life sciences. This is below universities such as Yale (7th) and Johns Hopkins (11th) but above universities such as UCLA (18th) and University of Toronto (22nd). This ranking implies that the admissions process will be very competitive, as such a well-regarded university will only attract the best candidates.

  What is the general portfolio of attractive candidates?

An ideal candidate will likely have experience of performing undergraduate research, a good degree classification or GPA and very strong reference letters. Additionally, they will have clear motivations for wanting to pursue the degree, as well as some idea of their own particular research interests. These would be included in a statement of purpose, personal statement or covering letter.

  I noticed they required GRE, is it absolutely necessary for students who studied in North America?

If they state on their website that they require the GRE, then this suggests to me that this is definitely a necessary requirement. If you're still unsure, contact the admissions office of the department you'll be applying to.

  (...) they didn't mention obtaining a supervisor before applying to the program.

This is not uncommon, particularly for a partially taught Master's course, where in the first semester or year you will have lecturers and coursework, allowing you to develop your interests and get to know potential supervisors, before choosing a research project and supervisor for the second semester or year.

This question asks about maximising one's chances of admission to US PhD programs and I think much of what is suggested in this answer is applicable to your situation too.

Lastly, what have you got to lose by applying? If you don't try, you'll never know.


Handling PhD funding offers that come before hearing back from all schools I applied to

This answer applies if your schools of choice are in the United States:

Most major universities in the US are signatories to the "April 15th resolution," which gives students until April 15th to accept offers of admission/financial aid. A full list is here: http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGSResolution_RevisedOct2017.pdf

  Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance of
  such offers violate the intent of this Resolution

If the schools you are applying to are in the US and signatories to this resolution, they are not allowed to offer and then withdraw admission/financial aid prior to April 15th. Before that deadline, you can politely inform them that you are waiting for all your offers before making a decision. They might want to pressure you to commit earlier, but you are not compelled to do so.

You are correct, though, in assuming that they would like to offer the fellowship to someone else, if possible. Therefore, the polite thing to do is to inform any school that is no longer in contention as soon as possible, that is, as soon as you have another offer you plan to accept, and no sooner.

You could reach out to the schools you are waiting to hear from, but I wouldn't pester them, it is still fairly early in the acceptance calendar (again, from a US perspective) and admissions committees are still meeting to make decisions.


Must publicly funded research in the EU be published as open access by law?

The European commission has a webpage dedicated to this issue. In summary:

All projects receiving Horizon 2020 funding are required to make sure that any peer-reviewed journal article they publish is openly accessible, free of charge (article 29.2. Model Grant Agreement). [...]
The Commission is running a pilot on open access to research data in Horizon 2020: the Open Research Data (ORD) pilot. [...]
In 2012, the European Commission published a Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information encouraging all EU Member States to put publicly-funded research results in the public domain in order to strengthen science and the knowledge-based economy.
The document also asked each Member State to designate a National Point of Reference (NPR) with the task of 1) coordinating the measures listed in the Recommendation, 2) acting as an interlocutor with the Commission and 3) reporting on the follow-up. [...]

So in my understanding, everything funded directly by the EU has a mandatory open-access policy. For research funded by member States, this is only a recommendation.
See also the Open Science page on the Horizon 2020 website.

To clarify this answer: "Horizon 2020" is the name fo the portion of the EU budget dedicated to funding research from 2014 to 2020. I think one of the better-known bodies funded by Horizon 2020 is the European Research Council (ERC), but more generally all EU funds going to research go through Horizon 2020 (well, until 2020). The previous programs were called "Framework Programs" (FP, e.g. FP1, FP2, FP3... up to FP7 for the period 2007–2013).


When updating a preprint on arXiv, should I update my affiliation?

Your affiliation as far as the work goes is where the work was done. You should perhaps add a footnote giving your current location, and (obviously) update any contact information given.

Or do it the the other way around: give current affiliation, and in acknowledgements or at least a footnote state where the work was done.

I've seen both.


Ask authors for some data (after already asking one of the three authors without getting an answer)

I would wait longer for a response before following up or contacting the others. (Sticking with the "corresponding author" listed on the paper should be appropriate unless they are currently on leave from their position.) The authors may be busy and may not have gotten around to it.

The process of answering may also take some time. If you're the first one to request the data, they might even be talking among themselves about who has a clean copy, whether they want to release the data, whether they can release the raw data as well, how to verify you would adequately protect (raw) data, whether they have updated data to share, etc.

In the meantime, I'd suggest digging a bit more into the source of the data (did they do the experiments themselves? did they tediously collect it? did they buy access to the underlying data or get special permission?) so that you can see if you could replicate or approximate it. You could also see if any of the works citing them have used the same data (i.e. if there is evidence they have been willing to share it with others, that would suggest they are more likely to share with you).

You could also scour their academic websites and CVs.

Is further information available on their websites, like an unpublished appendix?
Is there a rendering of the graph online that somehow has the key data embedded in it?
Through their CVs, can you find potential points of contact? (E.g., if an author attended grad school with your advisor, or coauthored with another professor with whom you've taken a class, those profs might be especially good to ask advice of. If the prof you ask is on good terms with you and the author, they may even write an email on your behalf asking about the data.)


How active should professors be in writing papers with their students?

Writing "good" papers is an integral part of being a good academic, and therefore it is, in my opinion, something that supervisors should teach their students.

This means you should be active in teaching them how to write, and less active in the actual writing itself.

Struggling is part of any learning process, provided they are struggling with writing, and not with your reviews. The best you can do is to provide the student with clear goals of how the paper should look, how it should be structured and what it should contain. Looking back at my own first papers, I usually started writing before knowing exactly what the bottom line, e.g. the take-home message, should be. Discussing a plan of the paper, both with regards to content and the writing process, with the student before letting him/her write it is probably a good idea.

When reviewing the manuscript, I think it's important to provide clear, consistent and constructive criticism. Specifically:

Clear: If you don't like a sentence, paragraph, figure or table (don't forget these latter two!), make sure you tell the student exactly what you don't like about it. This may require putting intuition aside and thinking through why you're not happy with it.
Consistent: Avoid editing ping-pong that lead to the same paragraph being re-written 20 times back and forth. It's probably a good idea to keep copies of previous iterations with your own comments. This also helps the students if you can tell them they've done a good job fixing things from the previous iteration.
Constructive: This is kind of obvious, but I can't be reminded of it often enough.

Deadlines are a bummer, but they're as much part of the academic process as the writing itself, so the best you can do is to teach your students to prepare for them adequately, i.e. plan ahead.

Addendum

As for authorship, in my opinion, teaching a student to write a paper in no way qualifies as co-authorship. It's part of your job as an academic. Co-authorship is something that arises out of having contributed significantly to the contents of the paper.


Is it acceptable to cite people without putting the appropriate diacritics in their names?

I'm not sure how far ethics comes into this, but omitting accents is, effectively, a misspelling of the name. If you need to cite something by Schön, and you instead write "Schon", I'd regard that as analogous to writing "Schöm" or "Schöh": pretty close, but certainly a typo. If I'm reviewing a paper, I will request correction of missing accents as I would for other misspellings, but I wouldn't regard it as an ethical breach.

In practice, there's a bit more leeway for missing accents than for other misspellings, partly due to former limitations in computer typesetting, and partly due the dominance of English as a scientific language and the frequent belief among native English speakers that accents are always optional. As Burak Ulgut says, some authors won't mind missing accents, while others will care a lot -- but since you can't know which is the case for any particular author, you should keep the accents. In some cases, missing an accent may have unfortunate consequences in the author's native language: if you cite a Swedish Dr Hörberg as "Horberg", you've just turned them into "whore mountain".

For citation purposes, the correct spelling is (almost always) the one on the publication itself: if, say, Miloš Blažek chooses to publish as Milos Blazek then that's how you cite him, no matter what it says on his birth certificate.

On the technical side: unfortunately you cannot take it for granted that exported bibliographic records will handle non-ASCII characters correctly, or for that matter that they will handle anything correctly. Bibliography record formats are a mess of partially supported, poorly defined standards interconverted by buggy code, and you should always eyeball the record after importing it to catch any errors (not only accents).

As you say, it's clearly a laborious task, but so are many aspects of writing a thesis :).


There is a study by Shen and Björk (2015) which includes a figure (Fig. 6) showing

  the distribution of the publishers across geographic regions. The distribution is highly skewed, with 27 % publishing in India.

Figure 6:

(the figure's license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made)


Central deposit for recommendation letters

In mathematics, mathjobs.org fills this role.