PhD in the US with an MSc from another country: coursework exemption?

It depends on the department. I have been looking at various applied mathematics departments in the USA and all of them want PhD students to go through the coursework and obtain an MS, even if they already did a masters degree before.

I think in general, there is no chance to skip coursework. This is probably because different universities have different standards and syllabuses for the same course. And they want to ensure everyone is up to the same standard and have taken the same syllabus.

But do check with the department, there are always exceptions.

P.S.

However, it doesn't have to be a "waste" of two years. The level of the course might be higher and you are probably able to choose different courses to get broader experiences. If all else fails and you are able to ace all the courses with no problem, you can always spend the extra time looking for a thesis adviser or find research collaborators.


Should a student shake hands with the professor?

Greet them in whatever way is natural to you. In university settings (where contact with different cultures is common, more so in graduate studies) they'll probably take it in stride. If they offer to shake hands, do so. Doing otherwise is certainly rude.


How to reuse algorithms from previous paper

You can create a Preliminaries section, and include Algorithm A and its explanation there clearly citing it. That way, it is clear to the reader that the second contains necessary background information, and not new contributions.

As far as how much to include, that really depends on how crucial it is for understanding of expansion of B, how much space you have available, whether the algorithm is published. Any other approaches you suggest are viable.


Is it OK to have a PhD thesis with shortcomings and inaccuracies?

The thesis is a "good" one if you have passed and will be awarded your degree. Don't overthink it. You have learned something from producing it that you can leverage into future work. That is, in lots of ways, a big advantage. If your advisor is also happy and wants to work with you on any future extension, you have a positive outcome, if not a perfect one.

That the thesis "might have been better, if only..." is true pretty frequently.

My suggestion is to take the advice of the reviewers and get done. Then write a future paper extending and improving on the thesis. Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Your dissertation shouldn't be thought of as your life's best work, only its first.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (apologies to Voltaire)


Is it legal and ethical to post my notes of a conference I am attending on my website?

Firstly, you will need to ensure that content from the conference is allowed to be shared - I have attended conferences were we were explicitly told not to share the content as much of it was pre-publication.

Secondly, and very importantly, if it is allowed and you do take notes, you should provide proper attribution - referencing the author/speaker and the conference proceedings.

If you are not sure of the legalities of reproducing your notes - ask and receive explicit advice.


Justifying sub-optimal research quality by lack of supervision

You should be very, very careful about seeming to criticize your own department or supervisor. It might be unfair that you received sub-optimal results, but if you try to blame somebody else for your results, search committee members are much more likely to just think you are a complainer or a malcontent.

The best advice at this early stage in your career: either find a way to work together better with your advisor, or switch advisors.


Using movie clips in a conference presentation

Let's just preface this with 'I am not a Lawyer' (I am a Sociologist interested in copyright and piracy).

Fair-Use in the U.S. supports educators using small amounts of copyrighted material for educational purposes, and this includes to peers for conferences and workshops, so long as that material was legally obtained.

Copyright (in the majority of cases) gets invoked at the point of distribution so putting those clips into a .ppt and then sticking it online is not protected as you're now distributing copyrighted material without permission.

I would use the clips live, and then put placeholder images in the slides for the upload. If clips are available from reputable hosting sites like YouTube or Vimeo you can always include a link in the slide. Technically in the U.S. this can be framed as second order copyright infringement under 'inducement' (i.e. you are inducing, or encouraging someone to access copyrighted material illicitly by providing a route to it).

However with all copyright it's a matter of enforcement, and more likely if the material is unlawfully available on a streaming site, the rights-holder will pursue the site, not the linker.


My co-authors want to remove my name from manuscript because I am "not in science anymore," how to correct this?

Authorship wars are common and they suck. I suggest you discuss your plans to reach out to the journal editor with the primary PI, maybe they can change their mind. I don't know what being in science or not has anything to do with your contribution being ignored but I would understand an argument that suggests a ton of work has been done since you left to bring the paper to publication.


Pros and cons on working in an industrial research lab without a PhD

For many research positions in industry, a PhD is a requirement to apply for the job. With just an M.S., you simply cannot be considered for these positions. Some research jobs I have seen in industrial labs are available to candidates with either a PhD or an M.S. with several years of industry experience, but I don't see as many of these.

Industrial research labs often also have non-research positions (e.g., staff programmer) that do not require a PhD. However, these positions tend to not be on the research "track": you cannot easily be promoted from "staff programmer" to "junior member of technical staff" in many companies. If you are interested in doing creative research, staff programmer jobs are not a direct path to research scientist jobs.

Smaller companies tend to be more flexible, so that it may be easier to get a research job without a PhD in a tiny company than a large global one.

Of course, this can vary by industry and geographic region. (My experience is in the field of telecommunications and computer networks, in the United States.)
You can find out more about your particular field of interest by going to the "Careers" page of the labs you are considering, and looking up the requirements for the jobs that you would like to do.

However, as a rule, if you are interested in doing creative research (and not just working in a support position in a research lab), you will have more opportunities available to you with a PhD than without one.


3 follow-up emails over 2 weeks, and the potential supervisor still wont respond to me?

I ignore such emails all the time. And I'd feel threatened/harassed if the email writer kept emailing me, contacted my students or postdocs, or showed up to my university.

The reason I ignore them is because there isn't much to say. I don't want to give you false hope because I can't guarantee your admission (even if you're the best one out of everyone who contacted me, there are plenty of strong applicants who don't contact anyone) and so, what could I possibly tell you? It might be nice to acknowledge the receipts of emails such as yours but I get hundreds of (mostly junk) emails and your email, being from an unknown sender, gets buried in the pile, and I usually just forget to reply.

So, stop stalking professors and focus on writing a good application and getting good grades. If you've emailed them once and if the email was good, they've read it and you've done your best. Any further communication will only lower their opinion of you.

EDIT: now that I re-read your post, I'm also noticing that your style of writing is quite familiar. This style comes across as immature at best, and entitled at its worst. For example, your spelling, grammar and punctuations are not quite correct. You're also narrating in a quite dramatic way, which is not how most academics write. If your email reflects the tone in which you wrote the above post and the subsequent comments, that may have had a hand in why your professor did not respond.


This is the sort of thing that corrections and errata are for. The journal should have a procedure for informing the editorial staff and correcting the record.  Follow it, and you should be able to fairly quickly and easily correct the record.


Supervisor and GRA roles in submitting a grant

You seem to be having two issues. The first is you are not happy with your GRA experience and the second is you are confused about the grant. It is important to separate these issues when talking to the supervisor and only bring one issue up at a time. Sicne you questions focuses on the grant, so does my answer.

While it is too late now, before starting to work on a grant or any research project it is important to define the roles of each team member. You then need to review these roles frequently as the project progresses.

There are two possibilities for the grant. The first case is that the grant includes funding for you (or someone like you). In this case you need to have a friendly chat to discuss what your role will be if the grant gets funded. This should be fairly painless since you (or someone like you) is listed on the grant. The second case is that the grant doesn't include funding for you (or someone like you). If this is the case, then it is pretty clear that you are not really included on the grant. If the grant could have included funding for you, but you were not included, you should have raised the issue as soon as you realized. This is potentially problematic and it is worth discussing with the supervisor why you were not included. If the grant could not have included funding for you, then it is not clear what the issue is.

Whatever happens, you should have a nice civil conversation with the supervisor.


I am not familiar with SSRN, but it seems that when you publish content there you give SSRN a license to display the paper, but this is not a transferable license like a Creative Commons one. If that's the case, and if you did not publish the paper on a journal or elsewhere, then you are the copyright holder and Researchgate does not have a license that allows them to publish it. Then they are infringing your copyright, and the correct legal step to take is filing a DMCA takedown request using this PDF form.

IANAL.


Editorial Board Listings without subject descriptions

You hit on the reason, it's the amount of work necessary to maintain an up-to-date description. Classifying research is difficult because of how specialized knowledge is these days, e.g. an example I encountered recently is two people at a social function discovering that they are both physicists, and furthermore, both submit papers to arXiv that are classed as high energy physics. This makes it sound like their work is closely related, but then it turns out that one person works on lattice quantum chromodynamics and the other works on landscape cosmology, and they have zero chance of understanding each other's papers. The journal editor will typically not know how to classify the editor. For example, for the two topics above (lattice QCD and landscape cosmology) a typical journal editor might recognize them as physics, but I would be pleasantly surprised if an editor I manage can tell both are in high energy physics.
Since the journal staff are not very capable of classifying the editorial board's subject expertise, it becomes very hard for the journal to maintain an up-to-date description. Authors are experts on their own work and therefore the best-positioned to tell who will be able to handle their paper.
That said, many journals are trying to make it easier for authors. If you get the chance to choose subject codes for your manuscript, that would be a relatively easy way to find the editor most suited to your manuscript (although you might still end up with an editor from the other end of the topic).


Will they send my paper to the opposed referee?

Some journals will ask for a list of reviewers that you would disprefer.

We all know that there are some in academia that bear grudges and this is one mechanism to make sure they don't land in your review pool. It's also a mechanism to indicate conflicts of interest (positive and negative) that might not be apparent to outsiders (a romantic relationship for example).

It saves time for everyone as the editors then don't have to wait for COI responses and reassignments.

So don't view the disprefer list as a wholly negative list. There are positive reasons to disprefer someone.

But it should be short. More than four or five names and the editor will suspect that you're trying to game the system by dispreferring all possible critics.

And to answer your question specifically: yes, an editor may send an article to someone on your disprefer list. It is - after all, your preference - and not binding in any way on the editor. They might, however, scrutinize and weigh the response of the reviewer on the disprefer list more carefully than if they hadn't been flagged.


For minor corrigenda (such as this), some scholars merely put it on their web site.  Likely many of your future papers will also have errors, so keeping a list of all of them in one place may be the best choice.


Are mentally ill people allowed to perform research?

Let's turn this around and ask the converse.  How could you tell if a researcher has a mental illness or similar disorder?
Modern understanding of mental illness has moved towards a recognition that humans have an extremely wide range of functional cognitive and behavioral patterns. This means that most mental illness exists on a spectrum, where the boundary to illness is quite fuzzy, is only considered an illness if there is a persistent impact on a person's ability to function.
So if a researcher is producing work that is passing peer review in reasonable publication venues, then they are clearly functioning at a level sufficient to conduct scientific research, and that research is being found to be acceptable. That's it. There is no other scientific bar.
Some levels of mental illness will, of course, make it difficult or impossible for a researcher to produce acceptable research. For example, a person suffering from severe dementia would likely have a difficult time accomplishing any task in their life, including research. This isn't about saying it's not acceptable for any given person to conduct research, however, but rather that some illnesses will inhibit a person from actually accomplishing the task.
In certain niche cases requiring certification, significant impact from a mental illness on a person's trustworthiness may also preemptively bar a person from conducting research on subjects requiring that certification. For example, a person with schizophrenia not responding to treatment might not be able to work in a medical field requiring the handling of confidential patient information or at an organization that requires a security clearance.
In history, unfortunately, we find a very different situation. Until surprisingly recently, for example, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, and many people were denied work on the basis of their sexual preferences.  I believe this remains the case in some repressive nations today.
Bottom line: in any modern liberal society, mental illness is no bar to research in and of itself, though it may become a barrier if it affects ones' ability to function as a researcher.


Can I publish a review article if I only have a Master degree?

So, is that ok if I only have a Master degree?

Yes.

  can some journals accept that?

Yes, but...

... the journals that would accept it might not be exactly the reputable ones. Reason: an MSc student is typically not educated enough to be able to write a good review paper unless there are other outweighing circumstances, for example vast industrial experience, a senior supervisor closely looking at the paper, etc.

Keep in mind that some journals ask for a cover letter in which you may have to justify why the main editor should bother caring about the paper at all rather than moving it into the (electronic) trash bin.

Still, if you have several weeks of time for writing, why not trying and sending it to a small, initial-stage journal? You might be disappointed by the reviews you get, but it would be an experience for you. Please keep in mind that you might get requests from the editor(s) of that journal to review other papers.


Do policy papers count as research papers in a cv?

Most policy journals are not peer reviewed in the same way that research papers are, but many people will put them in their "Publications" section of their CV nonetheless, so long as they are on a research topic. Furthermore, the length of the article and the reputation of the outlet matter a great deal. The more widely read and highly respected the outlet, the better. Also if it is long-form, 3k words or more, that is closer to a research paper.

The gold standard for high-quality policy papers are Foreign Affairs and Congressional Quarterly. Most departments would consider publications in those outlets similar to a research paper,and you are going to have to put in nearly as much research, to get a hit there too.

The best way to tell if it is as good as a research article is to see if well-respected Associate Professors in your sub-field are publishing in that outlet. Full Professors can publish wherever they want, and Asst. Professors may not be able to get it in that outlet. Associate professors don't want to squander their reputation, which they by then have.

A general rule of thumb:

FA, CQ - As good as Research Articles in most cases

Regionally or topically focused outlets like The Diplomat or Army Magazine - Only as good as a research paper if you are regionally specialized, otherwise see below

2nd Tier Policy outlets (Atlantic, Foreign Policy) - As good as research at lower ranked institions, but probably not at a top 20+ institution.

Think Tank Pieces (Including RAND's journal) - Great, if you are looking for a policy job, or at a policy school, otherwise, see below.

Niche Policy outlets (National Review, Mother Jones) - Most schools will not think too highly of these, but still not nothing. Grad students with this on their CV might not have a hard time with it, but unless it is really on your research topic, faculty should steer clear.

Opinion pieces (newspapers, public magazines, blogs) - Anything that is less than 2k words probably goes here, by the way, as is just about anything published online only. Do not put these on your CV, unless in an Op-Ed section, or you are desperate and want people to know you are desperate

As with everything there are exceptions. Articles that are excellent summaries of your work or are very closely tied to your research may be worth including at your discretion.


Why do universities support faculty writing textbooks?

Textbooks take a lot of time and effort to write, so why would a university support their faculty to do so?

Why wouldn't they?  Writing textbooks is an important form of scholarship, with great influence on the field, and this is something universities should strongly encourage.  The only reason I can think of not to support textbook writing is the profit issue, but this is not generally an important factor, since very few textbooks make a lot of money.

The fact that U.S. faculty are allowed to keep the royalties from textbooks they write is a historical contingency, and there's no reason why the system has to work that way.  However, I think it's a good system in practice.  Overall, the incentives to write good textbooks are too low, since both the financial rewards and the academic rewards are generally small compared with the time commitment.  Removing the (small) profit motive would leave the incentives even lower, and I think the net effect would outweigh the tiny increase in university funding.

  What about the grad students that edit and also work on the textbook? It seems as if they are working to fill the faculty member's pocket while being [partially] supported by the department/university and expected to do research.

If grad students are being enlisted as unpaid labor, then that's a real problem, but in my experience it's not common.  If there's any prospect of nontrivial royalties, then it's unethical to ask students to work without compensation.  Furthermore, the arrangement needs to be formal enough to include a copyright transfer (otherwise, the students will own the copyright to their contributions).


How to transition into a PhD in Theoretical Physics?

Your situation is not much different from other people seeking to pursue condensed matter theory.  There's a lot of overlap between theoretical chemistry and condensed matter physics, so there's no real scientific barriers.  The regulations of individual universities may matter, but we can't help you there.

People who brand themselves as chemists tend to pick RSC or ACS published journals.  People who brand themselves as physicists tend to pick APS or AIP published journals.  Otherwise, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference.


Which tense to describe the analysis on a dataset?

In a case such as this, you need to use a careful mixture of tenses, because sometimes you are speaking about an event which is in the past, and sometimes you are speaking about an observation about that event, which still holds in the present.

Thus, in your example:

  We analyze the epidemic spreading dataset in 2008. Let I(t) represent the number of individuals that were infected at t. Our analysis shows that the epidemic had infected 100 individuals, and most of them were in the EU. The results show that on average each individual has three neighbors.

Notice that the facts about the events that occurred in 2008 are in the past tense, but the analytical results are in the present because the analysis is still showing these facts right now as the reader looks at it (I am assuming the "on average" result in your sample is a general conclusion and not just a fact about those 100 individuals in 2008).


Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript?

If your collaborator is not technically inclined, then there are a few possibilities:

Google Docs
It is very simple, robust and real-time (no need of thinking 'which version is the most recent'). I created a lot of documents with it (though only 1 scientific article). A good idea is to use different colours so that it is clear who wrote what. One drawback is that it may be not as simple for equations and than you will need to copy things from there to LateX manually.
Annotating PDF files with Adobe Reader or sth equivalent
Also simple and robust. However, as it is not real-time you need to keep track of which version is current and it is not possible to make changes in the same time. Here you are the only person responsible for changes in LaTeX file.
Annotating or changing with OpenOffice, MS Word or another office package...
Another variant which allows you collaborator to make direct changes, at cost of some robustness.

As a practical remark for the two last: always keep track of the version, e.g. draft_20120424_prof.pdf, where you add both date of the last edit (not final5!) and name of the last editor. When exchanging things by e-mail it is easy to loose track which version is the most recent and in fact lost changes (often not knowing about that.)

Other possibilities, requiring some technical knowledge:

writeLaTeX or sth similar (ShareLaTeX, ScribTeX, LaTeX Lab - the one using GoogleDocs, ...)
Tools for editing  documents collaboratively (in real-time) and compile it within one's browser (so no need to install anything). Though some knowledge of LaTeX is required (at least to know how not to spoil a file).
ScribTeX(the only one I used) gives version control and you can see which lines were changed (as in version control system), so not need of guessing what might have been changed.
EDIT: ScribTeX is being replaced by ShareLaTeX.
writeLaTeX has live preview and may be the most suitable for beginners.
Git or another version-control system, e.g. at GitHub
However, it may require technical skills beyond edition of LaTeX. While it is not hard to use it, I never did I am using it for writing papers and I would never try to use it with someone with low computer literacy.

When it comes to Dropbox - it is a good stuff for sharing files for a project but NOT for making changes in files. First, you never know when the changes happen. Second, you don't know where the changes happen.

There is also an article on it: Research tips - Online collaborative writing.

See also a few questions:

Simultaneous collaborative editing of a LaTeX file - tex.SE
Tools for collaborative paper-writing - MathOverflow
Compiling documents online - tex.SE


How can co-authors check the status of a submitted manuscript in Elsevier Editorial System?

The answer is No, he/she cannot cannot give any permission to the co-authors after submission to EES and before acceptance, as mentioned here:

  I am a co-author on the paper, I would like to be able to see the
  status of the manuscript. I have the manuscript number and I am
  registered on the journal website.

  After submission, you can only see the status of a submitted paper via
  the corresponding author's EES homepage. You will not be able to
  search for this submission via your own author's EES homepage.

So just the corresponding author can check the status before acceptance. But after acceptance, co-author can track the status as well:

  After acceptance, the article is recorded in our tracking system, you
  can use the production reference number along with the Corresponding
  Author's name to track your paper status and add your paper to your
  personal homepage on http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle.


If I quit my PhD, would it make my advisor look bad?

You are a nice guy, but let me tell you this: no matter if it makes your advisor look bad, if you really like the job in the company and believe it's the best thing for you, then you should quit your PhD and take the job. Doing your PhD just because of your advisor will not do any good to either you or your advisor.

Because pursuing a PhD requires a lot of determination. No matter how your advisor is kind to you, making your advisor look good will not be enough as a sole motivation for your PhD. If you don't quit now, you will quit later and it may cause more damage to your advisor.

For a complete stranger like me, if a guy quits his PhD after 1st or 2nd year, there are many reasons beside a bad advisor: maybe the guy himself finds PhD too difficult, or he changes his mind etc and etc. But if someone quits his PhD after 5th or 6th year, I would think there must be something wrong with the supervision.


How would you respond if you were forwarded an email by your secretary that clearly wasn't meant for you?

My first question is what you thought would happen? In my experience, many secretaries would handle it exactly in this way - your email is fairly unspecific in what you thought the secretary would do ("remind him about this" - he/she did by forwarding your mail, and at the same time probably wondering why you did not send it directly to him). If you thought that the secretary would take responsibility for hunting down the recommendation letter for you, I think this is an unreasonable assumption. The secretary is the professor's assistant, not yours. In the olden times this may have included managing the professor's work backlog, but nowadays most people prefer doing this themselves and just having the secretary arrange meetings etc.

  even though it was never written with his eyes in mind.

Tip for the future: never write something to staff where you would be embarrassed if the boss saw it, especially if you don't know the person well. However, I see little in this email that would offend me, other than maybe the implication that you thought I could not be approached directly about this. But of course other people get offended by other things.

  I was wondering how academics would feel if they were put in a similar spot, and if I ought to be proactive in rectifying the situation, or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie.

I am for "letting sleeping dogs lie". Very likely there really isn't a situation to address, and if there is you can still tackle it once it comes up.


How long should I describe when asked to talk about my past research experiences by a potential PhD advisor during Skype interview?

They ask about your research experience to learn more about your suitability for the position. They are not necessarily interested in the specific research results. If they are, they will look for publications after the interview or simply ask for more details.

Prepare a sales pitch with three main points:

background/topic of the projects and also why you participated in them
main results and conclusions
what did you learn from doing them (project management skills, exciting new technique, ...)

You should be able to explain this in about 5 minutes. Be prepared to answer questions if they ask for more details.


but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't "hit" the point

...

  I guessed he hate me for that and trying to stall my work

...

  Any risk that he will rant me to the co-supervisor?

...

  I just had that bad feeling about the project he led and many of his direction doesn't make sense to me. Doing his way or my way is doomed anyway.

There is only one suggestion that we can give you. Get out of there. There is no telling whether his research is indeed "doomed", or whether you just have different angles of attack and ideas. In the end, it does not matter. You have no respect in his guidance and will need to find an advisor whose advise you actually trust.


Tracking reading progress of documentations or ebooks

If you read some page again, it presumably is because there are points you forgot/didn't get the first time around.
Who says you have to read all of it? Presumably you have some specific interest(s) in the subject matter, it is OK to just concentrate on the few documents that go to your points, work through them thoroughly, and at most skim over the rest.


Does being a lab tech count as research? Probably not. Research means making contributions that go beyond the state-of-the-art. Keeping the machines turned on isn't really research.

But!! Don't sell yourself short. You say that you collect data and "don't do much" with analysis. Do you do anything with analysis? Do you understand the aims of the project? Do you write up the data? Do you discuss the results with anyone? Also, your internship seems like it should have had some research associated with it.

Can you answer "yes" to a yes/no question about having done research? I would say yes -- let the reader decide whether your research "counts" or not. So long as you are clear elsewhere in the application about what you did, you should be fine.


Applying for job while 3/4 done with MS program

Usually a masters thesis is a full time job, especially closer to the end of the thesis. Honestly, I would not recommend working 40h/week on top of working on a masters thesis, as long as the fields are not closely related. But of course this depends on individual factors which we can not appraise without knowing you and your thesis / course work.

Some questions which might help:

How much of your thesis can be finished before January?
Will it be possible to reduce the working hours to complete your studies if necessary (without being paid during that time)?
How well can you handle stress?
Would it be possible to start with 20-30h/week whilst you have to study?

In the long run, it is not a good idea to screw your thesis for a job. It is the most important grade! When people apply for a position at my lab, I am mainly looking at their thesis topic and grade - the rest is less important.

Maybe you can twist it another way: At our university it is common that students are doing their thesis in cooperation with a company - maybe you could switch your thesis topic and combine job and thesis.


issues regarding student research work in an undergraduate level

I think you have built a counterproductive structure into the course and you should probably change it, perhaps radically.

But there are some lesser things that you could, perhaps, do to make the problem go away. Maybe this isn't possible, but your staff should discuss these and all other options.

First, is that you can decouple the "advice" given by the reviewers from the grading/marking of the work. The actual marking and assigning of grades should be someone with an overall perspective on the course and its students, not the parochial views of some specialist, no matter how skilled.

The second thing is to have a session before the work goes out to the reviewers in which you are clear to the students about the marking (if you can get it changed) but also that they are likely to get weird, even hostile reviews. The students should be clear that while they need to be respectful and to consider any proposed changes or extensions that such things won't affect their marks. But of course, if project revision is part of the exercise the students will need to show that they have considered suggestions even when they must be rejected.

Another thing you might be able to do is to give the reviewers some training. Perhaps they don't understand the requirements at the level the students are at - undergraduate. Perhaps they don't understand their role - helping, not abusing, students. You can probably do this with written material given to potential advisors at the time of selection. A face to face meeting of all reviewers would be preferable if possible. That way you get feedback on the attitudes of the individuals. If you can fiddle with the grading scheme, you can make it clear to the reviewers that while their reviews will be considered in grading, they won't be definitive.

Finally, you may need to do a better job of matching students and reviewers as well as rejecting reviewers who have behaved badly in the past.


Did a masters in order to make up for my BA marks. But I did worse. What now? A second MA?

Your explanation of being in the humanities with no 'industry' for you begs the question... why are you pursuing advanced degrees or maybe asked another way... what do you hope to do with your life once all degrees have been attained? If you can focus on that instead of focusing on attaining the grades to get into the prestigious university vs. a lesser known one; and how it will be perceived by the respective schools you may come up with the answer on your own.  A PhD at any respectable university is an accomplishment in and of itself, and one that you would/should be proud of. Inevitably, whether you get into a top tier university or a lower tier one, what you get out of it depends on what YOU put into it. Whether it is an 'industry' or a career or a profession or a job, that is what will await you when schooling is done.  Try to focus on what you want to be doing after school then pursue any school that can give you a credible education towards that end, and then move forward and don't look back! So in answer to your original question... don't waste another two or three years on an additional Masters degree, move forward, and take what is available to you.  Good luck!


How can I counter a student response saying "Why are we bothered to reinvent the wheel when proving mathematical identities?"

Someone said:*

When you reinvent the wheel, you end up learning a great deal about why wheels are round.

And that is really the point. When you’re at university to get a degree in wheels, you should fully expect not just to be told that wheels exist but to be asked to think deeply about them so that you develop an understanding, at the deepest level, of why they work the way they do. That is literally the whole point of going to college.
*Source: something I read recently somewhere on the Stack Exchange network. The quote is from memory, I can’t find the exact source now unfortunately.


Stating PhD scholarships that I turned down on my CV

It might be worth mentioning this while you are applying for PhD positions. But after you have obtained a PhD position, it will be fairly meaningless, as what will matter is how you perform in your PhD studies (ie, number/quality of publications).


Should I keep my name on a paper in which I have no important contribution?

Standards (and customs) for coäuthorship depend heavily on your field, but if you contributed to the work reported in the paper, you might first want to consider actually accepting coäuthorship:

Unless you think the work is actually crap, there is no downside (having a few not-so-great papers doesn't actually hurt, even if it doesn't help your career).
If you worked with prof. X, it might be nice to have something (a paper) to show for it.
The relationship may have soured, but are you ready to burn that bridge? If he insists on coäuthorship, a flat refusal will annoy him, probably because it would hurt him for some strategic reason.

Now, on the other hand, it's entirely your choice to make. Nobody can force you: if it comes to that, just flatly state that you do not wish to be a coäuthor on the paper. After that was made clear, and in writing, there is little chance prof. X will submit it with your name behind your back: that would be a very severe breach of ethics, and grounds for immediate retraction of the paper when you find out.

Finally, on the question of whether resubmitting without your name can actually hurt him… yeah, it could be an annoyance. There are a few people (editor and referees for the first paper) who would have knowledge that the same paper was submitted twice with different author lists, which definitely gives a bad impression of the senior author.


Alternatives to paper handouts in conferences

There is almost no reason to give out paper handouts any more.

Almost none of the conferences that I attend hand out anything paper other than an updated program, if that.  Instead, everything is either in a USB stick or simply online at the conference web site.  Conferences with full papers tend to give out a USB stick; conferences with abstracts tend to place them online.

And here is where I see the only reason one might still want to bring a piece of paper: if the conference is handing out USBs stick or some other form of program that must be produced many weeks in advance, then if you want to give your audience some piece of information to look at that was not available then, you might bring paper.  To me, however, that sounds like a relatively rare case and not something that needs preserving as a typical custom.


should I publish in journal that has no IF

There's a lot behind your question that should be clarified.

You are not finding an impact factor for the journal because it is not indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI). All journals not indexed by SCI do not have an impact factor. SCI has its criteria for indexing, one of which is whether papers published in the journal receive citations from the other journals already in the index. Not having an impact factor is usually a bad sign in the sense that the journal is not prestigious. It does NOT mean that the journal is predatory.
ESCI is a lower-ranking index. Journals listed here are being considered for the more prestigious indices. Notably the ESCI does not feed into the SCI, but to the "next tier" of citation indices. If the best the journal can say is that it's indexed by ESCI, it's definitely not a prestigious journal.
I don't know what HSCX is and can't find it via Google, but assuming it's got to do with the h-index then it literally means nothing. A h-index of 12 means that the 12 most cited papers published by that journal/person have been cited at least 12 times each. Since this calculation is so generic, the moment a single paper is published, it can be calculated. If you've ever written a paper before, you have a h-index.
Quoting a h-index on the website does not mean that the journal is predatory. Predatory publishers do something completely different, the most important hallmark being they publish without really performing peer review. They can afford to publish junk because the authors pay for it (i.e. open access). Since the journal you linked is subscription-based, I can virtually guarantee it is not predatory.

tl; dr: the journal is likely to be low-prestige, but it is almost surely not predatory.

As to specific questions:

  Is publishing in journals with no Impact Factor a bad thing for my carrier?

Usually, yes. The more prestigious the venue of publication the more people read it and the better it's regarded.

  Can I verify whether this journal a predatory journal or not?

Yes. See this question.


How to write a cover letter for a PhD position while involved in another PhD?

Just be forthcoming about the reasons why you're switching.  If you have evidence that you have a track record of success (grades, publications, etc.) in your former PhD program, there is little reason to believe that mentioning this information will count against you.  Even if you don't have a particularly "good" track record, it's important to be forthcoming about your experience nonetheless.

The key to a successful transfer into a different PhD program is how you justify changing programs.  This falls more into the category of your personal statement, rather than your CV.  If it is because you realized that you have stronger research interests in another field and wish to pursue research with a top professor in that field, then I don't think any institution would frown upon this regardless of your track record.

I'm not familiar with your track record, and I don't want to make any assumptions about you one way or another.  Thus, I want to address one more key issue:  If you are changing programs because to avoid "impending failure" at your previous PhD program, this will most likely be interpreted as "jumping ship" and institutions will not look highly upon this.  If you happen to be failing in your PhD program, you need to do some introspection and ask yourself some tough questions.  If a PhD is what I really want, why am I failing?  The more open and forthcoming you are about these questions in your personal statement, the more strongly you can justify your reasons for pursuing a PhD in another institution.


Can principal investigators use leftover grant money to take a vacation with their families?

Without knowing the actual laws or seeing the grant proposal, I think I can pretty definitively say no, you can't do that. If it is noticed, it would likely generate an audit of the entire grant. In an extreme case (NSF funding) it could result in jail time as fraud or embezzlement.

However, if the grant is from some private party, the rules might be very loose, though I doubt it.

However, if the topic of study in the grant were somehow related to leisure time or such then what seems like a vacation might actually be research. (We should all be so lucky.)

What happens with unused funds is likely spelled out in the grant itself or in the regulations of the funding agency. They might go back to that agency, or perhaps remain with some other institution.

But vacations? No. Pizza night for the research team, maybe. Unlikely.


How can I begin to gain credibility within the scientific community without a degree?

I suggest that you read some papers related to what you are working on to see how your work compares. Try to develop a writing style that somewhat matches what you read.

Then, if you think your work is ready, submit it to a journal, such as the ones you've been reading. You will get some feedback. If the work clearly doesn't measure up, the feedback will be quick. But if it is more or less appropriate, you will get, after a while, some detailed comments on the work, and perhaps how you might improve it.

But the path to credibility runs through publications. The degree itself is less important other than to help an editor make a quick judgement.


Is there a standard for translating grades across Erasmus universities?

As far as I know, the translation is up to the universities who do the conversion. I think that it is unlikely that there are is one set of guidelines as even within a country not all universities have necessarily the same ranking systems.

I have found this table on Google though that gives some idea on what grades are roughly equivalent.


Most people call this "cumulative distribution function", or "CDF". A Google image search for "cdf performance" produces many plots of this type with the vertical axes labeled "CDF", which should be understood by people in the field if the field is "mathematically inclined" enough.

A more verbose way for more divulgative works is to label the horizontal axis

Ratio to best performance, r

and the vertical axis

Probability of achieving a (performance) ratio < r.

An additional difficulty of your example is that the measure "ratio to best performance" is not easy to explain in very few words. In such cases, a good idea is to use the caption of the figure to further clarify what the axis labels mean. This way, those who do not understand the labels can quickly get more information from the caption.


How to resolve authorship issue of a conference paper?

You may just have to go along with all the boss types. What is fair, what is customary in field, and what is forced on you can all differ. By countering the last, you can also wind up forcing yourself out of the organization. While it is probably your best option to find a better place to work, being forced out is probably not the best option for your career.

But if such things are customary in the field you work in, then you just go along with it as a (sad) consequence of working in that field. Many fields have non-contributors listed on many papers. I also realize, of course, that your field and their field are a bit different and may have different standards for authorship. But a boss can find ways to prevail or make your life miserable.


How to write good and effective lecture notes?

The first question to consider is what you want the notes for.
Situation A: to improve listening comprehension
If you just want to take notes to help yourself listen better (which is what I do), then it's not a big deal what you actually write down, but you should practice scribbling fast while listening. You could practice on (relevant) YouTube videos for a little while, which has the added bonus of showing you the material twice (so you're better prepared when you actually get to class).
Situation B: to use as study material
If you want to take notes that you can use to refer to later, it depends more on what you're studying. In general, though, here are some tips:
it helps to read whatever material your professor gave you ahead of time (videos, textbook chapters, their own notes...) so you have some idea of the structure beforehand, which helps you know what's important and what's not.
There are several different"note-taking systems" floating around online, like the Cornell method and the Mapping method, that you might find helpful (personally, I find it slows me down, but I know people who swear by structured note-taking). I'd recommend doing a bit of research to see if it might help you stay organized and keep things legible.
You should also work out some shorthand that works for you (stuff like -> for "implies", ^ for "is a subsection of"... Whatever works in your field). These are great, but you do have to develop them yourself so they make enough sense; otherwise when you come back at the end of the semester, you won't know what you wrote.
The other thing that I find works for me is having a color-changing pen so I can use color changes to easily denote subject changes, but that's more personal and probably a holdover from my 20-color notes in secondary school.
(Can someone help format this for me? I'm on mobile and I keep messing it up.)


Should I write a bilingual email to a professor who can't speak German very well?

English is the language of academia, so write in English. This is especially the case if his primary language is English.

In the reverse scenario where the professor is not very fluent at English but is great at German, still write in English, but feel free to sprinkle some German (e.g. in the salutation or signature). If he responds with more German, then you can use more German too.


How should I approach my advisors about switching research topics, when they're counting on my results for a grant proposal?

This is a really complex problem, especially since you're in your 2nd year of PhD, meaning it left you more than 1 year, right ?

Why are you not getting along with one of the advisor ? Is it not one of the main issue, which gives you the feeling you don't like your research area ?

Breaking plans of your advisors is really not a good idea, there is always gap in motivation when you are in PhD, and I think you should think about what gives you the feeling you want to go somewhere else. That will hurt both your carrier and your relationship with everyone in the lab.

There is no good answer to your question, either way, you will end up with a problem (for yourself and for your advisors). The best way is to speak with them about your feelings, after having a self-reflexion.

EDIT: Since it is clear you don't want to stay in this lab, the earlier the better. Tell them about what are in your mind, and they will certainly understand, if they are not short-minded (which hopefully is not the case for a scientist !)


Audit or B in class when applying to grad school (mathematics)

It's better to have documentable (whether in transcript or by letters of recommendation) exposure to more substantial mathematics. Especially in the U.S., the default undergrad curriculum in mathematics is far too thin for grad school. Without taking initiative, which necessitates not-the-routine channels, you'd not be ready for grad school. Naturally, the irregularities in the not-routine channels generate grades whose meaning is unclear, and so on. (And, no, summer "research experiences for undergrads" do not typically add much to one's scholarly preparation, although they may fire one's enthusiasm.)

So, for me, when I see "functional analysis" on a transcript, I don't really care what the grade is, nor whether it's "audit" or not. Just the  initiative to engage with it.


How to improve writing skills when writing a manuscript for the first time?

Concrete advice on where and how to begin, especially given that I
  don't have that much time

I work in biomedical science so my advices may not fully apply to you, feel free to take whatever that is useful.

Don't write too much: Most students I work with who are trying to turn their paper into a journal article tend to write too much. It's usually described as a painful process because it would feel like chopping off a lot of work from their thesis (which was done with much blood and sweat.) But the trimming and refinement need to happen because thesis format is not suitable for journal.

Concretely, these newbie articles tend to

Have an introduction that is overly long
Contain abundance of details in the methods section, documenting the conception of the idea to every little details, with meticulous follow up of citations
Justify every single decision, some of which trivial
Cover too many hypotheses or fail to boil down the structure to bite-size, thinking everything in the chapter has to go into the paper
Elaborate lengthily in Discussion, failing to highlight the most important aspect

But also don't write too little: And yet, most students tend to overlook these components:

The paper goes into technical way too abruptly, doesn't account for the fact that some non-specialist may be reading this. And this is really an art, you'll need to see your target journal and get a sense of who are the readers, and then decide how broad to start with
Fail to explain the "so-whats" in the Discussion
Did not address the strengths and the weaknesses of the study. Or quoting weaknesses that actually can be alleviated but were not. For instance, I have a lot of students stating weaknesses like "this is a cross-sectional study so causal inference is not feasible," which I tend to agree; but some may say "in this analysis we did not adjust for income levels" while the income level variable is actually in the data set. In those case I'd request a re-analysis. In short, if you can have done something about it, don't list it as weakness.

General style mismatches: Sometimes the articles have nothing really wrong about it but the style just make it clunky as a journal article. For instance:

Overly sensationalizing or flooded with emotional adjectives. E.g. "the obesity epidemic is indeed a human tragedy," "our results are surprisingly encouraging."
Mixing up facts and arguments, ending up with a lot of statements that are not backed up or statements that are accompanied with a tsunami of facts without a trace of synthesis.
The objectives and the conclusion do not match. And this is very common in theses because we set off with a plan and things may fail to work in the middle and we have changed direction. In journal article, the objective statement and the conclusion need to resonate so that they read nearly like Q&A.
Trying too hard to make the whole paper self-contained and complete. Common signs are including too many details that can be included in the form of citations.
Calling the same concepts or things with many different names. In English composition we are often encourage to diversify our word selection but this is a big no-no in scientific writing. If the variable is "occupational stress," call it so throughout. Do not use variants such as work-induced stress or even worse: work-related mental problems or job-site related depression, etc.
Drafting, writing, and editing at the same time. Most of the students lost steam because they want to churn out perfect sentence from the get go. This causes the process extremely slow and painful. It's easier to do a brain dump and then come back to edit the work. On a good day you may save 50-60% of the dump, on a bad day maybe 10%, but I found it worth it because I can be more focused in either laying out ideas or perfecting the wording, separately.

So, how to start? Before writing, read a bit. Download the "guideline to the authors" from the target journal and use a highlighter to indicate all stylistic requirements. Follow them to the t.

Then, download about 3-5 articles related to your fields from that journal, and read for word-uses and syntax. Generally, when reading each paragraph, ask yourself "Why did the authors put this information here?"

Now, when it comes to writing/drafting. I find it easiest to do in this sequence:

Identify 1-3 main analysis outcomes (table, graph, regression model, etc.) Paste them on a wall or a board and they will be the staple of this article.
For each of these output, write about 2-4 main points or interpretations people should take away with. Imagine you're at a conference manning a poster. What would you tell the audience to focus on in each table or each graph? If one of them has overwhelming amount of talking points, you are trying to pack too much. Consider breaking the analysis output down, and trim, trim, trim. In this stage, do not throw away unused outputs, put them aside in a folder or a box in case you have a second thought.
For each of these output, write out the methods. Remember to only contain enough information to allow readers to replicate, not too much so that the readers have to endure the whole story. For instance, reason for picking a certain concentration or threshold can be explained with a citation rather than writing it out.
Now combine your selected output into the Results section. Write it in the driest style you can think of. No interpretation, grievance, celebration, defense whatsoever, just plain, hard, cold data.
Break Discussion into segments A, B, C, D, and E. In A, use one paragraph to summarize what you found. In B, incorporate the talking points you generated for each of the output, so that the first paragraph makes sense. In C, compare and contrast your work with other literature and discuss the potential differences. In D, delineate the strengths and weaknesses of your study. For each weakness, discuss what you had tried to make it less a matter, or what else could have been done in future work. Finally, in part E, go slightly wider and wilder: elaborate what these results mean to your target audience and their field. You can quickly see that this section can get overwhelming if you have too many objectives. For starters, one main objective with a sub objective will be a good challenge.
Write the Introduction. Focus on some "what's known" to bring your audience to the same page so that they can understand your work. Then, discuss what is not known or what challenges the field is facing. After that, explain how your work may help, and lastly, lay out your objectives clearly.
Cut and paste the objective at the end of the paper (or use split screen so that you can see the objective section), and start writing the Conclusion. Introduce no more new information there, simply answer the objectives point by point. Make sure the objective part and the conclusion part resonate. When you feel it's good enough, you can then take out the reference objective you just pasted there (or close the split screen function.)
Go back to write the abstract.

Other nitty-gritty

Don't feel bad that people are not happy with what you write. A lot of the time they do not even concretely know what's wrong with the piece. Ask for actionable suggestions and then thanks for their comments; take whatever applies to you.

Your supervisor may not appreciate your writing quality, but will definitely appreciate your attention to details. So, make his/her life easier by following the journal's guideline tightly when it comes to formatting.

Check if all the figures and tables are correctly indexed.

Check if all the pronouns connect well and leave no room for misunderstanding.

Use subtitle to introduce another layer of structure if you feel too overwhelmed.

It's true that some papers can take years to write. But you have been working on it for more than 3 months and it is more than probable to write a decent article in 3 months. Some other users may say a paper can take years, but remember the duration is also a factor of i) how much time the person is putting in every day, ii) how much the work is being held up by co-authors, and iii) personal writing style. I myself have papers that were done in the span of 2 months to 6 years; there is pretty much no rule when it comes to time.


List of peer review platforms and social networks

I don’t think Publons provides what you’re searching for. If you’re looking for potential reviewers I’d suggest you to look into F1000, PeerJ, Peerage of Science.

The latter I’ve come across with a while ago, see question below.

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102720/has-anyone-here-tried-this-alternative-peer-review-platform-peerage-of-science

Good luck!


How to revise the manuscript (one reject and one accept in first decision) and what could be the final decision?

There is no real way of knowing what the outcome will be without seeing the feedback. It honestly depends on the primary reviewer. Depending on what the formal process is for IEEE ACCESS, either one reviewer will have the ultimate say, or both reviewers will have to agree on a result.

I've been in this situation a few times and it has gone both ways. Looking at your feedback summary, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the research which is always a good sign (I've had more than my fair share of reviewers simply disliking the premise of my research which is a complete non-starter). Ultimately, you need to work hard on the revision and write a cover letter that addresses each of their points.

The cover letter is a really important part of this process as a lot of reviewers will use this as the basis for their decision. Be sure to respond to each of their comments methodically, and clearly. Try to avoid using vague language such as "We've added more detail to the conclusion", but instead provide a clear description of the changes you made.

It sounds like reviewer two had an issue with the language used. If you've got any strong English language researchers in your department, it's worth asking if they are able to proofread the document for you. Services like Grammarly are also useful to improve typos and grammar. Make sure you emphasise how much effort you put into improving this when responding to reviewer two's comments. This may be enough to nudge the needle in your favour.


How important is one's first publication in affecting prospects, assuming others are to follow?

A first publication matters less than you might think, especially as an undergraduate.  My take on likely interpretations:

If you publish as first author in a credible but low impact venue (of any type), people will think you're doing great for an undergraduate to be publishing as first author at all.
If you publish as first author in a high impact venue (of any type), people will probably assume that the senior author on the paper did the critical intellectual work in defining a high-impact research plan, and that you just executed it (whether that rightly or wrongly describes your particular situation, that is still what is likely to be assumed, given the difficulty of publishing in high impact venues).
If you publish not as first author (in any venue), people thing you're doing good work as an undergraduate on the team, but that the first author contributed more (which will probably be true).

Frankly, all of these sound like nice things to have people think about you.  My recommendation for any undergraduate is to not get hung up trying for a perfect first publication.  Your first publications will probably either involve a lot of hand-holding or else be a pretty rocky experience, as you gain experience in writing publications and communicating with your scientific community.  It's better to start writing and gaining that experience now, rather than saving it for a more painful experience with a larger and more significant work that you are more heavily invested in.


My advice is to reach out AFTER he has graded the exam (if needed).  This is for a few reasons.

I have seen (and experienced) lower grades on an exam after a student told prof they had done poorly.  Teachers are humans and prone to halo effect bias.  If you did a bad job, let him decide that.  Don't do something to make him think that a priori.
You don't want to exert (or be seen as exerting) any influence on the fair grading of your paper.  For example, that prof cuts you a break since you will work together.  (If you get that anyways, now, well...que serat.)  In theory, he is an inviolate Roman judge of fairness.  But in reality, teachers are people.
It may be seen, even accurately seen, as you being nervy, not strong.

If you hose the exam, then yes...talk to the prof about still having collaboration interest. Let him know your feelings.  But also be open to some real two-way discussion (even to include him saying "this would be a bad idea" or "let's see").


Should I send this e-mail to my instructor who is also my supervisor?

I would strongly suggest not sending this mail. I'll give some specific feedback below, but in general, it is very distasteful when students complain about their grades when they don't even know why they lost points. I understand that you are angry, but especially since this professor is your supervisor, I think asking politely to learn what you missed and to raise any concerns is likely to end better than going in angry and demanding points.

I think the best course of action would be to ask for an appointment to discuss your grade.  At this meeting, you can ask to review these three items with him/her, at which point you can listen while they explain why you got the grades you got. At this point you can politely ask for clarification or politely request they reconsider certain subjective marks.

To the points you raise:

  firstly, I should say that I am really surprised by the final exam grade(93.00). The questions were very easy for me since they were very similar to what we learned in the lectures and you had already covered all of them through the lecture, I thought I could get 100 in the final exam.

This is probably your weakest argument -- "I thought I would do better" is not actionable. Instead, I think you should ask where you came up short, and then follow-up from there if you think the answer is unfair.

  secondly, I think the oral presentation was way better than other students oral presentation. Most of the presentation given by students were not well organized and even they did not even care about timing and the rubric. I got just 89 and the second mark is 88. I think there were lots of difference between our present and the guys who got 88.

It's not clear how you know that you got the top score and the second mark was one point below you. Even assuming this is true, how other students were graded is not your concern. If there are scores on the rubric that you object to, then it is fair to raise those points. But again, I would try to be very polite and ask for an explanation rather than trying to argue that you deserve more points. After you understand the perceived weaknesses, you will be in a better position to respond to their concerns and even ask that they reconsider one or two of those marks.

By the way, I hope this presentation was recent -- it seems very opportunistic when students have no complaints until the end of the term, and then all of a sudden old grades become unfair.

  Finally, in the written report, I got 86.00 I am really curious about this grade. I want to know why I really performed badly. Did I miss anything in the report?

I'm not sure in what course an 86.00 is "really performing badly." But I wouldn't ask "if you missed anything" -- obviously you missed 14% of the report, in the instructor's view! I would simply ask to be allowed to review/discuss your professor's comments, and then you can follow up if you think any of the complaints are not valid.

So, I would write this instead.

  Dear Professor, I was a little disappointed by my final grade. I'd like to go over the final exam and written report with you to see what I missed. I am free anytime this week, please let me know what time you are available. --Name.


another master's degree or just single courses?

Given both of those stated goals, I would not pursue additional coursework to learn the material. Your current masters degree is likely good enough for either teaching or getting into a machine learning PhD program, and no degree is necessary for independent research. I would recommend that you use other resources to learn the material.

EDIT: Given that the question in the above link was deleted, I'm reproducing it here:

  There are many ways to learn new topics. Taking a university-level
  course is only one option. Other alternatives are:

  read textbooks
  online video tutorials (Khan academy, youtube)
  online pre-recorded lectures (e.g., iTunes U, but many, many others exist)
  talking to peers
  reading publications (for specialized topics)

  Taking a non-required university course is usually not the most
  optimal approach, for a number of reasons:

  You will spend a lot of time learning material not relevant to your problem, simply because it's part of the syllabus and the teacher
  found it interesting
  The requirement to pass will require you to spend likely (disproportionately too much) time doing homework, studying for tests,
  etc.
  It is very expensive

  This isn't to say that self-study doesn't require homework, or that
  learning topics not directly related to your research is a bad thing.
  I'm simply suggesting that by pursuing more self-directed learning
  opportunities you will be able to make better use of your time.


Should a senior Program Committee attend the conference?

"Should" is a judgement call that I won't make. If you are the person and if you are new at this, I'd recommend that you go.

However, a large and important conference (in CS) might have, say, 30 people on the various committees. At the conference you will likely find about 3/4 of them in attendance. Not everyone, but most. Some will actually be presenters or session chairs.

But the Capo di tutti capi would nearly always be there.


How to assess the proportion of post docs in a lab that go on to become PIs?

One approach is to simply ask the potential post doc supervisors. That said, if I received a random email from someone asking how many of my post docs have gone on to get academic positions, I would probably ignore it. If however, that email came from someone I had previously talked to about doing a post doc with me, I would be happy to tell them about my past post docs and where they went. You should then talk to former members of the lab and see if the PI's view of the world matches their views. While a single descriptive statistic like percentage of students who went on to get academic positions might seem like it is easier to interpret, it likely only provides a portion of the story.


Can I include in my CV the invitation to a conference I'm not sure to attend?

I would say no.

I often turn down invitations that could be considered a distinction, i.e. an indication that somebody thinks I am reasonably competent at this research thing:

Will you speak on this panel at this research open house?
Are you willing to review this paper for this journal?
Would you want to do a research internship with us this summer?
Do you want to submit an invited paper to this workshop?
Can you mentor this undergrad who is doing research in the lab?

All of these things would go on my CV if I actually do them, but not if I turn down the invitation.

An invitation to speak at a conference is no different, in my opinion. It's certainly a nice validation of your work that the conference organizers recognized your ability to contribute. But if you don't actually give the talk, it doesn't go on the CV.


Etiquette for a female PhD student to reject her male supervisor's invitation to meet outside of work

While I know India is not the US (or any other country I am familiar with), but some norms should be universal and a student should not have to subject themselves to things outside the norm. Something like

  Dr. Smith, it is nothing against you, but I do not think it sets a good precedent for us to meet under those conditions. Is there a time we can have the meeting at the university?

Now, Dr Smith may get very mad and take it out on you, but if they are the type of person to do that, do you want them as a supervisor, and more importantly, do you want to meet them alone at their home.


How should I cite two different translations?

Cite each translation where you use it, just as you would if they were different works.

To ease any confusion on the part of the reader, however, it would likely be a good idea to also:

In your introductory material, note that you are using two different translations and why your are doing so, and
Call attention in the prose when you use the unusual translation, and why you have chosen to use that one instead in this circumstance.


What are some of the starting phrases that I can use while responding to Ph.D examination committee questions during my defence?

In addition to Pete Clark's excellent answer, I would like to offer a second piece of advice.  When you are feeling nervous or "put on the spot" by questions, an excellent first step is to begin by ensuring that you have understood the question.  You can say something like:

  "If I understand correctly, you are asking [paraphrased question]

and then go on with your response.  This both makes sure you are clear about your communication as well as giving you a moment to steady your nerves and to think about your response.


Ask your PI to write the letter, and consider suggesting that the postdoc consult with the PI or even help write the letter. That way, you get the best of both worlds: the reputation of the advisor, and the specifics from the postdoc (who could be named within the letter).


How to present my work experience in a PhD interview?

The first part:

If this is going to happen in front of the interview panels only (not with other applicants), then it is better to prepare for a detailed discussion. A detailed discussion includes a powerpoint presentation of your work, what would you do in future, etc. Also, you must expect some direct questions like "Why this is good for our organisation?" type questions. This part seems more like a personal discussion.

The second part:

If this is with other applicants, then there is no point being too specific and detailed about your PhD works. It is good enough to know the general knowledge of this field and some degree of the thesis that you have proposed in your PhD. You should be able to actively communicate and agree/disagree with others, very intellectually.

Good luck!


Is it worth finishing your PhD if your advisor thinks you are not cut out for research?

I am very, VERY reluctant to tell anyone to scrap what they've worked so hard for. I don't have a doctorate and I can tell you that I'm always impressed when I find out someone has one. To me, it means they contributed something new and significant to their chosen field. That's impressive. Think of it this way. Let's say you are NOT a good researcher. That means you broke through that hurdle and achieved it anyway. You had drive and stamina others might not. Let me show you how impressive it is to achieve a doctorate. I Googled on "what percentage of Americans have a doctorate".


Graduate application: Institutions that I have attended

Safest stance: mention both.

School B may be "irrelevant to my major", but mentioning it is going to add to the application. Though we are talking about an application here, and not about a CV, something related happens in a typical CV too. You assign more significance to stuff that is more relevant to your major, you put a general heading Other relevant information, and include other not-so-relevant bits over there. Over here, you need not put a separate heading. but still, mentioning it (with a clear pronouncement that you've done it though it ain't directly relevant to your major), can only add to the application. What do you lose by mentioning it!

As far as the issue of transcript from B is concerned, apply for the same - that would serve the purpose of authentication. If there isn't enough time to get it before the application deadline, write an email to the department saying that you have applied for the same on ( insert date here ), and some delay in receiving it is anticipated. If possible, you can forward the application (for the transcript) too, along with this email, to serve as a direct confirmation. Maybe, you can also add that you will communicate the same as soon as it is received. That would be a correct and safe statement. And I don't think your masters-degree-school will consider it a wrong stance, since the crux of their decision will certainly not be based on this part. This is only going to be a point in your favor (if it does count at all), but certainly isn't the bone of contention for your application.


Is it okay to mention the potential advisor's name in my personal statement?

It's perfectly acceptable to mention a potential supervisor's name, especially if they already know who you are. Indeed, many places that I applied to specifically requested that I include the name of a potential supervisor, either in the personal statement or elsewhere on the application.

In doing so, the admissions committee can see whether you've done your homework on the research that goes on at their institution (for example, it's no good writing down the name of someone who works on observing supernovae to then say that you're interested in theoretical research on modified gravity models).


Meaning of 'scholarly approach' for graduate award nomination

Actually, I don't think "scholarly approach" is obvious even to a native anglophone. Consider the following a guess. Others may supply additional suggestions, I hope.

If you have rationalized how it is that you find (have found) interesting research problems, then you can say something about that. How do I go about deciding what is worth exploring. That is a useful question for any researcher to be able to answer. It also seems related to things about your research experience.

Since you are being considered for an award, I assume that you don't need, anymore, to rely heavily on your advisor(s). So I suspect that you may have given that some thought already.


What are the signs that it is time to switch from thesis to capstone track?

This answer might not be applicable to everyone; however, today I met with the Associate Director of Professional Programs at [tier-one university]. I was informed that barring extenuating circumstances, if a student doesn't have an accepted proposal and a Thesis Director assigned after a year then they should switch over to the capstone track to ensure they are able to successfully finish their degree.


what shoud i say in a follow-up email to prospective PhD supervisors after I submitted my applications

For those with whom you communicated previously, a follow up is appropriate. But it can be very short and simple. Just say that you have applied and thank them for their help. Add that you remain interested in their research and in working with them in the future.

You don't need to remind them of anything. The university procedures will take care of that. The "thank you" part is the most important.


Universities offering PHD in Economics or CS without requiring a masters degree

Generally you can get a place for a Ph.D. in the UK or US after your Bs.c.; however it is a time consuming process.

For this I would suggest the following steps:

Ask one of your lecturers about this. They might give you recommendations based on their knowledge. For example if you want to do a Ph.D. in E-commerce try to ask this from a lecturer who teaches this.
Ask your personal student advisor or your last year supervisor. You need their recommendation letter more than anything to get a Ph.D. position besides your marks.
Look for lecturers in the top 50 universities yourself, and try to communicate with them through your university email.
Repeat till you get there! It might take up to a year to find a place; so meanwhile you could get a job so there will be no gap year in your CV.


How to automatically link LaTeX .bib references to a set of pdf full-text articles?

Here is one nearly automatic way to do it using Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/):

1) import the PDFs in Zotero. One way is to select multiple PDFs and drag them into a collection (in the LHS pane) of Zotero.

2) Select the PDF items (CTRL click in Windows for multiple selections), right click and select "Retrieve metadata from PDF". Note that this step searches online databases for missing information and seems fairly robust.

3) import the .bib file in Zotero

4) Go to the duplicates collection in the LHS panel and merge all the duplicates.

Issues:

1) In step 4, there may be false negatives if the automatically retrieved metadata (in step 2) is too different from the corresponding entry in the .bib file (step 3)

2) Step 2 might fail on old scanned PDFs.


In computer science, is omission of negative experimental evaluation results research misconduct?

tl;dr-  In general, suppressing negative results harms objective analysis but can make the research appear more significant.  How people feel about this practice depends on their stake in it.

Pure consumers are the most likely to feel that it's misconduct.

Pure investees are the most likely to feel that it's acceptable/appropriate.

Others in the field likely have mixed feelings since they benefit from the practice as investees but are harmed by it as consumers.

Looking forward, there's a growing understanding that these practices pollute the literature and will need to be weeded out.  However, we're not quite there yet.
Pure consumers are likely to consider it misconduct
At one extreme, readers who have no affiliation with the research are the most likely to object.  Such readers might be trying to select an algorithm for their own research or business application; they want to know the good and the bad equally, so having the bad omitted is purely detrimental to them.
For example:

Ashley has developed algorithm X and decided to experimentally compare it with algorithm Y. She compared them on benchmark set A, B and C. She found that on benchmark C, algorithm Y outperformed X, so she decided to not report on C. In the paper, she also only claims algorithm X outperformed on A and B.

If a reader is trying to select which algorithm to use, then they'd likely want all relevant benchmarks.  Doubly so if Benchmark C is more closely related to their application.
Pure investees are most likely to consider it acceptable/appropriate
At the other extreme, those invested in the research effort itself are most likely to want to see it presented in a positive light.  Investees include the researcher themself; their supervisor(s); their institution; and any media services that report on their work (e.g., journals).
Pure investees are those who aren't also consumers.  For example, a university's promotional news team is a pretty pure investee, as they basically want to make the research shine.
For example:

Ashley has developed algorithm X and decided to experimentally compare it with algorithm Y. She compared them on benchmark set A, B and C. She found that on benchmark C, algorithm Y outperformed X, so she decided to not report on C. In the paper, she also only claims algorithm X outperformed on A and B.

If Ashley's supervisor feels strongly about the result, they may go into full-promotional-mode, including contacting the university's promotional team and others to advertise the work.  Ashley's supervisor and related promoters might wench at any criticism or negative analysis that might detract from their efforts, so they're more likely to appreciate the comparison using Benchmark C not being reported.
Fellow practitioners may have mixed feelings
Other computer scientists may have mixed feelings since they're consumers, but likely engaging in the same behaviors.
In practice, I've seen researchers acknowledge that they understand such behaviors to be detrimental, but still argue that not downplaying/omitting criticism would make their work appear unduly weak compared to other researchers'.
Overall, practitioners seem to generally understand that it's sort-of misconduct in the sense that it shouldn't be done, but that it's acceptable in the sense that authors often feel like they must do it to play on a level playing field with others who do.


Reputation of Frontiers Journals (Received Invitation Chemistry)

In my opinion, Frontiers journals are only modestly predatory. They are clearly for-profit, and seem to have a journal for every sub topic, not to mention the constant invitations for submission and ‘special issue’.  However, they’ve done a pretty good job maintaining reputation, though it certainly differs per-journal. An impact factor of ~3 isn’t that far outside middle-tier, non-profit, established journals. If it helps, I have a publication in the top-tier journal Neuron in 2012 with 156 citations and a pub in Frontiers in 2014 with 120 citations. So worry less about it being ‘frontiers’ and worry more about writing a solid work.


How to replicate others' results quickly?

As JeffE points out, trying to reproduce existing results before embarking on new endeavors is not a waste of time. It can be particularly useful, especially in tracking down issues that you have within your own code—or, perhaps, in the existing literature. My most-cited paper, and much of the research work currently ongoing within my group, came about precisely because I could not replicate an existing paper. As it turned out, there were some significant methodological problems in the existing literature, and this led to a fair bit of digging around, plus a lot of careful analysis to demonstrate what had happened and why. As I've also said, the issues we uncovered there indirectly led to a different line of inquiry that has already led to half a dozen additional manuscripts.

If you are determined to speed up the process, however, you might try to consider simplified versions of the research cases presented that can validate what you're working on. For instance, can you find a "prototype" problem whose solution would be known with your method as well as the existing methods? Can you find one or two test cases which can test most of what you're looking for? Can you devise a new problem that compares the two better than the existing cases, and is also simpler to execute?


How to solicit feedback from students about faculty candidates?

As someone who was a graduate student until recently, I would have no idea how to respond to a request like this. Even if I were qualified to judge potential faculty hires (which I very much am not, even now, as a postdoc) you've simply asked for "feedback" without giving any specifics. Do you know what kind of feedback you're looking for? You have to answer that question for yourself first.

It sounds like this task was thrust on you. Can you get anything more specific from whoever put you in charge of this?

This whole thing sounds odd to me. In fact, I suspect it's really all for appearances, to make the grad students feel included or to appease some high-level administrator who thinks it's a good idea. If you think that's the case, my advice is to provide free food for grad students after the job talks (without the free food, no one will stay) and hand out evaluation forms with a few questions about the content/style of the talk. The forms are unlikely to be read by anyone, but you'll accomplish the task you were given and the students will get free food. Everyone wins.


How "edited" should a paper be before submission

Strive for perfection, but if you fail to achieve it, then it won't be the end of the world. But you write a paper for people to read it, so you should make every effort to make it as good as you can, including grammar and such. Try to stamp out typos. Use an editor that knows about spelling, for example. Or at least, paste your content into such an editor so that you can see where there are errors.
The more readable your paper, in the initial submission, the less the reviewers will need to "fight" with it, getting more and more frustrated if they think you are sloppy. If you aren't a native speaker/writer of the language of the paper, try to get a native speaker to review it.
In fact, it is a good idea to have someone you trust review your paper before you submit it, perhaps a paper copy, simply marking errors for you to correct. It is very difficult to proof read your own work, since your mind will see what you wanted to write and not what you actually wrote.
Reviewers aren't likely to reject your work for such things, but you will get a more useful review, and quicker, if they can focus on what you say and not be distracted with things that you should have fixed.


Why can it take more than a month to find a reviewer?

There are several factors that can play into this:

Some journals have a strong editorial hurdle, i.e., a high desk-rejection rate, and the editor is expected to actually spend some time on the paper to judge its suitability for the journal. Thus editorial handling includes more than just finding a reviewer.
Some editorial systems only indicate that a paper is “under review” (or similar) when a reviewer actually agreed to review the paper, while others already do this as soon as the first requests have been sent to reviewers.
In some fields, it is common that reviewers blatantly exceed the allotted review time, so that the journal requiring their reviewers to submit their reviews within a month may still result in an average review time of two months or even higher.
Depending on the availability of potential reviewers for a given paper in the field, some journals follow a strategy of requiring reviewers to submit a review quickly, but take into account that many reviewers reject the request and they spend a considerable time finding reviewers.
Both, editorial handling and peer review do not take much work time in comparison to the allotted time (a day’s work or less in most disciplines). The main delay arises from the editor or reviewer having to find time for this given their other academic duties. Thus, if for example, the editor is on a conference for a week, they have to catch up with their regular work and the editorial work afterwards, which may amount to a significant increase of the editorial handling time.
Some editors are just slow.


Tenured position to be started very soon...what to do with the old affiliation

I would not tell anyone anything until you have accepted the position (ideally with a signed contract). Leaving a position on short notice leaves your colleagues in a bind to cover your teaching and leaves your graduate students (and possibly lab personnel) at risk. If you are given an offer, you may be able to negotiate solutions to these problems (or the offer may be made so late, that it is not an issue). It is not unheard of for graduate students to be allowed to transfer. Delaying the start date by a semester, even a year, is not uncommon. If the start date is not flexible, you may also be able to negotiate some sort of teaching buyout which will allow you to teach a reduced load at both universities for a semester/year with each university covering a portion of your salary.

The reason not to tell people is two fold. If the position falls through, you do not want to upset your colleagues. Telling your students also seems premature. They really little to no control over the situation and it is likely going to make them anxious.

In terms of control, the student can drop out immediately. By telling them early, you save them 2 months of "wasted effort". They can also work harder with the goal of graduating early. The 2 months additional warning time is not going to result in a significantly quicker graduation. Arranging alternative supervision is really out of the hands of the student and requires the current supervisor, the new supervisor, the department, and the funder all agreeing. They are not going to move quickly on the issue until the PI confirms he/she is leaving.

Not telling the student is not the same thing as not preparing the student. Hopefully, when you took the student on, you created a safety net for them (e.g., a second supervisor and alternative research paths). You should reconsider this safety net, alternative supervision, the key resources they need, and the time lines of their current and future projects. It is probably worth discussing aspects of the safety net and steering them into now (e.g., increased collaborations with a potential second supervisor and reducing the resources needed).


Is it possible to negotiate the position rank in an UK academic job offer?

Yes, you can always ask about salary and position for any job you are applying to. They won't stop considering you because you asked for more money.

While we are researchers, and love what we do [citation needed], in our society we need money and work for money*, thus bringing money to the negotiations is (or should be) an obvious part of the "finding a job" process.

They can say "yes", "let's negotiate" or "no". Just be prepared for all, and make the decision as you see fit.

*you wouldn't work for free, would you?


Is it permitted to cite works by members of my own family, in classwork?

I'm not aware of any reason you couldn't cite work of a family member. Indeed, a tenet of academic work is to cite your sources and give references appropriately, so due credit is given to previous works.

Were you not to cite your grandfather (or indeed anyone else's work you reference), that in itself would be the improper behaviour.

It is normal (and often necessary) to cite your own work as well - in order to avoid self-plagiarism, you need to reference any previous works by yourself if you use them in a future work, so as not to be re-presenting the same work repeatedly and claiming it as new every time.

Regarding clarifying points, that wouldn't be a problem - it is actively encouraged to discuss and collaborate with others in research. Authors place their email addresses and affiliations on publications to facilitate private conversation and discussion with other researchers, and often this is how collaborations and future advances happen. Conferences are also organised with the principle aim of facilitating dialogue and further discussion between researchers.

You would be able to cite information from clarifications with him as personal correspondence type references, and I don't see a reason you would need an appendix to quote the actual correspondence.

In the event that there were to be any kind of potential for conflict of interest, you obviously should disclose it as such. Also, if you are significantly referencing personal correspondence with your grandfather, he may be making sufficient intellectual contribution to be considered an author of the paper. Simple clarification of points in already-published works wouldn't be an issue (otherwise I'd be an author on any paper as a result of an email I replied to!), but significant intellectual contribution or addition of new material would probably require you to regard him as an author. For assistance and clarifications which don't constitute author him, you could add an acknowledgement to the paper to express recognition of the assistance and advice given.

Disclaimer - there may be discipline specific nuances here I am not aware of, most probably around how to cite personal correspondence, since it's not something I've had to do before. The requirements to declare authorship may also vary between disciplines and publications based on their regulations.


Disclosing Asperger's Syndrome in cover letter for scholarship

I would think not.  While it would, by default, be considered illegal (in the US, at least) to discriminate based on an asperger's diagnosis, putting it in your application makes it valid information for them to make an assessment of your worthiness.  There are extremes to which this cannot be taken, but they are legally allowed to discuss all (legally) provided information, and they will have extra leeway in defending against discrimination suits on data the applicant volunteered.  If you tell them your age in your application, then it is not illegal for them to talk about your age during the hiring process; if you do not provide it, it is illegal.  You are rather explicitly saying "here's a fact about me, so please take it into consideration in determining whether or not to hire/admit me".  The law does not require them to magically bleach their memories of what you have clearly and explicitly given them and pretend the elephant in the room isn't there.

Some applications may have a separate form in which you can disclose "diversity" information such as race and ethnicity.  These are supposed to be kept anonymous and unavailable to the actual hiring committee.  They are just meant as data collection methods to establish they are compliant with laws regulating discrimination and diversity.  If this form asks you about mental health matters, you could certainly feel free to respond to it if you are comfortable with doing so.

I personally wouldn't volunteer any protected information if there wasn't something else in the application that made it sort of obvious, and could be very negative if left unaddressed.  A prolonged period of unemployment may warrant some sort of comment, for example.


Are there any online tools to calculate academic collaboration distance (i.e. a generalisation of the Erdős number)?

I have been using https://www.csauthors.net/distance for a few years now. It seems to work decent considering I am not a mathematician either. However, it does not work on your name :(


In order:

1) Yes, if you paid for it or referenced it

2) Yes, if you paid for it or referenced it

3) your contract should say something like "copyright or all rights pass to client", BUT that may be a question for the Law stack...

Many images on many documents papers etc are done by professional artists for exactly that reason. They like / want the work as well...


How to write research proposal without the risk of getting my idea stolen

Yes, this is a known issue.  What you said is perfectly true -- a vague proposal will probably be rejected, a well elaborated proposal can potentially be stolen.
The situation is very similar with job applications, where applicants are asked to produce a research plan for the next 3 years, and members of the recruitment panel can be more excited with the elements of the proposal than with hiring an applicant. Speaking from personal experience, this puts applicant in a frustrating position.
There is no ideal solution for the applicant. However, the following helps:

Remain active and productive in research as much as possible and try to stay ahead of the crowd in your own field. If it is clear from your proposal that you are the best person who has the right skills to get the project done, then it is more likely that people will want to have you onboard.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Apply to several places quickly and move forward with your research at the same time. Even if someone decides to steal your idea, they won't be able to implement and publish it overnight. Use your time effectively and stay ahead of possible competition by moving faster than your competitors.
If possible, try to discuss the proposal informally with your potential supervisor first, and see how interested she or he is, and whether she/he would like to contribute additional ideas or details.