Should I attend a job interview after I've already accepted another offer?

Once you've accepted a job offer, you are supposed to inform other places that you've applied that you would like to withdraw from consideration.

If they still want to invite you over to give a talk knowing that you can not be considered for the position, go ahead. But, you must tell them.

To do otherwise would be a serious breach of ethics. You do not want to gain a reputation as someone who engages in unethical behavior (don't assume they won't find out).


How to change path from field of IT to field of Space sciences?

Getting in any neighboring field is not always a matter of basic education. Space agencies indeed need engineers, but they for sure have a huge demand on IT specialists as any modern tech company. But you need to first search what kind of ITs are engaged in space industry (automation, simulation, modeling, integrated systems etc.). Then if you would like to do a master degree, choose one which will give you necessary skills. Furthermore, you can try searching internship/practice in a space-related company during your study. It is very probable they would hire you, if you did well.
Having an IT degree gives you pretty a lot of perspectives, but nowadays it is really about skills and what you learn by yourself. Google, visit career days, make personal contacts, learn and prosper.


Borderline on appropriateness from teacher

Strange blink patterns are not necessarily a sign of a need for glasses, one of my students has similar symptoms as part of Tourette's Syndrome - there are a myriad of other reasons what this could be a symptom of.  Having said that, asking the students how they are individually as they enter class may give some insight.

Beyond that, I would ask your supervisor or someone in administration first if something has already been documented about the potential condition the student may have.  If not, then it is your superior, the nurse or someone in administration that should be informed of your concerns, this will do 2 things:

save any potential embarrassment for you and the student.
provide evidence of you chasing-up the concern through official channels


Final Exam: Proficiency Needed for Guaranteed Pass

In my undergraduate university, we had a similar system in the mathematics department, only instead of one final exam, we had our test grades calculated based on our top X - 1 tests, where X is the number of tests.

For example, if you had four exams, only the three highest scores were counted and the lowest score was dropped. 3 100s and a 0? You get an A. 0 on the first test, and 90s on the rest? Still an A.

In my case, I had gotten three solid As in calc. On the last day of classes before finals week, the professor checked my test grades, marked a zero for my final exam, and congratulated me on my A.
He had no expectation that I would take the test because I had demonstrated proficiency three times already and he would probably not have found anything different about how well I knew calculus.

I'm sure some people will argue whether or not only actually demonstrating knowledge 75% of the course material is representative of 100% proficiency, but people have to put in at effort to reap the reward of no final. People who are driven to do well will do so regardless of any shortcuts you provide them.

The system you've described where your grade is only determined based on your performance on the final sounds like an even better deal, but I do not believe would be as effective as an X - 1 drop system, and would even harm student performance.

Students do not get accurate gauging of their own performance through their semester.
Students do not participate in class (you could end up teaching an empty room if nothing matters).
Students can potentially fail before realizing they have a problem.
If you're doing a half-semester Withdrawal setup, there's no grade reflection at the half-way point for them to consider dropping.

The only people such a system would benefit are those that have basically mastered the subject and need to retake it for some reason. Otherwise, I wholly think that it's better to have the student work their way through a course, rather than allow them to treat the final of the course as the only performance checkpoint.


Is it desirable to compliment a seminar speaker before asking a question?

My personal preference is not to offer a compliment in this setting.  It often strikes me as less sincere (off-handed or perfunctory).  If I really want to compliment someone, I tend to catch up with them later and start with something like "I really enjoyed your talk.  If you have a minute to talk, I have a question for you about..."  On the other hand, I know that some people feel like asking questions (especially if they are critical of some aspect of the work) can feel hostile, and so they find the compliment as a good way to off-set that.


Typesetting statement of purpose for a masters application

You should follow the instructions. Absent any such guidelines, you can do whatever you like, within reason. In the US, "reasonable" tends to mean:

Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or something similar
Single spaced, or something close to that (e.g., 1.1)
1" margins, almost always
Left or justified alignment, personal preference
Indent your paragraphs or leave a space between paragraphs or both
Header on each page including your name, page number, and any other relevant information you'd like to include. (e.g., university name, application number)

Personally, I like to use letterhead (either institutional or with my name on it) for official documents like this.


Being in "Reviewer invited" state for 3 months, What could it say?

It means the editor(s) invited reviewers who have not accepted the invitation. If this status has remained the same for 3 months, it's not a good sign. Completing the review can take time, but agreeing to review should be much faster.

My guess is that the editor is either very busy or not very active. He/she invited reviewers and left the manuscript alone. Now would be a good time to nudge the editor and hint that they should be inviting new reviewers, since the currently-invited ones are not likely to agree to review.


Department not giving me TAships after a dispute with professor, what should I do?

The first thing would be to meet with the department chair to get the story. If that doesn't yield a satisfactory result, many universities have an appeals process, and you could call on that avenue. If teaching is an actual requirement, then they would need a pretty compelling reason to effectively terminate you without just cause and doing the Due Process thing, although this depends on the legal system in your country, of course. But you would have to be pretty blameless (e.g., if the dispute was over a significant error on your part as a teacher, that could be the end of the discussion).


Our professor does not make any effort to engage with us

Given that you've described the other lecturers at your uni as being engaged, I would contact one or two of them and tell them the situation. They would know your local context and have advice on what to do.

At a given university there will be somebody whose job it is to supervise the teaching of the faculty. At larger universities a given department will, for example, have a Associate Head of Undergrad Affairs (or some similar title) who would be the appropriate person to bring the issue up with. The lecturers will be able to point you to that person, or may be willing to talk to your lecturer directly about their teaching.


Does country of author influence the rejection of research paper

I am not sure that I ever seen any substantiation statistical research on it, but it is definitely believed that researchers from some countries  are under pressure to generate large quantities of research papers, but not necessarily under the same pressure regarding the quality of their research. The lists are subjective and vary from one researcher to another, but often include China, India, Russia and post-Soviet countries, etc.  So, yes, peer-reviewers may have a subconscious bias against research papers from these countries. This bias may be further amplified by the language barrier — if the paper is written in sub-par English, it may reflect on the perception of research explained in the paper.

However, reviewers should not allow their bias to affect their decision and there are systems in place to ensure they don't. Good journals have good policies which encourage reviewers to work with their bias and also involve a diverse panel of reviewers to consider the merits of the paper more objectively.

Regarding your last statement, yes, it is always good to carefully check your paper before submission and stress the novelty and usefulness of the proposed research idea.


Should I suggest to use version control for writing a paper with new collaborators?

I recently was on the other side of this - I learned git to work with a collaborator on a paper (written in LaTeX). While git is fun, and it's good I learned it, I am not convinced the net time savings were that large, and I found the first steps very frustrating. I would not generally recommend you ask collaborators to learn git - but only ask if they already know it. For papers, maybe things like overleaf/etc might be better?

Giant time losses:

 Trying to figure out how to properly discard changes I made but didn't want to merge, when stash didn't seem to work right...
 Accidentally doing bad commits, etc, and trying to figure out how to move backwards.

This would obviously get easier the more you worked with it, but I found that in the first few months, there was some problem like that, and I ended up deleting everything and re-downloading - this xkcd sounds about right: https://xkcd.com/1597/

Upside:

 Fewer ugly email chains
 Made integrating small edits late in the process a lot easier - I was more willing to make tiny wording changes when it didn't require someone else to integrate it into the final draft, and that I could do it on my time.


A set of promotion codes often would be dedicated to the people, who are members of IEEE and has been promoted to the upper membership level, typically. Those members are supposed to present those codes to the other people, willing to become new members of IEEE. For example, an IEEE Member will receive a couple of promotion codes, as he/she has been promoted to IEEE Senior Member. He/She could grant those codes, as gift, to the others (especially his/her students), to be considered for the membership discount.

All in all, you better find any recently-promoted guy around yourself and if any, he/she would, probably, be able to provide you a promotion code, as you need.


Finish my Masters or take a break year before post-bac?

Don't stay in a graduate program you're not happy with. It isn't worth it if you can instead work toward something you're passionate about and can make more money while doing it and likely won't be judged heavily for doing, especially if you haven't even spent much time in the past year on graduate studies. At the very least, if you have a good advisor, discuss your options with them. They may be surprised to see you but will likely not encourage you to stay in the program if you aren't dedicated to finishing it.


What impresses more in a graduate school application for CS: an REU or an honors thesis?

I don't think that there is a definitive answer to the question as asked. It assumes "equal quality", which is unlikely to be easy to measure. Moreover, every reader of an application might favor one over the other, but in a different way from another reader.

So, I would suggest, treating them of equal "value" on the face. But what will be impressive to a reader is that the applicant has done "something" that required hard work and has high quality. You can achieve this either in developing a thesis or in an REU.

My advice would be to pick one that interests you and you are likely to work hard at, but also one for which you get some local support. An REU might be slightly favored on the latter idea (support) provided that the research is guided in some way. But even a thesis could be given support if the student meets regularly with a faculty member during development to get some feedback.

Do something hard. Do it well.


Application for a PhD in Germany: how specific do I need to be about my thesis plans?

But how precisely am I supposed to give the topic of my doctoral thesis? Is it sufficient to have a broader view of the topic and themes the working group is dealing with or is it necessary to formulate the concrete topic of my planned thesis?

In general, most hiring PIs will want to see that you have "done your homework", that is, you have a good idea what the group does and that you're motivated to work on these kinds of things.
On a more specific level, you should address any concrete hints from the job advertisement. It's a good idea to be as specific as possible and mention a few ideas for topics you would like to work on. But unless the job advertisement explicitly asks you to do so, it wouldn't be required to have a detailed proposal of your thesis project.

Also should the statement be part of the CV or should it be a separate document?

If the advertisement explicitly asks for a "CV and statement of research interest", it should be two separate documents.


Abstract, Preamble, Acknowledgements and Introduction all in Thesis, how to order them?

(I expect people will tell you to consult with your advisor, and you should, but on the other hand I think most of this question does have a right answer, so I've tried to give it.)

It sounds like you have three main parts to your thesis: the management plan, the guide, and the database. So your thesis should have three main sections (if one of the three is an appendix, that's okay), and there needs to be a single introduction that ties together the entire document. One of the things this introduction should do is explain the organization of the rest of the thesis.

If you want to write a more specific introduction to one of the sections, it should go at the beginning of that section. You can call it "Introduction to Section 2" or whatever. Using the word Preamble confuses the issue, and it also sounds pretentious.


Should I retake my A minus class in my last semester?

TL;DR: Probably not worth it. Take something else and expand your horizons.

From a knowledge perspective, you're not getting anything out of this. You got an A- in the course -- on a transcript, that should tell any graduate school that you understand the material in the course.

So any potential gain here would be for your GPA. On a 4.0 scale, an A- is a 3.7. If that 0.3 is the difference between a 3.5 GPA and a 3.4 GPA, go for it. Otherwise, find yourself another class and accept that you aren't perfect (nor will any graduate school expect you to be).


I almost always include a last updated date on my CVs. There are numerous online copies of my CV that I am no longer in control of and I think it is useful that people can see that what they are looking at is 10-20 years out of date.


If I submit my application with only two letters, will it be rejected as incomplete?

Yes, probably.  That is what the word "required" means.  It is possible that some employers might consider the application anyway, or perhaps give you more time to submit a third one, but many will not.

They want to make sure they are getting a range of opinions on the candidate's qualifications, to reduce the chance that they are just hearing from one or two biased people writing inaccurate letters.

  Is it a bad sign if I send only two letters in those cases where are requested at least three or more?

Yes.

So you should try harder to find a third person to write a letter.  We have lots of questions on this site about how to find letter writers.  For instance, you can tell your other two writers about the situation, and ask if they have any ideas.


Results Presented in Conferences and Their Publication

On 1, if you present something at a conference, there will be witnesses that you presented it there, and you will have documentation of your work products on your computer, in your lab notebooks, etc. If someone does take your work from your talk and try to publish it, you can work with the journal editor when you discover it to prove that whoever it was stole it from you and have the publication pulled so that you can publish instead. You can also contact the employer of the stealer and have disciplinary procedures started against them. Stealing your work is not outright theft in a legal sense, but it is serious academic misconduct, and shouldn't be taken lightly by anyone.

Also, this isn't dangerous. As far as I know, this kind of stealing basically never happens. That being said, if you want to protect yourself even more, write up you results into a paper draft and get it submitted to a journal ASAP. If the work is under review, then you've got a lot more protection from having your work stolen.

As to 2, "I hear" is a bad standard to base your decisions on. Contact the organizers of this conference and ask for their advice. You might even link to the conference so that we can help you figure out what's going on.


Will "academic expert" for study website hurt me on the academic job market?

I don't see it being harmfull to your career if you don't answer asignment questions or doing something that can be thought as unethical. may be you can elaborate on why you think that it can harm your career?


(Supplementing F'x's answer.)

Physical notebook

I use it all the time, as it is the quickest way to write mathematics and jot diagrams. It's low tech, so it's "always on" (e.g. I cannot run out of batteries).

I have one A4 notebook (so I take it anywhere), with removable pages.

I try to devote a single page only to a single project. On each page I note 3 things:

date,
title (or, actually, a pictogram) of the project,
"page number" for pages on the same project in a given day.

After some time (could be the same day, could be never) I take off pages, to fit them into thematic folders (and usually throwing away most of things, because they are "non-recyclable" rubbish; if it is "recyclable" then I scrap the important things, writing them on a new page).

However, such operation has trade-offs:

(+) sorted by topic,
(+) higher valuable content density,
(+) can be viewed "all at once" by putting pages on a desktop,
(-) I cannot take all of them anymore,
(-) it's somehow easier to loose it, unsort, or torn/coffee split/... it.

Electronic notes

Electronic content is much more linkable, searchable, easier to share, more polished etc. However, it takes much more time to write formulas or draw diagrams.

Different things work for different people, but some kind of personal wiki (or a well-organized text file system) seems to work the best.

I'm not settled down, but I'm switching from TiddlyWiki (very neat but requires a browser to run) to Gitit (so I can write in Markdown, with LaTeX inclusions, in any text editor).

I tried Evernote as well (and I'm using it for other content) but for highly-linked content it does not work for me.

See also:

How do you keep your research notes organized? - MathOverflow
Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?
Software/App for electronic research notebooks


How should I mention on my CV that I will leave my current PhD program when I apply to a new one?

Your CV is not the right place to mention this. Instead, you should write a brief explanation near the beginning of your personal statement or cover letter which explains your reasons for applying to a new PhD. I would advise that you think carefully about how you explain your motivations. If you sound like an uncommitted student (even if that is down to your environment rather than yourself), a new supervisor or department are unlikely to want to take you on.
Make sure that your CV is an honest record of your past employment and education. You should not omit your current position as a PhD student, even if you aren't really working for it.


Should citations be included in funding applications

Yes, include references. They serve a twofold purpose in your application:

They inform the reviewer about the state of the art in your field, and allow him to judge whether your project would advance it in a meaningful and cost-effective way.
It shows the reviewer that you know what you are doing. Nothing worse than a grant application for a project where the PI did not read the literature thoroughly and does not know that his exact question has already been thoroughly investigated.

The funding body you apply to may well have very clear-cut guidelines for your application. (Because applicants have a tendency to write up everything they know about the field they are excited about, and no reviewer wants to read a 200 page proposal.) These guidelines will very likely have a strict page limit and explicitly note whether references should be counted against that page limit or not, along with what citation style to use.

If there are no guidelines for references, use whatever is common in your field, e.g., in common journals or conferences. Use conventions that make reading your proposal easy for the reviewer.


Is it possible to do a research on both Computer Science and Law, without a Law Degree?

You most certainly can work in the intersection without a law degree, and a number of prominent people have done so.  A nice example is Edwina Rissland, who is a well-known expert on machine reasoning about the legal code, and who actually taught at Harvard law school for quite some time without ever having a law degree.  I heard one of her lectures on the subject once, and found it gave me a whole new understanding both about how our law really works and how we humans think about the world.

Do note, however, that without a law degree, you will likely need some collaborators who are lawyers, to help you with their expertise in the subject, just as if you were digging into computational chemistry without being a chemist yourself.  As for how to get into the area... just the same way as you would any other research area.


All Reviewers Assigned : Nature Communications revised manuscript: What does it means?

It means reviewers have been invited, but you can't read anything more than that. Whether or not reviewers have accepted the invitation is usually confidential information available only to journal staff. Depending on the range of statuses the journal uses, this status might even mean that some reviews have been received.

In any case, there's nothing to do except wait and see.


What should be done about conflicting invitations for graduate school interviews?

This happened to me when I was interviewing for graduate schools—two different schools offered only one weekend per year, and picked the same weekend. However, a number of students had the same problem, and contacted them. As a result, the departments in question agreed to "share" the weekend, with part of the time spent at one school, and then part at the other.

If the schools are not geographically close, and you have no way to split the weekend in such a manner, then you should contact the schools in question, to let them know that you have a scheduling conflict. In some cases—particularly if the department is large—they may be able to schedule you to visit on another date. To some extent, such a visit might be even more useful than the scheduled group visit, because you get to see what the department is actually like when they're not trying to impress everyone!


How do I tell my supervisor that I've been offered a job and want to leave?

There is no reason for it to be confrontational. It is a sad situation, not a confrontational one. Just say that you are leaving and have considered your options.
Don't get talked out of what you want to do. If the person is angry, that is on them, not you. Say you are sorry, but determined.
Make some effort to clean up unfinished work that impacts on others if that is at all possible.


Can you share some screenshots of editor's control panels?

The following screenshot is for Editorial Manager (used by Springer, Nature, APA, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, PLOS).

The action links on the left are where everything is done. Brief explanation of some of the tabs:

iThenticate is a program that checks for plagiarism. This particular submission has 16% similarity, which is low. If desired the editor can read the entire report, which includes both where the similarity occurs and where it came from.
"Duplicate submission" checks if the manuscript was submitted multiple times. Sometimes it's in error (author submits twice thinking the first time didn't go through); other times it flags a reject-and-resubmit manuscript.
"History" shows the history of the manuscript from submission till today, such as when it was submitted, when an editor was assigned, when each reviewer was invited, and so on. Every time the system sends an email, it's logged here.
"Edit submission" lets the editor modify the submission (e.g. if the authors later discovered they've not included a source file, this is where to add it).
"Invite reviewers" - self-explanatory. Clicking this goes to another menu that lets the editor both mine the current database and / or register new reviewers to invite. If this submission had a completed review there'd be a "view reviews and comments" button, and if it's ready for a decision, there'd be a "submit editor's decision and comments" button as well.
"Set final disposition" terminates the peer-review process. For this manuscript, since no decision has been made yet, the only option is 'withdraw'. If a decision has already been made (accept / reject), this is also where to set the final status.

The other boxes should hopefully be self-explanatory. In the review status on the right, the first manuscript currently has 3 reviewers who've agreed to do it, 1 who hasn't responded, and 3 who declined. Clicking the "more" button lets the editor see who those reviewers are, when the reviews are due, how long it's been since the reviewer invitation was sent out (for the reviewer who hasn't responded), and the reasons for declining, if any.

The bottom manuscript is showing status "required reviews completed" because the settings for this particular journal is set to flag any submission with 1 completed review as such. Some journals might require two or more reviews before the status updates.


Our teacher is encouraging us to use cracked software

My advice is to just use the pirated software and not rock the boat, just like Drunken Code Monkey, for example, mentioned.

This issue isn't something that you're likely to solve yourself. Instead, you're most likely going to spend large amount of time and energy on nothing and produce no results. The fact that your teacher just expects you to get cracked Mathematica is a proof enough that it's something completely normal and accepted by your society. Now, I'm not going to preach to you about your own personal ethics or if you should feel bad about the situation or not. Others have given more than enough options.

Instead, I'm going to talk a bit about how things like this are resolved in other places. I myself am from Serbia, a country that has been recently opening itself to the idea of actually giving money for software, so I've seen a bit of how negotiations between foreign software companies and locals work.

Basically, on one hand, the "manufacturer" of the software is suffering what some might consider a loss, since you, your fellow students and the institution aren't paying for licenses.
On the other hand, keep in mind that they also have a direct benefit from you: You're increasing the user-base of their software.
 Mathematica isn't new and it's not going to disappear because you aren't paying for it. Instead, it has a chance to thrive: You're using Mathematica and not competitors. That means that you'll be most likely comfortable using Mathematica and not some other tool that take getting used to. At your future employer's place, you'll probably feel more comfortable again using Mathematica than alternatives.

This means that your area is a very interesting potential market for Wolfram. Sure, you're not paying now, but directly, that fact doesn't cost Wolfram anything. Keep in mind that software prices are not calculated by how much a license costs (because it costs pretty much nothing and the trend is to reduce physical costs as much as possible), instead they're calculated by how much potential customers want to pay for it. In some cases, the "normal" prices might be very far away from what you can normally afford.

The bottom line for software companies is that they want money, specifically, more money than they invested into the creation of software. Their user-base is a potential source of money. If the users are paying, that's great, if they're the non-paying type of users, you want to convert them eventually into paying type of users using various methods (student licenses come to mind, for example). If you spend resources to convert the non-paying users into non-users, you just wasted your own money for no profit at all.

The result is that, if Wolfram has a sufficiently large user base in China, and at the same time, the political situation in China changes to a point where Wolfram can start negotiations on licensing, the educational institutions could end up getting real licenses for their computers.

These licenses could be either payed individually, or through an agreement with your government for a form of collective licensing. They might even be "donated" as a show of "good will". There might be an agreement for a combination of donated and purchased licenses or a certain ratio of tolerated "non-purchased" and purchased licenses, eg. you'll buy 5 and we'll let you use up to 15 licenses or similar. There might be an agreement that a company could be allowed (or maybe even given government backing) to persecute or at least aggressively negotiate with commercial pirates in return for giving licenses to government and educational institutions. Sometimes, it's much easier to put pressure on a large for-profit company that has money to pay licenses than to put pressure on a smaller institution that in the end won't even be able to pay anything.

Possibilities are great, depending on what the company and relevant institutions manage to officially or unofficially negotiate. Do note that, if the political climate is ripe-enough, such negotiations can be very profitable for the company. After all, some money is much better than no money, as long as it doesn't take too much effort to obtain it.


Professor wants to use required class project for research

There may be course policies or institution policies allowing it at your school, but you should be at least cited/credited/acknowledged in that professor's research.

I've personally had my research and work used in a professors publications and she has always at least acknowledged me in her publications.

(My case may differ from yours, in that the research I was involved in was done on a student-employee basis. I'm not sure how that might change the dynamic.)

I would certainly at least send an email so that there is some sort of recoverable proof, asking if your work will be cited/attributed to yourself. Don't fall victim to the old "your reward is the experience" thing. While valid and applicable in some situations, not so when it's your intellectual property.


Is it appropriate to send a gift to a professor for an online course?

I deliver a significant number of online courses, though not for university credit. I appreciate emails, tweets, and other expressions of gratitude from those who enjoyed them. I am not sure how I would feel if a gift basket or a box of chocolates arrived at my office. Sure, everyone likes gifts, but it might feel a little creepy to be honest.

I provide my courses to the organizations, and they're the ones who decide to make them free (Channel9 or MVA) or very cheap (Pluralsight), not me. So they are the ones who probably should be the target of the gratitude. Since PI wants donations, why not make one, then email the lecturer saying thank you and letting them know you've made a donation because of how helpful they were. (You could also repeat the statement in public such as tweeting it or writing it on the institute's wall, so that PI are aware of the lecturer's contribution to their coffers.) I would appreciate that more than chocolate, myself - and I like chocolate a lot :-)


Rampant sharing of authorship among colleagues in the name of "collaboration". Is not taking part in it a death knell for a future in academia?

I can tell you from the perspective of a person who was on hiring committees that these kinds of ethical indiscretions are easy to spot and are not well received. To the point, we rejected several applicants because we suspected they weren’t sufficiently independent after graduation as they weren’t lead authors on enough publications.

First of all, word gets around. If a PI lets their group slap their names on random papers, hiring committees will take notice, and will not take these applicants seriously. Second of all, we ask questions! If you obviously know nothing about papers you coauthored (yes, it’s obvious), that reflects very badly on you. Finally, if I were you I’d emphasize that on the few publications you have you are the lead author.

That said, your colleagues can partly get away with this: publishing is a numbers game and I don’t know how hiring committees think in other places or fields.


Dealing with softcover textbook curling?

Don't try to repair the book. If you're an honest person, point out the damage when you return the book.

Libraries repair books. They have the tools and expertise to do it properly, without causing greater damage. They do it in a way which will preserve aesthetics and prevent future damage. And they treat it as a cost of doing business: they aren't going to yell at you, and except in extreme cases they're not going to bother charging you.

In the future, don't put things that shouldn't be bent (like softcover books) in an environment where they'll be bent (like the main compartment of a backpack).


How can I judge whether an alternative "impact factor" is from an accepted and genuine source?

One way to judge a journal metric is to look at a few of the journals that are ranked highly by the metric, and judge for yourself whether they seem like important, reputable journals.  (See How do you judge the quality of a journal.)

According to the SJIF metric, this is the publisher of the US-based journal with the highest impact factor. Visit their website (if you dare - it may give you a headache). I think it's pretty clear that this journal is not an important or reputable journal. The other journals ranked by this metric are similarly unprofessional.

Also: here's Jeffrey Beall's list of criteria that he uses for identifying a "fake" impact factor, and a list of metrics that he believes meet those criteria.


How do you find the contact info of a professor in a foreign country?

Some options:

Use a general contact for the university, either phone or email, and try to get specific contact information for the person.  I would expect most universities that deal with international students to be able to respond in English.  Try an international student office if you don't have luck with the main number (it doesn't matter too much that you reach the "right person"; as long as they are relatively helpful, they can probably easily access an internal directory for you).
See if the author has a profile on a professional networking site such as LinkedIn or ResearchGate.
Try to contact co-authors if there are any.
Use Google site search.  e.g. site:www.chikushi.ac.jp Yohei Kawajiri. If there was something in English, but hard to navigate to, this would probably find it.  Also should work for non-English sites that use Latin characters.  It didn't work in this case, though.


Citation of the table or illustration made by myself

There are three options:

1) It is yours and you made it from scratch especially for this publication. You do not need to cite anything. If reviewers or the editor ask, mention that it is yours.

2) It is yours and you based it on some other illustration X that was published by someone else. Then mention that you based it on X and cite X.

3) It is yours and you published it before. If you are sure you are allowed to re-publish it by the original publisher then cite the original publication. If you are not 100% sure, consult the original publisher about their rules for re-publishing figures.


Like user avid, I used to get several of these and they were easy to ignore. Even retired for several years, I get a few. Some ask me to join my lab (which I never had). Others are from wildly different fields. Straight to trash, or even junk.
You seem to have avoided some of the pitfalls, provided that your field really is relevant to what the professor does.
But you ask too much. You've flooded the professor and implicitly asked for some analysis of all that is there. The CV as a pdf is overkill, for example. It is too early for that. Many recipients will stop reading after your first or second sentence. You will be immediately dumped with the others that are even more off base.

Dear Professor Buffy
I am inquiring whether you are accepting students at this time. If so, I'd like to discuss with you my qualifications and interest. I can provide whatever background information you need to evaluate my candidacy.
If you will have a position open in the near future I'd like to apply.
Sincerely panipiridin

You will be more likely to get some reply. Even if it is just "sorry", letting you know to move on. But if the reply is as simple as "say more" then you know you have an audience.
But it requires very little on the part of the busy professor, so is more likely to succeed. Don't ask for a lot in a contact email.
But, of course, do your homework first, so that you don't wind up wasting anyone's time, including your own. Make sure you have an idea of what that prof is really interested in. Prowl their web pages. Read a paper or two. Be ready to answer simple questions about that area of research.

I assume in the above that you are in a place/field in which early acceptance by a professor is required for admission to a program. That isn't universally the case, so understand the overall system too. For example, in the US in mathematics or CS it is normally the case that you first get accepted by the university. Then you start some coursework. Then you find an advisor. But here you get to have the conversation in their office and don't need (and shouldn't use) email.


Is highlighting important references a good idea?

Your thesis should have an introduction.  You can highlight the most important references by mentioning them in the introduction and explaining why they are important.


Unfortunately there is not much you can do -- you can try to get the editor of the journal involved, but it is almost certain that the editor will not involve themselves in authorship disputes that have nothing to do with the scientific content of the paper. Also there is a high chance of severe damage to your relationship with your advisor, which needless to say is not ideal immediately before your PhD defense.

If you have a trusted faculty mentor outside of your advisor, you could try approaching them about the situation, for advice and psychological support, if nothing else.

Some journals allow several authors to share "equal contribution" credit for first authorship. This may be a compromise that is easier to negotiate with your adviser and the new students than outright first authorship.

Finally, as a practical matter, depending on how much first authorship on this particular papers means to you and your future career, it may be best to give in and move on. Treat the incident as a painful lesson in why it is important to explicitly discuss what each collaborator expects to get out of a project in terms of authorship order, both at the very beginning of a project and whenever involving new collaborators.


Abstract appeared in the abstract book of a conference but the paper is not published, can I publish it elsewhere?

Yes. In my field you don't publish the same but you can present more than twice. Because conferences aren't journals but are seen as moments of discussion and dissemination of ideas and results.

I would avoid the same wording anyway. This gives idea of laziness at least if one is not sure to have found the perfect wording.

It might be different in fields where conferences are seen as the major source for results, but still, up to date, your results are not in the wild and they just left a trace as simple abstract.


Opinion on accepting a grad school offer after having already accepted another offer

You have to know what you want to do. If you want to go to your 1st choice school, perhaps you can come to an agreement to have the 2nd professor as your copromotor? Or didn't you pin down your supervisor and your topic yet. In that case, just go for the first school definately.

Take a look at your contract or contact the administration. They will be able to help you with the more technical details of resigning.

But do what you feel you want to spend the next 4 years doing!


Is it ethical to share the knowledge for free that I've learned at the university?

I do not see that sharing your knowledge would in any way be a problem per se. What could become a problem is if you also share copyright-protected materials. It is virtually impossible to list what might or might not be such materials but to take other persons presentations, images, data and then sharing it would be clearly illegal (and unethical) unless they are provided with a "license" stating they are free. If you take the knowledge you gather and then put it together somehow (including making your own presentations on your own material), it should not be such a problem. In any circumstance where you want to use other peoples materials, it is always best to ask for permission. Not only does it save you possible future problems, you may find friends in the process. Watch out for materials published by commercial interests and use open source material (but do give credit to those who made it - attribution is required by licenses like CC-BY-SA and it is also a nice gesture to acknowledge the work and time by the original authors). Much material is given out for public (but not commercial) use.

A final advise, attach an open source license to your materials. I am not fully aware what licenses may apply but am sure many has good suggestions for you (check Academia.sx or ask another question on that).

So to sum up. I think it is a nice idea and perfectly fine, but be aware that you must be 100% sure you do not publish materials so that you break copyrights or abuse licenses (protect the open source practises).


Primary Investigator gets really nervous around me?

I would advise you to simply ask about it, in a way that pre-supposes as little as possible.  For example, you might say something like:

  Can I ask you about something I am feeling concerned about?  I've feel like our interactions become very awkward and stumbling sometimes.  When I see you talking with other people, however, I do not see this happening.  I'm concerned about this, because I want to have a good advisor/advisee relationship and be able to communicate effectively with you.

Don't assume anything about her feelings---what you might be interpreting as feeling nervous might be something else entirely, even just a mannerism of your PI.  You also may be incorrect that this is unusual with you: people have strong observational biases and also you don't see your PI when she's alone with other people.

Hopefully, the two of you can then have a short awkward conversation that will help resolve (or at least allow you to work effectively despite) your other awkwardness.


How to ask someone to collaborate on a joint paper?

I'm not a mathematician, and in my field sole-authored papers are unusual, so my answer might not be entirely relevant, but for what it's worth:

You don't usually ask someone to collaborate on a paper because you are stuck. Either the collaboration arises naturally through a joint project, or you ask someone to join your paper because they have some specific expertise or experience that you think can add to what is already going to constitute a good, publishable paper. In the latter case, I have had success by sending an email briefly outlining the goals of the paper, its importance, and the timeline on which I intend to have the paper completed. I finish the email by stating what I think they could add to the paper and asking them if they are interested in a co-authorship on this basis. I might already have a draft of the paper ready, and if so, I will attach it so that they can see that I am serious and the paper has a good prospect of timely completion.

Also: a bit of flattery doesn't go astray. Refer to "your important work on..." or "your extensive experience in..." among the reasons for approaching them.

If in fact, you are not approaching someone to collaborate because of something specific that they can add to an already solid paper, but merely looking for someone to help with a work in progress, I suggest approaching someone at a junior level who already knows you, and asking for help.


What is an effective means to educate non-academic colleagues of the importance and time needed for Adjunct Lecturing research?

As @NateEldredge mentioned, technically research is probably not part of the duties of an Adjunct Lecturer.

That being said, you could explain that as an adjunct it is natural for you to develop your CV further so that you may be considered for teaching higher-level courses, increase in rank, service on interesting committees, etc., in which case research will be important.


How to handle salary negotiations while negotiating a postdoc position?

I think all your concerns are very reasonable. Honestly, I am not really buying into the "money is no concern in academic job hunts" story. A postdoc is a job. Part of a job is a salary. I never understood why you are allowed to ask about housing, students, packages, whatever, but not what money you are going to make.

  Q1: how can I inquire about the salary offer/negotiation without appearing greedy or money-oriented?

In the past, I have brought up this topic during my faculty visits (i.e., when they invited me over). At this point, nothing is promised yet, but it should be reasonably clear that both sides are interested and will not be scared away by trivialities. That is, if the PI went through the pain and costs to fly you over, (s)he isn't going to drop you just because you said the nasty M-word. Also, a slightly uncomfortable topic is better discussed face-to-face, over coffee.

Usually, there is a point in the conversation where you can drop it in without being overly heavy-handed. Don't make it the first thing you ask, but some time during the day quite naturally the formalities of your employment will come up. At this time you just ask directly for your yearly salary.

"You say that my employment would be full-time for 2 years? By the way, how much in yearly salary would this roughly amount to?"

If this is above what you expect, nod sagely and let the topic go. If this is slightly below your expectations, ask if there is possibility to increase (e.g., with additional teaching, by bringing in grants). I wouldn't really consider this negotiating (as they like to say over at Workplace.SE, one cannot negotiate without being prepared to walk away), but rather an open discussion what you would need to do to get to your expected salary. If the offer is way below your expectations, to the extent that your standard-of-living would actually unreasonably sink from your current position, explicitly say so.

However, keep in mind that there is a good chance that in this third case, you may well have an unfixable problem - likely, the PI will be unable and unwilling to go up very far from whatever (s)he currently has in mind, so there is a good chance to you will either have to take the lower salary for the experience, or be prepared to walk away. However, at least then you know - this is still much better than finding out when you are already in the US that your salary isn't close to what you are used to.

Edit:
There is, unfortunately, also the very real chance that the answer will be something evasive, for instance:

"We'll tackle this when you are here, ok?"
"Salary will follow the university standards / NSF standards / whatever."
"I don't know from the top of my head, but I am sure we will be able to figure it out."
...

If this is the annoying case, I would press the topic. Really. No matter what anybody says, it is not unreasonable to expect to have more or less exact knowledge about salary before agreeing to changing jobs, especially but not only if that "changing jobs" will mean that you move to a different continent. Also, it is a super-bad sign if the PI won't even give you a ballpark number. That alone would make me very anxious about the entire salary topic.

  Q2: As a follow up, is it reasonable to expect/ask them to match my current living standard?

Partially. Your current standard of living isn't really of much concern to your new employer, but of course you can use this argument to plausibly explain why you care about having a specific minimal salary goal. Of course for the PI it's not an ethical problem at all to respond with "I don't have this money", or "For this money I can get two qualified people who don't have your expectations regarding standard-of-living". So I certainly wouldn't expect them to match your current salary, but it is not unreasonable to ask for this.


What is the point of a thesis defense presentation?

The point of the thesis presentation is so the examiners can see if you actually did the work in the thesis or not.
It's quite easy to paraphrase content from e.g. publications, to ask one's supervisor for assistance tackling technical aspects of the work. So, by seeing you present the work and asking you some questions about the content, the examiners can assess whether you actually understand what you're talking/writing about.
Think of it as a presentation followed by an oral examination on the content. Some tips (I am not a mathematician but hopefully these are generally applicable):

Be clear about what problem your work is addressing.
Be clear about why that problem is actually worth addressing.
Make sure you give due credit to the relevant literature (e.g. with citations).
Don't spend more than 1/3 of the presentation on the points above.
Focus on what your contributions were to solving the problem described above.

Hope this helps.


Best practices when hosting visiting speaker (especially with the questions part of their talk)

First of all, stop worrying - I am sure that, no matter how you decide to approach this, the quality of the talk will be much more memorable to the participants than how you ran the Q&A part from an administrative point of view.

Further:

  I thank people for coming and introduce the speaker.
  I sit down and the speaker... speaks.
  At the end of his talk I stand up and ask if there are any questions. If people > raise their hands I'll point at them so they can ask the speaker their question. > I'll keep an eye on the time so when there are just a few minutes left I'll say "there's time for just a couple more questions".
  After the last question, I'll thank the speaker again and that'll be it.

This is pretty much the standard layout of such sessions, and I see no problem at all with running it like that.

  Should I be doing the questions? Or should I let him call on people himself?

It is more common that you as a "moderator" call the questions, but I have certainly seen it handled differently as well.

  Should I just stand to the side of him?

Probably not during his talk, but when you are moderating the Q&A part you may get up the stage. However, most moderators seem to prefer to stand somewhere to the side, presumably to not steal the presenter's thunder.

  is it ok for me to ask questions (particularly if nobody in the audience is doing so)?

Yes, you should make sure that you have at least a few fallback questions as a discussion starter.


How to evaluate (my) faculty application?

Unfortunately, there's little you can do on your own.  One huge obstacle is letters of recommendation, which play a major role in screening applications.  You probably won't know exactly what's in your own letters, and until you've served on a search committee yourself, you certainly won't know what the letters look like for the applicant pool as a whole.  This makes it really difficult to gauge how impressive your letters are: you just won't be in a position to estimate whether a given opening might receive three applications with letters comparable to yours, or thirty.  This makes an enormous difference for estimating your chances.

Partly you'll have to rely on advice from experienced mentors, who have years of experience seeing how job searches play out.  Partly you'll just have to guess, and apply to a slightly broader range of jobs than you hope for, just in case.  But you can at least make quantitative comparisons with recently hired people at universities you aspire to.  (Number of publications, prestige of journals/conferences, number of citations, etc.)  Don't take these numbers too seriously, since they can offer at best a crude impression of your track record, but they will show whether you're in the same ballpark as the successful applicants.  If your application looks quantitatively similar, then it may be reassuring.  If it doesn't, then that will at least show what you need to emphasize in your application.  (E.g., if you have relatively few publications, then you'd better make sure readers are impressed with their quality.)


Student not giving mid-project report and not coming to defense

Not sure what you expect here, given they have submitted nothing then they will have nothing to experiment on.

So, basically they have failed this assignment and will need to replace it if possible. That will depend on the regulations in force at your institution.


Differences between a real in-person and a remote presentation are quite many, but the main key points of keeping an audience engaged remain the same. Assuming the audience can access the slides somewhere before or after the presentation, I would suggest to have pictorial representations of main concepts - use schematic diagrams and small bullet point sentences to assist them. Play around with bold fonts and highlight colours for texts, but not too much of any of these. There are many other good practices for giving a scientific and technical presentation, do perform a google search and find your preferred ones.
For a remote session, it is best to choose a platform where you can share your screen and keeping your video on, which actually adds a real feel to the presentation for the audience. It is good to have a plain background and silent environment as much as possible. If you choose a virtual background, make sure the software platform has had enough practice with it so that it can recognize between you and the background without patches of your face disappearing in the background. Structure your words more like a conversation and less like a monologue because even though the audience might be the best in this field, it is easy to zone out in such a session, so it is best to put in elements that attract attention and makes your talk easy to follow. Also, remember to number your slides/equations, etc so that they are easy to refer to.
Also, keep track of the time, if there is a chair or convener, probably they will give warnings, otherwise time yourself and don't rush or be overly slow, try to keep a steady tempo. A neutral tone is also a strong requirement for remote sessions because if your audience is spread across the planet, you don't want to come across as either a rude person or a bore.
I remember the speakers from remote sessions whose talks were natural and didn't seem too rehearsed and plastic. In the end, the content matters the most, but it is always pleasant to see it presented in an easier way - just like in a good paper.


Academic referees: course organisor vs project supervisor?

You should provide the names who know about your academic background and research ability very well. So he/she could be your Master degree professors or supervisors. In my point of view, you should provide a name who was your project supervisor as well as professor.

As per your question, I can suggest you the following two names.

One from your master course department (who has a better overview of your work and achievements during your Master studies)
One who supervised you for some weeks. Because short term project supervisor would write good about your research ability.


Math Phd vs Job Offer (struggling very hard in my mind)

These are two very different fields. You have to ask yourself: do you want to be a math teacher or a math researcher? Note that a PhD gears you for research positions. While professors teach, their main duty (at a R1 university) is actually research (this fact is seldom known to undergraduates). Your ability to get a professorship, get tenure, etc. is all based on research. If you are going to go down the PhD track, the choice is for a research-based career. Ask yourself if that's what you want. Choosing a career path based on what you want to do with your life is so much more important than whether a school or department is "prestigious" (which is highly variable depending on the subfield, your adviser, the fellowships/grants you get, etc.).

Caveat: there are positions at 4-year college, i.e. get a PhD and get a position to teach undergraduates.


Is it OK to publish the slides for a conference paper on a personal Web site?

Have a look at the copyright transfer document that you have signed. Typically, it will only transfer the copyright of the conference paper that has been included in the proceedings. That means that you or your university / institution remain the copyright owner of the slides.

Be careful, though. Often the slides contain figures that are also included in he article, and the copyright of those may have been transferred. Many copyright statements allow you to use figures and such on you own or your institution's website, but not all.

If you do have figures or other material in your slides that you do not own the copyright of (anymore), then it is wise to either:

ask the copyright holder for permission for them to be used on your own website, or
leave that material out, or
create a new version of the respective material (which often can be done if you have the underlying raw data)


Why are GPAs calculated the way they are?

The big reason: exact numerical scores are not comparable across classes and professors.

Suppose I told you that two students took a class offered in different semesters. We look at their transcript and see that student A scored a 94% with Professor X and Student B scored a 99% with Professor Y. Student B beat out the first person by five percentage points, but do we actually know that Student B is a better student? Maybe Professor Y is a soft grader or Professor X had a really harsh curve that semester. We don't really know whether Student B is better. All we really know is that both students did pretty well.

Hence, grades tend to be assigned and interpreted with a large degree of subjectivity, which fits the ABCDF model better than a score-based model. The general interpretation is:

A - excellent
B - good
C - average
D - needs improvement
F - failing

If the first and second student both get A's, then this means that an expert in their fields (the professors) have said that both students did excellent. This isn't a perfect system, but it is about as good a comparison as you can get.


Can I cite information from a report summary, if the report is locked behind a paywall?

If you are able to read the information in the report, even if it was only in the abstract, you can cite it.

Cite the report and the complementary references you have found.


When I am asked to review a manuscript I ask myself three questions:

Do I have the time at the moment to do this?

Normally the invitation to review comes with a time limit. In my field this is typically months in the future but can be limited to weeks. If I have a big deadline or other personal commitment coming up I might pass over the review.
Am I qualified to do the review?

When you are asked to review a paper you are often shown the title and maybe abstract too. The job of a reviewer can be broadly thought of as trying to improve a paper. Even if you are inexperienced you might have other expertise which would add something. If the paper is too far away from your field it may take a very long time for you to read and understand which isn't good for you or the authors.
Am I interested in the paper?

Reviewing should be a two way street. In effect you are giving your time away for free! Normally there is an implicit understanding the others will give their time for free to read your work in the future so it all plays out fair. Having said that if you are giving your time away you might want to get more out of the task than simply paying your service. I normally interpret this question in a quite friendly way and have never turned down a review for this reason.

If you have answered yes to all three there is no harm in accepting. Your review is a recommendation that the editor may or may not listen too when making a final judgement. There will also be other reviewers. Reviewing isn't something you should take too seriously and should hopefully something you enjoy doing!


In a peer review system, what does "accepted for first look" mean for a submission?

"First look" is a stage in the ScholarOne Manuscripts (S1M) system used by many journals. The First look stage means that your manuscript, after an "Accept" decision is scrutinized to see if it adheres to journal standards (a.k. Instruction for authors) and that figures are of sufficient quality (resolution for bitmaps). The journal editor(s) handle(s) this stage. Your paper may be returned to you to fix specific formatting problems BUT NOT changing the content. See S1M pdf

So "First look" is not a general name for a stage but is specific to S1M. Other systems or journals may of course be using such a term for other purposes but it is not a general publishing term. The stage it represent will, however be found in all journals.


Is there a standard ethical codex for publishing of research?

The Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/) "is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors, publishers, etc. to achieve this."
They have many documents; you can probably start with their core practices.  These cover:

Allegations of misconduct
Authorship and contributorship
Complaints and appeals
Conflicts of interest / Competing interests
Data and reproducibility
Ethical oversight
Intellectual property
Journal management
Peer review processes
Post-publication discussions and corrections

(Note that this focuses on publication ethics.  If you want research ethics then that would be a separate question.)


Should I include a selection as an alternate in national competition awards on CV?

The two basic criteria I recommend using for answering questions on whether to include something optional on a C.V. are:

Are you proud of it? [note]
Will it detract from other things on the C.V. by feeling like "filler"?

I don't know the particular awards you're talking about or how competitive they are, so I can't make a specific recommendation regarding them.  At one extreme, being runner up for an award where only three people are nominated isn't very interesting; at the other consider how big a deal it is for a movie to be nominated for an Oscar even if it doesn't win.  See if you can find out how big the applicant pools were and how many alternates were accepted, and if it was highly competitive, then include it on your C.V. and also include the competition numbers.
I would also advise to err on the side of inclusion (people who don't care will just ignore it) unless it will detract by comparison from other things that you have won.

[note] Certain things are non-optional, of course, for the sake of honesty, even if you aren't proud of them: you've got to include things like internships, and all of your papers, whatever you might have done while young and naive.


IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems Review Process

It means that the reviewers already submitted their scores and now the paper is with the associate editor who will make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.

The next step will be "awaiting final decision" which will be made by the Editor-in-Chief.

It will take probably a week or less to get a decision now based on my experience.

At this point, the paper could get accepted or rejected. You cannot infer anything from this status.

I recently submitted a TCAS journal paper and went through this process.


Authorship with Past and Nearly Absent Supervisor

First, should you include her as a co-author? Customs in this are journal- and field-dependent, so you should check with others in your field (you didn't tell us what it was) and also with the authorship policy of the journal you intend to submit. You may also want to check with the department where you did your Masters what their policy is on authorship and affiliation for students' papers. At the very least, if you're going to have someone be cross at you, know in advance where you stand!

I'll sum up my answer to another question on the site by stating that graduate students oftentimes dismiss too easily an advisor's role in the research. Selecting a problem/project for you to work on, even guiding you in the selection of a problem can be considered a big intellectual contribution to your research. Conception/design of research is an integral part of the research, and usually explicitly calls for authorship in resulting papers.

It's okay to be proud of your work, and to think your contribution in it was crucial, but be sure not to be biased against your supervisor when evaluating her contribution. One person who may help you do that is your current advisor!

Now, that being said, let's suppose you have made the decision not to have her as coauthor. How do you manage that? The guiding principle should be: be upfront and clearly state where you stand.

Including her name in the acknowledgements of the paper, specifically stating her contribution. (“SG thanks Dr. Jane Doe for initially pointing him to this challenging problem.”)
When the paper is published, be sure to send her a preprint, along with a nice email.
If you are worried about her reviewing the paper, list her in the list of potential reviewers to exclude (if the journal submission has space for that). But… having her in the acknowledgments may already be enough for the editor not to pick her.


How can one find a research mentor to fulfill a research paper requirement prior to PhD application?

Considerations about the paper

Before anything else, I would suggest checking with that program about what they consider a research paper. It is possible that something like a literature review, or a research proposal, rather than an original research study, would be adequate for their purposes.

If they mainly want to use this to gauge your writing ability or your familiarity with the scholarly literature, then a literature review should give them most of the information they need.
If they want to see your understanding of experiment design, then a research proposal would help give them that, on top of containing a literature review section.

Do you have any past coursework that has produced anything remotely like a research paper? If so, starting from there and revising would be a good start.
To actually conduct a research study, you will need to either reanalyze publicly available data or gather new research data.

If you're reanalyzing data, you might do some sort of statistical project, or a qualitative project using, say, library archives of old or anonymized interview or case data.
If you're gathering new research data, you need to make sure you are getting informed consent and using confidential data correctly. This might be very challenging outside of a university and/or hospital Institutional Review Board setting, so a research mentor would be critical here. (While class projects and pilot projects are usually exempt from such review, you want to make sure that nothing you do appears to cross ethical lines.)

Approaches to finding a research mentor to work with

Through your work

Do any of your colleagues at/through the nonprofit have a Psy.D. or a Ph.D.? They may be able to help you with this.
Do any board members of the non-profit have academic affiliations or doctorates? They, too, may be good to approach, either as research mentors themselves or as people who could connect you to appropriate people.

Through your alma mater

Even if you have not been in close contact with professors from college (and/or your Master's program, if applicable), you can still ask them for advice.
If you are far from those colleges, you can also try to do some "cold-calling" through the alumni network, if there is one with information available to you. (If there is no official one, you could try through LinkedIn, looking for people with a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in a related field in your geographic area.)

Through nearby colleges

Is there any summer psychology course at a community college, college, or university nearby that involves producing a paper? Check with the faculty there and see if there's a way you could get their guidance on a research study through that course.
Faculty at nearby colleges who are actively conducting research (see if their website/online profile mentions "research") may be willing to help you with this in exchange for, say, you helping conduct interviews for their research. You could reach out to the associated departments at the colleges, offering research assistance in return for some mentorship (and the department will share info with the professors), along with perhaps a few personalized emails to professors whose work would be a very good fit with your own.

People in other fields

The more "generic" parts of writing a research paper, such as structure, doing a literature review, and tone, don't require someone who is specifically in counseling/psychology to help, and getting others to help edit your work can improve it immensely.
See if your local librarians can help you get access to the research literature, and/or recommend ways that you can gain access to a local college library. They may also be able to help you with the basics of approaching a bibliography or literature review.

Through the program you're applying to

If you've talked with the program specifically about this requirement, perhaps you could volunteer to work with one of those professors to help conduct research and/or analyze research data this summer.
This would take some chutzpah but would potentially get you a strong advocate for your admission, if done right.
At the same time, faculty may be leery of (remotely) mentoring someone new at research, before the admissions decision. Plus they might have other plans for the summer.

In short, you'll be more likely to be able to do a literature review or research proposal rather than a research paper on this time frame and without university resources (human subjects procedures, etc.). However, depending on how widely you reach out, you may find people who are able to mentor you through this.  Good luck!


Article-based PhD and advisor's (new) role?

This topic is near and dear to my heart, as the number of days until I finish exactly such a thesis is measured in a single digit number.

If you field is dominated by journal, rather than book, publications, I think its a vastly superior system, leaves you better prepared for what you'll actually have to do in the future, and leaves your CV in hopefully a stronger place.

  But with an article-based PhD, it seems that the active approach in
  editing co-authored journal papers is essential, and in effect writing
  a big part of the dissertation for the student. I realize every case
  is different.

This has not been my experience - even the most active members of my committee who are co-authors on papers can't really be said to have written a significant portion of my work. Generally speaking, I would send them a fully fleshed out draft paper for their comments (which is exactly what I tend to do as first-author on a non-thesis paper), and then we'd iterate through the draft several times as they tinkered with language, added their own pet sentences, asked for additional analysis, etc. But the paper, in its final form, is very much dominated by my work and my writing.

One of the keys may be to not wait until the end of someone's graduate career to work on their writing. If someone needs you to fundamentally rewrite massive parts of their dissertation papers, in my mind they're not ready to defend. They should be at a stage of maturity where they can produce largely independent writing, in need of only the usual modifications a co-author would provide to a manuscript.


Is it correct to get a scholarship to do your final degree work?

If this is a final year project then the required output is as a learning exercise, which may not need the App to be completed and working.  But if this is a project for an external company then completion is probably the final objective.

If the scholarship was awarded to support the final year then yes, it is correct.

If the scholarship was awarded against the completion of the App, then you need to complete the App...

Does very much depend on the conditions of the scholarship though - which you need to check as necessary.


Eleven reviewers invited but only one has accepted--is this a problem?

I think it really depends on the field. Having published a lot of work in Systems Biology intersect biology, comp sci, math, modelling, ... I found it really hard to get reviewers for our papers. And once you have reviewers they often evaluate the paper very one sided (e.g. the math is trivial, no new concept in comp bio, limited biological novelty, ...). So yes, it is a problem, but you are asking the wrong question: I think you want to know what is the cause of it and can it be fixed?


Finding out if company founders are graduates for a dissertation

The most reliable source is the college/university itself. You can compile a list of where these founders when to school, and call the school itself and ask the question. The question has to be Yes/No so you will have to phrase it like: "Did you award such-and-such degree to John Smith?"

If that is too labor intensive, a simple Google search of the person "John Smith College" should return results from reputable sources such as Time, Business Insider, etc.


How can I manage my time so that I can perform well in my research lab?

You have three legs you are trying to stand on. Either drop one of them that is less important, or do a very serious evaluation how much your time expenditure for each of these is. You have a very tight time schedule, you need to balance your time accounts as if it were money.

Include time for sleeping and "basic maintenance". I am not talking about work-life balance here, because I am aware that some people are prepared to shut that down for certain periods. This is possible for short term. However, on the long term, you would also have to consider that component. It's not usually possible to completely ignore that on the long term without undesirable consequences.


Can a prof affect my admission to a highly reputed department even though I don't have the perfect background for that department?

This would definitely help your chances, and in any case you should apply to preserve the relationship since this prof has gone to bat for you.
I would not see this as a guarantee, however, and I would continue to apply to other schools. I'm not 100% clear on the timeline, but it seems like this prof has already been unsuccessful in securing your admission once, so they may just not have enough power to get you admitted. It could be the case that admission decisions (especially at Ivy leagues) are done with more consideration for the student's impact on the department rather than on a specific research group. Also the politics here could be more complex than meets the eye.


Wikipedia paragraph in the Introduction section?

You should write your own introduction so it represents what you are going to cover in your essay / report / thesis.

Just taking an introduction and referencing it to avoid plagiarism, will not usually represent your activity very well.


Getting work experience recognised as a master's degree?

From an academic point of view, no.  Work experience is not counted as a substitute for formal study in academia.

Academics consider the award of degrees for work experience to be fraudulent.  Some employers will accept these degrees for promotion purposes.


Can I ask the editor for rapid processing (rapid peer review) in the cover letter of my paper submission?

You can ask for just about anything, but unless you already have some connection to the editor you aren't likely to have much happen out of the ordinary. In particular, they are unlikely to move you ahead of another author and you would probably object if the situation were reversed.

The editor has little control over what his/her reviewers do or their schedules.  If he/she tries to press them, they might just turn the paper back and you get in line again. The editor is unlikely to move on a paper without reviews. The time it takes is the time it takes.

Note that in some ways the reviewer "stable" is more important to the editor than the current bunch of authors since there is a long term relationship between editors and reviewers. Since they probably aren't paid, there is little leverage.

But you can ask.


Are scientifically detached professors referred to as ‘clinical’?

There can be clinical professors in fields other than medicine, though they may be labeled something else.  The definition of a "clinical professor" is not limited to medicine:

  "The prefix Clinical identifies appointments that primarily provide practical instruction and application of practical knowledge. On the Medical Campus, the title describes faculty whose primary activity is limited to clinical or public health practice and associated teaching. The duties, terms of appointment, and salaries (if any) of such persons are specified in the letter of appointment. In general, the applicable rank and any subsequent promotions should be determined by the relevant academic achievements, professional accomplishments, and demonstrated effectiveness of the appointee."  (Boston University faculty handbook)

So, though I don't know much about engineering, I imagine that a professional from an engineering firm that specializes in a particular process could be hired as a clinical professor.  S/he would teach about the particular niche they occupy in the industry.


What if point systems for tests were different?

You are not the first person to think about this idea.
People use similar ideas in forecasting and your idea is similar to the Brier score.

The premise of this foresting is to be the best at predicting the future.
People weight their certainty of predictions over time (e.g., the probability of rain tomorrow is somewhere between 0 and 100%).

Over the short-term, the Brier score penalizes certain wrong answers (e.g., if you say there is a 95% chance of rain but it does not rain, your score is lower than if said there was a 55% chance of rain).
But, over the long term, this method penalizes both uncertainty and inaccuracy (e.g., if I consistently make right predictions with 55% probability, I will have a lower score than if I make correct predictions with a 75% probability).

The Good Judgment Project uses Brier scores to evaluate people's ability to forecast and would be a good starting place for you to you look.
That being said, I don't know how your proposed idea would work on exams unless you wanted your students to study game theory, forecasting, or predictions rather than your subject material.
In general, many if not most education experts think multiple choice questions are a bad way to assess learning (e.g., for some of the reasons described in this article).


How much will a terrible freshman undergradate year affect academic future?

Your older work is far less important than what you have done since. If you have turned it around and people are willing to attest to that in letters of recommendation the first year will likely hurt you very little. I can't say not at all, but not as much as you fear.
For future stuff, focus on the future and on what you have learned enables success there. You are far from alone in this and many students have a slow start. It is good actually, that you found a way to do better. People may well recognize that.
You may have to answer questions in an interview about your first year, so expect that.

Note that the past is past and you can't change it. What you can do now is work so that the past is irrelevant to the future. Make sure you haven't missed any essential knowledge from the early years. Work closely enough with current faculty (projects, research, ...) that they will enthusiastically support your next steps.


How to express success of the found solution in a thesis?

You don't need to reserve your conclusion until the end of your Evaluation chapter. Is that separate from the Results section? When you present your "Results", that should be narrowly focused on the test statistics, maybe even numerical comparisons to others' results to put the numbers in context.

The "Discussion" part of your work (not sure if that's all of what your "Evaluation" chapter is or just part of that chapter) is the right place to discuss the interpretation/interpretation of your analysis. You can even have that argument as the thesis for that section. E.g.

  As established in [Chapter  where you describe the problem], an effective solution to [problem] requires X, Y, and Z. The results in [other section] demonstrate that [this method] is a viable solution.

Then go through and interpret the results to show how the result is suitable. (You should fully acknowledge any drawbacks, but it should be OK to write up this section so that it explains the benefits of your solution.)

The Abstract and Introduction should also clearly say that the approach performs well and securely. You're probably not in a mystery-writing field. :)

Using the word "successful" might be the wrong tone (or it may be OK). Other wordings would be that the approach is "promising" or "proven" or "demonstrated". You might want to look over the wording that published articles in your field use.


Applying for graduate programs, will missing classes count against me?

It's probably inappropriate to say it always "count against you," but it is fair to say that it will be taken into consideration.

For instance, some schools may not admit you officially to the master's or doctoral program in a field if you are missing classes normally expected of students in a given program (for instance, if you're missing analytical chemistry and applying for a chemistry master's). In still other cases, you may be admitted to a program, but with no allowances actually made for the courses missing—that is, you'd be expected to pass the graduate-level courses just like everybody else enrolled in the program.

On the other hand, if you are missing too many "core" classes, then you will probably find yourself struggling to gain admission, since the admissions committee may (rightly?) feel that you have too much prior work to make up.


Who reviews the postdoc file applications? (UK)

Similarly to the answer of @YemonChoi above, the way recruitment is supposed to work at the place I have experience (n=2, higher than @Yemon, but not massively) is that HR passes the documents, mostly without reading them, to a recruitment pannel chaired by the PI who holds the grant.
The panel independently score the applicants on a predetermined scoring scheme matched the person specification drawn up for the position (and normally advertised with it) and the applicants with the highest scores are invited to interview. For any internal redeployment or disabled candidates that are not invited to interview, there most be an explicit reason why not.
Interviews are conducted using predetermined questions/activities and the panel score the interviewees independently. After the interviews, the panel confer, but ideally, the best performing candidate is offered the job first.
Thats the theory.
In practice, the PI generally decides who they want to interview, and checks that the rest of the panel agrees.
At interview, most panel members don't bother to score on the predetermined criteria. After the interview, they have a conversation, but in the end the PI makes the decision. Scores are then created to justify the decision made.
What this means for the OP is that if the PI wants you, the rest of the panel will not get much say. That said, it probably can't hurt to make some optimizations to your materials, unless that will be very time consuming and you worry about a soft or hard deadline, or creating a poor impression to the PI for being slow.


Are my expectations for undergraduate student support unrealistic?

Are my expectations in terms of academic support unrealistic?

Yes. You're describing the general existing level of academic support at your school, and that is by definition the normal level of academic support at your school.

This kind of thing varies greatly from one school to another, and most of the variation depends on the prestige of the school. Your school is in the Russell Group, which AFAICT (being American) means that it's a top-level research university with highly selective admissions. At that type of school, faculty are often highly focused on research rather than teaching, and the attitude is often that if an undergrad was smart enough to get in, they should be smart enough to succeed by going to lectures, reading the book, and doing the work independently.

Taking an example of such a school at the University of California system here in the US, the schedule of office hours published for math and psychology suggests that different departments have different expectations for faculty office hours, and some faculty have no office hours at all, even though they are teaching lecture classes. Presumably there are TAs for a lot of these courses.

As you move down the ladder to less prestigious schools here in the US, you see more and more academic support being offered. Here in California, we have a three-tier system. The next tier below UC is the Cal State system. There, a typical teaching load might be 12 units, and someone teaching that many units is contractually required to have 4 hours of office hours every week.

After that, the next step down is the community college system. At the California community college where I teach, I'm required to do 5.5 hours of office hours every week. We also have extensive support services. We have a math lab, writing tutors, and students paid to work as tutors in the sciences.

  There also seems to be a difference in the support materials provided. Many modules don't publish example problems or solutions, provide any form of solutions to past exam questions or sign-post relevant textbook exercises.

This type of support is the sort of thing that is typically considered normal at the lower rungs of the ladder, but not at the higher rungs. At the type of school you're attending, the expectation in a certain course might be, for example, that you decide for yourself what problems to do out of the book, rather than being given a list. If you need to see solutions for exercises, you can, for example, find a textbook on the subject that has solutions for some problems.


How should a postdoc address senior research staff and faculty members in the USA?

When I was a grad student, my initial preference was to call faculty "Doctor" or "Professor".  At some point (about halfway through, I think) one professor said to me: "If you want them to see you as a peer, you should call the professors the same way that they call each other."  At my university, all the professors called each other by their first names (it didn't matter if they were assistant, associate, or full).  Since I planned to make a career in academia, I really did want to be viewed as a peer.  So I started calling them by their first name (and no one ever told me to do otherwise).


How common are recruitment fellowships for students accepted to PhD programs?

You could, without any ethical pangs, but please realize that it will not carry much weight with hiring committees. Overall, it's a feather in the cap, as they say.


Asking Professor for Letter of Recommendation before finishing class

Yes, it's fine.  You could visit office hours a couple of times, to get to know him better, to make up for the missing second half of the semester.


Journal changed the ordering of the authors. What to do now?

You seem to be in a Math department, and are having a problem that is going to effect everyone in that department.  I suggest you speak to the chair of the department.
There are journals in mathematics, good ones, that insist on an alphabetical order of authors.  This is also the standard in most of pure mathematics.  If you have your facts correct, your university has policy that will make it very hard for anyone in pure mathematics to publish.  Applied math is a bit different but this still will be a problem.
As an example, the journal Results in Mathematics explicitly requires alphabetical author order.


PhD funding source for international student in the UK

Your best bet is probably to check if there are fellowships available for study abroad from your home country. However, depending on where you're from, there may be special programs available. For instance, there are Commonwealth Scholarships available for people living in members of the British Commonwealth.

There are some databases of UK awards for general students: here, for instance, is a list of postgraduate scholarships available to citizens of any country.


Lukewarm grade in proposed area of study?

A B+ is not a bad grade for an undergrad in a grad course.  I suspect that it will not raise red flags in an admissions process.  The discussion on "complaints" or "the class was terrible" has no place in your application package, especially coming from you, and it would make the applicant come off as a whiner.  You took a course, you got a grade.  Done.

If admissions slots were limited, and I had to make an otherwise equal choice between  two students, I'd opt for the one that looks more mature, and complaining in your application package about a course does not make one appear mature.


It will depend on the requirements of your course - ask your supervisor for clarification.

Having said that, I did write a handful of papers while I was completing my PhD - not a single one was with me being a sole author. Three of them had my supervisor and another academic as co-authors and the other 2 was with another academic (I was co-author of these).

These papers formed the 'backbone' of my successful PhD thesis. My supervisor indicated that having the papers published and then referencing them in the thesis served to strengthen the thesis, as those points had already been peer-reviewed.

If anything, they demonstrate some ability to collaborate with other academics.


How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation?

The answers here of Solar Mike and corey979 are correct, but let me point out two additional issues.

First, it might be that without your citations you could validly be accused of self plagiarism. Readers of the current work need to be able to trace back the ideas to earlier work. This is why we cite ourselves rather than just reuse old work.

Second, if you want a mental check on whether a self-citation is proper or not, just ask whether you would still be giving this citation if the other paper were written by someone unknown to you. If the answer is yes, then it is certainly proper - even essential - to cite it. If the answer is no, then you should probably forgo.

As for a response, you could simply ignore it. However, if you think that it is affecting the editor's decision, you could point out the self-plagiarism aspect.


Are professors not allowed to work on what they want to work on without a grant?

No, a professor doesn't strictly need grant funding to start work on an idea (and it's common to do some preliminary work on an idea to help get grant funding for that idea). However, grant funding helps professors to

support graduate students and/or postdocs,
pay his/her own summer salary, if the university only pays 9 months of salary a year,
be promoted/get tenure in departments where there is an expectation of bringing in funding,
sometimes buy out of teaching obligations

Thus a researcher who wants those things, needs grant funding.

Having no-strings-attached grant funding that comes with no obligation to research a particular area gives a professor freedom to do those things, and still spend their research time and effort on whatever they want.


Is it appropriate/safe to ask for help on major theorem proof of my paper online?

This answer is meant to apply to graduate students (like the OP).

Talk to your advisor. She is the designated person to help you with your research.  You should do so because:

  1) Your advisor will probably have some help to offer.  Give them more than one chance to do so, and be clear in communicating how much help you want/need at any given time.

In your case I believe you said earlier that you talked to your advisor and got some but not enough help, because she only thought about your problem when you were there.  To me that is the opposite of strange: being a thesis advisor myself, I recognize it as the classic tension inherent in the job.  How much help do you give the student?  How much time you do spend thinking about the student's problem so as to be able to give help? There are usually no easy answers to these questions.  Even in dealing with the same student, over time I often find myself: giving too much help; giving too little help; being put in a situation where the question they ask is too hard for me to give an answer on the spot and then having to try to find time for outside thoughts about their question.

When you talk to your advisor, make sure she understands that you feel so stuck in your research that you are considering seeking outside help.

  2) If you get outside help without telling your advisor about it, it could be embarrassing to her.

It can be tough to ask the same person for help on the same thing more than once.  But it is part of the advisor/advisee relationship.  If my students showed up on SE sites asking questions that I feel that I could have answered, I would not feel great about it.  (Most of my negative feelings would be directed to myself rather than at them, but still: not great.)

  3) If you are truly stuck, your advisor needs to know.  It very often happens that the best thing to do is to switch to working on a different aspect of the problem, or perhaps a different problem entirely.  Your advisor is the one to help you with that.

Let me also say that in the realm of mathematically-related research, two weeks is a fairly short amount of time to be working on something.  If after two weeks you are completely out of ideas and don't even know what else to try, then you should address that.  If you simply haven't proved the "major theorem" yet: join the club.  To prove a major theorem usually takes me at least two months; two years is not at all unheard of, and is not a maximum.  As long as you're making some progress thinking about the problem, I don't necessarily see anything wrong here.

Added: The lack of directness of my answer was intentional, but let me add one comment.  In my opinion the greatest risk in asking in the internet community for help in solving your mathematical research problem is....that someone will solve your mathematical research problem.  As mentioned above, your advisor is optimally briefed in the matter of how much help to give you / how any one question fits into the larger scheme of your research program, and still advising a student is a matter of successive errors and corrections (i.e., helping too much and too little).  Being a PhD student has a highly egoistic aspect to it: you are not just trying to find solutions to problems; you are trying to find them yourself.  There is a real risk that the right expert will simply leave you without a problem to be working on.  This is why talking your advisor is so critical: she may in fact decide at some point that asking for help is best, but in that case she will know exactly what and whom to ask in such a way that the rug is least likely to get pulled out from under you.  This is very important!


How to indicate that I am an ERC reviewer in CV?

I think it is pretty common to list such reviewing activities in CVs, at least I've seen it often. Usually, people list these activities under "Service", as in "volounteer service to the academic community".

However, I don't think these things are actually very important, especially at your (presumed) career stage: if you are an ERC reviewer, you must be pretty well known, maybe already a Full Prof. (or Associate), thus these details won't make your career any better, in my opinion. They might have more of an impact for junior people, as it means they are recognised as experts by the community, which, with less years under the belt, might be a relatively nice accomplishment.