To your specific question: I would not worry about referencing questions on an exam.  Although exams could end up on the Internet if a students posts them, I find it hard to believe that "fair use" does not cover using the questions for internal educational purposes, and referencing the questions is almost certainly not necessary.  That said, I am not a lawyer.

The bigger question might be

  How does one come up with good test questions?

It used to be (and may still be) that fraternities kept a filing cabinet full of course exams used in a class from year to year, purportedly simply for study purposes, but also in the hope that professors would re-use questions from year to year and this would provide a huge advantage to those studying from the prior exams.  These days, it would be trivial to have a web page dedicated to scanned copies of old exams.  Therefore, I would advise against re-using too many questions on an exam, or at the very least modify old questions to make it difficult to simply re-apply the exact same methodology to solve.

Crafting good questions is always challenging, but some would argue that it is fun developing questions that test the students ability to problem-solve in a format that works on a timed exam.  Questions that have a single answer are easier to grade, but could limit the ability for a student to think outside the box, or to solve using alternate methods.  Depending on the subject, this isn't always possible, either.

I am of the opinion that the best tests have many different types of questions, so students can show their own strengths in different ways.  For programming tests, there might be a few questions asking students to describe what blocks of code do, others that ask the student to find syntax errors, others that ask for algorithm deficiencies, still others that ask the students to draft short snippets of code, and finally some questions that demonstrate that the student knows when to use certain constructs (e.g., when is a "do while" loop appropriate, and when is a "for" loop appropriate?  How could you turn the following "do while" loop into a "for" loop?).

As a bottom line answer to your question: I would not worry about referencing the questions on the exams, but if you are worried about students cheating by looking up the references for future exams, it is probably worth trying to obfuscate the questions themselves, or to at least change them enough that studying the questions directly from the references will not give an unfair advantage to the students that do find them.


What to do with a thesis adviser that doesn't respond to emails or offer any help?

You are a bit stuck. It would be a shame to abandon work already done if it shows promise of successful completion.

But there are really two things that you should require from your advisor. First, they need to approve of your thesis when complete. Second they need to write you a good letter of recommendation for the next stage of your career.

Everything else is nice, but not essential. If you are capable of doing the work on your own and can achieve those two things, nothing else will matter.

I'm more concerned, actually, that no one responds to your request for help. Perhaps if you take a different approach with external professionals it would be more successful. My preference would be short introductions and very simple explanations about what you are working on. Make it easy for anyone to make the first response. If you send too much it is more likely to get ignored.

Quit and restart elsewhere only if no other option is open to you. Given the current pandemic (early 2020) no one will think poorly of you if you need to start over. It will delay your career, but not necessarily end it.


NSF graduate fellowship: how specific should the statement of purpose be?

I think this is an issue that a lot of students struggle with; at least I did when I applied last year.  I was rejected, so probably take what I say with a grain of salt.  They say some things on their website that are important to note.

Keep in mind that NSF does not just seek to fund scientists and engineers; NSF seeks to fund future STEM leaders.
Use appropriate scientific form (hypothesis, figures, references) in the Graduate Research Statement.
Instead of elaborate details on theory, focus on the rationale for your studies and the existing literature as it supports your proposed work.

The students that I know that were given the award properly addressed these issues.  My proposal did focus on one research idea and that was rewarded with comments on the creativity and feasibility of my proposed idea.  One of the critiques I got in my review was "While the applicant does demonstrate an excitement of discovery and should be able to communicate his results to a large audience, ...  Broad societal impacts are not evident with respect to encouraging diversity and enabling the participation of underrepresented groups."

The feedback that I got was based on two scores: Intellectual Merit Criterion and Broader Impacts Criterion.  I would make sure that your students take both into account.  As far as the research proposal goes, I what JeffE said is true.  It is an opportunity for the students to show that they are familiar with the current research and are able to come up with an appropriate idea to pursue.


Is it good idea to use arXiv for improving my paper?

arXiv is not a good choice for obtaining feedback or informal reviews of papers.

arXiv is typically used for publishing pre-prints. It allows authors to disseminate a paper as well as enabling the paper to be cited in advance of traditional publishing. As such, it also allows authors to establish some claim of precedence on their work. Such papers are often published on arXiv with a note such as "Submitted for publication in < journal >" or "Accepted for publication in < journal >" since the publishing cycle can range from months to years in some fields.

I would venture that most readers will be other people working in the field, to see what work is currently being done. They are likely to have neither the time nor inclination to review and provide feedback on unpublished papers. It may vary depending on the field but I would expect that papers without an accompanying "Submitted ..." or "Accepted ..." note would have fewer reads, let alone feedback or responses.


Are there differences between academic papers and industrial papers?

I am a scientist working in a company and frequently collaborating with university academics.  There is no difference between the papers we write.

People at companies are more likely to write more applied papers, and people at universities are more likely to write more theoretical papers, but the distributions are highly overlapping.


Although this approach to measuring is plausible, I fear it is not what you want. Although of course things vary by field, the papercount per se, or even "impact factor", or ... any other easily-measurable thing is not quite what will affect things.

At least in mathematics (my field), a smaller number of very-good papers is much better than a large number of irrelevant papers. One might imagine that this would be measured by "impact factor", but it is absolutely not reliably so. As an extreme case, consider what happens when an important problem is finally and definitively solved: there may be fewer follow-ups, fewer citations, simply because there's little more to say.

And there's time-lag: I have many examples of 10-20 year (and longer) delays before people widely realized the interest of a given paper. Srsly, surely we're not trying so much to be of-the-moment-celebrities, but to make a long-term impact.

One could go on-and-on about the unreliability of appealing-but-fatally-flawed metrics... but the real point is that a less objectifiable judgement is necessary to evaluate the "merits" of a program. Stats on the students is probably not quite what you'd want, even though it might seem to be. E.g., at more elite places, there is vastly greater variance among students... so the "outcomes" are harder to interpret meaningfully... and, for you yourself, what those other kids did or didn't do is operationally irrelevant:

That is, your level-of-performance, that causes (or doesn't) respected experts to commend you to their peers, is what will get you a job, or not. The "published papers" thing is a side-effect.


Are arXiv papers more read than the journal versions?

Well, statistically speaking, ArXiv requires no reader subscription, so more people have access to it (regardless of what publications they or their institute pays for). Ergo publications on ArXiv have the potential receive views from a wider audience. Whether this translates to citations or not is another argument.

It’s relatively common in my field to see an author "park" some research on ArXiv before submitting it to official publications or conferences. The publication process can take a while (and conferences have fixed dates), but the paper might as well gather interest and citations during that time.

I’ve never heard of anyone publishing on ArXiv after publishing in a journal, but I have seen post-conference extended papers (which go into more detail without the page limit). I don’t know what copyright you signed over (or what access level your publications have) when you published but I’d be wary about infringing the official publisher's copyright by posting on ArXiv.

———————-Edit———————

Well, according to comments, some journals explicitly allow publishing to ArXiv (or related sites) after publication. That might depend on gold access level, but it makes sense for journals to make ArXiv an ally rather than an enemy. Relevant xkcd.


Is it possible to pursue two distinct research interests in the same discipline?

For example, can I have two research interests the one concerning History of Economics and the other concerning Mathematical & Computational Economics in a PhD program in an Economics department where there are always professors that have these but usually not the same person?

Practically speaking, your PhD topic will need to be on one topic, so you will need to choose to some extent. Relatedly, you will also need one (and usually exactly one) advisor - you can have the other person as a member of your committee, or sympathies permitting, just as an unofficial mentor and collaborator, but typically the formal advisor will need to be one specific person.

However, this should not prevent you from conducting research on both your interests. Typically, there are two ways to go about this:

Find a topic that naturally integrates your interests. For instance, you may write a thesis in political sciences, but with a healthy dose of econ (which almost automatically also includes plenty of applied maths), or you may write a thesis in economics, but with a focus on political implications of economic theory. In this example, both versions sound completely reasonable to me. Of course, if your actual interests are farther apart, this becomes less reasonable.
Choose one of your interests as thesis topic, and work on the other as side topic. This you can do in most cases, as long as there is some understanding between the disciplines (and your advisor is generally in favour of side projects, which apparently not everybody is). This course of action has the disadvantage that ultimately, you will lose time to work on your thesis, and your thesis may accordingly take longer to complete or be less compelling than if you worked 100% on it.

That all being said, a common advice given to students is to remain somewhat narrow in their academic interests early in their career, and only start to branch out and diversify once one is strongly established in one particular aspect of a field or discipline.


how to decide on first coauthorship for a paper

Your colleague came up with the idea of combining the work of themselves and yourself into a single paper, and your co-author took the lead in writing the paper. For me, that would add up to enough distinct initiative to single out your colleague as the primary author of the paper.
You ask how "to avoid such situation in the future"; Roland's comment is spot-on in this regard: the author list and relative ordering therein should be discussed upfront, if you wish to discuss it at all.


What should I do if someone published my old reserarch result without mentioning my name?

I would first contact the individual who published your work. Perhaps he can provide insight into his actions.

If he has a faculty position in the US, you could next contact his department to open a case with them. University administration may also be able to step in and arbitrate on the matter.

If the journal is reputable, they too would be a point of contact. Since I have no way of knowing what journal/"journal" this work was published in, it is difficult for me to gauge what contacting the journal would lead to.

Much of this will depend on providing evidence that you performed the work you say you did. This also greatly hinges on what exactly this person published that you think is yours. Did he publish written work verbatim from your own writings? Did he just publish a paper using an idea you had but never formalized? Did he publish data that you collected? Do you have any lab notebooks showing that you collected the data? Were you paid to do research for this person? Is he publishing a paper using data that you collected, but that he cleaned and analysed?

One note on pursuing civil litigation on this matter: Unless you can show loss of money, opportunity, or standing due to this person's actions, you are extremely unlikely to get a definitive decision awarding you some sort of remuneration for your work. This is not how civil suits work. This is an academic matter and the courts are likely not going to hear the case. (Unless you go to some sort of TV 'Judge Judy' court). If you have an actual published piece of work that is copyrighted, civil action could be a move of last resort. Otherwise, civil action is very unlikely to result in anything.


Resources for quantitative social science research workflow

Overview

To my knowledge, only a very few research workflows for specific packages / tools have been published (the R and Stata books listed below).

As the question is about research workflows, I have avoided the many published guides about how to use a particular quantitative analysis application, with the exception of the Data Carpentry website, because it is explicitly designed for social scientists and emphasizes the importance of a reproducible analysis.

I included the section on version control because, in my experience, it is not commonly used by social scientists.

General Resources

(pdf) Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide by Gentzkow and Shapiro (2014)

Topics include automation, version control, file organization, data management, abstraction, documentation, project management, and code style. Employs a conversational. Freely available at the link.
Strength: Topics include most aspects of a research project. The authors are social scientists who sought better workflows.
Weakness: Level of detail in the examples and anecdotes varies considerably across principles.

(pdf) The Plain Person's Guide to Plain Text Social Science by Kieran Healy

Topics include: text editors (especially emacs) and markdown, version control, automation with makefiles, and using pandoc to generate HTML and Latex for presentation documents. Freely available.
Strength: Provides many links to valuable information on particular tools and topics.
Weakness: With the exception of the emacs starter kit section, the material is more motivational than instructional.

(Article) Best Practices for Scientific Computing published in PLoS Biol in 2014

8 best practices with subparts, including (1) Write program for people, not computers; (6) Optimize software only after it works correctly; and (7) Document design and purpose, not mechanics. Freely available at the link.
Strength: Very concise statements of general principles. Contains references to additional information.
Weakness: Because the principles are general, they cannot be used as an off-the-shelf guide for specific software packages or tools.

(Website) Data Carpentry

Strength: Freely available lessons with considerable detail on python, R, OpenRefine, SQL, and spreadsheets.
Weakness: Topics are largely restricted to working with data, and do not include other parts of the research workflow (some of which are addressed through the companion Software Carpentry resources)

(Website) Software Sustainabilitiy Institute Guides

Topics include Data, Project Management, Software Development (including testing), and Repositories and Project Infrastructure, among others
Strength: Many short articles on specific topics
Weakness: Not a unified work

(Book) The Practice of Reproducible Research, edited by Justin Kitzes, Daniel Turek, and Fatma Deniz

Strength: Many examples (case studies).
Weakness: Very lengthy. Not designed as a quick-reference for practitioners.

Version Control

(Book) Version Control By Example, by Erik Sink (2011)

Freely available as a website or downloadable pdf.
Strength: Explicit examples of how to use Subversion, Mercurial, Git, and Veracity.
Weakness: ?

(Application) Sourcetree

A graphical user interface for version control systems (Git, Mercurial), compatible with GitHub and BitBucket
Strength: Good for the less experienced because users don't have to use the command line
Weakness: ?

R

(Book) Reproducible Research with R and R Studio, by Christopher Gandrud

About using R, RStudio, Knitr, and Markdown to perform data management and analysis, document one's work, and create presentation documents in HTML or Latex. Also includes one chapter on using git and github, and one on data gathering using makefiles.
Strength: Unified workflow for research from start to finished product.
Weakness: ?

Stata

(Book)The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata by J. Scott Long (2008)

Topics include file organization, variable naming, data labeling and documentation, automation and one-click reproducibility, and larger project management organization.
Weakness: no discussion of version control software or code testing


Why don't Universities provide staff/post-graduate with stationery?

Stationary products, with the exception of prepaid postal envelopes, are not reimbursable from most grants and needed to be provided by the university as part of its infrastructure. How the university provides the stationary products is up to them, they can of a closet full of the required supplies, be willing to order them at no cost to grant holders, or provide grant holders with a sufficient portion of the grant overheads so that stationary products can be ordered. Every university I have studied or worked at has had a closet full of supplies and the office staff were willing to order special supplies within reason, but this doesn't mean other models do not exist. You just need to ask.


I assume institutions will want some background on your past 7 years. It may be hard to get into higher ranked institutions, but perhaps lower ranked institutions may be more accommodating. I'm not sure what you mean by "abroad' though, and you didn't mention your career goals. There are many great institutions around the world in mathematics and physics, such as in various EU/Nordic countries, USA, Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, Gulf Countries, Russia, Korea, and Japan. I've heard from a prospective PhD student, although have not verified, that sometimes institutions in various countries will be willing to reduce the application standard for Western applicants.


The great success story of open access is arxiv.org.  Wikipedia claims that "in many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository."  There is no citation for this claim and I couldn't find a study, but certainly there are subfields where a very high fraction of papers go on arXiv.org.

It's also a fact that all serious journals in these fields allow authors to post preprints on arXiv.  I would say that "all authors can make all their papers freely available with minimal effort" is success.  This latter statement is backed up by data; just go to SHERPA/RoMEO and search for e.g. journals with "math" in the name.  The first page of 50 results doesn't show a single one that prohibits preprint archiving.

The dominant publisher (SIAM) in my field (applied math) allows authors to post the final published article on personal or institutional websites, for no charge.  When they adopted this policy, they also made it apply retroactively to all articles ever published by them.  I'd call that success.

I wouldn't necessarily consider a wholesale move to author-pay journals to be a similar success, since the author-pay model (as implemented by many for-profit publishers) siphons off just as much money that was intended for research as the (for-profit) subscription model does.


Using Google-Fu, I believe I have found what you are looking for:

The 2012-2013 Annual Report

As a guide, someone somewhere will always want to archive something. In this case, archive.org didn't have it, but the owner of that domain, who is likely to be an awesome person in research in a few years, cached a copy of it for us.

The statement used to find this document was:

"2012-13" national merit scholar annual report pdf

It is important to use the years in quotes as 2013 can be used to find the current report as well.


Keys to a successful postdoc in mathematics

Aru,
Your question is phrased in rather general terms.  There are different kinds of postdoctoral positions in mathematics, and two mathematical postdocs hired side-by-side in the same department may have different career goals.  So advice which is guaranteed to be applicable must be rather general.  Here goes:

What is the point of a postdoc in mathematics?  I think it is this: the position of "tenure-track assistant professor" at a US math department is really much different from what it used to be.  It used to be an extended apprenticeship combined with an audition for a permanent job.  Now the job market is so competitive that institutions at all levels tenure the vast majority of the assistant professors they hire: I could easily name hundreds of people who have gotten tenure over the last ten years; I'm not sure I could name ten who were denied tenure.  The "apprenticeship" that used to take place at the beginning of these positions is now somewhere between immensely abbreviated and completely absent: in my own department (UGA) we have "graduate faculty" status, which must be conferred separately, but every tenure-track hire in last eight years has been given that status immediately upon arrival.  In my department you cannot tell the assistant professors from the associate professors (and from some of the full professors) without your scorecard: the job is really identical, including supervision of PhD students.

Even most brilliantly talented and competent PhDs need time to perform the laundering process from student to faculty.  In particular, 99% of the time it just doesn't work for your PhD advisor to have just gotten her own PhD a couple of years ago.  This laundering process is what the postdoc is for.

How does a postdoc work towards the goal of tenure-track readiness and marketability? In what follows I will assume that the desired tenure track job has substantial research expectations (keeping in mind that "substantial research expectations" is still a continuum).

To attain your goal of a tenure-track position, you need to concentrate on two things:
2a) Research.

Put out product -- accepted papers.  Both quality and quantity matters.

Many people get a PhD in mathematics before having a single accepted paper (I did), and if they have an eminent advisor who goes to bat for them, having no papers need not be much of a strike against them in the postdoctoral market.  Things change tremendously when you apply for tenure-track jobs: you need to show conversion of your research promise into research success.  With multiplicity.  Publication standards vary significantly among mathematical disciplines (topologists and algebraic geometers publish fewer papers; combinatorialists and applied mathematicians publish more) but I think that at least one publication per year is a reasonable lower bound for almost everyone.
Most math postdocs have not published all the work that appears in their thesis before graduation (my understanding is that this is almost the complete reverse of what happens in most other STEM fields).  There are good reasons for this: mathematics is such a technical, specialized field that you spend 90% of your time as a PhD student attaining mastery of one specific subfield, and the PhD is awarded within a very short time period of that attained mastery (in some cases, it is awarded when the advisor feels confident that such mastery lies in the student's near future).  So many if not most math postdocs spend the majority of their research time in their first year working on the papers that come from their PhD research.  Why does it take so long given that the thesis has already been written?  One reason is that they are usually not just transcribing the work but also significantly improving it: again, this goes in hand with the observation that as soon as you know what you're doing you're out the door with a PhD.  If you compare a PhD thesis and the paper that it results in, you often see stronger results, simpler and better proofs, and so forth.
Spending time in your postdoc working on publishing your thesis can be tricky: you are in a new environment with new distractions, and after you give a talk or two about your thesis work, many of your research conversations will be about the research interests of those around you, who will probably at least want to involve you in seminars and may in fact want to collaborate with you on further projects.  And it's good to do that...but not at the expense of getting your thesis work done.  There is even a bit of a trap here, since as a PhD student you get so much care and attention on every aspect of your work, including someone whose job it is at times to tell you to slow down and be more careful: that you haven't yet fully nailed down what you thought you had.  Most postdoctoral advisors don't work as closely with their postdocs as thesis advisors do with their students, and when they do it is probably not on the topic of their thesis (they may not even have enough expertise on that to work as closely as the thesis advisor did).  So the first priority of any postdoc is to make sure that they actually write up for publication all the work that was "promised" in their thesis, and the second priority is to figure out how to continue this thesis work in a meaningful way.

Acquire a research program -- distinct from your thesis advisor's program.

I think this is really the hardest part.  It is a well-known fact that the most common number of MathSciNet publications for any given author is one.  In some cases this just means that some bright young person passed through mathematics on the way to something else -- e.g. this one-hit wonder turned out fine -- but it is distressingly common to see one strong, cutting-edge publication followed by dead silence.  What this means is that the work was -- in some suitably high-level sense, at least -- really that of the advisor rather than the student.  A lot of postdocs follow the previous bullet point -- i.e., they get their thesis written up -- and then they just can't see their way to a continuing research program.  In some cases this means that they still publish some papers, but they have just switched from being one person's apprentice to a different person's apprentice.  This is still not good enough for a research-intensive academic job nor, increasingly, a job at a nationally reputable liberal arts college.
It is here that I must disagree with another answer to this question, which says:

In my opinion, you are best looking for a postdoc in an area that is as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate.

That really doesn't sound right to me.  It is a relatively easy path to give up on what you've already done and start fresh on something unrelated, for which you can get local supervision.  As above, this is not good enough.  You want your research program to be considerably deeper at the end of your postdoc than it was when you got your PhD.  Sometimes that involves a significant course correction, yes: in my case I spent less than 1/3 of my time as a postdoc working on the subject of my PhD thesis, but the other material that I worked on was material that I had already been interested in and even started writing up for publication as a student.  Moreover the two areas were related because I was interested in both of them, and that allowed me to work towards closer relations.  Finally, by the time I gave job talks I was able to talk about Hasse principle violations for Shimura curves (my thesis was on Shimura curves) alongside Hasse principle violations for torsors under abelian varieties (which is what I spent most of my postdoc working on).  Moving to something "as far removed from your PhD areas as you are willing to tolerate" would have moved me several orders of magnitude farther away, just as I was experiencing a rapid improvement in my understanding of the part of arithmetic geometry in which I did my thesis work.  (Eleven years after my thesis, I am now also exploring parts of mathematics that are considerably farther away but I still do some work on things closely related to my thesis.)
A research program has some breadth to it as well as depth.  But the ideal way to develop breadth is to expand outwards from your current position, not give up and move to a new position chosen for its substantial distance from your current one.

It is good to have done more than one thing, or at least to know more than one trick.

I want to reaffirm that after establishing depth, the next thing hirers look for in a research program is indeed breadth.  If you're working on what looks to all outsiders like exactly the same thing now as you were three years ago, that's less than exciting, and it creates concerns about your future trajectory: mathematics does move on, and long-term colleagues grow together in their research interests and expertise.  However, if you're working in a hot, technical area and doing well with it, then you probably don't want to diversify out of that area as a postdoc, but you do want to take steps to show that the potential for diversity is there.  Often digging deeper in exactly the same spot requires learning new tools, even basic things that early career graduate students in other fields learn.  I think it's important to continue that kind of learning as a postdoc (and beyond) and show that you're doing it: for instance, in any job talk you should showcase the variety of knowledge and techniques that go into your results, especially if the results themselves look narrow and specialized.
2b) Teaching Teaching is challenging for a postdoc because for a certain range of intended careers it is less important than research...but it is still important, and in fact increasingly so.  You have to crank up a different kind of professional vibe to be a successful teacher as a postdoc: whereas for research you are trying to burn the midnight oil to make the transition from excellent to outstanding, what a disaster it would be for you to vow to be the best calculus teacher ever and devote all your time and energy to that.  (Part of the disaster is that vowing to be the best calculus teacher ever and putting three times as much time in as your office-mate will not necessarily result in teaching evaluations that are any better than hers: unfortunately they might even be worse.)  Rather you need to set a more temperate teaching mark and learn to hit it while leaving plenty of time for your research.
Your specific teaching goals will depend upon what kind of tenure-track job you have.  On the other hand, you may be hoping for a job at an elite research institution but may have to settle for a job with higher teaching requirements.  A good all-around plan is to showcase at least competent teaching across a fairly broad range of levels, including: calculus courses / service courses for non-majors; courses for undergraduate math majors; and graduate-level courses.  If you can cover those bases by teaching fewer courses, that is probably better.  In three years of postdoctoral work I taught five semester courses: this was close to ideal, but if I magically had control of my own teaching load, I would have cut it down to four.  Because your overall teaching responsibilities are relatively limited, it is good to start thinking about where your teaching letter(s) will come from right away.  If you feel that a course is going especially well, by all means invite some faculty in to watch you teach it.  That together with good evaluations is sufficient for a strong teaching letter in many cases.

You've written a lot, but actually everything you've said is fully consistent with "doing as much math [including math teaching] as humanly possible".  So I still suspect that doing a tremendous amount of work -- of the right kind -- in a relatively short period is the key to a successful math postdoc.  Am I mistaken??

No, you're quite right.  Being a math postdoc should not stop you from having a satisfying personal life, but professionally speaking it is one of the most intense, work-intensive points of a mathematical career.  There's no secret remedy for that.
One could give a lot more advice for math postdocs, and this has been done.  The Young Mathematicians Network has lots of information on this.  Google searching reveals that several mathematicians have math-specific postdoctoral advice on their webpages, including Sara Billey and Terry Tao.  I tend to think that it is better to talk to people -- lots of people -- and get advice rather than just read about very generalized advice (including this answer, of course).  A lot of times you don't even need to explicitly ask for advice: look for young, successful mathematicians (that includes most people who have recently gotten tenure-track jobs nowadays) and talk to them about their experiences.  By comparing the backgrounds of multiple role-models you can get a sense of what the "market wants".


What should I do if I attended a conference but forgot to register?

I would suggest to contact the conference organizing committee as soon as possible and ask them what can be done about it. You can explain what happened and why, and also directly offer to pay the registration fee afterwards. If you presented at the conference and also chaired a session, there should be enough evidence that you were actually there. Conference committees are human too, and will understand that mistakes happen. If you are honest, it should be possible to convince them that you did not intentionally try to sneak into the conference or avoid the fees.

Note that many conferences will only publish your contributions if you have a valid registration and also paid the fees, so it might definitely be in your own interest to fix this mistake.

As the comment by @Roland suggests, it could also be helpful to contact your administration responsible for the reimbursement and to ask for their advice on how they want the situation to be handled. Since you are worried what impression you might give them, this should rather help to have them understand that you actively try to correct your mistake.


Is it reasonable to do a second master's degree just for the letters of recommendation?

I can share my experience. I completed my graduate program online so I only had one recommendation from my masters program. I then had two recommendations from my work experiences. I was accepted at my 'goal' university and awarded a fellowship that covers tuition and provides a stipend for  living expenses. When I spoke to the chair of my department about how/why I was awarded the fellowship, he said that the most important admissions requirements were GRE score and GPA. He said that recommendation letters are often not even read. They become of interest if there is a debate about accepting a student. He also said that recommendation letters have lessened in importance because no one trusts them anymore (due to lawsuits and everyone's fear of writing something that could be questioned.) They DO read your writing. So any essays or proposals that you are asked to write are important.
I do not know if this is accurate for all universities. I did serve on an admissions committee at a private school for many years, and I would agree with his assessment. We dealt with such large numbers of admission candidates that we only read recommendation letters for a few cases.
You could always apply to both PhD and masters programs, but I definitely wouldn't let recommendation letters prevent you from applying immediately to PhD programs.


Does securing a supervisor basically guarantee acceptance?

It depends on where the funding comes from. If the money comes from the professor's own grants, then you're extremely likely to get a formal admission. If the money comes from the department the professor now has to convince the admissions committee that you should get the position. Why not send an email to the potential supervisor and ask what the next step is? That should let you know where you stand.


When to remove college leadership positions from CV/resume?

I'd suggest removing them as soon as you stop being a student or reach your late 20s, whichever comes first.  Keeping that stuff on there too long may cause hiring managers and others to view you as stuck in your past and possibly adolescent.


How to find all the articles citing particular two?

Using Google scholar, you can find the articles citing article #1.
Then, you click the box "Search within citing articles" and you do a research for article #2.

Edit: I just realized this question is a duplicate of How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?

But I think my answer is far simpler.


Is there any concept of working paper in science and engineering?

They are not common in my field(s) (numerical methods, high performance computing, etc.), but where journals are the primary, high prestige publication venues, we sometimes use conference talks to present works in progress. These talks are often accepted to the conference or one of its minisymposia on the basis of nothing more than light review of a one-paragraph abstract. This gives the author room to be a bit speculative in their abstract and talk about work that may or may not be complete by the time of the meeting. Later, if it works out, the material is turned into a journal article for publication.


What are some strategies for using automatic grading technologies to get students to express their reasoning?

I think you've hit the limit on what automatic grading technology can achieve at this current point in time. Generally, this technology is only going to allow you to automatically evaluate questions with pre-defined answers. This doesn't work for theory or structuring. It probably isn't going to, either.

However, you can use it to evaluate concepts. I'm not exactly sure how your class works, but here are some example concept questions.

  Given [Situation X], what methodology would you use to solve [Problem Y]?

The answer would be from multiple choices.

You also combine this with over method comprehension. Let's do true/false.

  [Method X] is the process of..... (True/False).

From there, you can then start going through some actual calculation questions. If structured correctly, you can deduce the information you're trying to achieve.

If the student does well on the conceptual questions and bad on the math questions, they likely made some arithmetic errors.
If the reverse is true, the student probably just memorized the formulas.

These situations aren't always going to be true, though. They will never be as accurate as a human evaluating a student's process. But the estimates may still prove useful.


Are 16 schools too many for a professor to provide recommendation letters to?

As other people have mentioned, the problem with 16 schools is that a professor cannot, either truthfully or operationally provide customized letters to 16 different schools. By "customization" I mean more than changing the name of the school and program. Good letters of rec use professor's familiarity with their field to speak to applicants' specific strengths with regard to the program, or referencing previous students of theirs who attended the program in question.

In honesty, I wouldn't expect to ask a professor to customize a letter for more than two or three schools, plus a generic one for the others. Maybe four custom letters if you have worked very closely with them.

You could let them know what your top few choices are, then acknowledge a generic letter can be shared among the rest.

I would also reconsider whether 16 is a necessary amount. In my field, 10 programs would be a lot.


How specialised should research prior to tenure be?

This answer warns against being too narrow; see aeismail's answer for reasons not to be too broad.

The precise answer is going to depend on your institution and your field.  But as a first order approximation, you must establish yourself as an independent intellectual leader in a broad enough research area to attract good tenure letters.  An obscure subsubfield beloved by only ten researchers probably isn't going to be enough, because not all of those people will be credible references — well-known, active, full professors (preferably with named positions and Academy memberships) at top-ranked US departments (assuming you're at a US institution) who are not your advisor (and preferably are not your coauthors or from your PhD department either).

So your question becomes:

How large a field do you need to consider to include a sufficient number of viable tenure writers?
How you establish a world-class reputation within that field?

As a general rule in my field, you should move as far away from your PhD thesis as possible while still being visible and productive.  But other fields may have different expectations.


How can I import my BibTeX file to my Google Scholar Library?


You can ask for an unsigned copy of the offer letter for full-time, and explain that you need to look it over so you can decide how to proceed with the adjunct work. They should understand and even appreciate that you don't want to leave anybody high and dry. Likewise, you might consider contacting the chairs of the departments where you are adjuncting and get a sense of how difficult it would be for them to find someone else to teach the course. It could go either way. They might not have a good back up plan, or they may have a reserve of graduate students who need to teach to improve their CVs.


I cannot answer the first question, because it depends mostly of the result itself (if it is strong enough, interesting for reasonably wide audience and can make sense when condensed to 4 pages).

Take a look at Length of publication cycle for peer-reviewed journals from Physics.SE; in on of the answers there are mentioned the following slides:

Thomas Pattard, How to publish your work in the Physical Review or Editors are from Mars, Referees are from Venus, and Authors are from Earth

In short, it takes longer for PRL than most of other PR journals (except for PRE). The difference for Rapid Communications is the highest.

When it comes to risk of rejection - AFAIK the only bad thing for you is that you loose some time. There is no "rejected from PRL stigma" - again, AFAIK.

When it comes to arXiv - it may mean a lot for you (remember, you do it not instead of publishing in a journal, but along with):

it becomes visible a few days after uploading,
some people actively follow arXiv RSS feed on their topic (or even start each morning with it),
some people don't have access to all paid journals,
some people even claim that "normal" publication didn't influenced their cite counts once their paper went on arXiv.

So, even before it gets published (which will take at least a few months, and in case of rejections or slow journals - even years) it is visible.

And personally, I had a lot of scientific discussions based on my papers that by that time were 'only' on arXiv. If you are going to hunt for a postdoc position there may be a big difference whether they can see your paper (on arXiv) or "you said them that you had sent it".


Directly contacting a referee of my paper

This should depend on the journal policy. Both you as an author and the reviewer are bound by the rules the journal has in place with respect to the publication process. While it sounds like you are meeting with the reviewer solely for the purpose of improving the paper but it may come across as going out of one's way to others. To be on the safe side, I would suggest you contact the journal editor before organizing such a meeting. With a sign-off from the editor, you can be sure that you are playing a fair game. I would also keep co-authors in the loop if any.


What does it mean if a professor suggests to contact in future?

You can infer from this type of reply that you should contact him once you have graduated.

There are many reasons for this:

If you're genuinely interested, you'll follow up when the time comes.
The last year of a program can be hugely impactful in either good or bad ways on a student's preparation.
You may be outside the application window for his program, which puts talking to new students low on the priority list. Similarly, if its a competitive process for admitting people into his lab, he'll be wanting to compare you to other interested students.
Funding is a time-variable thing. Whether or not he has room for a student in his lab, can pay for them, etc. might be very different now and when you'd actually arrive.

Among others. It's not necessarily too early to start applying places, but sometimes you may get answers like that.


Let the second author to go to the conference instead of the first author who also wants to go

You're going to get a lot of opinions on this, but I think that if the second author wants to go primarily for networking purposes, he should pay his own way. The student wants to go, did the majority of the work, and is the primary author of the paper. The fact that the student will leave academia after graduating is irrelevant. The student should have his travel paid and present the work at the conference.


What are the goals and benefits of doing a PhD?

most of the people who do a PhD leave the academia afterwards and start looking for jobs (is it also the same in the US?)

Depends on how you see "most". In my experience, about 50% of the students in top-tier graduate schools leave academia; most students in lower-tier graduate schools leave academia. In Europe, this percentage increases quite a bit, since the Europeans generally enter a PhD program to become a professor (In the US, some people enter the program with the intention of getting a PhD, and nothing more.) You can judge for yourself where you fit, since I don't know which school you are thinking of attending.

  in those 5 years they could have started a small tech company and make it somehow medium or even a bit successful.

Sure. But in those 5 years, your tech company could have gone out of business, too! Perhaps you will say that you learn from your mistakes, so that was a valuable period of time. But you learn from doing a PhD too. I'm not necessarily talking about technical things, but the fact that you are able to learn things faster than the non-PhDs (since that's one of the basic skills that research requires.) If you do a CS PhD, depending on how you choose your research topic, it could be useful in real life too.

  I mean you could definitely graduate, find a job or start a company and buy books and read all night or weekends! You don't need a university for this.

True. But grad students are reading all day, then all night or weekends (in theory; in reality they don't actually do this, but they still would have more time than you). You would learn slower. Not to mention that not having a mentor would make things much harder for you (you could tell your PhD supervisor about the courses that you liked, and particular ideas that you liked; from there, she could tell you about some papers that you might like. As an independent research, that's not an option).

Last bit of advice: my father, who is also an academic, always told me not to go into academia unless I loved research. He told me that there are easier ways to obtain everything else in life; money, fame, etc. can all be obtained without being an academic, and more easily at that. And what he said was true for me. Being in academia extremely strenuous -- you'll deal with competitive peers in graduate school, maybe you won't get along with your supervisor, jealous colleagues, people who try to steal your work, thesis gone wrong, error in your paper, etc. I have encountered some of these, and each of these is enough to make you want to quit. The only reason I was able to hold on was because I found that I genuinely loved research. I knew that I couldn't have a job like this elsewhere, so I had to hold on. Any other reason will eventually drive you out of academia, though.

FYI, I attended a top US institution.


No, cite it as you would any other paper. You do not mention the paper status (“invited paper”, in your case; “review paper”, “perspective”, “editorial”, etc.) in the citation, unless that is formally part of the title (which it typically is not), or unless the citation style explicitly calls for it (IEEE does not, and I know no citation style that does).

In IEEE's templates and LaTeX classes, the only place which mentions invited papers is a command to indicate when your paper is an invited paper (here for IEEEtran):

  Special paper notices, such as for invited papers, can be declared with:

\specialpapernotice{(Invited Paper)}


Editor asks for π to be written in roman

They are referring to the upright version of pi. In the picture below, you can find on the left an italics version and on the right an upright one.

If you're using LaTeX, you can obtain the upright pi with the upgreek package and the command \uppi, see this Q&A on TeX SE.
More details on this convention can be found in the IUPAC Green book, which follows the ISO/IEC 80000 standard. From p. 7 of the linked document:

The overall rule is that symbols representing physical quantities or variables are italic, but symbols representing units, mathematical constants, or labels, are roman.

And from p. 8:

The symbols π (3.141 592. . .), e (2.718 281. . . , base of natural logarithms), i (square root of minus one), etc. are always roman [...]


What is a faculty mentor for a junior professor?

It's rapidly becoming the norm at least at larger research universities (R1s) for all junior faculty to have assigned mentors from the senior faculty. At smaller institutions, they may not be assigned and so junior people have to find a mentor themselves from within the college, go externally, use their thesis adviser as a continuing mentor, or choose not to get mentored altogether.

I'm currently serving as a senior faculty mentor to a junior colleague (I was assigned this person by my Chair) and am an informal mentor to two others. As I see it, my roles are to:

Show an active interest in my colleague's work.  Read their published and unpublished work. Go to their internal talks and try to go to their annual conference talks. Provide feedback.
Serve as a soundingboard for my colleague -- which journal should they publish in, should they change the structure of their article, what should their publishing schedule be. Suggest, but don't direct.
Serve as an advocate for my colleague at senior faculty meetings and to the university at promotion and tenure time
Take the colleague out for lunch from time to time.

In general, try to be a decent human being to them. Especially at the larger R1s, decent human beings are rare so this takes quite an effort. :-)

Note that I've seen a lot of bad mentoring by senior faculty. I'm not sure if they do this because of spite or because they are Evil People®. In my mind, bad mentoring is worse than no mentoring, so I'm not sure if mandatory mentoring programs such as at my institution are a good idea.


How are suitable epigraphs in books found?

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
― Mark Twain

Read a lot and remember.  Write quotable quotes in a notebook if you feel you might be able to use them in the future.


Code hosting platform that allows sharing through link

Option 1

Based on your requirements, it doesn't seem that you need the code to be directly accessible from a browser. So the traditional solution would be to create an archive (e.g. zip file) protected by a password, and make this file accessible for instance through your institution website or Google Drive, Dropbox etc. Then you give the link and the password to whoever you want and they can download and browse it on their own computer.

Pro: protected and accessible through link
Cons: not accessible from a browser

Option 2

As an academic, you can have private Github repositories for free (probably also on other platforms). The people who need to access your code will need to have an account themselves, and you will have to explicitly grant access to them in the Github interface.

Pro: protected and accessible from a browser
Cons: requires people to create an account if they don't have one already

Option 3

Since your code is meant to be made public eventually, you could simply create a public repository and give the link to the people who need to access it. It doesn't really matter that the code is not polished or even finished, Github and other platforms are designed for projects under active development anyway (and you can  mention "work in progress" in the README file to make this clear). Additionally it's quite unlikely that anybody would find your code among the millions of repositories, unless you advertise it in a paper or webpage.

Pro: accessible from a browser, no need for an account
Cons: accessible to anyone who finds it

Option 4

I hesitated mentioning this one since it's kind of hacky, but for the sake of completeness: Overleaf is a platform meant for sharing Latex documents. Like github, it is backed by git, so as far as I know you can actually create a directory structure and push any file there. Then you can share the repository as a link, which contains a long random key so it's impossible for somebody to find it by chance.

Pro: private, accessible from a link, no account required for people to access it
Cons: kind of a hack


Referee selection : Why would an editor pass up inviting the most suitable referees?

Many possible reasons, although there is of course no way of finding out which one applied here (if any at all):

Editor E believes that, being big animals in the field, neither A nor B will have time to review.
Variation: E is a junior researcher and doesn't think that he has the stature to ask A or B for a review.
E is not on good terms with A and B.
E believes that A and B have some sort of personal problem with the author and doesn't want to put them into a position of a conflict of interest.
E has recently given both A and B difficult papers to review and doesn't want to overload them.
The author has asked for neither A nor B to be reviewers.
E simply has not paid attention to the previous seminal paper and so asked colleagues he knows are well versed in the general field.
E actually knows the field well herself, and so self-assigned herself the paper, plus a couple of grad students who should learn how to review papers.


Racial discrimination at Duke University's Biostatistics department

I believe that for the students the situation has resolved itself. But I expect that it was collective action on the student's part that brought it to the attention of higher powers. I might be wrong in all of this, of course, but I think that people have been made sensitive to the problem and will be less willing to engage in (blatant) discrimination.

So, it may be that in the short term, things will improve.

But in general, it is collective action that is needed to bring such things to the fore. Bad things can happen in dark alleys. The light of day is a good disinfectant. But when someone powerful is acting badly, individual action might only make it worse for the individual. There is power in numbers.

If the students are still threatened, it is good to stick together.

Individuals can, of course, seek reassurance from their professors. If it isn't forthcoming, more light is needed.


Can my work on manufacturing, designing & fabrication of an electric solar vehicle be considered as an original research & can it be published

The simple answers to your questions are that, yes, you can claim your work to be original research and you can have as many authors as you like.  That said, the fact you think your work is original and of publication quality does not guarantee that any journal will agree.  Your best bet is to discuss the specifics of your project with your advisor (I assume you have one?) and follow his/her advice.


Open book exam tomorrow but the file with the questions are open to everyone already

Tell your professor.  I don't know whether Canvas keeps logs such as you describe, but it doesn't make any difference.  Your feeling of moral obligation is correct. You are obligated to tell your professor.
Here is some general advice.  Author John D. MacDonald has one of his characters say, approximately, "In the case of any ethical decision, the thing you least want to do is probably the right choice."  (Quoted from memory, which is why it's approximate.  I think Benedict De Spinoza wrote something similar.)


Do unethical acts that are tangential to methodology taint research?

First, I think there is an important distinction to be made between unethical and illegal.

While most things that are illegal are also unethical (e.g., murder, theft), there are many cases where the laws themselves are either clearly unethical (e.g., slavery) or may be considered unethical by a reasonable person (e.g., prohibitions on stem cell research).

Let us thus consider only unethical acts unrelated to research, whether illegal or not.  Here, I think there are at least two good motivations for considering unethical acts that do not directly call the methodology into question:

Concern about honesty: If you find out that somebody has been gratuitously lying in other aspects of their life, it's entirely reasonable to wonder whether they would feel comfortable lying in their research as well. Motivation matters here: a person lying to protect themselves or to cover a sexual infidelity is not particularly relevant, while a person lying with the intention of advancing themselves or hurting others is of much more concern. In this case, there is no "smoking gun" indicating results should be withdrawn, but it would be entirely reasonable to do a careful process re-review of their work for validity in the light of the new knowledge.
Punishment: If a person does terrible things that damage the scientific community or the larger community, one may wish to exile them and their research as part of the punishment, in order to make it clear one should not expect to profit from such behavior. This is clearest in the case of unethical acts directly related to research, such as sabotaging a rival or non-consensual medical experiments, even when they don't invalidate the methodology and conclusions. It's less clear what one should do about the scientific legacy of say, an abusive rapist who happens to also be a highly successful mathematician.

There is still no clear consensus on what to do in such cases, even in the case of Nazi medical research.  Personally, I favor the approach suggested by some of using only when no other citation is possible, and then without a formal citation and with inclusion of an explanation of why this research is problematic. Should this be extended to lesser criminals like rapists and abusers?  Unclear, though I think it's certainly worth considering for those who poison a scientific community with their behavior.


Is it appropriate to ask a professor to bump up a grade when I suspect it may be at the cutoff?

Consider asking for an appointment to review the final exam.

Preemptively saying "I might be below the cut-off and would appreciate free points" is obnoxious. It's likely the professor has already taken your improvement and other factors into account. Further, asking for additional points for any reason other than a grading mistake is really inappropriate, though it's so common that most professors accept it.

On the other hand, waiting until the final grades might be too long. Once the professor has made a decision about what grade you deserve, they are much less likely to reverse that decision.

So, a good middle ground is to ask for an appointment to review the exam. This is a good thing to do in any case; further, the professor will take extra care when assigning your grade, as he will anticipate having to justify it to you. This also does not put you in an awkward position if you actually earned the grade you wanted -- you can just review the exam and thank him for a good course. Note, if you do this, you should make a good-faith review of the exam and an honest assessment of what you deserve; this is not "one weird trick" to get free points.


When do I tell my advisor that I'm leaving the PhD?

I've had experience with similar issues and in my opinion, honesty is the best policy assuming that your advisor is a reasonable, non-vindictive person. If the issue is just the topic and the area, and not your advisor personally, then they probably want what's best for you and could actually help you out in working out the details (perhaps offering you an interim position so that you don't lose everything, or agreeing on you acting as a visiting scholar in your institution while your admission to the other place is finalized etc.). If your advisor is not on your side, then I would get out regardless, even risking going back to your home country. There's no point in suffering through a PhD you hate.


What are some tips for crowdfunding science off websites like PetriDish?

These funding mechanisms are in their very infancy, so I don't know if there will any "tried and true" techniques for a few months, assuming the funding model proves to work at all. That being said, it will be very similar to that on Kickstarter:

Advertise in numerous channels. People can only support you if they know about you. Getting the word out is the primary goal in the beginning.
Provide an engaging, easy-to-understand description of:

What you want to research
Why you want to research it
How humanity will benefit from your having researched it
What success will look like

(Note: This last point is often ignored, but it's crucial for the lay-audience. They may expect a particular cancer research project to end with a cancer cure, whereas in reality it will end with the identification of a particular protein responsible for a particular mutation. Stating this will avoid making you as an individual and scientists as a whole from looking stupid in the eyes of the public.)

Offer a constant (strictly defined, e.g. "weekly" or "biweekly") updates to backers

Regarding useful perks, I've noticed that a few of the successful drives offered things such as:

Engrave the name of the backer or a loved on the instruments being used
Paintings of the organisms/landscape/imagery being studied
Naming a star/organism after the backer/loved one

The final topic, transparency, is more difficult. On the one hand, you will need complete transparency. On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much transparency. In brief, your updates should serve to inform the backers about your work, while simultaneously and more subtly serving two other goals as well:

Convince your backers that you're actually doing work
Maintain their confidence in your ability to do the work

tl;dr -

Make everything  - everything - about your proposed project crystal clear for the layperson
Make the prizes cutesy and attractive, but not too lavish; they're investing for science, and secondarily maybe a little gift
Your updates should, in order: (1) inform about your research, (2) convince the reader of your scienceness


How to type a foreign language author name with special characters?

Try shapecatcher.com and detexify.kirelabs.org to identify the characters.  Then proceed from there by inserting a Unicode char in a Unicode font or a latex command (depending on whether you are using MSWord or some form of LaTeX).  Once you have identified the character, also try an online search engine to find out spellings easier for you, e.g., the romanized ones.

If everything else fails, ask the sources where you got the name from. The contact person can be an editor, a publisher, a coauthor, or the author himself/herself. Some authors maintain homepages with a correct spelling of their name; if it is the case for the author in question, take a look at their HTML code.


How to know which citation style is applied?

I don't know an easier way than including the reference in http://www.citethisforme.com and then changing the reference style to see, if I can find a style equal to the one I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the amount of reference styles is very large.


At what stage should acknowledgements be inserted into the paper if review is not double-blind?

If it's not double-blind, then it generally doesn't matter whether the acknowledgements are in the initial version or not: the reviewers will simply ignore them.

When there are page limits involved, however, I like to put the acknowledgements in as early as possible.  That way, their size is built in from the beginning and we don't have to figure out how to fit the extra space during the revision.


Am I disadvantaged by declining authorship?

Declining authorship is quite common among my collaborators. There are cases when you disagree with the paper and you do not want to assume responsibility for what is written there. Declining authorship is the right thing to do. I assume that in your case, you agree with your coauthors. In this case, you did the right thing to decline authorship when you feel that your contribution is too small, even if this could be a disadvantage to you.

I declined authorship twice so far (and I don't have that many publications). In both cases, I felt that my contribution was too small to warrant authorship. In the second case, I didn't agree fully with the paper, but I was involved in the experiments leading to the paper. In both cases, however, my coauthor(s) insisted of including me. In this case, I tried to contribute more in ways I could, such as by reading the draft thoroughly and giving constructive feedback that would improve the quality of the paper.

There are different ways your potential employer assess your publications. Some base it on the total number of papers and citations you authored; in this case you could be at a disadvantage if you have fewer papers than you would have by not declining. Some do not care about papers you are not a first author of (in my field the first author is assumed to have performed most of the work); in this case it does not matter if you have more papers or not.

However, in a job interview, your potential employer might ask you about your specific role in a paper, especially if the paper turns out to be highly cited (I was asked this question before). If you are not able to give a satisfactory answer, this could be a disadvantage instead of an advantage to you.


Additional correction after paper publication

A more serious content issue could be corrected with an erratum or corrigendum, but if it's a minor typesetting issue, there's no chance they'll make the change. It's simply too late. The paper issues might already be printed, the electronic versions already distributed.


When is it acceptable to ask a graduate program about their admissions decision?

If there's a specific reason, such as a deadline at another school, that it would be helpful to know your status, then I think its very reasonable to send a message to the graduate director at a program you're considering.  Asking just because you're curious is generally discouraged, but if you have new information, then its reasonable to ask for an update.


Which year can I start to apply graduate program in United States?

What matters is whether you will have completed your undergraduate degree before the graduate program starts.

For example, suppose there is a program with application deadline December 2017, with enrollment in September 2018.  You can apply this year as long as you expect to finish your undergraduate degree before September 2018.  So if this is your last year and you expect to graduate in spring 2018, you can apply this year.

For students on a traditional US schedule, this would usually be the fourth year of their undergraduate studies.  But some students might be finishing their undergraduate degree in a shorter or longer period of time.  E.g. if this is your fourth year as an undergrad, but you expect to need one more year to finish and will graduate in spring 2019, then do not apply to graduate programs this year.


What is the legal status of using copyrighted images in academic/conference talks?

Legal status can vary by country, content and sometimes even - the intended audience.

In many places you are allow to use otherwise copyrighted materials within fair use, e.g a figure from a paper.

For things, which are not directly relevant to talk (e.g. "let's put a nice stock image of a man with a plant") the story may be different.

In any case:

from the practical perspective, you are unlikely to go to jail (or even: getting fined) for showing copyrighted images in an academic talk,
from the legal perspective, unless you are a lawyer (or your country has a very clear law on copyright) you are unlikely to know wether is is legal or not.

Highly relevant:

Can I use images showing up in Google search for my presentation slides without violating any copyright?


Can I put an invited talk on my CV if the conference was canceled?

Yes. I had a similar experience where my agency restricted travel and did not allow me to present. In my case, I listed that the presentation was delivered by someone else who could attend.

Matching the style of your CV, I would write something like:

  Academic, F. My cool title. Awesome conference. City, State. March 2020. Invited oral presentation. Unable to deliver, meeting canceled due to COVID-19 outbreak.

Based upon personal experience, I will now be adding a similar entry to my own CV. Also, based upon some of the comments, here's why I would list an invited talk even if the talk was not delivered: The invitation is an honor in itself because it shows people recognize you, at some level, as an expert on a topic. Thus, the invitation has value besides simply delivering the actual talk.


Is it any unwritten rule, that for how long after getting PhD is it appropriate to publish with your advisor?

You should not only publish with your advisor, because it suggests a lack of independence, and that rather than emerging as an independent researcher, you are still essentially "doing the work" for your advisor's ideas.

That being said, I know a number of people who still work with their advisors on projects - the key is to project an image of "long-standing partnership". This is especially compounded in public health (my field) where a single large study is a vast mine of potential papers, and so it's likely someone will be working on the same data with the same people long after they've started their own careers. The key is to have a place carved out that's clearly "Yours".

If there's a secret statistic for it, I must not have gotten my copy in the mail yet.


Fancy/pretty or concise and informative plots?

I prefer plots which communicate information and tell the story so clearly, that I do not stop to think which software was used to create them. There are several good ways of achieving it and many ugly ways of failing it. The art of preparing a good plot (and infographics in general) is a complex matter and can not be boiled down to a one-bit answer like "do/don't use ggplot".

To learn this art, read more papers, highlight plots you like and analyze what you like about them and how it was achieved. Try reproducing a nice plot in your favourite software. Consult your supervisor and colleagues for more hints.


On getting reviews for research work as independent learners

You want to try a combination of networking and learning how to ask good questions.

Networking—you have to find people in your field in order to grow, and you can only find people in your field by networking appropriately. Try to find money in the department/broader university to attend a conference, or even just email authors of papers you cite. Describe your situation (briefly). If they're local, ask to meet with them for 30 minutes-1 hr; if not, try for phone calls.
Do note that, generally speaking, graduate students/postdocs will be more willing to give you time than advisors; try to get in touch with them as well.

Asking good questions—you can and should assume that no one has time to act as your advisor. Because of this, your interaction with those whom advise you will be brief. Make the most of those minutes. Give a summary of your work, ask very directed, substantial questions. Make the most of your meetings.

Personally, the most productive meeting I had in the entirety of my just-under-five year graduate school stint was one with a member of my thesis committee, and the entire meeting lasted 15 minutes. I gave the right background, asked the right questions, and came away with what turned into my thesis project. (I don't think I've done that well since.) Do your homework, and you may benefit nicely.


Is it possible for people with a stutter to have a career in academia?

I don't want to turn this into an answer about how universities or society in general should deal with disabilities.  I will offer what I have witnessed first hand through a good friend.

Can you work in Academia?

Yes.

Will people make fun of you?

Probably but who cares.  People make fun of others for everything.

But...

don't try to hide your problem
embrace the stuttering.  Nobody cares that much unless you do.
spit out what you are trying to say.  The content and meaning are key.  Don't let the stuttering stop your speech.
don't try to dumb down your words to help the stuttering (to a point).  You will be judged by most on what you say, don't let stuttering get in the way of that.

So my friend - let's call him Paul (sorry Paul for using your real name) had a big banquet speech he was asked to do after much of his research was published.  Four of the faculty members/advisors Paul was thanking were named John...  So he says, "I would like to thank Joh-Joh-Joh-Joh-Joh-Joh-John.  (He catches his breathe and smiles at the crowd).  Well I had fou-fou-four Johns and I think I thanked too many."  It could have been two hours of drinking but people were honestly laughing for two minutes straight.

In reality it probably would effect you more if you were in a field were public speaking were part of the field.  Paul was a scientist.  I hate to say this but I think the stuttering became his calling card and made him even more likable, and even better presenter.

Add:  After seeing this question get a ton of hits I want to be clarify my answer.  Stuttering and other issues, whether it is a disability or just something that someone isn't good at - be honest with yourself about any "shortcomings" and don't make others feel awkward (I know this is hard).  Whether it is a strong accent, stuttering, talking low, saying "ummmm", whatever - if you know you have an issue own it and put your audience at ease.

A perfect example of this is Jeff Foxworthy.  He readily admits that he talks like a redneck.  That is his shtick.  People like him and think he's hilarious because he openly talks about his accent and redneckedness.  If he came out to an audience, unknown to them, and tried to (poorly) hide his accent and redneck background, people would feel uncomfortable.   Everyone has issues, some worse than others.  Acknowledging your issues makes your more personable and relateable to your audience as they know that they too might have trouble talking in front of a large group.


To whom the follow up email must be sent?

I was in many hiring committees in math. If it was the last of several interviews for the position, the decision was likely made during the same day. If so there is no need in any follow up letter. If it was not the last interview, then it is too early for any follow up letter. In any case if the decision is positive you will hear from the hiring committee soon after it is made.


How to request retraction of a published paper when contacting the editors and publishers doesn't work?

If you have tried the journal/publisher's complaint process without success, and you believe that the journal editors are not handling the matter according to commonly accepted publication ethics standards, you can contact COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. All Elsevier journals are members of COPE.

  If a reader or an author has concerns about a member editor, journal or publisher which they wish to raise to the attention of COPE, they should email  the COPE Membership Assistant and supply the following information:

  A summary of the concerns in 500 words—this will be shared with the editor and/or publisher and thus the summary should be as clear as possible and provided in a polite tone.
  An outline of the points within the COPE Code of Conduct which are relevant to the concerns.

Source: COPE: Contact Us

This flowchart explains how COPE handles complaints about member journals.


Avenues to collaborate with PHD students / professors while working

This is certainly field specific, but in general there are few straightforward fora where someone who is simply interested in research in general can collaborate with a PhD student or academic. Such collaborations occur and often the results are amazing, but they tend to arise more organically than a cold email.

Thus to answer your penultimate question: yes becoming an academic yourself is the best way to collaborate with academics and do academic research. As for finding a programme that is right for you, that's another kettle of fish and you should be looking for researchers who work in the area you wish to enter and consider them as possible supervisors: that's research for you to do.


Does switching majors look bad for graduate admissions?

TLDR: You should switch majors
Engineering (of any kind) is hard. If you are excited about it and love it, then putting in the work is possible.  But if you hate the classes, you are going to find it very hard to be motivated enough to do the work needed to get As.
And you do want As for grad school. One bad semester won't kill your grad school chances.  Four more bad semesters in a row will.
Either Electrical or Mechanical are both good starting points for BME (just as good as if not better than Chemical).  Pick whichever you suits you best and switch.


How to refer to an Academic, NGO and private partnership organization?

In my experience, an organization that organizes activities across multiple organizations would be called a coalition.


There's no absolute universal standard as to how this will be perceived, but it's definitely better to be in the situation you describe than the reverse (good in general courses, mediocre in the major)!

One of the issues is where the first-year grades are bad. If you have some poor grades in "general education" classes unrelated to your major (for example, an engineer who gets a "C" in American history and English literature), that hopefully won't matter too much if the admissions committee is actually looking at the transcript, rather than just the overall GPA.

Ultimately, it comes down to how rigid the admissions committee is about reviewing things, as you can see in this thread.


Can I be admitted into a PhD program with non-thesis MS degree?

It depends on the university. Some Ph.D. programs have extra requirements for students who did not complete a thesis (or they will not accept these students). Others are fine with a 'capstone/directed project' which has elements of a thesis. Others may simply ask that students who did not complete a thesis take the GRE for admission into the Ph.D. program while not requiring this for students who did complete a thesis (I attend an R1 university in the US and this is the case here).

So the answer is yes, but it depends on the university.


References on how often finances are cited as a barrier to graduate study

Most of the research I identified describes the impact of undergraduate loan debt (as a proxy for financial burden) on pursuing graduate education. I found fewer studies discussing the direct financial burden as a deterrent, though some literature does review the impact of financial stress on graduate school completion (See Strayhorn, 2010 for further sources).

One study of undergraduates in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math fields) examined the impact of undergraduate debt on graduate school enrollment, breaking down the analysis by racial and ethnic classification (Malcom & Dowd, 2012). They found those with greater debt than the average for other students in their racial or ethnic group were less likely to enroll in graduate school within two years of graduation. Borrowing any amount of debt reduced the likelihood of enrolling in graduate school. For most racial and ethnic groups (the exceptions being African Americans and Asians with high levels of debt), graduate school enrollment declines as the level of undergraduate debt increases.

Another study of bachelor’s degree recipients examined the likelihood they transitioned to graduate school within 1 year of completing their undergraduate degree (Millet, 2003). The study found that students with more than $5,000 of debt were less likely to apply to graduate school compared to students with no debt. However, for students who expressed intent to attend graduate school and were accepted, their degree of debt did not seem to be a barrier. Additionally, the study found that the graduate school’s financial aid offer significantly predicted enrollment, and the author suggests the financial aid may counteract the burden of undergraduate debt when students decide to pursue graduate school. This paper also has a nice literature review section within this paper, which may point you to additional studies.

One study of 19 African American nurses found that financial concerns were frequently cited as barriers to attending nursing graduate programs (Mingo, 2007). In a quantitative survey, 9 students listed financial issues as one of the their primary barriers, and 1/3 of write-in answers expressed financial concerns.

However, some studies have found neutral or even positive effects of undergraduate debt on graduate school attendance. One study of undergraduates failed to find a relationship between undergraduate debt and plans to seek advanced degrees (Monks, 2001); the literature review in this paper cites several other studies, including some using national student surveys, that came to similar conclusions (see Baum & Saunders, 1998; Schapiro, O’Malley, & Litten, 1991). Additionally, 348 senior undergraduate psychology students – found that concerns about cost did not differ between students intending to apply and those not intending to apply re: grad school.

A national survey of over 7,000 undergraduate students found that undergraduate debt affected public and private university graduates differently (Zhang, 2013). For students who received their bachelor’s from a public college, debt reduced the likelihood they would attend expensive graduate programs such as doctoral, MBA, and professional degree programs; it had no effect on master’s programs. For private college graduates, debt was actually positively associated with attending MBA or professional programs, and did not effect other graduate programs either positively or negatively.

Similarly, another study sought to determine whether the 1992 Higher Education Act amendments, which expanded federal student loans and access to those loans, impacted the relationship between debt and graduate school (Kim & Eyermann, 2006). This study compared students who had graduated before and after the amendments and found that before the amendments, students with more debt were less likely to attend graduate school. After the amendments, the study found that debt did not impact low or high income students plans to attend graduate school. Additionally, they found that post-amendment middle income students actually experienced positive relationship between accessing loans and intending to pursue graduate school. The authors suggest that for these students the increased access to loans (even though it resulted in greater debt) actually facilitated their plans to pursue advanced degrees.

In sum, most studies use undergraduate student loan debt as a proxy for financial barriers to graduate education, and results have been mixed.

Baum, S., & Saunders, D. (1998). Life After Debt: Results of the
National Student Loan Survey. Selected Text from the Final Report.
Journal of Student Financial Aid, 28(3), 7-23.
Kim, D., & Eyermann, T. S. (2006). Undergraduate borrowing and its
effects on plans to attend graduate school prior to and after the
1992 Higher Education Act amendments. Journal of Student Financial
Aid, 36(2), 5-21.
Landrum, R. E. (2010). Intent to apply to graduate school:
Perceptions of senior year psychology majors. North American Journal
of Psychology, 12(2), 243-254.
Malcom, L. E., & Dowd, A. C. (2012). The impact of undergraduate debt
on the graduate school enrollment of STEM baccalaureates. The Review
of Higher Education, 35(2), 265-305.
Millett, C. M. (2003). How undergraduate loan debt affects
application and enrollment in graduate or first professional school.
Journal of Higher Education, 74(4), 386-427.
Mingo, A. D. (2007). Barriers and facilitators affecting African
Americans continuation into graduate programs in nursing. The ABNF
Journal: Official Journal of the Association of Black Nursing Faculty
in Higher Education, Inc, 19(2), 51-63.
Monks, J. (2001). Loan burdens and educational outcomes. Economics of
Education Review, 20(6), 545-550.
Schapiro, M. O., O'Malley, M. P., & Litten, L. H. (1991). Progression
to graduate school from the “elite” colleges and universities.
Economics of Education Review, 10(3), 227-244.
Strayhorn, T. L. (2010). Money matters: The influence of financial
factors on graduate student persistence. Journal of Student Financial
Aid, 40(3), 1-23.
Zhang, L. (2013). Effects of college educational debt on graduate
school attendance and early career and lifestyle choices. Education
Economics, 21(2), 154-175.


How to convince my PhD advisor to keep working with me if I am switching university?

It sounds like you should probably not expect your advisor to continue as your advisor. In choosing to leave the program (and, indeed, the country), you have relieved him of responsibility.

Advising students is difficult and demanding work. It is much more difficult, and less rewarding (for both the advisor and the student), when done over correspondence. Usually when advisors agree to do this, some combination of the following two factors are in play: (1) the student is near the end of their Ph.D. studies (and already has a thesis problem); (2) the advisor left the university (either temporarily or permanently) and the student didn't want to or couldn't follow them.

I don't know your exact situation, but I would recommend looking for a new thesis advisor in your South American university, while still trying to salvage a productive relationship with your current advisor. Even if he is no longer willing to assume formal responsibility for advising your thesis, he might still be willing to suggest open problems to you, offer advice, or be supportive in other ways.

One course of action that might turn out well for you would be to investigate opportunities that will be available to you at your new university, and schedule an appointment to discuss with your old advisor which of them he thinks it would be most valuable to pursue.

Good luck to you in any case.


Attending a conference that my abusive ex-supervisor is also attending, how I should react?

The best revenge is living well. You have a good start on that working on your topic with a nice supervisor, and attending the conference as a volunteer.

Ideally, treat him as just another academic you happen to know, about on the level of a professor who taught one of your undergraduate courses. I understand that may be difficult, but it tells him that his treatment of you was just a minor roadbump in your life. He is too unimportant to be even worth your anger. For a racist, seeing you happily getting on with your life will hurt far more than if you let him see he still has emotional power over you.


Report ancient harassment to the university?

Honestly, I think this is way over the top. I am not even sure if there is anything that could be reported at all.

Let me just sum it up:

This way 30 years ago, nobody except you might remember your case anymore
Its unclear whether you have experienced harassment at all, it's even harder to tell after 30 years. Hurt feelings do not automatically mean that you were harassed.
You did not take immediate actions back then, as you said, you "got over this"
A friend has told you that he retaliated that she did not want to go on a coffee with him. I have heard way too many stories about (female) students who interpreted way too much into their professors'/teachers' behavior. I would be very cautious with stories heard second-hand. If your friend is really sure that something went wrong, she has to address this issue.

If your report this professor: Which reactions do you expect by the university? Is there anything that they could do now? On the other hand: Are you aware that you could bring him into serious trouble, perhaps just due to a misunderstanding 30 years ago?

  For the record, this is not about me. I pretty much got over this a
  long time ago. My concern is for young women in his classes today.

I think today's women are confident enough to oppose against harassment on their own. Our society is way more sensitive now.


To come right to the point: after accepting the first offer, you should have withdrawn all your other applications.  When you were contacted for the second interview, it was not enough to inform them that you had already accepted an offer -- you should have informed them of this and therefore declined the interview.  (I find it strange though that this second institution was happy to interview someone who told them they had already accepted another offer.  I wonder if there was some kind of miscommunication / misunderstanding here.)  In academia, accepting an offer means committing to show up to that job for at least one semester (which is the atomic unit of most academic jobs).  In my circles at least, the minimum length of time to spend in an accepted academic position and "leave honorably" is one academic year.

  I have heard that many people do these things (declining offers already accepted) for academic positions, but that this is seen much worse for postdocs positions.

Yes, it happens somewhat frequently.  Like a lot of negative human behavior, that it happens frequently does not excuse it.  I don't necessarily agree that it is seen as worse for postdocs; it really depends on the situation.  I would argue that all other things being equal, getting reneged on by a temporary employee is not as bad as getting reneged on by a (relatively) permanent employee.

  However, I think that everyone would agree that the second offer is substantially a better option, even the supervisor from the first university.

Better for you.  But would the supervisor from the first university think it is better for her?  What happens to her if you renege -- will she have the time and opportunity to hire someone else?  If she can't hire anyone, will that have negative repercussions on her work and the work of her affiliates and students?

The way to find out the answers to these questions is to ask.  I strongly suggest contacting your supervisor as soon as possible.  Explain your situation and perspective, including why the second position would be substantially more desirable to you for personal reasons.  Then ask what repercussions there would be if you weren't able to show up for the first position.  If there would be severely negative consequences for your supervisor, I think you should stick with the job you committed to.  Otherwise you may suggest to the supervisor, with maximum politeness, that you would like to take the second job instead of the first, and see if she will give you her blessing.

Good luck.


Should I put my not-yet-submitted work on my web page?

I varies with fields and journals.

Some journals do allows posting preprints on one's webpage, or on a preprint server.

Some not, but they don't care. (And some academicians do put their papers on their websites, even if it is against rules.)

Some don't allow and do care, so putting the preprint on your webpage may disqualify you from publishing this work.

(If it fits your discipline, why not using http://arxiv.org/?)


What should an undergrad CS student know to publish to a conference?

How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?

That question depends on a lot of factors. Here are a few of them:

What is the significance of your research?
How much of your research is unique, novel, and relevant?
Will other computer scientists be interested in your findings?
How well can you write? How well can you organize your paper?
Where do you intend to publish?

Some conferences and publications are more competitive than others. (Put another way, some have a lower acceptance rate than others.) Much of that depends on who sponsors the conference or publication.

First, you have to do the research (this is not trivial). Significant findings need to come from that research (this doesn't always happen). You have to write that in a way that will appeal to the community (the community can be rather fickle sometimes). Lastly, you have to find some venue where the work can be presented (it's not always easy to find a good match).

If a paper gets rejected, it could be because:

The research doesn't report anything new or significant
The research doesn't report anything of interest to the community
The paper is poorly written
The paper doesn't cite other related research, leading to a credibility problem
There simply wasn't room for your paper in the publication, or it wasn't a good match for that venue

Getting back to your original question, you might be able to publish in a year, if everything goes very smoothly. However, that's a huge "IF." Even established researchers can spend years getting ready for a publication, only to see it be rejected by a committee.

Publication can be a long and arduous process, with plenty of opportunities for obstacles, setbacks, and dead ends. It can be very hard to estimate a timetable, particularly for a first-timer going from start to finish.

Your best bet might be to see what's going on at your university, and see if you can get involved with an established, ohgoing research effort. Before you do that, it might be worth doing a self-evaluation first, so that you're prepared to tell a faculty member what you can offer the research team. For example, perhaps you're a crack programmer, and a research project at your institution needs some software written, in order to complete an experiment or simulation. That might be a more realistic way to get started as a researcher.


Joining ArXiv without university affiliation

Let's distinguish two senses of "affiliation" for arXiv:

The affiliation listed in your arXiv account profile.  The arXiv policies say:

  It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or organizational affiliation. Claimed affiliation should be current in the conventional sense: e.g., physical presence, funding, e-mail address, etc. Misrepresentation of identity or affiliation, for any reason, is possible grounds for immediate and permanent suspension.

So you cannot list your former university as an affiliation in your profile, much as you might wish to, because it is not your current affiliation.  You can list a current employer if you have one and if your employer says it's okay, otherwise you can enter "None" or "Independent" or "Private" or anything else to that effect (or maybe even leave it blank, not sure if that's possible).

Anyway, as GoodDeeds mentioned, it does not appear that your profile affiliation is listed publicly anywhere.
The affiliations listed within the articles you submit to arXiv.  These should, as usual, reflect your affiliation at the time that the work was done.  It is perfectly fine if that is different from your current affiliation as it appears on your arXiv account; this is not misrepresentation in any way, and there is no reason for it to incur a ban or any other negative consequences.  People change affiliations all the time, and there is nothing wrong with submitting an article that you wrote some time ago when your affiliation was different.

In the unlikely event you're questioned about it, you can just explain: "When I wrote the paper I was affiliated with University X; now I am not."  In the even unlikelier event that you're asked to provide verification of this, presumably it won't be hard to do so.

So to summarize: Yes, you can create an arXiv account, but don't use your former university as your affiliation in your profile.  You may need endorsement in order to submit papers; we have several other questions about this process on the site.  You can list your previous affiliation on the title page of those papers as you normally would.