How do I handle a Program Officer who simply will not execute an awarded contract?

In your question, I am struck by the lack of information about why funds are not moving, for which there may be many reasons.

In many cases, program officers are not actually able to execute a contract themselves, but need to depend on another set of contracting personnel, sometimes in an entirely different agency.  For example, Agency 1 may award and obligate the funds, but Agency 2 actually manages and disburses the funds (this may sound crazy, but there are actually good reasons it is handled in this way).

In other cases, there may be an internal block of some sort, often having to do with the interaction of external politics with laws.  For example, acting leadership whose appointment has not been officially approved by Congress often has less authority than approved leadership, and our current presidency has resulted in many agencies being without approved leadership.  Funds may also be approved, but then the money might be diverted elsewhere by forces above the ability of a program officer to control.

You may also be running into a problem where they wish to award the funds but there is a regulatory issue or contracting slowdown regarding your own institution that is blocking it, and they assume that you are aware of it when you are not. For example, I know of a case where an award was held up for a long time because it was going to an institution which did not support ROTC in the way the specific awarding agency was required to by a "side clause" in regulation.

You need to get on the phone with the program officer to have a frank conversation about the state of your finances and find out exactly why and where the blockage is. Then you can find out exactly who you need to be interacting with (or asking contracting personnel to interact with) in order to unstick your project.

Finally, while 15 months seems long, it is not at all unusual in the case of certain agencies, so unless you know more, you don't even know whether it's an issue for concern or not.


What to do if a paper by respected authors has obvious problems, and I have told them so already?

Just a guess here, but I think you have done everything you can be expected to do and it up to the authors now. If they do something positive by your standards then all is well. But if they don't you aren't likely to get them to change unless they reach out to you in some way.

You could, of course, produce a study with the correct methodology and attempt to publish it as a confirmation of the results of the other group. That is worth doing in any case. But how much you want to criticize the "respected authors" in your work is a judgement call that you should make only rather late in your process, not before you begin.

I think that would be a good outcome for everyone, actually.

But don't let the inaction of others frustrate you. It is out of your hands what other people do and going up against an establishment might not be a good career move.

I'll add here that you might not be the only one to have informed them and that they are taking time dealing with it somehow. Anything from ignoring it to fixing it.


What is the most accepted time for a pre-tenure move?

I think the answer is "when you find a good opportunity."  I have a slightly embarrassing amount of experience in this regard, as well as some experience on the other end of things viewing such applications.  My experience is that they will not care where you are in your tenure review process; the advice about moving pre- vs. post-tenure is mostly just because there are usually more internal barriers to hiring someone with tenure (which still happens quite often).


Etiquette for an initial meeting with a prospective advisor: What is expected of the student?

For an initial meeting, I would take an general idea of the kinds of things you'd like to do in a particular advisor's group, a sense of what the advisor works on—you don't necessarily have to have read papers in advance, and an open mind. That said, you'll make a better impression if you have read a few recent papers, and have a few intelligent questions to ask. It will pique the advisor's interest, and show your sincerity.

As for coming in with ideas for a research project, this depends a lot on how the project will be funded. If you have your own fellowship and can design your own project, then you should definitely have an idea or two ready. On the other hand, if you will be funded by an existing research grant within the group, your choice of projects will be more constrained.

One final note—I would say that it's definitely not required that you take a course with an advisor before considering them as a research advisor. If that were the case, I would have been on a completely different career path than the one I'm on now, as I'd be working for my fourth-choice advisor (who was the only one I took a class with before choosing a research group!).


Is it ethical to keep authorized readings after course is over?

Technically, it may not be ethical to keep a case or data set past its license period. Most dataset licenses also specifically state that the holder should not hold material of both physical or digital form (or even preprocessed form) of the licensed matter past its license term. It also stated that the backup of all forms should be deleted.

Having stated above, it is still a widely practised taboo to use cases and datasets past their license periods. You may attain knowledge from it but will only get into trouble if you were to publish any material that relates to the dataset/case that you currently possess beyond its license. This also depends on how strictly the license owner enforces the license.


What is the meaning of “Samuel C. Collins Professor”?

It's a named professorship, which means a couple things.  Generally, endowed chairs are better paid and have some extra funds associated with them.  These are typically funded by a gift to the Institute.  In this case, somebody presumably gave a gift in honor of Prof. Collins, who was a pioneer in low-temperature work.

  Dr. Samuel C. Collins, Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, internationally known as the father of practical helium liquefiers and founder of the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory, died on June 19, 1984 in George Washington University Hospital, Washington, DC.

  In 1946, Dr. Collins and his colleagues at MIT built what became know as the Collins Helium Cryostat. The device provided for the first time reliable, relatively in expensive and adequate supplies of liquid helium. His invention was of great interest to physicists because it opened the door to extensive experimental low-temperature physics

The existence of the endowed professorship is a honor to the memory of the eponymous Samuel Collins, and it is an honor for the current faculty member who holds it.


Is a PhD (economically) still worth doing?

If you look at income alone, it's definitely not worth it - assuming you don't live in a country in which "Herr Doktor" is still highly regarded, and an almost must for high-end jobs in politics and business (like in Germany or Austria).

In industry, there are a few jobs (chip design for Intel or quantitative hedge funds come to mind; maybe in consulting it's a toss up; certainly there are others) where it might help. There are also jobs where it's required to have a PhD (some chemistry research, or such), or at least very beneficial. But outside these somewhat rare positions, HR will put you on a pile called "non-standard degree" which is largely ignored, and you rely on personal connections or quantitative recruiters to even get your foot in.

If you end up in academia as tenured faculty, you get a decent salary with a wide range (e.g., at the top end, Business School finance assistant professors lie around $200k at good schools, to a low end that's a fraction of that if the school or department is less wealthy, or the field less supported by industry). But if you're smart and driven enough to get there, you almost certainly could have long made partner at McKinsey by that time, where you won't go home with less than $1m.

I think the term "still" in your title is a bit off. I don't think this ever was different. You should write a Ph.D. as you're passionate about a field, look for independence, and genuinely love what you're working on. And you should be aware early, and accept, that this is not a choice made for the money.


"Everything in an encyclopedia is Common Knowledge" - actually true?

Taking the statement “anything in an encyclopedia is common knowledge” at face value reveals it is obviously false. In the comments it was pointed out that half of Americans don’t know what century their civil war was in, but there’s also the fact that two thirds of people worldwide have either not heard of the holocaust or engage in holocaust denial. I recently was in a regional trivia competition with thousands of contestants where I had to explain to the organizers that one of their questions were wrong because they had confused density and mass. Virtually all of the questions on Jeopardy! are answerable if you knew everything in an encyclopedia, but even the specially trained contestants don’t know all the answers. Based on these examples alone, I think the idea that the majority of people know all the facts in most encyclopedias is nonsense.

I would strongly advocate for the idea that encyclopedias are irrelevant to the question of if something should be cited. Besides the fact that the vast majority of people don’t know most of the facts in an encyclopedia, there are other reasons to cite things, including:

Giving credit to the discoverer
Providing a link between your work and previous work on the subject
Making it easier for readers to find similar relevant articles.
Providing accountability for your positions. Sometimes encyclopediae are wrong, and the process of looking for a source would hopefully reveal your mistake.

Even if we pretended that it was common knowledge that every triangle-free graph contains an independent set of size Ω(sqrt(n log n)), all the above reasons to cite that fact would apply.


What do Grad Schools think about Pass/No Pass courses?

I don't think you have anything to worry about. You seem to be doing the right thing in your major and that will be the important consideration for grad school. But anything you do to increase supplementary skills is a positive thing, not negative. For example, even an online no-credit course can increase your skills and would have a small positive effect. If you were doing this in physics courses it would be viewed differently.

You have a good explanation to give for your choices. If asked, just present that. No one should think less of you or your abilities.


Job Application - Non-Tenure Track and Tenure Track in One Ad

Schools sometimes double up their job ads in ways confusing to applicants. For instance, a school may identify a single position as "Instructor, Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor," or as "Instructor/Assistant Professor/Associate Professor," signalling that they would offer a title based on the chosen applicant's experience and credentials. Alternatively, they may have multiple positions open but file one job ad. (It could be a deliberate cluster hire, or just a matter of how the department filed the positions.)
What you're describing is a blend of both approaches - hiring for positions of multiple ranks in one institution in one ad. There is no industry standard for how applicants should handle this exact situation. Instead, I'd advise treating each position like a separate search. File applications for each position you would like that you are qualified for.
This is the recommendation of Karen Kelsky (The Professor Is In), for instance, if a department advertises two positions:

But anyway, my answer is yes. If you are a plausible candidate for both searches, apply for both. In most cases the search committees will be made up of different faculty members, and while files may be shared across searches, you can’t assume that they will be. So to make sure your file is read by all concerned parties, send it to both searches.

So you should tailor cover letters and other materials to each position and its requirements.  If that means applying for an NTT position that emphasizes teaching and a TT position that emphasizes research, address teaching more in the NTT application and foreground research in the TT position. Let the respective committees behind the ad decide whether they want you.


I am taking a Bachelors in Information Technology, but I have a massive fear of public speaking

I don't know anything about your specific condition, but for some things that seem similar there is a possible solution.

It may not be possible to overcome the actual fear of speaking, but it may be possible, with practice, to overcome the appearance of fear, so that you can actually be effective in spite of it.

Unfortunately most careers, even those that are quite technical, require some interactions with people that may be very stressful. Autism is a different condition in which people don't pick up the cues that others do, making them awkward in public situations. Fear isn't the issue for them, but the solution is similar - or can be.

The trick is to learn to "play a role" when you are forced to speak in public so that it is your "character" standing in front of those people, not you. You deliver the lines as if you are Romeo on the stage, simply separating yourself from your role. In fact, one way to learn to do this is to join a local theatre group and take a role in a locally produced play.

But one iteration isn't going to make much difference. Your experience with the prof who let you give a more private presentation is a start, but from there it is possible to branch out to put yourself in other situations so that they become more familiar and you learn to quickly turn on your "speaking role" that you hide behind.

Not easy, but others have done it. Most people can do hard things if they want it badly enough and find a path to the goal, even if it is difficult.

It is even possible that with enough practice, in safe environments especially, you can learn to overcome the actual fear.

It would be wise, of course, to check this advice with your advisor/physician.


How to follow an article citations when you are not the author?

Search for the paper on google scholar in the "Search" field.
In the search results, it will say "Cited by" below each hit, and if you click you can see the citations.
Moreover, once you see the list of citations, there is an option "Create alert" on the left which allows to create an alert alerting you when the paper is cited.


Does registering in Editorial Manager® and indicating that I am available as a reviewer increase my chances of being invited to review manuscripts?

This depends on how the editor finds reviewers. Some (most?) editors select reviewers the way you described: from the references, the editor's personal contacts, etc. Others search the system. Editorial Manager allows the authors to select the subfield of their paper, which in turn can be matched to reviewers' interests. An editor who's searching the database for reviewers then can find you if you register.

One thing is certain: registering in Editorial Manager won't lower your chances of being invited (unless you have a track record of writing bad reviews, since your reviews will be tracked by the system).


Is it OK to have subsections with the same name?

You typically have a great deal of freedom in deciding how to structure the presentation of your thesis.  If parallel construction is a good way to present your work, and if you aren't constrained not to by your advisor or your institution's regulations, I see no reason to prefer an overly verbose subsection title over a succinct title that happens to be the same as a subsection title in another section.


What are some guidelines to keep in mind when selecting members of one's PhD committee?

There are some general guidelines for choosing members of a PhD committee:

They should have some enthusiasm for the work that you do. If they're not invested in seeing you succeed, you won't get as much utility out of that committee member as someone else who might not be as knowledgeable, but is more committed.
They should have the time to be on your committee. If they're extremely busy, then it doesn't help to have them on a committee, because it will be difficult for them to attend the meetings—or it will make scheduling the meetings a nightmare.
They should not have conflicts with either you or your advisor. A thesis committee is already a somewhat political body. There's no need to add extra politics to the situation by having interpersonal or professional conflicts before the committee even begins to meet!
Collectively, there should not be a power "imbalance." If your advisor is a new assistant professor, don't overload the committee with a bunch of full professors holding named chairs, and vice versa.

When they will set preliminary exams, there's the additional qualification of:

The committee members should be familiar enough with your area that they know what it might make sense to test you on, but not so familiar with your work that they turn it into a "gotcha" game.


Uncertainty in Essay Writing: How do I know I will find a good argument?

Simple: You start exploring several ideas, gathering references, learning how the attempted solutions work, searching for possible extensions/alternative approaches.

As Edison said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". You'd have to put in the "perspiration" part to be able to see the "inspiration" spark. Or, as Pasteur stated it, "Chance favours the prepared mind".


Is there a structured meritocracy outside of academia?

What is a top job?

The "top" of the profession isn't always clear outside of academia. In addition, your premise is arguable; while tenured professors are the highest ranked producers, you will often find that deans and other leadership roles have more authority within the organization and higher pay.

Promotional potential

This somewhat mirrors industry. Most firms have several levels of seniority or expertise in their engineering ranks, and many projects or departments have a chief engineer. Ultimately, however, there will be executives with authority over the engineers who are typically both non-technical and highly paid. On top of that, in my industry, it's about 50/50 between project managers with technical backgrounds vs MBAs.

Career paths

Often, there will be hints or outright questions from your managers about your career goals. You seem like you'd prefer the technical path (vs the managerial path) when opportunities arise for development or promotion.

Engineers can typically find employment in a variety of industries, but you would expect to start in a better position if you work for a company where your research is somewhat relevant.

Your industry will influence which certifications, skills, and experience are most valuable; there are no universal metrics comparable to the traditional academic metrics such as publication/citation count, H-index, or impact factor.


How to make my work publishable if my supervisor isn’t any help?

The foremost thing you need is a mentor familiar with the subject to guide you through the process of paper writing and in particular provide feedback to you. Unless you are very good at it, writing a mathematical paper without any feedback is a bad idea, as it’s very difficult to estimate yourself whether your writing is understandable to others. Also, scientific writing is an art of its own that you probably have not mastered yet.

As you already guessed, the canonical choice for such a mentor is your supervisor, but as he is not an option, I would consider the following (in roughly this order):

other members (PhD students, postdocs, etc.) of your supervisor’s group who have experience in paper writing;
visiting scientists or collaborators of your supervisor;
other scientists from your department, with whom you are on friendly terms;
scientists from other universities doing related work;
look for a mentor on your department’s bulletin board or similar.

To avoid quarrels with potential mentors and because it’s ethical, you should clarify the following:

You are not good at estimating the publishability of your work. It may very well be that it turns out to be unpublishable.
The essentials of the situation between you and your supervisor.
How you will handle authorship: Just mentoring your paper writing does not qualify for authorship by common authorship standards, but it’s not unlikely that your mentor will, e.g., find some extension or improvement of your work that is worthy of authorship. Authorship may be a relevant incentive for mentors. For more information, see authorship.

Together with a mentor it should be much easier to decide on the publishability of your work and what journal is suitable for it.

Finally, some further caveats:

Depending on how much your supervisor laid the intellectual foundations for your reasearch, e.g., by giving you detailed ideas on what you should research and how to do it, he may have reasonable authorship claims. Unless he verifiably abandons these claims, this would lead to all sorts of trouble.
If you are worried about your work being stolen, you can publish the current state as a preprint, e.g., on the ArXiv. Be aware that there are journals that do not allow for such prior publication, but as far as I know, this is not a problem in mathematics.


Research with Partisan Implications - Is it worth it?

A politically-focused paper may harm your standing among those with an opposing viewpoint.  This perhaps should not happen, but it's an unfortunate reality of human nature.

If you publish a paper that could be interpreted as "party X is worse than Y", people (even scientists) are going to read that through a lens of their own biases, to some extent.  If they support party X, they may be less likely to believe your conclusions, more likely to challenge you, and/or have an emotional reaction against it.  Some people will be able to be impartial and rise above their biases; for others, this may lead to a final judgement about you.

How much this harms you may depend on which side you take.  There have been many studies showing that college professors tend to overwhelmingly favor one side of the political debate in America.  Here is just one example.  This effect is far more extreme in some fields than others.

So, another unfortunate reality is that, depending on the side your paper favors, the results may be very different for your career.  You might be confirming the beliefs of 95% of your colleagues, or you might be challenging those beliefs. I hate to say this, because it sounds like a suggestion of "only do this if your finding matches the existing orthodoxy", which is a highly unscientific approach. But I do think this point needs to be acknowledged.

A political paper may get a lot more attention than the average paper.  Papers like "adherents of party X pick their nose a lot more than adherents of party Y" make great headlines and often get picked up by the media.  They are second only to studies claiming that chocolate, beer, etc. are good for you, in terms of press appeal.

More publicity for you is typically a good thing (assuming you are doing good work). The fact that you published a well-known paper can be a great thing to have on your CV.  On the other hand, it does raise the stakes.  Your paper would be subject to a lot more scrutiny than normal.

In the end, only you can make this decision; there are risks.  But my feeling would be evaluate this very carefully, but do go ahead with it if you think it would make a high quality paper.  Some points on how to proceed:

Don't move forward without someone experienced on board.  Make sure you can get some good, respected people's input.  Ask them about the general idea before you start, and make sure someone more experienced than you is willing to contribute and be an author if you do go ahead with it.
Work hard to overcome your own biases.  I would try hard to find someone with an opposing political viewpoint to review it, to make sure I'm not missing something obvious because of my own bias.  There may be an alternative reading of the data which I haven't seen, because I'm predisposed to think ill of party X.
Do the work meticulously. If this paper does get attention, any error or methodological issue is likely to get picked up.  Make sure you do everything very carefully, document all your methods, test thoroughly, etc.  (Of course you should always do this).
Report the findings in as evenhanded a way as possible.  Don't take unnecessary political potshots.  Don't assume bad intent where your results don't warrant it.  And think about the title you want to give it.  Do you want it to say "Party X is more evil than party Y" or something generic like "The relationship between Foo and party affiliation".
Make sure not to claim too much.  Be clear about the limitations of what your work actually shows.  It's quite common to see papers that jump to unwarranted conclusions or assume causality where they haven't shown that.  Steer clear of such things.  Make sure to be clear about your limitations, and if there are multiple possible interpretations of the results, make sure to discuss them all.


Does the graduate admission committee automatically consider you for a Master's program if they don't accept you for their Ph.D program?

Some do, others don't. I have heard the term 'cash cows' many times when it comes master's student in graduate schools (Because PhD is almost always full funded in a way or another). Some schools might offer you an unfunded master's admission if you don't get into their PhD program, and many applicants think of this as a polite rejection.


Submitting under review paper in the admission process, Is it ok?

If the university says it is fine, then it is fine. Label them correctly, of course. But even if they don't specifically ask for them then a person can submit them as "under review" and it will be properly understood. One might even list work that is well along, but not yet submitted as "work in progress".
Just be honest in labelling. And for those under review, say which journals/conferences are currently reviewing them.


Is citing data from a presentation not trustful?

If the source has been used, it generally must be cited, otherwise you assign yourself results or conclusions obtained by other researchers.

Providing the source is not a question for its reputability. If you think the source is not reputable enough, do not use it in your work. It is not very common but I have even seen "personal communication" as a type of the reference.


Your last sentence makes me think that the question you ask in the title may not be the question you're really interested in. If you feel lost, talk to people. Friends, family, professionals, whichever you feel most comfortable with, but get help.
How much does the future career of a PhD student matter to the advisor? The subsequent careers of the collective PhD graduates influence the attractiveness of the advisor to future PhD students. So it matters, but if the advisor has many successful PhD graduates on their resume, it is a matter of diminishing returns.
Beyond that, a good PhD advisor would feel a moral obligation to ensure their former students land somewhere nice. However, the current Covid situation makes the job market really rather difficult right now, so this is not entirely within the grasp of the advisor. Offering a postdoc is something that the advisor can control, so I can understand why this would seem like a reasonable solution to them.


Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?

This varies by field. In (most) fields that have journal-based publications and no tradition of selective refereed conferences, it might be quite hard to publish a paper in a journal after it has appeared in some proceedings, without substantial changes.

In computer science, in which conference publication is the norm, it is expected that journal papers have first appeared in conference proceedings. This is especially true if the full paper does not fit in the page-limit of the conference proceedings, and proofs or other material had to be left out of the first publication. Typically you have to make some small changes between the conference and the journal version (i.e. include full proofs, include a fuller discussion of related and subsequent work, etc), but in CS, the delta between conference and journal version can be relatively minor.


How to make improvements to an already-published paper?

If the improvements are sufficient to constitute a new paper, then write that paper, referencing the already published paper (but not repeating it) and explaining the improvements.  If the improvements are not enough for a new paper, then I'd suggest preparing a new version of the published paper, incorporating the improvements, and posting it on the arxiv (or in some other highly visible place on the web).


Is there a "Rate my Advisor" type website?

I spoke recently with someone who is building such a website/community, and I doubt they will mind me giving a brief overview of how they intend it to work.

Basically there are 2 issues that are difficult to overcome - assuming all the technological issues are minor:

Skepticism
Slander

Skepticism in the sense of 'Oh, I see this PI has a bad review from 2001, but who's to say that will happen to me. Maybe this one student is an odd-ball'. It also has parallels with the TornadoGuard problem.

And we see this a lot on academia.stackexchange too. We only ever hear 1 side of the story, and that story is rarely impartial. You know, occasionally people like to rant. People often omit the times they made mistakes. It's human nature. And so any website of this nature has to somehow overcome this issue of he-said-she-said, and theres simply no technological device we can implement to get around this. Particularly if you allow anonymous submissions.

The second, slander, is what I believe most people in the pubpeer.com debate are worried about. A deliberate attempt to hurt someone's reputation under the flag of mob-justice. Nitpicking and emotive words, but no real substance, etc. I actually only found out about pubpeer a week or so ago when a colleague at a party showed it to me, and I was shocked to see people I respect being picked apart on there for silly little things. Still, those anonymous criticisms do have some validity, and the concept of post-publication peer review is something I deeply agree with. I think only time will tell what impact sites like pubpeer will have on science. For a PI-review site, it could have disastrous consequences. Potentially legal consequences.

The website/community I referred to up top seemed to have spent a considerable amount of time fleshing out all the technological methods that could help here, and in the end i'm told they settled on the fairly low-tech idea for Skype-based interviews, potentially on a weekly release schedule. The idea is to mainly cater for people who hate their PhD and feel relief knowing they're not the only ones going through hell. So these Skype interviews generally are with post-docs or no-docs who had a bad experience, and they talk about what the end result was, what they'd do differently, if they still feel they were treated unfairly many years down the line (I watched 3 interviews and they were all totally different, so i'm finding it difficult to generalise here). But the big issue for the team putting all this together is finding PhD/post-docs/no-docs who are OK with talking about their experiences. They offered to interview me but I turned them down because, frankly, i'm not that brave. They offered to pixilate my face, but even so... as disappointed as I am with my treatment during my PhD, there's no one specific person that really let me down. It was a system of failures, I think, and one that is unlikely to happen again. So that particular PI-review project wouldn't really help me or people like me.


How can I quickly sort what is peer-reviewed and what isn't in a wide body of literature?

I haven't actually carried this out, but here's a series of steps that might help:

The basic idea is that some academic databases have an option to filter search results by peer-reviewed status. You would use such sites.

At least two that I know of are EBSCO's Business Source Ultimate (BSU) and ProQuest.

You start by searching your chosen database with a generic keyword that would feature in every relevant journal (not necessarily every article, but surely every relevant journal) in your database.

For example, my field is information systems. So, I search for "information" on Business Source Ultimate (BSU): I get around 2.7 million results.

Now you filter by peer reviewed jouranls.

In BSU, I clicked the Limit To option: "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals": I get around 580,000 results. I further click "Academic journals" and get 540,000 results.

You might have to fine-tune the results to get a smaller number.

In the case of BSU, I can export a maximum of 25,000 results, so 540,000 is way too much. So, I fine-tuned my search until I found that searching for "information system" gave only 19,000 results.

Follow the instructions for your database to export ALL the results (not just the 20 or so that appear in your screen) to a spreadsheet file (e.g. Microsoft Excel).

EBSCO has instructions for exporting up to 25,000 results. Unfortunately, for some reason, this mass export option is disabled in my school library system, so my step-by-step example has to end here.

Use the spreadsheet software to remove all the duplicates in the journal column. (Here are instructions for doing that in Excel.)
So, there's your list of peer-reviewed journals in your field of interest.
You can compare your original list of journals with your list of peer-reviewed journals.
If there is any journal from your original list not on the exported list, then do not automatically assume it is not peer-reviewed (my steps are not foolproof); rather you can verify their peer-review status individually just to make sure. But that would be a lot shorter list than what you started with.

Actually, you could repeat all the steps above except to include ALL articles without filtering out non-peer-reviewed journals. Then the difference between the two exported journal lists would be a list of non-peer-reviewed journals, if that makes sense.

But all that said, you cannot assume that the database's marking of peer-reviewed journals is absolutely accurate. However, I hope this idea might help.


In short, the behaviour of your students is not acceptable - no matter how good or bad your teaching was.

If something like this were to happen at my university, I as vice dean for teaching would invite the whole group for a face-to-face meeting and explain to them how adults should solve problems.

In fact, this is something you should aim for, since the problem will persist and affect others as well, since the students' behaviour will not change.

We had good success with early feedback opportunities (not just the end term evaluation), micro-evaluations (anonymous feedback which can be a one-liner) which are discussed with the whole group, an honest open door policy, and with involving student organizations and representatives early on. Some course formats have to be explained to students over and over again... This might be helpful in the future, but won't help for now.

If you are still teaching this course, I'd suggest an intervention (if possible with the help of another neutral professor) where you address the problem in front of the class. If possible, summon an extra meeting which does not take place in your usual teaching room.
For such a setting, I would suggest just asking the students about feedback regarding your lecture, but ask them to follow commonly accepted feedback rules. Afterwards, tell them what you took as the take home message from the feedback.

Afterwards, you should tell them that you prefer direct communication about any issues.

In the best case, they should be ashamed afterwards...


You have a good chance of being considered for admission, but the set of schools you tag is so small and the competition so fierce that it isn't very likely to happen. There will be lots of other applicants who also have excellent records and not so many slots as to make decisions easy.
But, you have a shot at least, so apply. But broaden your search also, so that you have options. Some schools outside the top 10 or top 25 also have excellent programs.
I'm assuming you are in the US where "top ten" seems to be an obsession. There are other places as well, of course.


What makes you keep on reading articles in your non-English native language, while the same information might be published in English?

Your three-part question is quickly answered:

Yes I read articles in my native language
Almost never because very few exist except older ones (ca. 1960s and older) and possibly bachelor or masters theses.
I would definitely cite them if they contained anything useful

Your concern is valid, regardless of preferences, using a common language ensures better spreading of the science. This does not mean non-English science is in any way uninteresting but will obviosuly be harder to find and read. It will be up to scientists in that language to bring the research to general attention. A possibility with thesis work is always to publish it or parts of it in journals and then translated. In such cases nothing is lost (except time for the complete re-writing)

EDIT: This answer was written for the original question which subsequently has been changed, also in terms of focus.


Can I write for another grant while being funded by a grant?

Yes and no. While most (possibly all) funding agencies will not allow you to work more than 100% of your time on a single grant, most universities will allow you to allocate more than 100% of your time (e.g., up to 125% or so) which is reasonable given a full time job is nominally a 40 hour week and 50 hours is not unheard of. This means that you are not using your time that is funded by the grant to apply for another grant, but rather some of that "extra" time. The key thing is that you need to make sure you still accomplish what you set out to do in the grant that is currently funding the majority of your time.


How long and formal should a paper revision letter to the editor be?

The editor needs this letter because she has to make sure that you have adequately taken the reviews into account. She is not going to read your paper to make sure you did.

Thus, in your letter, you have to address each comment and

explain how you implemented it or
explain your good reasons why you chose not to implement it.

Here is a method for writing a letter that ensures that all reviewer comments are systematically addressed.


Is it common for universities to have multiple boards (eg, a General Planning Board, a Finance Board, etc.) and what is the typical name for these?

I know that you ask preferably for the US and UK, but as a side note, this model is standard for universities in Switzerland (and presumably other German-speaking countries). These are typically called Kommissionen (which translate to commissions or I think more appropriately committees). Contradictory to your example, these committees are not exclusively staffed with professors. They are composed of a president and representatives of all levels of the university employees and students: faculty, "intermediaries" (postdocs, lecturers), admin/technical staff, and students.

Here is the list of the different committees from the University of Zurich. It includes the research committee, the ethics committee, the disciplinary committee, etc. The other universities of the country are organized in a very similar manner.


Being sure of date of publication of a book

The three dates you see are the years the copyright was renewed. You probably just want the most recent of those dates, as that's the edition of the book you're working with.

Note that it can get more complex than that—edition and copyright date are not always the same—but its definitely good enough for citations.


Is there any value in self-publishing a book as an academic?

I would recommend that you ask yourself a question: why do I want this book "officially" published?  You could, after all, just make the material free online via arXiv or as a webpage or an archival technical report of various types depending on its contents and your situation.

Prestige of having a published book?  A pay-to-publish press will generally give you negative credibility, since there are so many publishers that will publish your book without making you pay (including lots of dodgy low-quality ones that will publish pretty much anything).  Pay-to-publish smells like desperation or resume-padding.
Money from sales/royalties?  If they thought it was going to make money, they would be paying you, not the other way around.
Higher visibility?  A pay-to-publish press will generally not be any good at promoting your work.  They're not going to invest any real money in promotion if they aren't expecting to make significant money from sales.

Serious and reputable academic publishing houses are always looking for good books to publish.  The right ones for your field will generally have booths at the major conferences in the field, with representatives that you can talk to.


Should you publish a rejected conference paper on arXiv?

Submitting a paper to the arXiv does not preclude publishing it later in a journal or in the proceedings of a conference.  In fact, one should not think of a paper which appears on the arXiv as being published. (There's no peer review, for one thing.)

In my community (hep-th, mostly) one always submits to the arXiv first, gathers comments, and only then submits for publication.  Of course, other communities might work differently.

In the fields I am familiar with (maths and physics, mostly), I would submit the paper to the arXiv in any case.  You can then decide how to actually publish the paper.


Any suggestions for a rapid publish journal in material science?

It seems if there literally is no requirement about the journal then you can create your own journal and publish those papers yourself.


Grad schools emailing to request that I apply?

Universities are not above collecting and re-selling data.  There are a number of ways you could have gotten on a mailing list which was purchased by the 3 schools you mention.  In math, we have a Putnam competition and most good math majors participate.  Grad schools will buy the list of top 500 or second 250 or whatever finishers and then spam them with invitations to apply.  In your field, you may have done something that got your name on a list of likely candidates, or perhaps it's just that one or more of the schools you applied to stuck your name on a list and sold it to other schools.

(Yes, companies sell data to their competitors.  I always get a chuckle when DISH TV sends me a solicitation using the misspelling of my name that Time-Warner Cable has.)

The strict answer to your question is "both."  They are particularly interested in you, but it's because your name appeared in a list of potentially good candidates.  (This is my guess,  but perhaps your work in West Africa got noticed and they really are targeting you in particular.  But this doesn't seem likely, because how would they know you are now in the market for a grad school...?)


How should I talk to an unwelcoming future research group colleague so no interpersonal issues raise?

From your description, I'd say it's not time to worry yet:

Meanings convey poorly via words. See e.g. this "joke" that turned out to grievously hurt someone. You can't be sure your former classmate doesn't welcome you ... yet.
It's possible you're asking your former classmate the wrong things. For example you're asking about paperwork. Why should he know the paperwork better than, say, the professor or the department receptionists (or you for that matter, I'd expect the paperwork needed to be on the website)? He could be annoyed you're asking him questions you should ask someone else, which should resolve itself if you stop doing that.
He might simply be going through a bad period. For example if he just broke up with his wife and is fighting over the divorce agreement, you can't expect him to be very enthusiastic about anything.

If you're keen to join the group, I'd say join it first and only start worrying if it really doesn't work out.


A question for UK academics and students: How will UK universities respond to a professor showing controversial religious images to class?

Generally speaking, Universities in the UK can exercise their own judgement on how to organise their curriculum and how to deal with sensitive matters while encouraging academic debate and educated discussion. There is no single answer which is valid for each and every University in the UK, as customs and approaches differ from one place to another.
Typically, every University will have a quality assurance process for their teaching and research. Within it, they will have Ethical Panels/Officers responsible for deciding whether a proposed research / education module is ethical and safe. If you feel that your research can be controversial and/or cause ethical issues and/or make you or others feel unsafe, you need to contact the designated people and discuss with them whether and how to proceed. Normally, they will assess the risks and suggest appropriate measures to ensure that your program of research is legal, safe and ethical.
If you don't contact the designated Panels/Officers, and proceed with your potentially unsafe/unethical research, the University will not be happy. After all, they put all these systems in place for a reason and expect all academics to make use of them when necessary.
Note that all the above has very little to do with the exact reason why your research may be considered unethical/unsafe/inappropriate. The approach remains the same, whether the potential issues are caused by use of human biological materials, by research requiring access to children, by research involving toxic materials, or by research on social/religious issues. Anything that is potentially unsafe or problematic should be discussed with appropriate people first, before the activity starts. As long as you agree to that, you will likely have no issues doing your research in the UK.


My PhD advisor has unrealistic expectations on my capabilities to research independently

In short, it is normal that you feel like you were thrown in the deep end it is not normal for your adviser to act like she expected a post-doc.

You feel overwhelmed, which is to be expected when first appearing on any new job (in my experience, it is easier to consider yourself as employed, rather than a student – puts things into a different perspective). Doubly so for rather unstructured working environments, like a research lab. There are many novelties you have to get accustomed to, even before the primary one: doing research and publishing papers.

My advice for you is to think in small steps. Think about achieving the next small goal, rather than: “at this pace, I will never publish anything, let alone write a dissertation that will be approved and I can graduate”. Dwelling on that distant future and perceiving the present through that lens is overwhelming and discouraging. You are there to learn. And that includes all ropes of academia, not just research and papers, but to fully immerse yourself in the environment. Paper deadlines, multitasking, helping other students and post-docs, teaching, presenting, being independent (i.e. your adviser is not expected to hold your hand) are all part of the experience and by graduating you are expected to have a feel for life in academia.

Take your time to achieve something, working twenty hours a day will rarely bring you closer to your goal, it will sooner lead to burnout, even more stress, and perhaps even health issues. Being pressured (by the adviser, other colleagues, or even the competing environment) is also part of the experience and the correct response is not to yield to the pressure at any cost, but to learn how to manage it. If something takes five days to complete, the argument that you could get it done in two, if you don’t sleep, is moot. What I also found is that people pressure you as a test, if you yield, great, you'll get something done sooner, with no cost to them (it's you who won't get sleep), and if not,  they'll probably be really really sad/upset, but in the end, they just let it go. In the end, imposter syndrome is prevalent on all steps of the academic ladder – you'll often get the feeling that your work is not up to standards, but so will all of your colleagues including your adviser.

As for your adviser, again, don't perceive her as your teacher. Her purpose is not to be familiar with every aspect of your work. She also doesn't know the solution to every problem you might come with, figuring that out is an essential part of research. The adviser provides guidelines and nudges you in the right direction not due to absolute certainty, but with the best reasonable course of action provided through her experience. You shouldn't expect to have meetings every day, or every week in some cases. You should focus on doing work independently – again, think of yourself as an employee. Your Point 5 greatly illustrates that.

As to whether or not you can switch advisers, sure you can, you can even leave the whole program if you feel so inclined. My point is that based on your description, I see nothing really atypical with your experience or adviser. In other words, I see nothing that you could expect to dramatically change, if you switched institutions or advisers.


How to satisfy PhD requirement that publications be available online when papers have been only just been accepted?

While every university is different, the following answer assumes common sense:

Whether an article is on ResearchGate or indexed by Google does not provide meaningful evidence that you have published an article.

When is a publication available online? An article is considered to be available online when it is available from the publisher's website. The delay between acceptance and online publication varies between journals. Some journal will put an accepted unproofed version of the manuscript up almost immediately. Other journals wait until proofs have been completed. This is often a few weeks after acceptance. Other journals have no "online first" version and you have to wait until the manuscript has been allocated to an issue, which can take anywhere from months to even a year or more.

For this reason, when evaluating a researcher or a PhD student, it often makes more sense to count publications once they have been accepted. This is especially true for PhD students. Now, for journals that make articles available online rapidly (e.g., less than a month after acceptance) then the difference between acceptance and online is minimal. However, where there is a major time lag, then it would be a stupid policy for a university to require a PhD student to have the publication actually published, as opposed to being accepted.

So in summary:

If you've published your articles in a journal with a short lag between acceptance and online access, then you might just want to wait a few weeks.
If you've published your articles in a journal with a long lag, then you should talk to your university about providing other evidence of proof of manuscript acceptance (e.g., editor acceptance letters).


How long is too long for a personal statement for undergrad research application?

It's worth noting that the personal and research statements for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship are restricted to two pages each. So if you're writing more than that for a REU, you're probably writing too much.


How to recruit a post doc from an area outside your labs expertise?

A time-honored method is to identify professors around the world who are experts in the desired area, contact them, and ask if they have grad students who will be finishing soon and might be interested and qualified.


Contract versus ongoing positions in academia

This is a product of various reasons that are academic, economic, legal and institutional:

In many jurisdictions, it's easier and cheaper to remove staff at the end of a fixed contract: it can be very very expensive to remove staff on a permanent contract.

Enough able people are willing to work on fixed contracts that universities don't need to offer permanent contracts for every post.

Track record, CV and references are not enough to tell how good someone really is, nor how productive they'll be in your team; that needs an extended probation, which a fixed-term contract effectively functions as.

Funding tends to come in bursts, with no guarantee of follow-up funding; so while it can be possible to ensure a post can be funded for 6 months or 5 years, at the end of the funding, there may not be the money to fund that post. On a permanent contract, the resulting severance can be very expensive for the university. The fixed contract gives clarity to both employer and employee.

Productivity changes over time. Some employees are more productive when they have a lot of job security; others are more productive when their future employment depends on the current performance.  I'd love to see some studies on the impact on productivity of needing to repeatedly apply for funding: oddly, it seems to be one area where we academics don't take a scientific approach to analysing!


Harvard citation style: Is it "...as mentioned in Author (year)..." or "...as mentioned in (Author, year)"?

In the second option you suggest, the sentence is not complete. If you would leave out the part between (),  the sentence would not make any sense.
You should, as also @Peter Jansson suggests, write sth. along the lines of "As author (2013) explained, ..."


How much does one have to contribute to be considered a co-author (and therefore listed as such)?

This differs widely by field. The general principle is (or should be) that co-authors contribute to the intellectual content of the paper. The actual ideas that make it worth publishing.
But there are fields, such as high energy physics where nothing can get done without the participation of a lot (lot) of technicians. They sometimes get listed as "authors". But people in that field understand the intent. The first few authors came up with the ideas and framework. The rest actualized it in some sense. There are a few papers in which the list of authors is longer than the paper itself.
If you are asking general mathematical questions of experts to help you understand, then it is unlikely that they would warrant authorship. This remains true even if the questions are quite deep. If you ask them to help you prove the theorems or come up with important applications that you will include, then they probably do.


Posting a master's thesis on the arXiv is uncommon, but not unheard of.  My feeling is that there's little point to it: if there's material worth publishing in your thesis, then you should turn it into papers and post them on the arXiv (in which case the thesis is unnecessary), and if it's not worth publishing then it's not worth posting to the arXiv.

If you decide to post both the thesis and the papers to the arXiv, you should indicate the relationship between them clearly in the comments so you don't look like you are inflating your publication record with duplicates, as well as in case you trigger the automated plagiarism detection in the arXiv.

One potential issue is coauthors.  If anything in your thesis is coauthored with someone else (either from a previous paper or to appear in a future paper), then I do not think you should post the thesis to the arXiv.  The problem is that you'd be pointing readers towards a version that lists you as the only author and relegates your coauthors to a brief note in the text, and you would be increasing the chances that they would cite the thesis rather than the coauthored papers.  Instead, it's best to emphasize the papers by posting them to the arXiv instead.


Is there a polite way to rescind a request for recommendation letter?

The key thing here is that you say that you have stronger letters already. If you no longer need him to write a letter, just reply to your own email to him saying you don't need one anymore. Something like this should do:

  "Thank you so much for agreeing to the write the letter. Another professor just got back to me about writing a letter so I should be all set for letters in this round of applications. I really appreciate your offer and I will be in touch in the future if I need one though. Thanks again!"

Keep in mind that most people won't write a letter until they have a deadline in front of them. That said,  it is certainly more polite to let any potential letter writer know as soon as you know you won't need it just as it is polite to let them know well advance of when you will.

You frame this question as about "rescinding" a request and seem to be worried that the professor is going to be upset. You should understand that for professors, writing letters of recommendations is a thankless chore. Although this is generally the case, it is particularly the case for undergraduates that we only know through a single class.

Writing these letters takes hours on aggregate. Worst of all, because we also sit on the committees that read these applications, we are also all deeply aware that the letters will be read by a few people on a graduate admission committee if we are lucky.

Seriously though, he is not going to hold it against you. By agreeing to write a letter in the first place, he was offering to do you a favor. By letting him off the hook, you are doing him one.

Although it's not part of your question, I think you are spending too much time trying to unpack and interpret what really happened. Maybe he was busy or in a bad mood? Maybe he was emailing with somebody else and was confused? You say that you don't want to second guess him but that is exactly what you're doing. If he encouraged you to apply for a PhD program and said he will write a letter, it seems extremely unlikely that he's trying to sabotage you.


Does experience at a startup for a couple of years increase the chances of getting into a good Ph.D programme in a US university?

The answer to all of these questions and more is going to be: Maybe.

Experience will help, but testimonial in the form of reference letters will be better. If you work at this company and it gets you a dynamite reference letter, testifying to your skill, it may help you. On the flip side, for a PhD, skill may not be sufficient--- for a PhD your research background (what you already have) may be much more important than the work experience.


Is it appropriate for department administrators to send political emails?

In your question, I note two (different) items:

Sending political emails
Embedding an opinion

Sending political emails

I can certainly imagine that a department administrator needs to send political emails: there are often political situations that have a certain influence on a department/school or its students and staff (e.g. a new law or decree). In general, I believe that messages sent to mass email addresses should be used to provide information that is applicable to all who receive this message. As a guideline, therefore, I believe that such email should be without any opinion.

Embedding an opinion

I believe that personal opinions and emotions should be dealt with in personal circles, and not be shared with the general public over mass email addresses (there are public forums, but then viewers have a choice in reading or not reading). The sender does not know what these emotions brings about with the receivers: it can have significant consequences for people who have dealt with similar personal difficulties. And, strong opinions can cause strong reactions, again with possible negative consequences for the sender as well as other receivers.

As such, I think this behavior should be addressed. Many universities have an Student Ombuds Office, where any issue about university policy, bureaucracy, and conflicts can be discussed confidentially. If it bothers you, contact them, and then they can guide you further and inform you about the university staff member breaching university policies, for example.

Of course, an administrator may also have been asked to inform students and staff of the institutional opinion. This most likely means that a (board) meeting has resulted in a decision from the institution, which is then passed on to all involved in the institution. These messages describe the position of the institution on a certain question, but most certainly exclude emotional descriptors.

In short

The staff member's behavior could be against policies the university has set for mass email usage (using it for both political reasons as well as personal interest). Check the policy for this, and use the Ombuds Office for further advice and guidance on what can be done.


If I were looking at your CV in the US I would expect a line for each project, like

supervised study of quantum electrodynamics

or

reading project on quantum electrodynamics

I would not expect a list of sources any more than I would expect a list of texts for a course you took.


Withdraw CS conference paper (after acceptance) due to authorship disputes?

These sort of things do occur and are of valid concern. It would be best to withdraw your paper with a kind apology note to the conference committee. There is not an unethical conduct as your reason should be perfectly valid and you have no gain in this act.


Duration of courses: hours to weeks and self-study time

Regarding your first question for a "common conversion":

In Germany, workload for a course is measured in "hours per week in a semester" (abbr. "SWS" for Semesterwochenstunden), which would be what you are looking for. For singular events without a weekly schedule or for events where you need to calculate from a fixed number of hours, you can use the average (14 weeks / semester) or the real (12w / summer semester, 16w / winter semester [in Germany]) number of weeks and if needed the "academic hour" (which officially lasts only 45 minutes here) to calculate back.

As an example: A short practical course in the winter semester goes over 4 days with a daily workload of 6 full hours (breaks etc. already substracted).
This corresponds to 6 * 4 / 0.75 = 32 academic hours. As the semester has 16 weeks, the 32 hours correspond to 2 "SWS" or hours/week.

Formula: full hours [/ 0.75 if needed] / #weeks = hours per week

Covering your second question:

If your current university includes "self-study" time in the total course time, I would also stick to that in calculating the final "hours/week" for the course. Although it might be confusing if some course include self-study in the total course time and others don't, you should not alter the official course time given by your university.


Why do some science journals capitalize the words in a title, and others don't?

Essentially, the way to check is to look at if the particular journal to which you want to submit a paper uses title case or sentence case for the capitalization of titles. I think a lot of it is publisher-specific. For example, in my field, I publish primarily in American Chemical Society journals, which use title case, and AIP/APS journals, which use sentence case.


Nonacademic Letter of Recommendation for Masters

it depends on the university, for instance on my university the hierarchy of letter of recommendations goes like this:

Top priority: Faculty (same/different institution)
Mid: Staff (on same institution)
Low: High-school Instructors

Of course having faculty give you letters of recommendation is better.
Just remember that "usually" you need 2-3 letters of recommendation.

I would suggest to use the letter of recommendation from this director that you mention, If and only if you cant get letters of recommendations from faculty.


Collaboration with other researchers except supervisors

Yes, it's totally ethical and acceptable. Research doesn't happen in a vacuum, and collaborations are generally beneficial to all parties. I cannot imagine any funding body or person preventing you from collaborating with others. Talk to your supervisor first, of course, as they may want to be part of the collaboration too.


MPhys Physics to Theoretical Quantum Gravity/Particle physics PhD

Do universities accept MPhys Physics graduates in theoretical PhD positions?

Yes they do. People change field all the time, and moving within a field when going from undergrad to PhD is perfectly acceptable, provided you can demonstrate that you have the interest and aptitude.

    Do I have decent chances in being accept in a purely theoretical position?

Well, I know nothing about you except that you're a final year MPhys physics student, but that puts you in a better position than someone studying biology, or fine art.

Your chances will be improved if your dissertation is on a theoretical topic or if you have done any theoretical modules (eg QFT, GR, astroparticle physics, even cosmology). You should have good grades in these, and any mathematical modules you've taken.

The answers to this question: Will an off-topic Masters hurt my chances of a PhD place? may reassure you that you don't necessarily need expertise in the field you want to go into; having research experience in any field is generally sufficient, along with good grades. A good personal statement/ statement of research interests can also go a long way to convincing the admissions committee of your interest in the subject*.

I would also recommend speaking to your personal tutor/ dissertation supervisor/ other potential referees as soon as possible, as UK physics PhD application deadlines (for funded places anyway) are usually quite soon after Christmas.

*Please don't take this the wrong way, but it will probably help if you get your personal statement proofread by a native English speaker, or otherwise be sure to check your grammar very carefully (you made quite a few mistakes in your question).


Would going to Teacher's College be useful, if my ultimate goal is to become a university math professor?

Spending the next year in Teacher’s College, I’ve been thinking, might actually be a good thing, as a way to set me apart on applications for grad school and for jobs in the future, as well as a way to develop good teaching and other related skills.

If you want to get into a research Ph.D. program in pure or applied math, this will do extremely little to set you apart.  Taking more graduate courses and doing well on the GRE (especially the math subject GRE) would certainly do more than education or curriculum courses.

The most basic reason for this is that Ph.D. programs are essentially only worried about your ability to complete research in that discipline.  Any life experience or preparation that isn't relevant to that is likely to be ignored.  I suspect education courses are particularly likely to not be helpful, since (at the risk of way over-generalizing), many mathematicians have a pretty low opinion of the way classes in education are taught.  I suspect, for example, actual experience teaching in a school would be more helpful.


How good to publish a paper in an E-Journal compared to printed journals?

You appear to be confusing together two different issues: open-access vs. paywalled and printed vs. electronic.

Let us start with printed vs. electronic: the difference between a article available electronically vs. an article available only in print is that the article available electronically will be read and a paper article generally will not.  With a very small number of exceptions, for the most part electronic access is the means by which scientists access journal articles these days.  If they journal is not open access, then the researcher will be using an institutional subscription.

Now, as for open access vs. paywalled: some studies have shown that open access articles tend to be read and cited more than paywalled articles in similar quality journals.  For both open access and paywalled articles, however, the primary determinant in how they are viewed is the quality of the journal in which they are published, and in both cases there are excellent journals and terrible journals.


Is a Masters Degree required to pursue a PhD?

A master's degree is not required for admission to a Ph.D. program, but Ph.D. admissions are extremely selective, and most students aren't competitive for a Ph.D. straight out of undergrad. In addition to a high GPA (I'd say around 3.8 or higher) and GRE SCORES (around top 10%, though this may depend on the program), you would need several publications/conference presentations, extensive research experience, and STELLAR letters of recommendation attesting to your readiness for a Ph.D. program.

Most undergraduates, even with excellent GPAs and test scores, lack the research experience required for Ph.D. admissions. Also, undergrad (and to a lesser degree a master's program) is a time to explore your research interests. By the time you're applying to a PH.D. program, however, you're committing 4-9 years to researching a specific question/topic. Thus, you need to know exactly what you want to write your dissertation on and have to find a professor that will agree to take you on as a student. Again, most undergrads are still at the stage of exploring their interests, so they don't gain enough research experience in a specific topic. (I'm speaking generally in all programs.)

This is why most people end up completing their master's first, but it's by no means a requirement, and if you do feel you're competitive for a PH.D. program and know what you want to research, then certainly apply to Ph.D programs.

Disclaimer- I'm neither a professor nor a grad. student, nor is engineering my intended field. Again, my comments are meant more generally and apply to the U.S.

Good luck!


What does "external reviewer" mean for a computer science conference?

Conferences are organized differently in different subfield of computer science; my answer describes the situation in theory.

At theoretical computer science conferences, the program committees are relatively small, in part because submissions from program committee members are strictly forbidden.  Each submitted paper is assigned to 2-4 PC members to review; for a typical conference this means each PC member is assigned 25-50 papers to review.  Reviewing that many papers is a huge burden, and despite a preliminary bidding process, every PC member is assigned at least a few papers outside their areas of expertise.  So PC members regularly solicit reviews from people outside the committee whose expertise better matches a given paper.  Those people are external reviewers.

Normally each PC member tries to gets a different external reviewer for each paper (except the papers they review on their own), but a single external reviewer might get papers from multiple PC members.

(In other communities, what I call "PC members" are called "area chairs", and what I'm calling "external reviewers" are called "PC members".)

  Does this mean the person officially reviews the paper for the conference, or he/she gets a request to review from someone who officially reviews the paper?

Both.

A list of all external reviewers is typically included in the conference proceedings just after the table of contents (for example) as official acknowledgement of their service.

On the other hand, PC members are expected to use the external reviews they solicit as guidelines, not as substitutes for their own judgement, especially when comparing submissions that were reviewed by different people.


What is the difference between permanent faculty positions in the UK and tenured faculty positions in the US/Canada?

I think the most important difference relates to "redundancy" in terminations. In the UK, administration can decide to stop teaching a subject at a university, and faculty may become "redundant". There are various protections in the UK such as the need to try to find alternative employment for the staff member etc. but in the final analysis, if they want to stop teaching Vedic Epistemology, the Vedic Epistemologist could end up sacked. With a tenured position in the US, that would not be sufficient grounds for termination (following university rules that I am aware of -- rules are set by each institution, though there is considerable similarity). A correlated difference is that there is a huge tenure ordeal in the US (the "up or out" rule -- either you get tenure, or you get fired), which does not exist in the UK.


In grading, professor takes into account submission time, performance compared to other students, and visibility of posters. Is it fair?

Why not ask your professor what she is trying to achieve with this grading before escalating? There is a clear discrepancy between how you expect to be graded (by common standards) and how your professor is actually doing that.

I understand your frustration, but I would like to add some nuances:

She is rewarding early submissions. She may be doing this to try to teach all of you better time management. It is debatable whether this is the best way of doing that. Given such a system I'd be a bit worried that a not-very-early submission could cause a failing grade.
She is grading off a standard as set by excellent students. In the US, it's very common to grade on a curve which inherently contains a comparison with fellow students. However, the details are typically different.
She is rewarding visibility/popularity. In industry and science, these are also commonly rewarded. One could even go so far as to say that securing a poster position close to the door is part of increasing visibility, although I think that's overly harsh.

All in all, I think your professor has some good ideas but her implementation leaves something to be desired. Also, all of this should be clearly stated in the syllabus. I'd have a conversation with her about this, possibly argue for a higher grade for yourself, but I'd very much consider how much time and effort you want to put into this after that.


Prevent plagiarism after rejection of a paper?

I think that this has been covered on this site before.  But briefly:

Most academics (in particular those who have weighted in on the issue on this site) agree that the best way to prevent plagiarism is through more light, not more secrecy.  In other words, once you've shown your work to one other person (and in many academic fields, this will necessarily occur in the course of doing academic work), the more people who know about it -- and the more that people know that people know about it, and so forth -- the less likely it is for your work to be plagiarized.  Thus posting your paper on the arxiv would be an ideal solution (and have many other benefits as well) unless you're working in an academic field which has the practice of regarding, or potentially regarding arxiv submissions as "prior publication".  (If so: have you considered switching to math / physics / TCS instead?  In those fields we not only do not feel that way, we regard the whole notion that freely showing your work to others counts as "publication" as being infinitely lame and wrong-headed.)
Even if you can't or don't want to upload a public copy of your work, you have already done plenty to establish your priority.  Namely you submitted it to a conference and got three referee reports.  You should certainly keep these reports for your records along with the correspondence with the handling editors.  If later on someone tries to steal your work, all you have to do is produce this correspondence.  You should also be able to count on the conference editors / organizers for help: whether the paper is accepted or not, if a conference submission results in someone's work being stolen, the organizers of the conference have an ethical obligation and a professional stake to be actively involved in your pursuit for academic justice.


After Major Revision what is the decision?

The status is "under review" because the editor decided to ask the reviewers to look at the paper again. Since there's no way to tell what the reviewers are going to say, there's also no way to tell what decision you can expect, either. The fact that the initial reviews were favourable means there's a good chance your paper will be accepted, but reviewers can change their minds, and there's no way to be sure.


How much detail to include in first email to potential PhD supervisor?

My answer is going to extend up this earlier answer to a similar, although broader, question.

Some background: I have worked with two pretty well-known professors in Austria and Switzerland, and can provide some insight into how they tend to hire. I assume other professors have similar MOs, but not every person is the same, so your milage may vary.

Indeed, for both of them, the first step towards starting a PhD is to send them a short informal mail stating your interest in joining their group. Your challenge is to get the professor interested despite him reading maybe a 100 mails a day. You can already see why a two-page text has a 0% chance of being read, same is true for an attached CV or an elaborate research proposal - you need to convince in maybe 10 seconds. Your second challenge is to separate yourself from the dozen or so other people that are trying the same every week, mainly coming from universities in the far east.

In that light, here are answers to your questions

  Generally, how much and deep details should I provide?

I would go for none, honestly. Discuss concrete research ideas at a later point, when the professor has shown interest.

  Should I mention anything about fund chances?

God no.

  Should I send documents or only if s/he asks for.

Yes.

  Statement of purpose/motivation, what is the right length? Is s/he ready to read two pages about every applicant sends him/her email?

Forget it. None of the professors that I worked with is interested in those formal application documents at any point during the process. They will either want to skype with you or have one of their senior staff skype with you, and then you would explain the things you would write into a SOP. To be clear - I have received a PhD student, a postdoc, and a senior postdoc position without ever being asked for a SOP or letter of motivation. Those are required only if hiring is done by a committee, e.g., for faculty staff.

Here is an example of a mail that might work on the people that I know.

Dear FIRST-NAME,

I am currently looking into options for getting a PhD. I have looked into your work on IMPORTANT-THING-PROF-IS-WORKING-ON, and I would be really interested in joining you on this line of work.

I have recently graduated from XY with a degree in YZ, and I have a background in SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE. I have done internships at BIG-NAME-A and BIG-NAME-B and already published X papers on SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE during my masters.

I would be happy if we could discuss matters further via Skype.

thank you in advance,
YOUR-FIRST-NAME

YOUR-WEB-PAGE

Note the informal tone. This might be a personal preference of the people I know, but an informal mail is significantly more likely to be read by both of my professors than a very formal one. Further, note that it will be required that you have some measure of achievements that the professor can relate to - graduating from a university that the professor maybe has never heard of alone will not be enough to get him interested. Already having published and/or having done internships at well-known companies (well-known also to the professor!), especially those that are known to have competitive selection schemes (e.g., IBM), helps a lot here. Do not bother sending your GPA etc. - people in Europe tend to not be interested in grades in my experience.

Another thing that might help with the people I know is work on open source projects (e.g., being a committer or committee member to one or more Apache projects, having a well-maintained Github page with interesting tools and Gists, etc.), but this may be mostly because I work in software engineering (and people that know how software is built in real-life are very valuable to us).

Another important topic is english language - if you cannot speak / write english well, let the mail be proof-read by somebody who can (according to the way the question is written, this should not be an issue for the OP, but this may be relevant to other readers). Mails in terrible english are almost always discarded immediately.

Finally, the above sample contains a link to a web page. Have a personal academic web page. This is the place where you would put a good picture of you and all your academic achievements (papers, CVs, research interests, internships, links to open source projects you contributed to, industry projects that you worked on, whatever). Make it look professional and pretty.

Note that this mail still has a high chance of being ignored. In that case, give the professor a week or so and then write a a one-line reminder as a reply or forward of the original mail. If he does not respond after that, move on. Then he is just not that into you.


How long should you wait for a professor who's late for class?

I'd suggest the following: wait 5 or 10 minutes, or whatever length of time seems to you to exceed an ordinary minor delay.  Then call the department office and tell them that the professor has not arrived, and ask what they suggest you should do.

First of all, they may have some information about the professor's whereabouts or his/her likelihood of getting there, or they may be able to try to contact the professor.  Otherwise, if they say you should leave, you have a pretty good defense if the professor should object.  And if they say you should stay, you know that the department will not be on your side if you leave.


Interpersonal skills, lab dynamics, and personality

It is incredibly unfortunate that you've found yourself in a situation where it doesn't sound like there's much you could have done to actively avoid the contention. I do feel like there must be something in the story that you're leaving out, but if I base my conclusions assuming you've included everything that's relevant, here's my two cents worth of feedback to your questions:

Being the black sheep does not mean that you should leave the lab. In fact, what you are experiencing is not unique and is something that generally happens to people throughout their lives (to more or lesser of degree). Simply leaving the group might be an easy and acceptable solution to your current situation (only you can really judge that I think), but you might want to view this as an opportunity to build your conflict resolution skills, which will be incredibly valuable throughout your life.
This is not going to ruin your professional life, but like with all events in our lives (whether fair or unfair), it will absolutely alter your career-path experience. In general, it is always best to have a pro-active mindset (e.g., "I can direct my own career path") rather than a passive mindset (e.g., "these people will determine my career path"), regardless of whether other people can influence your trajectory.
Whether or not this is your fault, you certainly can learn skills from the experience. In my opinion, the best thing you can do right now is to focus solely on how you can serve your colleagues. Having a dialogue with them could be useful, but like you said you'll mostly be at their mercy in that approach. If you proactively look for opportunities to help them in their own work and learn the ropes in the lab on your own so you can help them and generally be a "good neighbor", then they will really have no reason to maintain their animosity towards you.

I'm not sure there's much you can control beyond my points above. An enormous skill to learn in life is to not stress out over things that you can't control. Another enormously valuable skill is being able to recognize what you can or cannot control around you. Proactively seek to make the things around your more amenable to unity and cooperation, regardless of others' reaction to you. Be sincere in your efforts, not superficial or only acting to get a specific response.


The effect of a PhD on a student's interest in pursuing a career in academia

There have been some studies to examine whether graduate students’ career aspirations change over time.

Gemme & Gingras (2012) surveyed 294 students in the sciences (including health sciences) and engineering at French-speaking universities in Quebec regarding career preferences. Students were surveyed in 2003-2004, and again 2006. They were asked if they would like a career at a university (academia) or in a range of non-academic settings (industry, government, etc). They found that 30.3% of students desired a university position at both time points, and 17.3% of the sample initially expressed interest in a non-academic career, but wanted an academic career by 2006. Thus, a total of 48% expressed an interest in an academic career by 2006. In contrast, 43.9% expressed a consistent interest in non-academic work, and 6.8% shifted from academic to non-academic career interests. The authors noted that those students who shifted towards academia also were more likely to have received scholarships from their institution by 2006. They suggest this may have encouraged those students to consider pursuing a career in academia.

Another study surveyed 469 basic biomedical science graduate students at UCSF regarding career choices (Fuhrmann, Halme, O’Sullivan, & Lindstaedt, 2011). They compared responses of first year students to those in their second and third years, looking at overall trends for career preferences, rather than looking at the same sample at multiple time points. They noted that early in graduate training students indicated a marked drop in interest in pursuing research careers, but this applied to only specific types of careers. Interest in being a PI in academic (research/teaching) or “other” reseach careers (government, industry, or non-PI in academia) did not change significantly. However, there was a steep and significant drop in those students who wanted to be a PI at a research-intensive university: 41.7% of first year students, 35% of second year students, and only 25% of third year students. The authors note that at by their third year, the students would have spent 8-10 months in a single, research-intensive lab and would be better able to evaluate that career path. Congruent with this drop in interest in being a research-intensive PI, there was increased interest in non-research career paths related to science (e.g. business, law, writing, consulting, etc).

Fuhrmann and colleagues (2011) also found that when students were asked about their top career choice, 75% of second years wanted a research intensive PI position, while only 55.2% wanted it by their third year. Interest in PI positions with a mix of research/teaching had a smaller drop in that time (56.3% to 44.8%). Also, while women showed less interest in research-intensive PI positions initially compared to men (21.3% compared to 39.5%, respectively), both sexes lost interest in research-intensive PI positions at an equal rate as time progressed. Of those students who indicated a move away from a research-intensive PI track, 91% identified at least 1 negative perception or reason for the shift. This included negative beliefs about work-life balance, career competition, research funding, length of training, and salary for the research-intensive PI track. In contrast, only 24% of students identified at least 1 positive reason for picking a new career path, such as developing new interests or skills.

Golde & Dore (2001) conducted a survey of several thousand doctoral students across 12 disciplines. In one analysis of 4,114 students, they found 35.4% of respondents reported a decline in interest in becoming a university professor since starting their program, while 21.1% reported an increase in interest;  47.9% still listed it as a strong current interest. In contrast, 39.8% of students reported increased interest in conducting research in the private sector, 34.8% reported an increased interest in conducting research at non-profits or for the government, and 39.4% reported an increase in working independently as a consultant or writer. A subanalysis (n = 2505) found that concerns about the tenure and promotion process, academic job market, work load, needing to obtain research funding, and salary levels all decreased interest in pursuing an academic career. Individuals who enjoyed many aspects of university/graduate work were more likely to be interested. The authors also found many quality of life variables (such as work life balance) had an ambiguous influence on academic career aspirations.

The largest study I identified surveyed over 8,000 graduate students on 9 of 10 UC campuses (Mason, Goulden, & Frasch, 2009). The authors specifically asked about students’ interests in the “academic fast track,” defined as tenure track positions in research-intensive universities, not in academia more broadly. They observed a decreased interest in the fast track over time. While 45% of men and 39% of women reported they had been interested in  the fast track when they began their program, only 35% and 27%, respectively, expressed interest at the point of the survey (this corresponded to 1-7 years later in the program, depending on the student). As with the study by Furhmann and colleagues (2011), Mason and colleagues (2009) found little decline in the percent of students interested in academic careers that focused on teaching, and saw increases in students looking to careers in industry or government.

When Mason and colleagues (2009) restricted their analyses to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, they found an even sharper drop. While 40% of men and 31% of women in STEM initially intended to pursue a fast track career, this dropped to 28% and 20 % respectively at the point of the survey. Across disciplines, both men and women reported concerns related to having other life interests and negative experiences as a graduate student as reasons for moving away from the fast track. Women also mentioned concerns about having children, geographic re-location, and issues with their spouses/partners. Men moving away from the fast track also indicted that the career path was “too time consuming” and placed a greater emphasis/concern on compensation and promotion than women.

Overall, most of the studies found decreases in the percentage of students considering research-intensive academic careers, with less of a shift for those interested in teaching. All of the articles indicate that despite these shifts, and despite the fact that only half of individuals with PhDs are in tenure-track positions five years after graduation (Golde & Dore, 2001), few graduate programs educate students about opportunities outside academia. Most of the articles express two concerns: 1) that there are not enough academic positions for the students who want them, and 2) in some cases talented students who could make important contributions in research are leaving it entirely because of the quality of life issues inherent in the current academic structure.

Fuhrmann, C. N., Halme, D. G., O’Sullivan, P. S., & Lindstaedt, B.
(2011). Improving graduate education to support a branching career
pipeline: recommendations based on a survey of doctoral students in
the basic biomedical sciences. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 10(3),
239-249.
Gemme, B., & Gingras, Y. (2012). Academic careers for graduate
students: a strong attractor in a changed environment. Higher
Education, 63(6), 667-683.
Golde, C. M., & Dore, T. M. (2001). At Cross Purposes: What the
Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral
Education. http://www.phd-survey.org/report%20final.pdf
Mason, M. A., Goulden, M., & Frasch, K. (2009). Why graduate students
reject the fast track. Academe, 95(1), 11-16.


What to select for "type of source" for a paper in Microsoft Word?

The paper you link is not a journal article. It's published as part of a conference proceedings.

You can find the complete proceedings in which that paper appears here (link is to the SPIE page for the 1994 conference Telemanipulators and Telepresence Technologies).

To address some other points in your question, I cannot think of a legitimate research paper that was not published in a journal or conference. Publishing in this sense means putting the paper through peer review, an essential part of contributing to the literature if you want your work to be taken seriously.

Furthermore, conference proceedings are exactly what it says on the tin: proceedings (i.e. talks) from a conference that have been written up and published. Publishing in this way is more common in some fields than others, for example, in computer science, just like the paper you linked.


What options does an international PhD student in UK have to fund his PhD?

Do TA. The easiest way is to do TA for the courses that your advisor or professors in your group teach. I was paid £12.XX per hour at my school in London. As long as it is less than personal allowance (£7000 per year), you don't have to pay tax or anything, and it can be added on top of your scholarship, so it's good.
Find an internship. My scholarship prohibited me from taking internship so I was kind of happy when it expired.
If you major is CS, there is some programs like Google Summer of Code (open in February), which you can earn > $5000 for 3 months with no tax.


Journal standards vs. personal standards

There are many different notions of quality of a paper:

accessibility of the presentation,
soundness of the arguments and conclusions,
relevance of the research.

Ideally, the level of journals only differs in Point 3. Realistically, there are some differences in Point 1 as well (ironically, I find that middle-level journal score best here, but that’s a different story). However, even mega journals aspire Point 2 – and outrage ensues if they clearly fail.

I would therefore not let the level of the journal influence assessment of deficiencies with respect to soundness, i.e., if I consider a paper unsound, I recommend to reject it, no matter the level of the journal.
Also, think for a second what would happen if all reviewers would recommend to accept all papers that are better than the worst paper in the journal in question:
Due to the variability and laziness of reviewers (and the abundance of bad papers), the threshold would decrease perpetually.
Nobody wants this.

Also, irrespective of the journal’s level, I note everything I see wrong with a paper, and let the editor decide whether this is a sufficient reason for rejection. As language problems (and some other presentation issues) can be fixed by a copy editor or similar, I would not even let them influence my main recommendation, but just recommend heavy copy-editing or similar to the editor.


Is it appropriate to express concerns to a professor about a new exam format?

It’s totally appropriate to point out to your professor that your grade is suffering for technical reasons having to do with the online format of the exam. If your professor is reasonable she will not be in the least bit offended by this.

By the way, we are pretty much all dealing with issues of this sort nowadays. I experienced something similar just a few days ago when I gave an online quiz. One of the problems required entering the answer to a question in decimal notation, and this was automatically graded by the testing platform. The correct answer was 15/64=0.234375, but some students assumed it was okay to round off the answer and entered 0.234 or 0.23, only to have that marked off as incorrect. When they emailed me to point out the issue, I gave them the points for the question.

To summarize, let your professor know. Be polite and explain the technical issues in entering the answers that caused your answers to be marked as incorrect. If you explain it clearly and convincingly enough, not only will the professor be in a better position to design a fairer format for the final exam, she may actually give you back some of the points that were marked off in the current exam.


Distinguishing between my personal acknowledgements and those of all authors

Is it acceptable to thank the co-authors for guidance, encouragement, etc.?

No, not really. Well, it may be going a bit far to say that doing so would be unacceptable, but I can say two things:

I have never seen an author thanking one of their coauthors.
Thanking your coauthors in your own joint paper with them is illogical. The purpose of the acknowledgements section is to provide a space where the contributions of people other than the paper's authors, which were of too minor a nature to merit authorship, can be acknowledged, so that those people would get some minor (mostly of a psychological, feel-good nature) credit for their help. Your coauthors are already getting a much more major credit than that, so an acknowledgement to them adds nothing.

To summarize, if you want to thank your coauthors, do it in person. I'm sure they would appreciate it.