How to proceed when a mathematical result contradicts existing literature?

Certainly the fact that there is a contradiction with previous literature must be prominently advertised; to do otherwise would be scientific misconduct. I would not be confident in publishing such a paper unless I found the mistake in the other paper, or could give a counterexample showing they are wrong.

After having carefully worked out the other paper and my own paper, and asked any experts with whom I have an established connection, I might contact the authors of the contradicting paper (if they are still active). After their response, or lack thereof, I would consider publishing a preprint and after that submitting to a journal. The journal is the slowest and most uncertain way of finding out where the problem is.


Visiting Assistant Professor before a postdoc position?

If the alternative is a gap year then it is a good idea to take it or, at least, consider it.
Presumably a visiting assistant professor, if you don't hold an academic position elsewhere, is just about the same as a post-doc but under a different name, since it isn't tenure-track. It would, of course, depend on what is expected of you.
If the duties are very heavy on teaching, then it is more like a better paid adjunct. You probably want to avoid that. If it is similar to an ordinary faculty position, with some teaching and some research then it can have long term advantages for an academic career. But consider, also, what courses you would have to teach and how much support you get in doing that. And, some post-docs do teach.
If you are doing research (successfully) during this year as a non-student, you have the opportunity to change the relationship you have with the faculty, building up a circle of collaboration that can be advantageous for your career.
Overall, though, I'd think that it gives you more, not fewer, options.  And certainly more options than being unemployed for a year. But if this is the first option that pops up, don't neglect to look for others before you commit.


How do I politely decline a project with my (to-be) supervisor

If you plan on doing a final-year project, you can quite honestly say that you thank him for the internship, that you learned a lot but you would like to try something else to broaden your experience.


A PhD student I know was terminated because of mental illness without any accommodation. What is the possibility of legal action?

As others have said, this is probably a question for a lawyer. That said, we don’t have any idea of what kind of information  the advisor/university/HR dept has. Perhaps they had information that made them think they had just cause. It could be that your relative is either ignoring or perhaps just overlooking something you don’t know.

Depending on the environment, mental health issues could be a cause for termination because it would make you unfit or ineligible to continue. If the research involves very dangerous products (infectious organisms, highly lethal compounds) or a strict environment (BSL4, secure environment such as a government facility), the terms were probably spelled out somewhere in a document your relative signed.


This sounds like a case of the ambivalent comma to me.  In the quote that you provide:

  "Please attach here (in PDF format only) your Curriculum Vitae, which will provide all of your Academic Background and Professional Background information, copies of your academic transcripts, and a Statement of Purpose describing your background and explaining why you feel that this is the right program for you".

it is ambiguous whether it should be interpreted as "Curriculum Vitae (which has your background) and copies of your academic transcripts and a Statement of purpose" or as "your CV should have: academic and professional information and copies of your academic transcripts and a Statement of purpose"

The typical practice would be for an institution to be requesting the second, so I would recommend interpreting it in that manner.  If they allow you to upload only one PDF, just bundle the documents together into one PDF.


Why is discrimination based on citizenship allowed in PhD funding in the UK?

I wrote a pretty extensive response on this a little while ago: here and also this may be slightly relevant.

The short version is: Because they can be, and because they have to be. UK universities make money off international students; their funding is limited, and it is designed to go to domestic or European students. The funding bodies will only fund domestics because a) they're probably not allowed to fund anyone else; b) it's in their best interests to fund domestics; c) one international PhD scholarship would be equal to 2 or 3 domestic ones.

There is also the over-arching idea in the UK governmental system that students are supposed to bring in money, not take it. This idea has spiked in magnitude in the past few years.

The UK government limits the funding given to universities, and universities make up for that with international fees. We are essentially cash cows, outside the rare scholarships that are extremely competitive (Rhodes, Fullbright - the second of which neither of us is eligible for).

You also can't go for the option of naturalisation based on the time you've been in the country because -- you guessed it -- time as a student doesn't count.

Source: Same situation as you, left friends, home, and partner to do PhD in France after 5 years in Britain. I had many PhD acceptances, but none of the universities could fund me and we spent months looking at every option. Unless you're rich and you can self-fund (or you're happy to take out loans), it's unfortunately not very doable right now.

You should also keep in mind that, as a student at the end of your education, you are unfortunately likely to be targeted by the immigration police. I would advise you to not do anything like overstay, but also to not leave the UK once you have graduated until you're ready to move away before the expiry of your tier 4 visa -- because you will not be allowed back in even if your visa has months of validity on it. It happened to me. This is unrelated to your question, but it's a warning I think not enough people in our situation get.


This may be field-dependent; I am answering from the point of view of an HCI-related CS subfield that is frequently in touch with other fields (for different use cases etc.).

Always choose your venue (concrete journal or conference) first before writing the manuscript.

The underlying core information you want to convey will remain the same no matter what. Hence, you may prepare a very abstract outline first. However, writing the paper before choosing a venue does not make much sense:

Important if you are in a field where manuscripts are formatted with the final styleguide: Each venue will require a particular formatting styleguide. While you should largely keep contents and format separate in your document, there are still more than enough detail decisions that require changes in your document according to the styleguide.

For instance, if you use LaTeX, depending on the venue-specific document template used, usually only one out of three or so alternative existing packages for a specific feature (e.g. subfigures, special tables, ...) will be compatible with the template.-
Also, at least I frequently find myself in a situation where I fill a paper up to the very last line (and page restrictions are very strict in my field). While different styleguides and page restrictions are roughly equivalent across venues, switching from one venue to another can easily mean gaining space for an additional figure or subsection.

Different venues have different audiences:

Even when presenting the very same procedure and findings, you will have to add a different set of explanations, references, etc., depending on the primary audience of the target venue.
Likewise, depending on the audience, sometimes you are better off starting with formal definitions and then presenting a concrete use case, whereas other communities prefer starting with a concrete problem and a case-specific solution description, and then formalizing that to a generic model.


Why say source code is available with an ArXiv paper when it is not?

There is no advantage to claiming the source code is available and then not doing that. All it will achieve is irritating the really interested readers.
The most likely reason is it’s a simple mistake. Something like they wanted to do that but forgot. Or other reasons, maybe department policies came up that prevented the author from doing that. Or maybe the author found another more suitable place to publish the code and forgot to update the link in the paper. Or...
The simplest solution is to contact the author directly.


Research assistant: I am responsible for scheduling subjects, how do I deal with attrition in my PI's longitudinal study?

Document. As scientists, your PI and supervisor should hopefully be receptive to data. Use a time-tracking app (maybe one of these push-button mobile apps?) to track and make statistics on how long it takes you to track down addresses per person, how many people you contacted, the call answer rate, the success rate in bringing them in, etc. Then, if anyone is concerned about how you use your time, you have hard facts to show them exactly why the productivity is what it is.

If you have another meeting with your PI after that, emphasize what else you could be doing with that time that is not getting done. Something like "You've asked me to prioritize subject scheduling. I'm currently using X% of time on tracking them down. This means I only have Y% remaining for these other tasks. (If you also have some metrics on how efficient you are at those, you could emphasize your productivity: ...but despite the limited time, I managed to get Z items done.) Should we keep going this way, or should we make any adjustments in how we use my work time?"

Or, if you really want to stop doing so much of this, not just worry about your higher-ups understanding why productivity is what it is, you can also instead say "It's really burning me out spending X hours on the phone or tracking down addresses each day. Can we get someone else to share that work so that I can spend more time on project B instead?" You'll know your context, but maybe there's a way to bring a student in for some part-time work calling people.


Is uncredited use of grad students' unpublished research by professors accepted/common practice in academia?

No, this not accepted and/or common practice in academia. (Your use of the plagiarism tag was correct.) It is of course unethical and not right to copy other's work and not mention them.


How to unintrusively distance myself from control-freak advisor and ride out the end of my PhD?

My advisor tends to go through periods of bombarding me with compliments and praise for my work, teaching, etc. until I feel totally great about our relationship, only to completely flip and treat me like a child in need of chastisement. What disturbs me about this is that he will often make me agree that he is in the right, and that he is 'not a horrible advisor, just has my best intrests in mind'.

Your advisor is abusive, and this is classic gaslighting. It can really do a number on your confidence, and "I consistently doubt my own perception of this situation" is exactly what this behaviour is designed to achieve. It is very difficult to keep/regain perspective within that situation.

Recommendations:

Minimize face to face interaction as much as possible. With e-mail, you can go back and re-read the past conversation, and confirm that things were like you remember them.
In the same vein, document all your verbal interactions, the positive just as much as the negative. Keep a journal or an advisor log. Re-read what you wrote during the last 'nice phase' when your advisor is being nasty, and vice-versa. This will help you keep some distance from both (giving you a better perspective of the whole situation). It will also be very helpful in case the situation deteriorates and you need to argue for yourself against your advisor with the administration or others. People like this are extremely good at convincing others that you are the crazy one - so good, they can even make you believe it yourself.
Read up on the patterns and techniques of abuse. There are few resources for abused grad students, but it fundamentally all works the same way, so looking into husband/wife or parent/child abuse you will recognize many facets. I highly recommend Lundy Bankroft's "Why Does He Do That", it's an incisive analysis of abuser mentality.


What data about grades should I tell the class? Make public?

Revealing information about grades is normally directed by some combination of university policy and government regulations (if one is teaching at a public institution of higher learning).

Where I teach, for instance, all grades for written exams are officially published, but semi-anonymized by replacing the students' names with their student ID numbers. In addition, the aggregate statistics are also published, along with the rubric for converting "raw" scores into final grades.

My general belief, however, is that grades are an "internal" matter, that should not generally be publicized beyond the extent required by regulations. There is no need for everyone in the world to see the grade distribution.


Should I include a paper with a low impact factor in my CV

Yes, probably.

An academic CV should be a comprehensive record of your academic past.  It is not like a professional resume where you include precisely the (true!) information that you think will be to your advantage.  It is very likely that anyone reading your CV will assume that they are looking at the complete list of your publications.  So omitting a paper because you think it will make the reader think worse of you is something that, if discovered, would be regarded as inappropriate by many.  (And in many academic fields nowadays, such a discovery would be quite easy to make.)  If it is a standard convention in your field to include only "selected publications" in your CV, you could do that...but of course it could make the reader curious as to what was not selected.

Let me also say that not wanting to include a publication because of the low impact factor of the journal it was published in is at least one step further along on the path to impact factor insanity than I had heretofore heard of.  A paper is not good or bad because of some numerical measure of the journal it is published in.  Further, not all papers are our best papers and this is so obvious that there should be no shame in it.  However, if you really think that a paper is so weak that you might later regret publishing it: think harder, and if you're convinced then don't publish it.

Added: According to @ff524's comment, the impact factor may be the least of your worries.  But I think my answer applies even if you're published in a "predatory" journal.

Further Added: People may be interested to know that I have a publication in a journal whose publishing company, SCIRP, is on Beall's list.  I won't tell the full story of how I came to publish the paper there except to say that this is a journal in which one ostensibly has to pay to publish, I was curious what happens when one submits to this journal and is not willing to pay, and in the answer in my case is that they published the paper anyway.  (Yes, this "experiment" was not well thought out nor necessarily ethical behavior on my part.) Moreover, my opinion of the journal has declined in the intervening years since I published the paper.  Nevertheless I list the paper on my webpage and on my CV: on the one hand, I feel obligated to.  On the other hand, despite the fact that the paper was published in a journal some of whose practices look pretty shady, the paper itself is a real (though rather modest) research contribution.  In fact, from what I can tell (the subject of specialty of the journal lies outside of my core expertise) a good number of the papers published in this journal are solid.  (So the journal is in some ways predatory and some ways legitimate.  I find this very strange, wish I understood the situation better, and again, I wish I hadn't published there.)  I would much rather have a line on my CV that shows that I made a naive, questionable choice of where to submit a paper than have a CV which is not intellectually honest.

Yet Further Added: I will record here what I found on the web concerning the question of whether an academic CV should list all publications.

1) This link from UC Berkeley's Guide to CV's as part of an academic job search says "List all the papers and presentations you have delivered or will deliver."

2) Our trusted friends at Elsevier weigh in on the subject and seem to come to the opposite conclusion:

  It is advisable to list your most reputed publications in ranking of type, such as books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, non-peer-reviewed articles, articles presented as prestigious conferences, forthcoming publications, reports, patents, and so forth. Consider making an exhaustive list of all publications in an appendix.

Please direct further questions on this article to its author, "Elsevier Biggerbrains."

3) Caroline Eisner at academic coaching and writing says

  When you list your publications, begin with the most recently published, or those out for review (list these in italics), and move down your list to the one published first. If there are early publications (or conferences) you are no longer proud to list, or you no longer care to publicize, leave them off the list. If you delivered a paper long ago, and it is not relevant to your current academic self, don’t include it.

4) This University of Washington guide to academic CVs writes

  List your published works in reverse chronological order according to publication
  date.  Use the reference style appropriate to your discipline.  If you have multiple publications,
  consider dividing them by type such as articles and book chapters, or
   refereed and invited
  papers.  If an article has been accepted for publication, indicate ‘in press’ or ‘forthcoming’ in
  lieu of the publication year.  Consider bolding your name on each publication.

It seems to give the impression that all publications should be listed.  (There is also the implication that there will not be so many.)

5) The University of Kent counsels structuring the CV so that the most relevant publications are highlighted, but the implication is that all should be included.


Why are some computer science conferences not included in the CORE ranking?

I guess it is because SANER was called WCRE before (present for example in core 2018, ranked B which seems right to me) and changed name. From experience, CORE people do not change things by themselves, it is better to send them update requests


Creating a collaborative project for a group of 10 graduate neuroscience students from various backgrounds

Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out what the project should be.

I use a large-group project for one of my classes, and I've started soliciting faculty in certain departments with an email a few months before class gets underway.  Essentially, this email states:

My class will be working on a semester-long project soon.
I would rather the students work on something real-world, as opposed to a toy project.
Because these are students, there are no guarantees you'll get a useful result when they are done. However, you won't pay anything, either, and you might get lucky.
If you have something that might be a suitable idea, contact me.

The result has been a big success. Students tend to work harder when they feel like something useful and tangible may come from their efforts. Moreover, this set-up requires the students to work with real "customers", which is sometimes one of the most valuable parts of the learning process.


Journals use a variety of formats for reporting author contributions. This content is like a conflict of interest statement—it's not typically evaluated as part of the peer review, but more a contractual reassurance in case of later concerns such as whether an author is added with no contribution.
I've used CRediT statements in several published papers. I don't know a citation for my claims below, but I strongly suspect:

Yes
Not mutually exclusive


Has anybody had any success with a college level "flipped classroom?"

Oxford and Cambridge University courses in England have always operated a bit like this.  In my Oxford Maths course, I'd attend 1 or 2 1-hour long lectures on the subject, have worksheets to do, then have classes in college of about 5 students to 1 instructor where we would discuss and work through the material.

What you're suggesting is basically the same, but having recorded lectures.  Given that most of the lectures were non-interactive, it amounts to much the same thing.  In general, I found it a very successful approach.


Engineers/Scientists to break into management consulting

I'm afraid I've got to say that many of the things that one might consider an asset, are in reality going to be a hindrance.

Rigour, consistency, reason, domain knowledge, ability to describe uncertainty, always prepared to put appropriate caveats on findings: these are all encumbrances in almost all management consulting.

What you need to cultivate is the ability to form strategy on the basis of a fairly superficial understanding of a business; and the ability to persuade people to pay you lots for you to borrow their watch and then tell them the time.

Oh, and do watch House of Lies through, end to end, a couple of times, to get a feel for it.

Having said that, there is a tiny niche in management consulting available for the skilled technician who's prepared to say no to clients who want "regular" management consulting, and only take on clients who want a thorough, rational, informed job done. There aren't many of those clients, whch is why it's a tiny niche. And it's more likely to be a boutique subject-specific consultancy. But if you find one (or found one, i.e. you are the founder), and it gets the right kind of clients, you'll be very happy (and completely exhausted much of the time), and financially very comfortable while the clients are there.


Fear of overbooking during job interview season. How is cancelling an interview to take another interview viewed?

I know the hiring process in Math is a little unique. My answer is based on the assumption that an "interview" means a 1.5-2 day campus visit and that interview season is 10 weeks. Further, I assume that when contacted about interviews a candidate is typically given 3 choices of dates and that departments are interviewing about 5 candidates.

As long as you avoid campus visits on Wednesdays, you can fit two visits in a week. This means there are about 20 interview slots in a season. As the number of interviews approaches 10, the likelihood that the 3 options offered for one of these interviews will clash with previously accepted interviews. To calculate an exact probability you need to know the rate of Wednesday campus visits. At 15 it is very likely for a clash and at 20 you would have to get very lucky.

I think in this particular case the post doc is looking at 11 interviews at most and has already gotten a few rejections so likely fewer. This means that the post doc might need to tell a school that none of the dates work, but would still be able to offer 10 alternatives dates within the prime season as well as early and late visits. On the hiring committees I am familiar with providing a wide range of alternatives would not indicate disinterest. The likelihood of the availability of one of these dates depends on how busy the department is, but I would be surprised if none of them worked. If in fact there is a clash, and the school is highly desirable, then the post doc would need to cancel (or reschedule) a previously scheduled interview. Again, contacting a school to reschedule an interview is not a sign of disinterest, but rather a reality of job searches.

The real problem is not scheduling, but the ability to do a large number of interviews. The number of "slots" can be drastically reduced if the post doc has teaching requirements. Similarly, having a campus visit on Monday and Tuesday, traveling to a new city on Wednesday, and having another campus visit on Thursday and Friday is tiring. Doing that for weeks on end is the craziness of the job search. I know lots of people who have managed 10 interviews in a season with a 1 class teaching load. I don't recall anyone getting to 15.

  I'm not sure about the ethics of cancelling an interview to take another interview instead.

As I said above, I would suggest rescheduling prior to cancelling. If there really is a clash, cancelling is the only thing you can do. Cancelling the less desirable interview (after factoring in likelihood of getting a job), is the only sane thing to do. Some search committee members will complain, but no one will hold it against the post doc for long.


Should I include interviewees in my dissertation acknowledgement?

I would think that it is probably enough to recognize them as a group: Thanks to the fifteen people whose ... enables this research. You might want to name the companies, provided that there was some cost (monetary or otherwise) to the companies.

Alternatively you might, at the end, without connecting any individual to their responses, thank them by name, maybe obfuscated: J. Doakes, M. Jones and thirteen others who prefer not to be named.

Likewise, if the positions held by the respondents is essential you might list that with or without names, even if it is just summarized: Three executive vice-presidents, one chairman of the board, and ... (That isn't the same thing as individual acknowledgement, of course, but informs your readers.)

My reasoning is that you probably don't want readers of your thesis to contact your responders, more to avoid them being bothered than for any other reason.

If the research requires that a name or other identifying information be associated with a response then you need explicit permission. You likely need to retain the written permission.

I'll also note that there are laws in various places that speak to issues like this. In the US, most universities have an office of research that will give you very detailed information about research, especially research involving human subjects. It may be the same elsewhere. In the US, see an officer of the IRB (Institutional Review Board) at the university. Your research may be covered or not. I suspect that for simple interviews it won't be covered, but you should check.


My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do?

If you don't have any problems with graduating next semester then just do that.  It will give you more time to refine your submissions and to prep for the defense.  A little annoying, granted, but it could be a blessing in disguise too.

As for working with your adviser, what's done is done.  Perhaps they were delayed in their responses but you may have to accept some of the responsibility here as well, I think.  It takes some time to make all of the arrangements for finalizing graduation.  It's not like undergrad where they can just look at the transcript and say "120cu, good to go". Heck, just getting a defense scheduled can be a major undertaking.  Especially if you're trying to squeeze in under the wire.  Stack the university processing and thesis review times on top of that and you're really cutting it close.

I can certainly understand your frustration (my M.S. was delayed by a semester due to a similarly inane set of circumstances which led to all kinds of fun) but my suggestion to you and anyone in a similar situation is to take a deep breath, relax, and use the time that you have to prep as best you can.

Aside: This type of advice question is not a very good fit to the normal SO format.  I wanted to provide a response since I suspect that many people have gotten into similar situations but have fair warning that it may get flagged.


Surely this depends on the strength of the candidate and their interests. IF they can prove theyre interested in math finance or finance in general, then theyre more likely to get into the MFE. I'd hope that the top institutions don't only choose candidates based on Maths knowledge, but also on there interests. I'd like to think that lecturers want to teach students who ask interesting questions on the finance side as well, rather than delving deep into the theoretical side.

I just finished an MFE, and it turns out that the theoretical maths is almost useless in practise. Its nice to see how it all works, but what is more useful is having a feel for stylised facts related to metrics such as volatility, and also the understanding of different products. I'm not saying the technical maths is useless, i'm just saying I cant see many people using things like levy jump processes in practise. The point is, you should have an interest in finance, and not only apply for the good potential salary after, because if you don't enjoy going to work, whats the use of the salary? You'll go through 5/7 days of hell earning £ which you can spend on 2/7 days, and you can see that this isn't the ideal balance (5>2 =D). Sorry if the end is abit off topic


The reputation of a researcher: number of Citations vs Quality of publication

Quality is not easy to define in general and this is even harder when it comes to scientific work or even scientists. One may say that any judgment of quality is subjective and hence, as Pete L. Clark suggested, you have to form an opinion yourself, e.g. by reading the articles/books or listening to talks if you have the chance. You may also ask colleagues about their opinion to help you to form your own opinion. To see that quality is subjective: The formulation of your question suggests that for you, high quality work has to have some "scientific depths". For other people "high quality" may mean "great and simple ideas" (which may not be too deep, after all).

Reputation, on the other hand, is something that is more related to a community, so you can get a good impression of someones reputation if you ask colleagues who are in business for some time. To see that quality and reputation are not the same thing you may get a response like "He/she has a good reputation in the field but I do not like his/her work very much."


When are 2 PhDs in philosophy necessary?

Just reading the two titles, those PhD's each have a different focus.

I assume that the Cambridge PhD is "modern"...
And the Toronto one is prior to some defined date.

This means that Tom decided to augment or broaden his knowledge, perhaps due to interests gained in the first PhD. I'm guessing - only he knows why for sure.


Proportion of journal submissions by developing countries

This is a question straight out of the domain of scientometrics - a field I have had some limited experience in. There is no one source which gives you your answer; rather this is a contextual, complicated and rather nuanced question which you have asked. The true answer is it depends on the field. For instance in the field of ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), the proportion of articles is very high (which makes intuitive sense) but this may not be true for other fields. Remember also that the term developing countries has a very shifting definition and is therefore temporally bound.

With this exposition, here are some studies which I can point you towards which have looked at  answering some, sub-section of your question. I also include studies on conferences (because certain fields are more conference centric) and also broadly scientific productivity and impact among scientists and researchers in developing countries. This is because these are all highly related and in total, might help you.

This study tells us that only 7.9% of articles in the top 21 Library and Information Science journals are from developing countries or eastern european countries.

This study tells us that articles from developing countries tend to cite other articles form other developing countries and thus, creates a vicious cycle of citations.

This study attempted to define a special collaboration metric for articles from developing countries. It recommended usage of this metric to measure productivity and impact from developing countries instead of the usual suspects (h-index etc.)

This study, specific to Chile attempts to find out root causes of low scientific productivity (i.e. publications) from Chilean authors in Chilean universities. (eg. low priority of funding, lack of interest in research, corruption etc.)

This study is a meta-level article into looking at the scientific productivity in developing countries across the world. It presents a socio-historical approach and also attempt to quantify certain key characteristics of developing countries' scientific productivity and reasons behind the low numbers of article.

This study points out that the present measures of bibliometric/scientometric analysis is skewed towards developed countries and as such is not a good indicator of research productivity in developing nations. The authors point out that alternative sources of databases, specifically presented as a case study of Cuba might provide better insights.

I would also request you to take such quantitative studies with a pinch of salt because they do not often paint an accurate or holistic picture of what's actually going on behind the scenes.


Is it appropriate to ask the editor which changes he/she thinks is critical to the review?

I am not in your discipline (I'm in the health and social sciences). I have always learned that it's best to try (somehow) to address all of the reviewers' concerns. That being said, reviewers are not always clear (as in your case), do not make reasonable suggestions, or their suggestions conflict with other reviewers' suggestions.

My suggestion is to revise how you describe the experiment and results. See how you can make your description of these things more clear. Then, when you write your response to reviewers' comments, you could say, "To address concerns by reviewer #2, we have revised and clarified the sections regarding our experiment and results. The time frame provided for the revision does not allow for additional experiments. However, if the editor feels that such work is necessary, we are open to further suggestions on improving the manuscript."

This way you do not look like you are disregarding the feedback from the reviewer and demonstrate your willingness to try and address his or her concerns. Good luck!


As a new PhD supervisor, how should I deal with taking a student to a wrong direction?

On the grand scheme of things, what you just described is not the worst I've heard of. There are cases where a student spends years of their Ph. D. on a problem with nothing to show for in the end, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes even experienced advisors will, intentionally or unintentionally, end up letting their students work on ideas that are terrible in hindsight. A couple of months wasted in the first year really is not a big deal (and there are certainly worse ways to waste one's time as a grad student). Besides just learning the lesson and moving on, here are a couple perspectives that I find helpful:

Defining the research question is not the sole responsibility of the advisor. It is true that the advisor sometimes has to act as a quality check for the students' work, but the point of PhD is to take responsibility for your own work. So the fact that the student just accepted the research question without asking whether it's valid or not (I assume) is partly the student's fault as well.
Try to salvage the effort spent as much as possible. Oftentimes it is possible to recast what you've done in light of a different research question, and you should consider whether that's possible in your case. I'd go so far as to say that one should always work on things that will be publishable even if your original hypothesis turns out to be wrong.


What is the difference between a teaching assistant and an instructor?

No, there really is no universal definition of the terms; I have been a "teaching assistant" and an "instructor" at the same school for basically the same position.

The only thing that I would say is that the term "teaching assistant" tends to imply a position that does not have significant lecturing responsibilities, although she may be responsible for nearly everything else in the course (creating and grading homework and exam problems, interacting with students, conducting recitations sections, and so on). Note that this does not mean that the TA might not carry out a "spot lecture" or two; but this is not an expectation of the position overall.

In general, I would avoid this problem by doing two things:

Listing on my CV the "job title" that the school assigns to the role you carried out.
Provide a short list of the duties your position entailed.

In this way, there is no ambiguity or misconception that can result, since you're providing all the information needed to understand the breadth of your teaching experience.


Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at another university?

Getting a second masters degree in the same field may be allowed, but it's extremely rare and I don't think it's a good use of time. I don't think it will help you get admitted to a PhD program. It would just look like an anomaly to the admissions committee. I think it would make more sense to apply directly to PhD programs.


Impact of PhD cgpa in academia and industry

Academia and industry largely do not care about your grades as a graduate student. The only exceptions are certain large corporations that have cutoffs for the GPA for graduate as well as undergraduate studies. [I have worked for such a corporation, so this is not idle speculation.] Even then, such cutoffs are not absolute—if a hiring manager wants you badly enough, they can petition for the requirements to be waived.

Academia does not care about your grades: your promise as a successful researcher and colleague is the primary consideration in getting hired as a postdoc.


Internships and their bearing on securing tenure track faculty positions

In my field of study (software engineering, distributed systems), industry internships are also exceedingly common. So common, in fact, that I would also assume without having ever actually checked that a majority of young tenure-track (TT) faculty in my fields also did internships during their PhD.

Yet, I would argue that what you observe is a classical case of correlation versus causation. Yes, TT jobs and internships are likely reasonably strongly correlated, because:

Internships are high-profile and the best PhD students (AKA those that are likely to go on to TT positions) are much more likely to get one than weaker students.
Internships are, at least in my field, often insanely productive for the student, leading to one or multiple papers of highest quality. Obviously, having one or more A+ papers (more) helps a lot when you are on the job market.
Internships establish very tight connections to one or multiple, often well-known, industrial researchers, who can write strong recommendations.
Another somewhat indirect advantage is that the close connection to industry experienced in an internship helps people get new ideas and grow as researchers, hence leading to better papers and research statements once they are back.

However, this is not to say that search committees value the internship itself. If you were on an internship, but you were pushed in by your advisor, there was no paper, you did not learn anything useful, and you did not make useful connections, then the internship will not meaningfully help you get a TT position. Conversely, if you never did an internship, but still have good connections to the community and have written great papers regardless, the lack of an internship should not hold you back.


Will an online minority student PhD recruitment platform be valuable in the US?

Having reviewed literally thousands of posts asking " I study X. This is my GPA, GRE and TOEFL scores. I have published a few papers. I have good recommendation letters. What is my chance getting into US PhD programs?" type of questions on this site, I would say such a central online platform is definitely useful.

In particular, I think it would be very helpful for the students to get an idea what the schools are looking for. Publishing lab openings is a good start. Some schools may be reluctant to publish their requirements in the first place. But, if many schools are doing that, many others will follow suits.

However, I am not too sure if those admission committee members will spend so much time to go through hundreds of thousands (or even more) applicants' files.
My other concerns is the information security. There would be a lot sensitive data to be looked at. So, I think to put students' data on that site may not be a good idea at the moment.


Is there any authoritative legal information on this?

I am not aware of any jurisdiction in which applying for a stipend for which you are not eligible is illegal. For obvious reasons, eligibility is bindingly determined by the stipend giver, not by the applicants.
The rule "top 10%" does not seem to be stated clearly. If the students that got 1.2 in your class are included, then the statement

12.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which seems to be a contradiction. If, as Nuclear Wang proposes, the students with 1.2 are not included in the 10%, then the statement

Only 5.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which also seems a contradiction. As both plausible interpretations lead to apparent contradictions, it is reasonable to have doubts about the actual meaning of the rule. So if the rule is not stated more clearly, just apply and let the stipend givers decide. That is their job, not yours (or your friend's).


How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?

In the different groups I worked in, their respective cultures were always the result of the behaviour of the leader. So lead by example. In particular, some useful hints from my experience would be:

E-Mails: don't send e-mails in non-office hours, especially not requests for help with something. No e-mails on weekends and late night are a signal which everybody "gets" after a short while.

Social activities: support group's social life. A group hike to nearby mountains (in office hours on a working day!), or a joint trip to a museum sends a signal that taking time off is an important part of one's life. We used to do it on occasion of having a guest researcher (for a study stay, or just a seminar talk). It's good for group's cohesion and again tells people that rest time is also very useful.

Personal relationship: care for private lives of your group members. Build relationship with their families. Speak to them about their personal activities, about their vacations, kids, etc. and do not forget to give back and speak about yours. These kinds of discussions send a powerful signal that you perceive time off in a positive way and even encourage it, since you take it as well.

Plan well ahead: clear plans and roadmaps in projects allow people to plan their time off as well. Nothing more annoying than a spurt interfering with one's private life to deliver some report, because the boss didn't care to tell the group ahead.

Time in the office: being in computer science, where I do not need to spend time in a lab and can easily work anywhere, I was always lucky to have bosses who cared for deliverables, rather than for my time in the office. After all, most of my good ideas are born in weird places, such as under shower, while on a bike, walking in woods, and by reading stuff outdoors. Making it clear with the group members that you care first and foremost for deliverables and are flexible regarding the actual time in the office (within reasonable bounds and respecting the local laws and regulations) works well. My experience is also that people tend to deliver better if they are given the power to plan their time and process, rather being forced to mantinels set by their supervisor.

Generally, I found it always very comfortable in groups where having kids was something nice and for what the group leader and members cared. Nothing is worse than a group where work interacts negatively with one's family life and where going home before 6pm to care for kids at home is perceived as something bad.


What are some techniques to get some work done during the Christmas period?

A major perk of being an academic are the long breaks between terms, when we have the freedom to travel and make our own schedules.  However, this comes coupled with the responsibility to keep being productive during these breaks, and this is harder than it sounds.

You are wise to be thinking ahead about how to manage this.  I'm not sure exactly what you have planned, but I'm going to guess it may include extended visits to see friends and family.  Here are some things I have found useful:

Explain to them that, although you are glad to get to spend time with them, you're not on vacation from work the whole time.  (Non-academics often don't realize this and assume the entire break is free time for you.)
Look ahead to set aside specific times in your schedule for work.  Ask your hosts to check with you before planning any family activities, to make sure they don't conflict.  Again, they shouldn't assume that all your time is free.  ("Oh, but you can't work on your paper tomorrow!  I've just arranged for us to go on a picnic with Uncle Jürgen!")
Consider going somewhere else to work, such as a library or cafe.  Trying to work with relatives around is often distracting, especially if some are children.
Set specific goals for what you want to accomplish during the trip.  If you share them with your family (and can convince them that they are exciting) they may be able to help encourage you to work toward them, and to arrange things so that you have the time to do so.


Caption for a figure reproduced from a CC-licensed document

Including the license terms in the figure caption isn't necessary.  "Attribution" in CC licensing is usually interpreted as "provides name of author and/or source of original", which you do fine with just "Reference X".

EDIT from comments: As pointed out by @ff524, the CC guidelines suggest including license terms. It makes sense to include title, author name, source, license in the reference section.  Not necessary for the image caption though.


How to motivate students you supervise to produce high-quality research when other graduate students in the program don't?

This is, as you say, a common problem. It certainly is realistic to try to get more out of your students than the other faculty. However, depending on how substantial the gap is between the norm and your expectations, getting into a better school may turn out to be the only realistic and sustainable way of aligning goals and reality. If the statement that the PhD theses in the new school are like bachelor theses in the old school is not just hyperbole, this may certainly turn out to be the case for your friend.

  how can he motivate his students to work harder and produce better work when other students in the program don't?

Step 1 is certainly to figure out why they should work harder than their peers (who still graduate!) in the first place. It's likely that your friend never really gave this much thought, because in his old school, working your ass off was simply what PhD students do. Here it isn't, so he needs to find a motivator that works for them. The two solutions offered by Brian (tell them that they won't find an academic job if they don't publish, and show them what cool things they could be doing) are good, but they will work only if they actually have aspirations to stay in academia, or respectively have substantial internal drive to do good research. Both may have been a given in the old school, but not necessarily so in the new one. Other potential motivators may include:

Getting to see nice conference venues (don't laugh - this works much better than you think as a motivator)
Serving as a stepping stone for a cool industry internship, e.g., at Microsoft.
Finding a problem that they personally really want to solve, i.e., real curiosity-driven research.
Bonuses! Most likely difficult to implement in  many universities, but depending on his financial capabilities, there should be some goodies that he can offer in exchange for going beyond the work of peers. It does not need to be a super-formal, but knowing that the students that work hard and get published are also the ones that get new laptops first is certainly a motivator for some students.

The most important step is really to start giving it a thought why they should be working hard in the first place, rather than lamenting why they don't.

Step 2, and strongly connected to Step 1, is then to find the right students. This was again something he has maybe not given too much thought, as in his old school most students were good to excellent. In his new school, there are almost certainly also people for which some of the above motivators will work and compel them  to produce good research, but he will need to identify and actively recruit them to his cause. The most important part of this is to make clear that things in his lab are different than in the rest of the department. Students are not graduating without papers. Students are expected to work on their research X hours a week, for whatever a realistic X is, and so on. If this is the message that your friend is communicating plausibly, most of the students will stay far away from working with him, but that is ok - he does not want those students anyway. However, even at a weaker school, there are likely going to be students who are dissatisfied with the status quo and who are actually going to be appealed by your friend's less lenient approach to PhD school, especially once he builds up a track record of students actually going beyond the norm in the school.

Step 3 is going to be the most difficult, but maybe the most important, step. He then needs to meet his students half-way. Despite all of the above, he is still not going to be working at a top-tier research university. That means he will need to re-evaluate his expectations on his students and the papers they produce. This may include both, quality and quantity of results. He needs to realise that it actually is much harder for his students to produce good work in this environment than what it was for him. He likely had a stimulating and high-competition environment to work in. They just have him, and maybe one or two other more ambitious students. All the other students (who plan to graduate without papers) are frankly more of a distraction than support for them. All the other faculty are simply of not much help. At the end, he may be ok with his students not, or not immediately, submitting to the very best venues. Instead, he needs to ease them into it (without teaching them bad practices). In computer science, a good way may be to initially submit to workshops at the top conferences. This is allows students to go to the top conferences and see what the work is like that is published there, but getting a paper accepted at those workshops is achievable for most students given a little supervision. Really, the core in  this step is to get away from the mindset that is common at top schools that only the very best publication venues are good enough.

What is also important in this step is the right kind of expectation management. Telling stories about your friend's old lab may be a good way to reframe the expectations his students have on how a PhD works, but he needs to pick his time and place. For instance, when his first student gets a paper in the major conference of the field, this is a big deal and should be celebrated as such. This is certainly not the right time to let everyone know that in his old lab they had papers in this conference every year for the last decade.

Finally, Step 4 is to make alliances within the faculty. It is  likely that there are other (younger?) faculty in the department that are also not happy with how the department currently operates. They won't be able to turn the department as a whole around, but it will certainly be easier to improve their own labs if they share their experiences. From a motivational point of view, it is also a good idea to try to socially align the labs of the higher-aspiration professors more tightly - if your students are friends primarily with the students of the other faculty who expect their students to actually work, it will be much easier for your students to keep up motivation. Ways to achieve this include joint  social events or retreats, joint talk series, and of course, if possible, joint research and publications.


Permission for using publicly available questionnaires in Dissertations

Cite them.

If the questionnaires are published then you do not need to ask for permission, just give them credit.

In Psychology there are some very popular questionnaires that were presented in papers that have been cited more than 5000 times. It would be a full-time job to reply to every person's email who wants to use it!


At least in the US, postdocs are hired by individual faculty members without consultation from others, so the guidelines are somewhat fungible, particularly if there's a compelling reason to hire you.

The one exception is for external (and some internal) fellowships—in such cases, the recency rules are pretty much absolute.

In other countries, though, the rules for what is or is not allowed are stricter, and it may not be possible to circumvent them without significant amounts of work on the part of all involved.


I didn't acknowledge someone who helped with my thesis, is this considered plagiarism?

What you are describing is more like a technical form of ghostwriting.  It is currently a matter of some debate whether ghostwriting ought to be also classified as plagiarism.  Whether or not it is plagiarism, however, it is most certainly academically dishonest to use this person's work without acknowledgement.  This is not a minor matter.

Moreover, if you did not disclose the help that you were getting to your supervisor and your committee, then it may be very serious indeed.  Knowing about external help that you were getting might affect their judgement of whether you have done sufficient work to qualify for a Ph.D.  In fact, if they did not know, and enough of your Ph.D. thesis was done by this tutor, it might even be appropriate for your degree to be retracted.


How do I start an initial conversation with a professor to ask them to let me work in their group as a graduated student

from my experience just last month, I am willing to join a professor's lab in the computer science area, so firstly I did my homework as you did, reading about his staff and paper, etc. then I wrote to him an email with sample subject (student want to work with you) and I explain my background and interests in his field of expertise alongside my CV. after somedays he replies and ask me to do a presentation about some project in my CV, then he asked me to prepare a research proposal and some research question, of course, related to the field. In the end, he accepted me and I am waiting for the acceptance from University research community.
Be confident, professional, and concise in your email. good luck


Referring to professors by their first names, when giving a talk,

Some professors are comfortable having students call them by their first names. You should wait until individual professors let you know that this is acceptable to them before you do so.

However, others are not comfortable with this. So, to be on the safe side, I believe that it is best to refer to them by their formal title and last name during a public talk. Many professors do this with their peers during public talks, even if members of the audience are their good colleagues. Plus, you won't run the risk of mistakenly refer to some professors by their first name and others by their formal name, which could be viewed as disrespectful.

I also caution to graduate students that even when they feel comfortable calling individual professors by their first name, they should refer to the same professor by their formal name when talking to others. It's usually best to err on the side of greater professionalism.


Early submission of graduate school application

If it is open for submissions then early or not won’t make a difference.

If it is not yet open then it is up to them what they will do.


What is the procedure for hiring a professor?

EDIT: Added dates to give a sense of the timeline.

Here's how the process works at my university (US).

The department votes (March or April 2014) to request a new hire or not. Usually at this point they will also specify--is this a hire in some particular field, or do we just want to try to get the best person in the field, regardless of speciality. This request is passed to the provost and dean.
If the request is approved (May or June), the department forms a search committee which writes and circulates the job ad (Sept or Oct).
Once all the applications for the job are in (Nov), the search committee reads the applications and selects between 15-25 people to interview at our big disciplinary meeting (January 2015). This is a first round interview that will usually discuss scholarship and maybe a little bit about teaching.
Of that field of 15-25, the committee will select three finalists to bring to a second, on campus interview. (February) The on campus interview is much more strenuous, usually lasting a day or two. At our institution it always includes a public job talk, which presents some facet of the candidates current research before the full faculty and graduate students. Some places it also includes a teaching demo. Invariably there is also a dinner after the talk at which the candidate still needs to be pleasant, conversational, and collegial.
After all the on-campus interviews have been conducted, the department meets and discusses who they want to pick. (Late Feb, Early March) Usually this involves a vote. At some places the faculty's vote is binding, at some places the faculty vote is simply advisory and the committee makes the official recommendation. But, at every school I've heard of it is the Dean or Provost who actually makes the final decision.
So, let's say the department has recommended candidate X to the Dean and the dean has no objection. Now the dean will call candidate X and offer him or her the job.
Usually some rounds of negotiation will follow. If the candidate has other offers, then usually the dean will have to improve the offer. Once a verbal agreement is made, the dean sends a contract to the candidate to sign and return.
Once the dean signs the returned contract, then, presto the candidate is officially a tenure track faculty member. (April or May 2015)


Is there a stigma of assigning the title TA to an undergraduate?

A teaching assistantship (TA) is a formal job category at most universities, which implies that you are being paid a specific wage for teaching duties while a graduate student. Consequently, you would be misrepresenting your work on the CV if you called yourself a teaching assistant, because you are not formally a graduate student.

At the university level, another issue may be that while many undergraduates do participate in teaching responsibilities at many schools, this is often in the form of tutoring programs and informal arrangements. Part of the reason for this is that many universities want to be able to claim a higher percentage of teaching duties are done by faculty than is really the case. Calling undergraduates graders and tutors helps to shift off the balance, since they are not officially "teaching staff," and therefore wouldn't be included in such time accounting.


I determined a parameter for an experiment – shall I ask for authorship?

Whether or not you should be an author on the paper is not about whether you did something, but whether you contributed intellectually. For example, a lab technician who washed the petri dishes and while everyone was working on the experiment in the background turned the dial of the radio to the station that everyone wanted to listened to (i.e., determined one parameter that was crucial to the experiment), did contribute to the experiment. But it was not an intellectual contribution, and so authorship is probably not warranted.

Without more details in your question, it is hard to tell whether you should or should not be an author on the paper. But, this is worth a conversation with your adviser. It's likely going to be a slightly awkward conversation, but it is one in which you can talk about the norms in your field, what qualifies as an "intellectual contribution" and why or why not everyone on the paper should or should not be an author.


Potential Change of Supervisor: Who to talk to first?

This is very hard decision to make.
I would first talk to my group, let them knom my opinion and how I don't feel like that their path is my path. So i would talk to them like person to person, and listen to what they have to say. For me, this is more ethical, and less serious consequences may appear.
After the conversation, I would rethink what to do next.


Acknowledging a reviewer from a journal from which the paper was rejected

First, I think it is good to acknowledge reviewers as you consider doing. It is the editor who rejects any papers based on the results of reviews so the reviews may still be very constructive and indeed helpful in improving a paper. So I would suggest something like the following

  We/I (gratefully) acknowledge the (critical) review by X on an earlier
  version of the manuscript.

There are many ways to express it and what words you wish to use is up to you and the way you wish to express your gratitude. I would not add the name of the journal(s) where the reviews were conducted (other than in the letter to the journal editor accompanying your MS submission).

I also would like to take the opportunity to add that the following issue, not that it applies to your case but more to point out some bad practices for the community. The poor behavior concerns when someone acknowledges a famous persons review just to gain leverage in resubmitting it to another journal. I have seen how persons have used reviews stating that the paper should be rejected because it is "crap" as a "most valuable input to help improve the manuscript". Since no-one typically knows what this review did, the gut reaction is to think it must have been valuable since the reviewer is well known. For this reason it is good to provide the review/revisions from the old MS when re-submitting it so that the review-revision work becomes obvious to the editor.

As a final point, I would not add the acknowledgement of any reviewers new or old until the time when your MS has been (hopefully) accepted in the new journal.

EDIT: Based on the good comments by Tara B on anonymous reviewers and how to distinguish reviews from old and new MS I would write something as the following

  We/I (gratefully) acknowledge the (critical) review by two anonymous reviewers as well as the (critical) review by another anonymous reviewer on an earlier
  version of the manuscript.

Words in parenthesis are optional and can be exchanged for others that better suit your needs.


What is the usual path of post Ph.D. in these fields?

There are two main options:

Pursue in academia as a postdoc, usually in the hope of eventually reaching a tenured academic position.
Apply for industry positions, either for research-oriented jobs (often found in big companies R&D departments or innovative start-ups) or non-research jobs for which PhD skills are required or recommended.

So if by "continue learning" OP means "keep doing research", there are options outside academia. Personally I often encourage PhD students who are close to graduating and haven't made their mind up to consider applying for a postdoc: it's a short contract which gives you a taste of the academic career path while also giving you a job experience, thus leaving all the doors open.

This question might help clarify the landscape of post-PhD options.


Saying that you will do something in the near future in CV and statement of purpose when applying for grad school.

In CVs, it's not unusual to write "planned" or "expected" next to certain lines on a CV that are not yet realized but where there is a very strong reason to expect the event will happen. Although I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about when you should or shouldn't do this, the most important thing is to be honest and unambiguously clear about what stage and state a particular piece of work is. If things fall through and something doesn't happen according to the plan, nobody who read your CV before should feel like you misled them.

The most common example of this is a listing of a degree with an expected or planned date that it will be awarded. This is common enough that I might even find it unusual surprising if a student in a degree program did not list a degree in this way. Because less of this is within an author's control, I'd be very hesitant to list dates next to any unpublished papers on my CV.

That said, it's not uncommon to list papers or projects at different points along a process — especially for more junior scholars who don't have a lot on their CV otherwise. For example, it's normal to list papers as: in preparation (i.e., unfinished), under review (i.e., submitted but without a decision), in press (i.e., accepted but unpublished), etc. Again, managing expectations is key here. On my CV, I list working papers in a section that is entirely separate from my list of publications.

In terms of your personal statement, I think you absolutely should list papers in preparation and make it clear where and when you plan to submit them. Again, just explain things clearly in a way that will honestly communicate the state of your research.


When did "Publish or Perish" first become a thing?

In mathematics, in the U.S., until the 1950s it was almost entirely the case that math departments were service departments to engineering and chem and physics. Teaching loads were high, and there was no expectation of "research" at all. Some people with M.S.'s were faculty, and some people with PhD's had "done no research" except their thesis.

In the early-to-mid 1950's, coinciding with the post-sputnik, post-Hiroshima era, apparently many math depts argued that individuals' teaching loads should be greatly reduced... so they could conduct research that would help "beat the commies" or whatever other enemies... and, concommitantly, they'd need lots more faculty lines.

Of course there was a boom time, perhaps of a decade or two, but then the pretense caught up with us all. E.g., Michael Spivak's multi-volume book(s) on differential geometry were published by "Publish or Perish" press.

Nevertheless, at a relatively high end of things, even into the 1980's, in math, in the U.S., it seemed and does still seem to me that people were judged more by their scholarship, reputation, insight, etc., than by paper-count. Yes, part of this was the considerable difficulty of creating a readable document pre-PDF, pre-TeX, pre-most-things. And, yes, pre-internet. Presentations at conferences, even without associated preprints, could make a person's reputation.

Many breakthrough results were first made public at conferences (in the lack of arXiv or internet generally), and, again, such stuff was what reputations were made of. "Publications" were mostly after-the-fact.


Nightmares and frustrations with students' sloppy homework

It could simply be students doing the minimum in order to get by. The solution is to raise the minimum. To do that, start denying points for non-compliance.

As Suresh wrote in his comment, electronic submission might be appropriate. In my classes I require that whatever students submit be word-processed written in a specific font. If the students do not follow the instructions then I treat them as if they never submitted at all. As you can imagine, seeing this one time in class gets everyone to pay attention.

Basically, eliminate hand-writing if you can. Some students simply have very poor penmanship so it's best to structure things so they can use a computer. Ideally, save the paper and submit electronically.

If you cannot eliminate hand writing them make it clear that if you cannot read (or understand) what they wrote then their score will reflect that. I have issues with some students writing in English (not their first language) and I make it very clear that I'm not here to judge their English but if I cannot understand their intention without guessing, I will simply mark it as gibberish.


Homework Policy - Extension with Partial Solutions for Partial Credit

I give weekly assignments and post the full solutions immediately after the assignment is due.  However, I also give partial credit (50%) to any assignments turned in after its due date but before the final exam.

I have seen a handful of students utilize this system.  Typically they are the ones who normally complete assignments but missed the deadline due to extraneous circumstances.  I consider these use-cases to be exactly in the spirit of my policy.  Occasionally, I will have a student who submits virtually all of the assignments in the last week of the term.  I see this as an unintended consequence of the policy (I would actually prefer to discourage this kind of procrastination).

There are a few downsides from an instructor's point of view:

There is a higher organizational load than if you enforce a strict deadline.  I find the marginal cost of grading a late assignment to be surprisingly high.  If assignments came any more frequently than weekly, I am confident my system would become onerous, and the one you propose would be even worse.
There is a risk that an honest (but poor) on-time effort by a student could be surpassed by a dishonest late effort by another student.  I haven't seen this but it is a worry in the back of my mind.  I try to avoid this by actively encouraging students who do poorly (worse than 50%) to re-submit after looking at the solutions.


I am a student of high potential but not great on paper, how should I go about transferring to a university more at my level?

Many, many students who are at lower-ranked universities aspire to be at higher-ranked places instead.  (In fact, what is more surprising to me is that not all such students feel this way.)  The hard truth is that top-ranked universities by definition are very selective of their applicants, and in your case the "main round" of the selection process has already occurred.  It is not impossible to transfer to a much better place, but it is difficult, to the extent that it may or may not be a reasonable goal.  Growing where you are planted sounds like a smarter strategy to me, and in fact it is not fundamentally incompatible with the ambition to move elsewhere.

The one way I can think of to effectively demonstrate your potential is to realize it, i.e., to prove at least one theorem of a caliber beyond what most students in your program do as part of their PhD thesis work.  If you can do that, then you clearly deserve to be at a better place, and you should not have much trouble finding some place to take you on.  I don't think anything else is worth banking on: as others have said, grades in PhD-level mathematics courses in the US are not necessarily very meaningful.  This varies in its extent, but every program I know has enough courses where all students who do not do anything egregiously, ridiculously wrong get the highest possible grade that a 4.0 GPA at the graduate level is just not the same thing as it is at the undergraduate level. I would expect that a substantial proportion of the students in your program would have 4.0 GPAs.

Unfortunately I think the strategy of "gunning for an early research success" will either be a good one or (and in terms of the percentages, this is more likely) a very bad one.  Most early career math PhD students are not anywhere near equipped to do meaningful research, to an extent that other academic fields would have a hard time believing.  In my program (about the 50th best in the US) early career students neglecting their coursework in favor of their "research" is a big red flag for me: these students often fail to meet programmatic requirements and get in real trouble.

To be very honest: I think the big risk here is that you are not as exceptional as you think, that your lack of effort in your coursework will itself become a problem down the road, and that your superiority to those around you may only be a matter of opinion.  Of course I'm not saying that this is the case -- I couldn't know -- but it would be very smart to be concerned about this on your own behalf.  You need some reality checks.  Here are some checkpoints:

  Step 1: Can you pass all your generals / quals / required coursework rapidly and unusually well?

In most non-top math PhD programs I know of, there is an initial phase of 1-3 years where students spend time studying coursework and then passing exams.  A small number of students get through this portion much more quickly: within a single year, a single semester or even immediately upon arrival.  It is debatable whether such students are truly more talented than the others or simply arrived very well prepared and have their act together, but in any event such students are certainly doing exceptionally well in the program.

  Step 2: Can you get faculty on board with the plan of your having exceptional promise and ambition and get a very meaty project to work on?

Go to one of the faculty members you're working with and level with them: say that you feel understimulated by the program, are worried that your peers lack your intensity and ambition, and that you are really looking for a project to sink your teeth into.  Then step back and listen very carefully to what she has to say.  You will probably get some amount of corroboration/denial of the picture you have painted, though it may be subtle.  (I would not say: "No, I completely disagree: you're just average, maybe not even that" to a student, even if I felt that way!) More importantly you should get something to work on.  Do so.  If it is not what you wanted, or if you have your own ideas about what you want to work on, come back and say so, but I think it's good to spend some time on projects that other people give you at this stage.

  Step 3: Can you get some results?  Anything at first, then something nice, then maybe a real breakthrough?

If you can make it successfully through Step 3, then as above you're ready to go somewhere better.  Let me not even try to hide the following key point: the merit of this checklist is that it's what you're supposed to be doing anyway.  If by the time you successfully complete Step 3 you're ready to graduate, should you curse my trickery?  No, you should proudly write up your thesis and expect to get a postdoc at a much better place than you did your PhD, which is hard to do and puts you on a great trajectory for your later career.

Good luck.


Electronic journals with 'print on demand'

It hasn't begun operating yet, but Cambridge University Press's Forum of Mathematics will work that way.  The journal will launch later in 2012.


Is conflict of interest applicable for independent research?

If your case is a case in which conflicts of interest do not apply, then you simply state:

  The author declares that she/he has no conflict of interest

assuming you are the sole author, in the appropriate section, usually stated Conflict of Interests. Note that some publishers, such as Elsevier, require you to sign a form for this purpose as well before even beginning the review process.

For further information you may refer this post:

Clear explanation of Conflict of Interest with examples in journal articles


Must graphs in a mathematical PhD thesis be drawn nicely?

Even if it's not a formal requirement, consider how important first impressions are. People will judge a paper with sloppy diagrams, and assume that the results and writing will also be sloppy. This is especially true for a PhD thesis. Since you've had 4-5 years to work on it, people will assume that a thesis is well-written and every aspect carefully planned. That includes the figures. A thesis with hand-drawn figures will not be seen as professional.

I personally recommend Inkscape for drawing things. I think it's easier than Illustrator. I believe for my undergraduate thesis I picked up most of the knowledge i needed in 2 hours of watching Youtube tutorials and trying them out. Fortunately, math diagrams usually only require knowledge of the most basic tools in a program.

If you are truly desperate, I believe it is usually acceptable to pay someone to take your pencil drawings and turn them into professional ones, as long as you give proper credit (check your university guidelines though). There is probably an undergrad at your university with experience in Inkscape or Illustrator who wants to make some extra money.


Is a 12-month open access mandate compatible with a 12-month embargo period?

You might be able to ask your librarians to help you with this. For example, I know the University of Cambridge's have a program with which you can submit your work after which they'll take care of checking the requirements.

Given that you're at most one day in the wrong, however, I wouldn't worry too much - you're definitely working in the spirit of the rules.


IEEE Copyright and replacing previous ArXiv/TechRxiv versions

When referring to a preprint being replaced, it is understood that a new version will be generated. Most/all preprint servers do not generally permit editing existing versions in order to maintain a clear timeline.
Even though older versions remain accessible, readers would view the latest version as the most up-to-date version to refer to for future use, so this is unlikely to be an issue.
This interpretation also agrees with the terminology used by arXiv.


should one add to the CV papers that appeared in conferences with no proceedings?

I assume that you're in computer science, since otherwise you probably shouldn't list any conference papers as publications.  So I'll answer as a computer scientist.

No, you should not list such papers as publications in your CV, because  those papers are not actually published.  Moreover, there is likely an expectation that the same paper can be published at a different conference. You must not list the "same" paper at more than one conference.*

I know of several conferences/workshops like the one your describe in computational geometry (my home field), including EuroCG, the Fall Workshops, and the Young Researchers Forum at SOCG.  At all three venues, submissions are lightly peer-reviewed, only a subset of submissions are accepted, and a booklet of abstracts is distributed to participants and/or on the web.  But no formal proceedings is issued at these events, because it is expected that accepted papers will later appear in more polished form at a more formally reviewed conference.  (Some early iterations of EuroCG did have formal proceedings, despite the expectation of later publication, but other conferences were unwilling to accept papers that appeared in those proceedings.)

As others have said, it's perfectly fine to list those talks under "Unpublished Workshop Talks", especially early in your career.  You might even include the acceptance rate if you want to emphasize that the venue carries some prestige.  Alternatively, if you did publish the paper elsewhere, you might include the phrase "Also presented at ..." after the publication info.

*...but journals are different.  In most subfields of computer science, conferences papers can be published later in refereed journals, usually in a more expanded/complete form.  Even so, I recommend listing each paper only once in your CV, including all publication venues for each paper, rather than listing the same paper once under "conference papers" and again under "journal papers".


query related to Teaching Assistantship award

Most places run on one year budget cycles so a commitment beyond one year would be hard to assure. But unless the educational system falls apart and there are no students to teach, getting a renewal would be assumed. Of course you need to do a good job also to get a continuation of a TA. But research institutions couldn't really run without lots of TAs in some fields.

But they make a "promise" to provide funding. You can expect best efforts on their part but it isn't an absolute guarantee.

In the US, in particular, State Universities are subject to budget constraints made by the legislature. They just have to deal with it.


Suggesting research topic of personal interest to my PI

There is a possible downside to your plan that you should also consider along with the discussion with your advisor.
Undergraduate research, unlike doctoral or professional research, is usually time limited. Therefore a long term research project may be contraindicated unless your advisor agrees that partial results are acceptable within your time frame. You might not be able to reach the point of having publishable results. If that is OK, then there are no real issues.
And if it is OK, and leaves you in a place with unfinished but potentially finighable work, then there might be an advantage to it. If the research questions are sufficiently "interesting" and your approach is "promising" then you might have a head start in graduate study, depending on the requirements of any program you enter.
But, before you commit much time and effort, have that conversation with the advisor and be sure that your short term outcomes are good enough to allow you to continue.


What universities (especially in the USA) prohibit or restrict duplicate advanced degrees?

This is more of a statement of how resources are allocated than a strict prohibition. It is a statement of "may enroll", rather than one of "may not enroll". I think admissions committees at a lot of places take a similar view, even without a formal statement. "Why do you think you need a second math masters?"

The available slots and money are limited most places and committees generally want them to be be used to expand the pool of educated folks.

So, I think that any numerical answer will be misleading. And any listing would be equally misleading.

But the statement is useful as guidance to those who would want to apply when it would be unlikely that the committee would accept them.


Doing MS in CS from low ranked university versus applying again next year?

(1) Should I accept going to low/no rank university now or should I try again next year?

You must go to USA first. The world is changing every now and then. You never know what will happen next year. You can have the Visa, go there, and, you will always have the opportunity to change your university.

  (2) is it okay to request the university to defer the admission for a year so that I can apply for better universities next year?

If the university has a provision to do so, they will. For example, I got acceptance from UCD, Dublin, Ireland. They have a provision to do so. So, I paid the registration fee and they reserved my acceptance for the next year. But, It is highly unlikely that I would go there.


How to resolve grading dispute between TA and Lecturer?

The nature of the dispute makes this problem difficult.

As a mathematics (BS) and computer science (MS, PhD) student I have done numerous exercises that required proof of the existence of a natural number N such that for all n>N some inequality is true. In addition to limits in mathematics, they show up in computational complexity analysis of algorithms.

Every time I have done one of those exercises I have picked a value of N that made the proof as simple and clear as I could. Often, I was aware of a smaller value of N that would have required a longer proof. I have never been marked down for picking an unnecessarily large value of N.

Any finite value N, no matter how large, such that the inequality is provably true for all n>N is equally good. That is an important aspect of these definitions, something the students should understand and apply.

If smallness of N were going to be a grading factor, despite its irrelevance, it should have been announced in advance.

That said, it would have been better for the OP to discuss the matter privately with the professor, and perhaps with more senior professors. The OP should not encourage protests directly, but should state the professor's decision and recommend that follow-ups be forwarded directly to the professor or offer to forward them on the students' behalf.


How should degrees be listed in an e-mail signature?

There is no formal academic convention for email signatures, although your university or institution may have formatting guidelines. You can simply include as much or as little information as you want the recipient to know.

Personally, I think your name and position are sufficient and listing every degree you have is a bit redundant (and, as others have pointed out, pretentious). People will probably infer that you have a BS and MS if you also have a PhD.


Is the following publishing strategy convenient?

As you describe it, it seems like standard practice (more or less). Conferences prefer somewhat shorter works than journals due to time (reviewing) and space (proceedings) considerations. Journals don't have that limitation, though some won't publish long works.

You will need to be careful about citations of your own work, of course and you may have issues with the possibility of double-blind review in some situations.

However, if you publish the journal article first, there would probably be a presumption by the conference committee that it is "old work" and not suitable. But, in general, extending an older work is acceptable - even praiseworthy.

But, to satisfy journal reviewers, the "extended" work should be more than a restating of the earlier work. A summary of older work might not be enough, even if it brings together the, already published, algorithm, and the, already published, use. Reviewers may be looking for what is new.


How can I deal with students who try to steer a course (in the online setting)?

The game is: you listen, but then, you decide. Just because students don't like something, you do not have to do what they ask. Check whether what they say has merit, if so, you can promise to change for next year (or for the current if there is enough flexibility).
Well-designed courses often cannot be massively adapted on the fly. I always explain to students my rationale about unpleasant things, and I do that upfront (very important!). If you have no rationale, it means you have no good reason to do it the way you do and you should strongly consider to change it.
Note that giving in to every whim of your students is the surest way to lose respect. I am considered strict, but make sure I find out what students need, not what they want. And I practically always explain my rationale. I most certainly not always do what they ask, but I take it into account where it makes sense and they always get an insight of my decision process.
Most react well to that. If someone complains, I give them one opportunity, tell them I will decide whether I take it aboard, but then close the discussion. They have had their input, I will contemplate it, and apply either in that round or in the next years' one. Once the decision is made (which needs to be balanced and fair), you thank them for their input, but the discussion is closed.
In your case:

If absence damages the learning, revert to not giving out the slides, and explain why. However, if you are simply piqued by them not attending while the performance is fine, let it go. Ego has no place in the consideration. Alternatively, if they can pick up everything from the slides, maybe the latter are too detailed, or the course is too easy. Which of these is it?

Don't make the homework questions easier. Keep them hard and explain to them why. I mean, they need to have a chance of solving them (it shouldn't be impossible), but it needs to be a challenge. They will initially complain, but as they get better, they will start understanding why this is university and not just a continuation of high school. They should be harder than exam questions, as in an exam you have limited time. However, lengthy homework is not always desirable, there can be short, hard questions. You do not want to waste their time for hours with tediosity, you want them to learn.

Because of Covid, you could easily argue, the exams need to be harder, not easier. As they are carried out at home, they can be given access to material they can not access in class. This makes it possible to crank up the difficulty. Their argument works against them.

People react to what works. If you give in into any request made, not only they know they can play you, but they perceive you as inconsistent, and the situation will become increasingly worse. When you make clear how inputs are treated and how you will work with them, usually people respond well. Make clear that ranting, and emotional complaints or pressure will not cause you to change your opinion, but only rational arguments have a chance to do so. Make sure you yourself know that, that will reflect back implicitly to your students.
You set the ground rules early, and stick to them. It may be difficult for people who strive to be liked, but if a teacher blows like a leaf in the wind, few will like them, and none will respect them. On the other hand, some people are just randomly strict without rationale ("because I said so"); make sure you do not fall into that trap, either, by always considering an argument and understanding why you dismiss it.


Presenting and disseminating research results before submitting a paper

Overall, I don't think there are much such rules; but I am not in the US, so my expertise is limited.

I personally refrain from presenting a work in seminars (in other department notably) or conferences before it is on the arXiv. The deposit is indeed the moment I have checked everything, and I am confident it holds together. Before that, I may have doubts.

In rare occasion, the preprint takes some time to be finished, or deposited, and I am still confident enough to present it, but it is very rare.

I usually put it on the arXiv before submission, because it is a time stamp and I want my work to be available. Referees rarely check proofs in detail, so you need to make yourself confident about your work anyway. You should however remember to update the preprint to a so-called postprint when the referee reports come in (note that some publishers inexplicably don't allow that, OUP for example).

Another reason to deposit on the arXiv before submission is that Elsevier allows you to update a preprint to a postprint, but is quite unclear whether you have the right to deposit a postprint or preprint for the first time after acceptance. Well, not that I particularly urge anyone to publish with Elsevier, but that is to be known.


I am responding to this question as a senior academic from Australia, where discrimination on the grounds of a disability (https://www.humanrights.gov.au/employers/good-practice-good-business-factsheets/quick-guide-australian-discrimination-laws) is illegal.  Other countries will have different rules and protections.

I see no reason for you to list this in your CV. If a gap is uncovered by an assessor or interviewer, then they will put this to you and seek clarification. It is reasonable for them to ask and it is equally reasonable for you to simply state that the gap was due to personal reasons not material to the decision. Where I work, this would be an acceptable response and no more need be said about it. If they press (and I wouldn't), you may state that the gap was due to personal health issues.

If they find out -- say, one of your referees inadvertently mentions it -- then the knowledge of your disability cannot be used as grounds for any decision that they will make.

If you get a spot as a Master's student, then part of the orientation program is a discussion of opportunities for people with disabilities. This is usually handled by another office independent of the academic department of which you are a student. In Australia, the nature of your disability and its management is protected by privacy legislation.

Good luck!


Sure.  How much depends on the field and the department; some places have fairly strict requirements for what you have to have learned in undergrad, and if a minor can hit some of those things, then that works.

However, in such cases, it tends to be less about the official minor and more about the coursework.  For example, if you're applying to grad school in a mathey field, getting good grades in linear algebra, differential equations, and real analysis will probably be a big help whether there's a math minor on your transcript or not.


Balancing coursework, research, and teaching

I think the answer lies in what your PI thinks you should be doing and how well you can, at least, appear to be doing it while doing things other than research.  Even if your PI doesn't enforce a certain allocation it's in your interest to do as much research and little else as possible. You won't get a PhD by teaching or taking classes. An overload, in my experience, is unavoidable first year. Is is possible to take electives that your PI teaches? That's about the only coursework he or she won't begrudge you.


As a full-time paid RA, should I get co-authorship on a paper that I have written?

If you have written the paper, you certainly have the right to be at least a co-author. In fact, from what you said, it seems to me highly dubious that your professor should a an author at all.

Being paid as a RA does not waive your right of getting credits for publications you wrote. Your professor is also paid by the university.

EDIT:

If you would like to talk to your professor about this, I'd suggest that you talk politely. To be honest, I don't know how to do this, but I am sure this is important (and possible).

Thanks to Captain Emacs for their very valuable advice in the comment.


Will my submission be rejected if I accidentally submit the non-blind version to a conference with double blind review?

You might get rejected without review. I would write the Program Chair now, explain your accidental submission of the wrong version of the manuscript, and ask for permission to resubmit the correct version.


Should I use abbreviations such as PDE or DN map in a paper?

If the term is sufficiently long and sufficiently frequently used, it is reasonable to use abbrevations, as it may be very helpful for reading. I once reviewed a paper that was almost unreadable due to using some very long and complicated term all over the place (and I recommended introducing an abbrevation). For example, compare the following:

Using a solver for partial differential equations to solve a problem after applying the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map was first suggested in Ref. 42.
Using a PDE solver for a DtN-mapped problem was first suggested in Ref. 42.

However, you should explain the abbrevation the first time you are using it, e.g.:

partial differential equation (PDE)

The only exception from this are abbrevations that are extremely common like JPEG or Laser, i.e., abbrevations you could also use in the title of a paper. Depending on your field, PDE might be such an abbrevation.
As a sidenote: I recommend to decide about the usage of abbrevations and explaining them in a piecewise manner. For example if you use a term as follows:

once in section 1,
not at all in section 2,
a lot in section 3,
not at all in section 4,
a lot in section 5 and 6.

I recommend not to use or introduce the abbrevation in section 1, but only use it in sections 3, 5 and 6, introducing it when it’s first used in section 3 and 5, respectively. Depending on how likely it is that somebody reads section 6 without reading section 5, it may also be wise to introduce it again at the beginning of section 6.


Is it OK to only invite one of three co-authors of a previous joint paper to do another joint paper?

It is absolutely fine to not work with A and C as long as

all the work and ideas in your paper are yours (and B's).
your preferences on who to work with are based on academic and research skills, Making decisions based on their race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. is discriminatory and hence unacceptable.

I feel it is dishonest to add A and C to the list of authors in your paper just to keep them happy.


Do the author's name and/or affiliation affect the visibility of a paper?

The short answer (from the view of an economist) is: Probably not. At least not in the way you suggest.

However, for most (i.e., not the most influential papers/journals) papers most of the citations (especially for PhD students) are "generated" by feedback from conferences, referees, supervisors, ... .
Therefore, someone from Europe is more likely to encounter someone who knows the European paper and therefore only cites the paper from Europe. In addition, researchers from well-known universities have more visibility and are more likely to know the topic of papers from PhD students at their department.

So, even if there is is no discrimination with regards to the name and the affiliation we could observe the effect you described.

I do not know of any study covering your question, and I do not think there is a way to do such a study.

  To ask the question in another way, is our perception of a paper
  influenced by the authors' names and/or affiliations? Do we not tend
  to infer the quality of a paper by these factors?

I guess that depends on the person. I (and most people I know) are heavily influenced by the journal it is published in, not at all by the authors' name (to clarify: We are influenced by the fact if we know the person or not, but not by how the origin of the name / how the name looks like.) and maybe a little bit by the affiliation of the author if it is a top 5 or top 10 institution in the specific field of research.