How to find the number of papers per language written by a researcher?

Clarivate's Web of Science citation database can provide this information. Assuming you have access to it, e.g. through your institution, you can

Search for a researcher's name
If necessary, use additional criteria to try to restrict the results to a single person
Look under "More options" for languages.

While this option is mainly intended for further restricting the search results, the tool also tells you the number of articles in language X associated with researcher name Y. Of course, their database coverage has some restrictions, so it may or may not work for your purposes. In certain fields, other databases could be more useful.


Can I mention brand names and their products in my research/technical paper?

I don't know about hardware, but in case you feel like mentioning some software (and hardware often comes with software...), beware that the EULA can prohibit researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers.

Oracle is notorious for that, they sued David DeWitt following some benchmarks he had published that mentioned Oracle, see the DeWitt Clause. Luckily the University of Wisconsin supported him, but Oracle banned all Wisconsin alumni for a while.


Is it reasonable to ask candidates to create a profile on Google Scholar?

As much as I like Google Scholar, requiring candidates to create a Google Scholar profile specifically seems inappropriate. You are effectively saying you won't hire people that don't use Google.

What you could do is make it an optional part of the application or you could ask candidates to submit something more vague like a "citation report" and suggest that a printout of their Google Scholar profile is sufficient for this.


Is it possible to do a PhD in pure mathematics after studying aerospace engineering?

The kind of math you'd get exposed to with your proposed BSc would be very much of the applied variety (calc, differential equations, that sort of thing) but it's not going to drive you to any of the backing theory (abstract algebra, real/complex analysis, topology, etc.). It's unlikely a Master's in Aerospace Engineering is going to do you any favors in this regard either. Hence, by the time you want to do your PhD in Math, you will be woefully underprepared for it.

Hence, if you really want a PhD in Math, it's a very, very good idea to do a BA/BS in Math, so I would highly, highly recommend that you dual-major. The good news is that there will be some overlap in classes when you do this, so it's by no means an insurmountable goal. Plus, this will give you a strong sense as to whether to pursue the PhD in Math.

Another option is that, if you just do a BSc in Aerospace Engineering, when you go for your Master's you might consider switching to Math at that time. From a practical standpoint, I'm not sure a Master's in Aerospace Engineering would open many more doors than the BSc would, but a Master's in Math would definitely broaden your knowledge and give you more general appeal. It's possible to proceed with a PhD from there.


Is this footnote from one of Perelman's papers meant to be a joke, or is it mandatory to list one's source of funding?

Indeed, funding agencies require authors to acknowledge their funding, but it's not mandatory to acknowledge personal resources.

To me, however, that footnote doesn't sound like a joke at all, but a sincere acknowledgement of those who have supported him during previous years allowing him to have savings (and during those visits he might have worked on different topics).

That said, there are certainly a lot of joking acknowledgments around.


What to do when reviewer wants p-values, but I prefer to use significance stars to prevent clutter in table?

In general you are not obliged to comply with all reviewer wishes in your revision, unless maybe the editor has mentioned such a point explicitly in the decision letter. If you don't want to follow a reviewer's suggestion for revision, just explain in your response letter in a factual way why you choose to do so, and see what the editor and reviewer think about it. You have good points for such a response in your question already.

I would nevertheless suggest to make the reviewer's life as easy as possible. Even if you don't want to have them in the paper, you could maybe add a list of p-values to the response letter for exactly that comment, stating that for the convenience of the reviewer you calculated the p-values from the data given in the paper (instead of expecting the reviewer to do this). You could also offer to put such a list in any supplementary material if the journal has such and the reviewer thinks it's important that readers see that.


Do referee lists of journals compromise the single-blind peer-review process?

Bear in mind that many papers are reviewed without being published, and that no one knows everyone who could potentially be a reviewer of their paper. So you may guess, but you really can't do so with certainty.

I think a bigger issue in this regard is the shepherding process done in some conferences, in which one person who served as a reviewer interacts directly with the authors to verify that concerns from the reviews are addressed.  Now you know who a reviewer was, just not which review they wrote.  Such conferences often have 5-7 reviews per accepted paper, but I've seen it done with as few as 3.

In either case, I think the possible unblinding of a reviewer is a minor concern. You really ought to be writing the public portion of reviews as though the authors know exactly who is reviewing (this came up in another question recently) and some reviewers choose to sign their reviews explicitly as a matter of principle.


Will my paper get an ISBN/ISSN number if I upload to arXiv.org?

No. ISBNs are assigned to published books (print or electronic), and ISSNs are assigned to published journals (or other serials, such as conference proceedings).

arXiv is not publishing either of these and so will not issue such identifiers.

This is effectively saying "if it's been published, it's not allowed, but informal circulation online or as a working paper is fine". Having an ISBN or ISSN is a simple (though of course not perfect) test to see if something counts as "properly" published. (It's worth noting that papers as such never get an ISSN - the serials they are published in have ISSNs but this will be common to all papers in that serial.)


Am I capable of doing PhD based on my advisor's words?

Though I can't relate to your situation, I have friends who were in a similar situation during their Ph.D. They were mentally abused and constantly demeaned by their advisors. Though this behaviour is predominant in South Asian universities. But it's quite prevalent in many western universities too. However, all my friends who went through such hard times, they did one common thing, they persevered.
They did not lose hope and did whatever was necessary to get the degree. After they graduated, they went their own way and are leading happy lives years after graduating.
What I trying to say is, you know that you are hard-working and a good student. What you are going through is because of your circumstances. You have worked hard for the past 4.5 years on your Ph.D., don't lose hope now. Do what's required for being eligible to defend and then change your circumstances.

All these let me to realize that I actually not capable enough
mentally and emotionally to be successful in PhD or even in any job
from now on.

Don't focus on something that hasn't happened yet. Your job now is to complete your degree. Don't worry about the success and job at the moment. Those will come. You are capable, that's why you are in a grad school.


Is it possible to write good papers in a startup?

A small startup will not have any money for hiring a person to write papers or form an independent research department.

Yet you can see startup companies appearing as author affiliations on academic papers, so a question might be how that is possible.

What happens is that some startups are funded out of research activities at universities, and at least during an initial growth phase they keep a tight connection to the university they are funded out of. Typically that would work in the way that a university research group develops a technology, and maybe a PhD student or post-doc working on that funds a company to commercialize the technology. Nevertheless, the research group may continue improving or working with that technology, and if that is in collaboration with the company, then of course company members will appear as co-authors on the papers coming out of that.

In that case, also the professor who originally supervised the research would also stay in contact with the company, usually even in some formal role such as on an advisory board, and would thus be available for further academic support.


Is it normal to feel dread before starting a faculty position?

It's perfectly normal to feel the way you do. Part of it is likely fear of the unknown; part is fear of a new job with "adult" responsibilities; part of it might even be fear about whether you can do the job (the infamous Imposter Syndrome). Transitions are always a stressful time, and I don't think we give ourselves enough time to adjust.

This also reminds me of a survey that discovered that people who just got tenure are the unhappiest of all faculty. The similarity is in the striving for a prize that's difficult to get, and then getting it ! In both cases, there's an element of letdown, and "I did all this work for THIS ?"

One technique that I've found useful when dealing with these kinds of feelings is to try and focus on the concrete rather than the bigger picture: in your case, maybe focusing on logistics issues related to the transition rather than the bigger picture.

I've also found as a rule of thumb (both personally and with others) that it can take upto 6 months to feel some level of comfort in a new position. That's a long time.


Why do some conference have an "abstract submission" before the "paper submission"?

From what I have observed, having a specific deadline for abstracts is used for two main reasons: having a rough idea of the number of submissions and organise a bidding for the reviewers.

Having the number of submissions can help deciding of a possible deadline extension and possible to "recruit" more PC members or reviewers if the number largely exceeds the expectation.

Organising a bidding based on the abstract allow the PC members to indicate their preference for each paper (e.g., I want to review this paper, I could review this paper, I couldn't review this paper), so that when the actual papers arrive, the distribution is already organised.


Tuition to transfer to massachusetts during a degree

Based on this document, I see a chance (slim, but not zero) that you could move to MA together, he would pay out-of-state tuition for a year, and then he could apply for reclassification.  (Please keep in mind I am NOT a lawyer, nor anyone in the college admission pipeline; I am hoping to provide you with a question you can ask of someone who is one of the two.)  Here's my reasoning:

From part 2, section 2

  Physical presence for this entire twelve-month or six-month period need not be required as long as the conduct of an individual, taken in total, manifests an intention to make Massachusetts his or her permanent dwelling place. However, residency is not acquired by mere physical presence in Massachusetts while the person is enrolled in an institution of higher education.

and from part 3, section 2

  The spouse of any person who is classified or is eligible for classification
  as a Massachusetts resident is likewise eligible for classification as a
  Massachusetts resident.

Your husband would be able to make the case to be reclassified after 12 months on the basis of "he followed you for your job."  I think that, even if he took classes full time, he could still apply for the reclassification, but that reclassification will not be retroactive to the year paid as out-of-state.  (section 4.4)

Here's the catch: If I am right, it's not a guarantee that he'd be reclassified; it's a thing he can apply for.  So, by continuing classes in that 12 month period, he is not only going to be paying full out-of-state tuition, but he runs the risk of being 'locked in' as an out-of-state student for the duration of his program.

The other option, which is much more of a certainty, is that he puts his education on hold for a year to let the residency sort itself out.

I strongly suggest that you just ask the folks at the college he is trying to transfer to.  Certainly the admission people have had to deal with this before.


How to make use of spare research budget?

Spend forward (into 2018-2019) with opportunities related to the research which originally got funded.

Why not top up with a last-minute research trip, or a write-up trip completed and paid for by the end of the grant period?


How do I respond to "how do you like your program" if I completely hate it?

"My experience hasn't been great" is a clean way to indicate the problem without criticizing anyone. You may want to couple this with something honestly positive -- such as "I really like my research topic, but overall, my experience in the program hasn't been great."

If they follow up -- and they probably will -- you can say something like: "I've had a number of issues with the faculty. I probably shouldn't go into all the details though." In this way, you give a reasonable answer to their question without inviting further discussion. You can then redirect the conversation to something you're more positive about -- for example, your research or graduation plans.


How to email a professor requesting to supervise a PhD thesis?

I don't think you need to send a "learning roadmap" or solved exercises. A learning roadmap doesn't really convey whether you have learned the subject. The University of Luxembourg requires that you have a masters degree before you start your PhD. If you have a masters in math, then you've probably solved a few exercises in the process.
Having ideas for future research projects is a very good thing, especially if they are ideas relating to the work of a potential advisor. My advice is to keep the initial email short and to the point -- you can add more details once you get a response. Something like:
"Dear Prof. [So and So],
I am interested in applying for a PhD position at the University of Luxembourg. I obtained my Masters from [the Institute of Such and Such]. I would be interested in working on a project relating to your work on [informal group laws]. I have a few ideas for potential projects in this direction. Please let me know if you would be willing to discuss these.
Thank you in advance for your time,
user454229"
Of course, don't just copy this and insert the relevant details. You want to write the email in your own voice. This is just to give you an idea of how to keep it short and to the point. And good luck!


PhD: Accepted into another PhD program - should I finish the current semester in my old program?

You got a high GPA so you might have a better chance of getting into a Phd program.

You already got accepted into the program of your choice, so at the moment your GPA is useless.

Your only consideration should be when you want to start, if you like the courses so much that you'd take them for general interest, and if you want to do something after your Phd where GPA suddenly counts again (instead of publications / references).


How much attention should I pay to developments in other research fields?

It depends on your actual research project. Some PhD projects are quite interdisciplinary in the way they are designed (regarding topics, data, method(odology) etc.) while others 'just' talk to their own specific community (although I think, this is rarely the case).  So, to a large extent, it depends on your specific research design of your PhD project how you take into account research from other disciplines. Nevertheless, and based on my experiences as PhD student, I have found it helpful to look into other research disciplines by either talking to people who do research which might be eventually of interest for me or skip through the main journals in the related fields.  For me, (doing my PhD in political science) reading papers from Human Geography, Psychology or Computer Science is quite stimulating from time to time and shows me how other researcher think about issues that I am also interested in. I hope this comment helps you to find a middle ground of helpful interdisciplinarity and getting lost in it.
PS: I found this blog post helpful, reflecting on this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/feb/19/interdisciplinary-research-universities-academic-careers


How can getting a masters hurt PhD admissions?

If you graduated successfully from a good math program in the US, I doubt that you are under qualified for a typical doctoral program in the US. Things might be different in other places, but in the US, the normal path to a doctorate doesn't start with and MS. In fact, the early couple of years of such a program include a lot of coursework to give you the needed breadth to enable you to begin research. But programming knowledge along with algorithmics should be fine and your math background suggests you have an analytical way of thinking that isn't too different from that of most CS students.

My suggestion would be to apply to a few doctoral programs and see what feedback you get. I doubt that what you learn in the first couple of years there will close off future options in other fields if you decide it isn't for you. But I also doubt that getting a masters will lessen your chances for later getting a doctorate at the same or a different field.

There may be a couple of universities that favor their own students for admission to doctoral programs, but that is fairly rare. Perhaps the advice you got was from someone with experience at such a place. I don't know why Princeton comes to mind, and my information is very old, but I do associate Princeton with the idea of favoring their own.

Doctoral study normally consists of two major hurdles. You need to pass some qualifying exams and you need to write an acceptable thesis. The coursework is mostly (not all) to get you ready for the exams. But an MS in field also does that part.


How do I get a summer research position as an undergraduate?

This is a tough situation to be in, as a lot of (STEM) undergrad research in the U.S. is funded by the NSF through REUs, and only U.S. citizens or permanent residents are eligible for those.

Many universities in the U.S. have school-wide summer research programs for their undergrad students, with various sources of funding (that you may be eligible for). Usually you apply directly to the program, instead of approaching individual professors who participate. Check if your school has one. You can also check if your school has an agreement with another school to "share" undergrad summer research students in such a program. (My university has such an arrangement with a few schools in the area, in which their students can participate in our school-wide undergrad summer research program.)

Ask your academic advisor (i.e. the person who helps you decide which classes to register for) if your school or department has an undergrad summer research program. Also ask your academic advisor if he or she knows of any faculty members in your department who are looking for an undergrad summer research student, outside of any official program. (That's how I got my first undergrad summer research job!)

Besides that, you can definitely approach professors in your department individually. My lab seriously considers every undergrad student in our department who reaches out in this way. It's helpful if you mention what your research interests are, what classes you have taken that are relevant to the research we do, and any other skills you have that might be helpful for our research. (You should also mention that you're an international student, since as I mentioned, we may have to work out funding in a different way than we usually do.) If you are taking courses with professors whose research is interesting to you, you can go to their office hours and ask them about it there.


Is it ethical to answer questions about homework for colleagues taking courses I've already completed?

To "answer their questions" may mean different things, and some of them are OK, while others are not. E.g. answering questions like "What does this mean?" by explaining the thing in your own words is of course OK. However, solving their homework problems for them is not.

I guess, one can draw a line here: If you are helping them to learn the topic then it is OK. If you only try to help them to pass the course without caring about their progress in the topic, it is not OK.

So my advice would be: Focus on the topic itself when answering questions. Try to find out or guess what the instructor of the course wants the students to learn and help them to accomplish that.

Oh, and of course, asking the instructor is also OK.


In some cases, it could be that the instructors had a template provided by the school.  When I was an instructor at a college, I was required to update a few things on the syllabus, like my name, but I was required to NOT change ANYTHING else.  I had no flexibility (in that one specific way...  I did have a whole lot of flexibility with just about every other way that I ran my particular class, which I know is quite different than what some other instructors experience).  One thing I did have the flexibility to do was to create my own addition to the syllabus, but the college bureaucracy, which determined the official course objectives, also mandated a certain amount of information get presented unaltered.

In that case, I, as the instructor, never bothered to check the copyright of each and every syllabus, because obviously I had the organization's permission to do what the organization absolutely required of me.

This is just one example: The main point being, in some cases, instructors might not be creating their syllabus entirely from scratch.  Surely, the specific details vary from school to school.


Do PhD advisors allow students to collaborate with faculty from other institutions?

Interesting thought. I will try to offer some factors to consider related to the approach you are suggesting.

There's a risk of spreading yourself too thin. All things held constant, I would expect it to be more difficult on average to build relationships with faculty at institutions other than your PhD "home base." The time and effort spent building these relationships would thus be re-routed from what should be your main thrust, i.e. developing a reputation as an excellent student in a place that actually voted to have you and invested resources in you.
Faculty at top institutions are extremely busy and inundated with queries from all sorts of places and people who want their time and attention on collaborations of various types. Successful faculty are very strategic about where they invest their energies (especially in Physics? sorry, bad pun). This partly explains the uphill battle presumed in point #1. They usually have plenty of students and postdocs of their own who want to "collaborate." The returns from such one-off partnerships with this or that individual who met them at this or that conference are dubious, and typically high-flying faculty end up collaborating on high-visibility/payoff projects. Unless your work will fall in that category, I think productive sustained collaboration with quality attention and care invested in the relationship on both sides is highly unlikely.
The only relatively common, accepted form of collaboration with faculty from other institutions that I am aware of is IF those individuals are  members of your dissertation committee. Colleges (at least in the U.S.) often require that at least one committee member be from another department at the home institution. Along the same lines, it is typically viewed as OK if there is another, additional committee member from another institution, as long as their being on the committee is well justified, e.g. by filling a gap in expertise or being in a unique position to contribute something given their specific context/resources. In contrast, collaboration on side projects can cause some minor (which could become major if left unchecked) issues involving your Advisor wondering what the heck is taking up your time that you could be spending in his lab and writing his papers...

This being said, it is possible that in some disciplines such collaborations are more frequent and more accepted than in others, and may pay off in some ways. However, the though I would like to leave you with is to carefully reflect whether such collaboration will in fact help your career plans, over and above similar collaborations with faculty at your home institution. If you find yourself in a situation/project where the answer is a clear YES, well, you can at least give it a shot and see what happens.

However, if by looking over the fence (where the grass typically looks greener) you might end up missing some gems on your own lawn, I would say stick to the familiar environment and try to make the most of the opportunities under your nose.

Lastly, collaboration can take many forms. It may not be necessary to go it alone and try to carve out an independent project with someone from another university/lab. Being on a research team (as a Research Assistant) that has some external partnerships with teams at other institutions can be enough to develop some contacts and build some name recognition in those places. Being considered a valuable member of the research team at home, and being valued by your own Advisor can speak louder than trying to convince someone on the outside that you are wonderful and totally worth their attention. When you will be close to graduating, if your Advisor believes in your potential, s/he will go a long way to help you network with various other labs/teams that s/he has relationships with. I personally would recommend this more "organic" route.

The academe is a big boat that doesn't like to be rocked, and stability is generally considered an asset. Having a reputation for dedication to one or two large-scale, complex, team projects is probably going to help you more than having 10 separate fledgling solo projects/partnerships. (Note: If you were an undergrad with a major in Business/Entrepreneurship, this advice would be the opposite. But a PhD in Physics seems more aligned with the solid/long-term academic paradigm.) Whichever way you choose to play your cards, good luck!


Does work experience help in (US) graduate admissions?

I would strongly recommend sitting in on, or somehow actually enrolling in, some upper level class at a local university. Treat it as if you were actually enrolled, and ask (beg) the professor to grade your homework and exams. And be sure to sign up for something brutally hard.

This will let you test your chops, and if you excel, then you can ask the professor to write a letter of recommendation.

Please keep in mind that top 20 programs are extremely competitive, and reject very many good people. Your competitors will have letters of recommendation from professors specifically familiar with the requirements of Top 20 programs, confidently saying that they are prepared to handle it.

An alternative would be to try to get into a master's program at a lower-tier university. If you prove yourself to be head and shoulders above everyone else, you can ask your professors to support transfer applications to better programs.

Your work experience is likely to count for very little, or perhaps even against you, since you have been out of school for so long. Sorry -- that's just how it is.

This is a hard road, I have at least sort of walked it myself. Good luck to you!


I need a reference letter but I've been out of school for 3 years

In your case it sounds like the strong letters you want from your former instructors are just not going to happen.  None of your professors from 2011 or before can speak to your recent good work in a mathematically relevant branch of industry.  They can only try to remember what kind of student you were back then, and it doesn't sound great.

In your case I would go with letters from people in industry who have skills and qualifications that would be respected by those in Financial Mathematics.  If possible, all but at most one of your letters should come from someone with an advanced degree, and you should make sure that they know you well enough to convey the positive arc of your trajectory in recent years.

You should also take any relevant standardized tests especially seriously: you certainly want a great score on the MATH part of the GRE.  I'm not sure whether the GRE math subject exam is required or applicable for master's programs in financial mathematics: I guess it would be at some programs but not others.  I think that either way it would be good to take some practice versions of this exam, and if you can see that you'll do well (over the 50th percentile is now a good performance from an American student) then you should consider taking it even if it's not required.

You may also have to face the reality that you'll be admitted to a lesser quality program because of your "checkered academic past".  If you're really serious about graduate school, you can spend one or two years in a lesser program, really light up the place, and then transfer into a better program.

Good luck.


Ethics of publishing received peer reviews

In the journals where I have been invloved as editor, author or reviewer (except in ones where the review process is open on the web), the implicit understanding has been that the communication is closed between the author-editor-reviewer. I have not seen any explicit rules stated by these journals to control against any such public dissemination but I have not looked for it either. I think that, particularly in cases where it is not explicitly stated that reviews are public, posting reviews without consent from the reviewer would be similar to publisihing someone private letters wihout consent. It is not illegal but ethically very distasteful. I do not think it matters whether or not the review was anonymous. Whether the paper was accepted or not would not matter either. I would consider posting without consent just as bad under all circumstances.


How do I address false propositions defended by the lecturer?

Disclaimer: I am primarily a student of physics so I'm not sure if the same issues arise in studying economics as well. Since your main question is broad -- it would be applicable for any discipline with complex mathematics -- I am writing an answer, albeit from a physics perspective.
First let me summarize some of the points made in the comments and add a few of my experiences.

It is plausible that an economist or an engineer would use a heuristic argument to "prove" an statement, even though this is not proved in a mathematically precise way. For instance, the "proof" may not work everytime, but it may work often enough. Cases where it fails may not be of interest or not easily characterizable, which is pretty much the opposite to what we do as mathematicians. I've seen some fields that work like that. So the issue may be a lack of common language between the OP and the lecturer. - Shake-baby

Have you looked into this? One of the most common cases of derivations being unsatisfactory in physics (in my undergrad) is that a LOT of context is often implicit (as opposed to being explicit in math). Frequently, one needs to be aware of several small points (mentioned somewhere way back in the text) while understanding new concepts. Even more frequently, one proceeds to do calculations without explicitly stating important conditions.
Examples of what I think would be at least slightly alarming to mathematicians:

Functionals will be considered without specifying which function space is the domain. Also, we often ignore measure theory entirely (in formal training) even though we see integrals over function spaces.
The level of differentiability will almost never be specified. The implicit assumption often is: take as many well-defined continuous derivatives as needed.
Naked "delta functions" are welcome. The more, the merrier.
Physical intuition is often more valuable than a solid definition. In a recent graduate class, we were discussing the fundamental group for special cases like a torus and a projective plane by cutting up paper and playing with rubber bands. However, topology was not a prerequisite for this course (!) and several of my peers had not studied it formally (neither did we define "topology" in that class).

If experiment matches theory, all's well and fine. Is there a mismatch directly because of wrong assumptions? Cool! We've got new physics to play with now. Does this hand-wavy approach mean that physics is "wrong"? It simply means that the level of rigor in physics in insufficient for a mathematician but is (often) perfectly fine for model-building or experiments.

Suppose you are at a stage where the former point (of common context) is not an issue and still you are facing major difficulties in communicating.

How am I to pursue my mission to convince the teacher that what he or she is defending is false?

First, I would like to point out that "to convince the teacher that what he or she is defending is false" is your mission, should you choose to accept it. No external agency has thrust this responsibility on you. That said, there might be many good reasons why you might feel that you should do so such as:

You want to help correct a misunderstanding of the professor for his/her benefit and the benefit of other students.

You consider that stating and believing false statements to be true is a bad thing by itself and so you want to correct that. This is different from the first point in that this point would apply even if you were the only student in the class.

Fortunately or unfortunately, convincing people is hard. Convincing people that they are wrong is much harder. Convincing people that they are wrong and that you are right is much, much harder [1]. Sometimes it's easier when the opposite person is a scientist. Sometimes it's harder. You try your best and reason with the person in good faith; it will work sometimes and sometimes you just move on after being unsuccessful.

How can I approach the teacher with respect (I am more like an activist than a politician) and send a message that my knowledge is important and that I am of the opinion that I know something to be false which the teacher think is true?

Permit me to break me down the question bit by bit:

How can I approach the teacher with respect

Be polite in words and manners and act in good faith. Some professors might get annoyed if sigh loudly. Others might not even notice or care if you yawn while they are making a key point. There isn't a silver bullet. The teacher is also a person, just like you. Is the teacher is trying to impeded your learning? No. Remember: the fallacy is the key issue, not the teacher.

(I am more like an activist than a politician)

If I understand correctly, you mean that you take speak in an argumentative manner as opposed to a soft tone. I have sometimes been guilty of this myself, especially when I felt what the opposite person is saying is very wrong and very stupid.
One possible solution is: write, instead of speaking in person. I understand this may not be the most practical in a lecture setting but courses often have online forums which make this more convenient. An email (or forum post) allows you to (i) collect your thoughts, (ii) frame your arguments fully and (iii) most importantly, gives you time between framing your points and actually clicking send -- in this time you can go over the language and double-check it (or have a close friend look over the email) and alter it if needed so that your tone does not come off as hostile.
Consider the following two emails:

(1) On Tuesday, you said that the isomorphism that takes the fundamental group with one base point to the fundamental group with another base point is path-independent. That statement is incorrect. It is true if and only if the fundamental group is abelian.
(2) On Tuesday, you said that the isomorphism that takes the fundamental group with one base point to the fundamental group with another base point is path-independent. Isn't it true only when the fundamental group is abelian? At the time, had we already assumed that the surfaces under consideration had abelian fundamental groups?

Perhaps you think that these two are roughly the same/interchangeable. Perhaps not. I would consider the second one more polite and preferable compared to the first one. Moreover, the second version expresses two things which are missing from the first -- (i) a possibility that you misunderstood something (humility) and (ii) a desire to arrive at the right answer together (cooperation). In contrast, the first version just says, "Here is the right answer. You are wrong." (superiority).

and send a message that my knowledge is important

It is the truth which is important. In this special case, your knowledge coincides with the truth ... but are you always correct? Probably not. If a teacher is dismissing your claim as false, don't take it personally (trust me, it never helps). This can get really hard, especially if it happens publicly, but you must keep your cool.

After a while, he or she will either ignore me, reject that I have something valuable to say, accept my argument, or tell me that I should read a certain book or certain research articles.

There you have it: there are all different kinds of professors. Is that a surprised? Some accept your arguments, some don't ... surely, a reasonable academic would accept an argument if it was true? Unfortunately, life isn't so simple...
Footnote:
[1] Based on the author's interactions (mostly with Indians).


What to write in an impressive about me section

It looks like what you are being asked for here is sort of a hybrid between an academic and conventional CV. I dislike this sort of form filling CV but if its what you've got to do...

Personal skills and similar sections generally are looking for your soft/transferable skills. Good communications, team-working etc. Try and not just state these but add some qualification e.g I'm good team working which I have developed/demonstrated during whatever project or competition or something. It's very easy to say you have some skill but far more convincing if you can demonstrate it. Similarly be prepared to defend anything you say in an interview.

For an academic CV you should focus more on your publications and academic work etc. and keep your personal skills section fairly short. When given silly form type CVs to complete don't feel obliged to complete all the sections. I would definitely just remove the Artistic skills section if I was doing this (I have none!).

Here is a similar template which also has some basic instructions and an example (admittedly non-scientific) http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/documents/curriculum-vitae/templates-instructions

For advice on writing actual academic CVs see http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Academic-CV-2012.pdf


Should I decline authorship over the quality of a paper?

So long as there's nothing wrong with the quality of the work, I'd let the person in the field make the decision about it's worthiness for publication.  Often, what's humdrum in one field is new and exciting in another.  I've seen people making livings moving routine info from one area to another.

When seeking collaborators in the future, my opinion is that having published a solid, if not exciting, piece of work in the field will be more advantageous than having published nothing.


My adviser is leaving. Can I ask him to support my application for an other PhD position?

Your advisor has offered three options. You have a fourth. My best guess is that the advisor just forgot that fourth option rather than considered and rejected it.

I strongly suggest that you ask him for your support in starting over at a different university. Any ethical advisor should support you. If you've been doing good work, they should support you strongly.

In your request, though, I'd do two things. The first is to talk about the research trajectory that you would like to get on and suggest a few places (and even professors) where it would be possible. The second is to ask, also, for his suggestions about places to pursue your goals. He may well have contacts that can be useful to you in changing. Try to make your change a cooperative endeavor with the professor, not a break. The future may hold collaborative opportunities if you work it right.


Professor/supervisor switches from writing emails in his native and local language to English - how to react?

I wouldn't worry about it too much: given the bilingual nature of his work, your professor probably context-switches back and forth between languages frequently.  If the professor is very comfortable in both languages, they might not have even realized the switch, e.g., if responding to your email in the middle of a large block of work in English with their head in "English-mode".

If you want, however, next time you see the professor in person, you might ask if they have any preference for language in their communications with you: it could easily go either way (e.g., in English to make forwarding to non-German speakers easier, in German for personal comfort, or even no preference at all).


Can a research group be formed without a PhD in charge?

A PhD is a degree supposed to develop (and later demonstrate) the skill of being capable and ready to do independent research. The degree to which that is achieved can vary massively, depending on institution and supervisor.

It is quite possible (and not at all improbable) that a non-PhD person can outshine the PhD person, but, per default, the latter enjoys a priori the expectation that they know more about the process of doing research than the former. However, this is no reason at all not to form a group of interested people, with or without PhD. A PhD member is not a guarantee of success and the lack of one does not presage doom.

The case you mention seems to be of someone who does not want to see a competing group being created (depending on the convention of your location). That being said, make sure you have knowledgeable people in the group. The reason why many countries have a research group led by a professor (not just a PhD) is that the latter not only know how to do research but have had a broad exposure to many methods and perspectives.

Good luck!


Is it okay to include a simplified and easy version of a result already proved?

Yes.

New proofs are always good and of scientific value, and may be of significant use and interest in their own right.  In some cases they are even worthy of a paper of their own.  As an example, just recently on MathOverflow I saw Zhi-Wei sun mention that a result of his currently has 6 proofs from 6 different papers and sets of authors (including his own and himself).


A disagreement with coauthor/boss about funding

In case the ethics argument fails, here is another argument against pulling the paper.  If you withdraw the paper for any reason, you run the risk that the resubmitted paper will be rejected.  The refereeing process is partly a random process.
The worst case is it takes a year for the journal to decide to reject your paper, and science moves on and your paper is now out-of-date and will not be publishable anywhere reputable.
In addition, the editor and others involved will now associate you all with making errors.  A good reputation is worth a lot in academia.


What standards should I apply when evaluating a PhD thesis from a weaker university?

I suggest that you remember that you are evaluating the work, not its author, or the supervisor, or the university. Give it an honest evaluation, based only on what you see before you. If it doesn't measure up to your standards, then say so. Say why. Make suggestions if you have the time. But honesty is required.
One of the reasons, actually, for international reviewers is to give the home institution some assurance that they are producing students on a par with others.


The word "believe" is a very fine word to use in a scientific article.
Generally, it's a good practice to separate factual information (data, observations, results) from subjective information (interpretation, speculation). The word "believe" clearly puts a statement in the latter category.


Journals selection - alternative criteria to impact factor

I largely prefer to talk with people about what they think of the various journals, see who is in the editorial board, and look at what they publish to determine which journals I consider as good. IF can be very biased even at the scale of a journal (Chaos, Soliton and Fractals had a pretty decent IF...)

Other criteria include price and politics of the publisher (e.g. see the cost of knowledge pledge and the blog posts around it), quality of the publishers work (do you have to check proofs in three days with no indication of what has been changed in your paper?), dissemination (is the journal subscribed by a lot of libraries? is it open access? Is it read by many people?), editorial standards (ranges from "any editor do what she wants and takes decisions alone" to "all the editorial board must approve a paper for it to be published, and the name of the handling editor appears on the paper"). All of them may be difficult to determine, that is why talking with other people in your field about journals is important.


Is applying for other positions during the early stages of a PhD you don't like considered bad?

Identifying that you are not happy where you are, honestly attempting to address the reasons and then, if you are still not satisfied, making the decision to leave before you become depressed and wholly negative, is far from unprofessional. Quite the opposite, in fact.
There should be no negative associations from taking a purposeful step away from an unfulfilling working relationship. For that reason, there is no problem for asking for additional recommendation letters from your referees for a different PhD position. They might be curious why the previous position didn't last. Being honest and professional with your reasons is a good policy.
You mention that you are "employed in a test phase" for a few months. Does this mean that you are in some kind of provisional stage of your PhD programme? It is not uncommon for PhD programmes to have some kind of initial provisional period during which both the PhD candidate and their supervisors develop their working relationship. If by the end of the provisional period it emerges that the PhD candidate and the supervision team are a poor fit to each other and/or to the research programme, the PhD registration can be terminated and everyone goes their separate ways.
There is no downside to this, despite many candidates viewing this as "quitting" or feeling that they were at some kind of fault for not making it work. The PhD -- supervisor relationship is just that: a relationship. In addition, there are occasions where it becomes obvious that the research project and/or student and/or supervisor are a poor combination. Normally this would have been avoided during an initial registration period, but sometimes the disconnect(s) are only discovered later in the piece.


How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?

This will really, really depend on the field you're coming from - or even the sub-field. Take two examples:

Mathematical epidemiology: If I present a paper with a nice infectious disease model, with the equations, the parameter values, and some numerical results, but I haven't tackled anything analytical yet, you could very well - if you could get all that down - beat me to publication.
Observational epidemiology: I could tell you everything about my study but, without access to the raw data, you'd have to go find your own multi-year hospital acquired infection cohort to study. Good luck with that. And if you still beat me to the punch? Well, I probably deserve that.

Generally speaking, for in-progress stuff, I present enough for people to know what I'm doing, comment on it, etc., but not enough to fully replicate the experiment without coming to me for more information. For example, some folks I'm working with struggled with whether or not to present a theoretical result without its implementation done yet, because someone could scoop us with the implementation. We decided for the audience I was presenting to, that was...unlikely. For another audience? They'd get the theory in broad strokes, but without enough information that the theory alone is enough of a springboard to run with the paper.


FYI I am not in a medical school, but this seems relatively straightforward to me. Hopefully someone will correct if there is a different norm in those departments.

Most departments receive authorizations to hire faculty positions ("faculty [budget] lines") from entities that are higher up the organizational hierarchy, such as a dean or other central administration person. So even if this person is a department chair, they may not have the authorization to create new lines. They may have the authorization to create post-doc positions, since those can come out of shorter term pots of money.

This person may be implying that a non-faculty (post-doc, perhaps) position would be possible, depending on how much of the budget gets sucked up in the two new researchers' salaries/packages. They seem to think you would not be a great fit for those two new research positions. But they won't know about the post-doc until later. They also assume you will also not be able to decide on this until you have explored your faculty positions, since, for most people, permanent/faculty positions dominate post-doc positions.


Is it unwise to pick an old field of research in maths to write a PhD thesis about?

If you pick an overly-trendy area there is a chance that it will be easier to get a Ph.D. in that area but that many mathematicians will be less than impressed by the resulting degree. For example, "fuzzy" is (or has been?) a trendy concept. There is almost a template for getting a Ph.D. in it (albeit one which is getting harder to apply by sheer competition): pick some topic in pure mathematics for which there doesn't yet exist a fuzzy version (for an example the exact phrase "fuzzy symmetry group" has only 4 Google hits). Learn the classical theory. Fuzzify it: whenever you see the word "set" replace it with "fuzzy set". Prove something -- which with lack of competition shouldn't be all that hard. Anticipating the question as to why anyone should care, hand-wave about potential applications to artificial intelligence. Voila! You have a dissertation (I am exaggerating a bit, this is of course easier said than done, and a successful fuzzification will involve more than simply replacing sets by fuzzy sets).

Now I don't deny that the core concepts of fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory have a great deal of mathematical depth, and that much of the fuzzification of classical pure mathematics has been well-motivated. Still, it seems likely that much of it has been done just because it was low-hanging fruit for somebody who wanted to write a dissertation or paper. I am instinctually skeptical of the value of a paper when it contains the word "fuzzy" in the title. I won't dogmatically reject it, but I will need some convincing as to its value. If your dissertation has a trendy buzz-word but otherwise seems unmotivated, you might meet with similar skepticism.


Approaching lab head about getting my name last on paper


How to find out salary for faculty positions in private universities?

For the US and mathematics in particular, the American Mathematical Society conducts annual salary surveys, broken down by various categories: public/private, highest degree offered in the department, rank, etc.  For example, in 2017-2018, at "large" private PhD-granting mathematics departments, the mean salary for new hire assistant professors was $94,675.


Can a successful, prestigious post-doc make up for a PhD from a mid-ranked university and make you competitive for a tenure-track position?

To my perception, the later you manage to "hit" a high-status place, the better, actually, because the standard pattern is a slight-but-steady ever-lesser-status trend. That is, typically, and statistically so if only for reasons of the available positions of various sorts, one's PhD institution is probably (and on the average, certainly) the highest-status place one will ever be. In particular, one corollary is that high-status post-docs are not typical sequels to high-status PhDs (even though a reason, if no other, is that there aren't as many such positions!)

On the other hand, a higher-status post-doc than PhD assures nothing. A momentary "surprise improvement", with no permanent "advantage".

The more genuine advantage is that, in the best-case scenarios, the high status is due to good, energetic, communicative, stimulating people who will help you do better for the rest of your life than if you'd been in the company of lethargic, disinterested people... though "status" is imperfectly correlated...

And, further, it does require considerable effort on your part to benefit from the potential of the environment... so it is just as easy to fail/languish in a high-status environment as in a low-status one... Perhaps easier, since things are more intimidating, no easy triumphs, etc. Almost to the point of being misleading. (Hence, the desire of some to be big fish in small ponds, etc.)

So, actually, I'd recommend accepting some risks to be in a more intense environment. If that intensity is attached to status, ok, good, that's a cosmetic virtue that will help you get peoples' attention (on hiring committees) subsequently.


To what extent do grades matter when applying to graduate school in mathematics?

A single bad grade is unlikely to matter much. A history of bad grades is worrisome. Your application to a doctoral program needs to show that you have high likelihood of success in (math) research. This implies that you can demonstrate insight into areas of math that you want to specialize in.
But insight in mathematics isn't uniform over sub-fields and mathematicians understand that (I hope, anyway).
In the US, there are many things taken into account besides GPA and even individual grades. So, you are right to be "a little worried", but not to panic.
But, for some people, even a poor academic history (not like yours, I think) can be overcome by other factors.
But you might want to be ready to answer a question or two about why you got lower grades in a few courses. Lack of insight is only one possibility. Taking too many courses in a term is sometimes a factor.


Should I put on my CV a postdoc which I am going to quit?

You absolutely should put this postdoc on your resume. It is where you are currently working, and given the times you have no good idea just how much longer you will be working there. The fact that you have a position is a positive indicator.
Now, this will raise some questions in the hiring process at other institutions, but a 4+ month hiatus would be similarly questioned. And you have good explanations as to why you want to move on. Note that in 6 or so months nobody is really going to be worried about it, since postdocs are limited term in the first place.
As an aside, I would say that you should perform more due diligence in selecting your next position, since there seems to have been some miscommunication. And, no, having a postdoc at a national lab is not generally seen as a negative either in industry or academia.


The answer is that we can’t know. The status of the manuscript is exactly what it says on the tin - that it’s awaiting the decision of the EIC.

Trying to divine why is a bad idea. It’s possible that the original review notice was internal, not external. It’s possible the reviewers turned things around super quickly (my personal record is a single day). You can spin up a number of “just so” stories about the status.


Do most Mathematics Phd programs accept class credit from a masters program to transfer?

To amplify the points in @ElizabethHenning's answer: in the U.S., in my experience in mathematics, in Ph.D. programs it's not so much "course credits" that are required, but some sort of "proof of reasonable competence", by local standards. That often certainly includes options to take an exam to prove competence (which would be helped by having your prior coursework), or sometimes by completing a (local) course with reasonable grades.

Here's the key point: why not give "competence credit" for courses taken elsewhere?

For one, if you want to claim that those external courses were sufficient for you to be competent, then you shouldn't object to demonstrating it in a half-day exam.

Second, at best it is very difficult to compare courses at different universities, all the more so to compare coursework done abroad to U.S. coursework... so, given the difficulty of comparison, we're back to just demonstrating competence on a half-day exam.

The "credit hours" themselves are usually not an issue in Ph.D. programs in the U.S., although a typical expectation is that people do register for some courses... since without sufficient registration advanced courses are often shut down by bureaucratic constraints. Advanced courses often do not have burdensome homework or exams, and are not meaningfully graded, so there's hardly anything to object to.

That is, in part, the question is a little misguided... and, no, coursework does not usually transfer in the sense of "fulfillment of requirements"... but you often can take a competence exam to fulfill requirements.


How to ask professor to explain something again?

I would like to take a different perspective than Buffy:

You were late (maybe even disrupted the course when entering the room) and missed something. Now you want additional time from your teacher to catch up something which happened in the first 10 minutes - which will take ~5-15 minutes of the working time of your teacher. Multiply this by 100 students and 5 courses per week, and you will spot the problem ;-).

Therefore, I would suggest to try everything you can do to catch up on your own. Ask other students. Use books. If you invested >3h without success, you can still write this e-mail explaining what you already understood, where you struggled and at which point you need specific help.

This will show your professor you are really engaged and makes it easy to answer your question within seconds. Maybe (s)he will ask you "just to talk a few minutes after the next lecture" which is also very time effective.

The behavior also depends a bit on your local student-teacher-relationship. In my course, I would not mind if you just approach me after class, you will receive a little (friendly but sarcastic) remark about being late, and get an answer (and I'm happy that someone is trying to learn something).


Do you know any country like Denmark returning an assessment for the job application?

When I applied for positions at Swedish and Norvegian universities, I not only received an assessment of my own application, but also that of the other applicants. The latter were not anonymized, but the original application materials were not included.


I think my PhD thesis has been plagiarised. What are the professional steps to take?

The best course of action would be if you can somehow elevate this to the journal/conference paper level. Was your newer research (the one they have plagiarized) published in a journal or at least at a conference? Is perhaps their (plagiarized) research published in a journal, not only in PhD thesis?

Monitor the student in question and his publications for a while. If he tries to publish that stuff that he lifted from you in a journal, then it is the time to start the action, and simply notify the editor of the journal or a conference about the suspected plagiarism. This way, it will be handled by people not connected to your previous lab and indeed plagiarism in paper is considered to be really bad stuff for one's reputation (often PhD theses are not publicly accessible, papers are).


Is it normal to ask to see the entire manuscript (not just the abstract) before accepting a peer-review invitation?

It is rather common in mathematics to have access to the full paper before deciding to review (it is attached or a link is provided). You could basically use what you wrote here as the basis for your reply. I specifically mean the phrase:

  I am potentially interested to review the paper, but I would like to see the content to be sure if the methods used in the paper aren't beyond my knowledge.

I would just ask for the full paper with this reasoning.

Only make sure to decide whether you are willing to review in a timely manner after you received the full paper.


If the case is fairly stated then the professor is not being reasonable. Students shouldn't have to cite what they study prior to the exam. In fact, in order to provide a proper citation the student might actually have to return to the site to get the proper citation, breaking the rule in order to uphold it - Catch 22.

However, since "innocent until proven guilty" may not be the operative standard (sadly) it may be difficult for the student to make the case. But it is worth making and should be made forcefully. Appeal to higher authority if necessary.

I will leave your last two questions unanswered as they are treated elsewhere on this site and don't really affect the outcome for the student, which I treat as paramount here.


For Master's admissions, are recommendations from academics preferred?

Normally, you should prefer academics, but you want the people who can most honestly attest to your accomplishments and the likelihood of your future success.

However, if the MS is focused on things outside the normal academic tracks, on, say, industrial practice, then a letter from a practitioner who also has the ability to fairly evaluate you would be fine. But for academic subjects or in a field that can lead to a doctorate now or later, academics would probably be better.

But also note that you are appealing to an admissions committee that has a certain background and certain views. You want that appeal to be successful. Thus, if you expect that they all have an industrial focus, then someone (again, who knows your abilities) from that industry would be good.

For doctoral level admissions, you are right. The balance tips more firmly toward academics, but exceptions occur even there.


What is a referee in the manuscript submission process?

Yes.

A "referee" in an academic context is

  An expert who judges the manuscript of an article or book to decide if
  it should be published.

You should make sure to find established researchers who are capable of judging your manuscript and who do not have conflicts of interest (e.g., frequent collaborators).

This canonical question may be helpful: What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?. Or the peer-review tag (although peer review is somewhat more general than manuscript refereeing).


Independent research after grad school while holding a somehow unrelated career. What are the potential caveats or problems?

The main issue I can think is time. Other people who will be working on the same research field will spend their full working week on the topic while you will be working only in your free time (weekends etc.).
So you will be progressing very slowly and there is a high chance that you might get scooped if you are working on some hot research topic.
All that assuming that you have some average productivity aptitude and you are not some productivity beast that is able to finish up work in 1/10th of time than the rest :)


Are there universities where authors can/must transfer their copyright to the university for negotiations with publishers?

So I was thinking that it could be a useful service if a university had an office for this kind of legal matters, providing standard paperwork for their researchers to transfer their copyright to the university, which would then deal directly with the publisher.

I think the approach you describe would be rare. There are certainly institutions providing some phrasing to enforce their copyright/open access policies to the author, and some that have a copyright office that can take a look at a given copyright agreement and OK/veto it. I'm not aware of a place that would directly deal with the publisher. Indeed, given the typical journal system with a single corresponding author it is much simpler to give the author permission to sign it.

It could even make sense for the university to require its researchers to only perform copyright transfers via them and never directly, so that they can keep an eye on what the agreements are about, negotiate standard conditions for the publication of their research, and maybe use them as some kind of argument, e.g., when negotiating transformative publishing agreements.

These goals can be achieved without having the university deal directly with publishers, by instituting a policy and providing guidance.

Are there universities that provide such a service, or have such a policy?
The closest thing I can think of is how some researchers, e.g., federal employees in the US, have a different publication copyright process because their work is ineligible to copyright; but this is a somewhat different situation. Another related situation is the University of California requesting permission from their researchers to archive their works, but it does not look like they are involved in the copyright transfer agreement with publishers (except to notify their policy to them).

As I suggested above, it'd be rare for an institution to be directly involved and to require intermediate copyright transfer to them. However, there's an increasing number of institutions with open access policies, which require a non-exclusive license, and then copyright agreements with publishers to respect said license. (Waivers may be issued for some exceptions.) The policy of University of California appears to be of this type:

The UC open access (OA) policies reserve rights for UC faculty and other employees to make their articles freely available to the public in an open access repository. They do this by automatically granting a non-exclusive copyright license to the University prior to  any later agreements authors may make with publishers. UC retains those rights regardless of what rights authors may subsequently transfer to publishers.The OA policies don’t say where UC authors should publish or require them to pay open access fees to publishers in order to comply.

They direct questions about copyright or the policy to Office of Scholarly Communications, and provide an addendum that can be used to inform publishers about the policy.  Princeton similarly has a Copyright consultation service, and a similar open access policy:

On September 19, 2011, the Faculty approved an “open-access” policy that is intended to make the faculty’s scholarly articles, published in journals and conference proceedings, available to a wider public. Under this policy, faculty members grant to the Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in their scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. This grant applies to all scholarly articles that any person authors or co-authors while appointed as a member of the Faculty, except for any such articles authored or co-authored before the adoption of this policy or subject to a conflicting agreement formed before the adoption of this policy.
To avoid a conflicting transfer of copyright to the publisher and to protect yourself from breach of contract, you can attach an author addendum to your agreement with a publisher. The addendum is specifically designed to deal with the prior license granted to the University.

As a final example, National Laboratories under US Department of Energy have to follow a similar open access policy from DOE. Note that researchers at such institutions are often employees of a federal contractor, not of the federal government directly, so they can create copyrighted works. I know that at least Oak Ridge requires authors to put a "Notice of Copyright" on each manuscript sent to a journal to  inform them about the policy, and that they have a copyright office that will OK/veto signing a given copyright agreement with a journal.


To be able to do meaningful research, "hav[ing] some ideas" is not enough. Also, graduate school isn't just "two years of forced learning by repetition". Many graduate courses are very resourceful and teach you the essentials to understand what has been done in the areas you're potentially interested in.

While it is possible for you to learn on your own and do high quality research, your picture of grad school doesn't reflect reality.


Reviewing Manuscript Which Misinterprets My Own Work

Give the corrections, referring to yourself in the third person where needed.  You don't need to impersonate someone uninvolved, you just need to depersonalize your corrections.  For example,

  In the introduction, the author is speaking of bla-bla; s/he motivates bla-bla by citing such-and-so.

Make sure you focus your corrections on errors that are relevant to the paper you are reviewing.  That may mean that your list of corrections will not be a complete one.

For all the author of the paper you're reviewing knows, you might be an advisor or close collaborator of the author of the paper that was mis-cited.  That's okay.

Note, if the author of the paper you're reviewing forms a conjecture that the reviewer is actually the author of the mis-cited paper... that's okay.  Maybe someday you'll meet each other at a conference and enjoy a moment of mutual recognition.

I am basing this advice on my own experience writing reams of legal documents about a family member, whom I got in the habit of not naming in my writing, to protect his privacy.  I also wrote about myself in the third person in those documents.  I found out that with a little practice it becomes second nature.


When should I cite, if using code from Stack Overflow?

The important distinction to make here is between:

Intellectual contributions to the actual research/science.
Technical help.

Contributions of the first kind are – roughly speaking – what warrants authorship or, if the contribution is already published, a citation. With other words: If the contribution would warrant authorship if unpublished, it has to be cited. As already stated, this is somewhat simplified and distinguishing between when to cite and when to include as an author can sometimes be tricky, but it should give you a rough idea, as to what you have to cite. Also note that there are other reasons for citing, such as context embedding, which do not apply here, however.

Two lines of code (to take this example) almost always fall under contributions of the second kind: They help you with the tools you need to use for your research but not with the actual subject of your research. It’s roughly comparable to the contribution of somebody fixing the microscope you need for some biological research. Of course, it might be a very helpful contribution that saved you months of work (in which case you should consider mentioning it in the acknowledgments), but it’s not a scientific contribution.

However, the decision may not always be that easy. Apart from the aformentioned authorship criterion (also note the authorship tag on this site for this), asking yourself the following questions might help to solve the question:

Is the kind of contribution to your work fundamentally different from:

designing the programming language you used,
designing or building your CPU,
designing or building your microscope?

If yes, consider citing.
Does the contribution affect the results of your research or is it necessary for others to reproduce your research? By results I here mean something like:

  The 666th digit of π is 6.
  The proposed algorithm outperforms the current standard method.

and not:

  I managed to compute the results before the deadline.
  Unfortunately, the results do not make any sense, probably due to some bug.

If yes, then you should consider citing. If, on the other hand, you have good reason to assume that somebody implementing your solution in a totally different programming language or calculating everything with pen and paper would arrive at the same results, then you should not cite.

Contributions of the second kind are what, amongst others, you can put in your acknowledgements, where in a thesis it’s usually up to you, who and how many people you mention.


How do you keep up with (non-periodical) conference proceedings?

I am not sure about EE, but for Computer Science, most of the venues you would usually want to track are listed in DBLP. DBLP itself does, as far as I know, not offer a subscription service, but (behold the beauty of open data) somebody else has built RSS feeds for DBLP.

This would allow you to use your favorite newsreader to keep up with conference publications the same way you are already tracking journals.


What can I do if my professor says he won't let me publish my biology research?

It is true that sometimes people may just search for pretext and will give all shorts of excuses. However, before jumping to that conclusion you should ask yourself are you sure you are right? Most of the times professors will actually give proper advice within the limits of their own personality and human nature.

So to answer your question try to examine and verify that your work is up to the expectations of your supervisor.


Is there a consensus in philosophy and other humanities that PhD dissertations have to be at least 200 pages long?

The University of Minnesota library system maintaining electronic dissertations library contained 2,536 records for Phd students.

The range was incredibly variable (minimum of 21 pages, maximum of 2002), but most dissertations were around 100 to 200 pages.

The average number of pages per topic is :

Source: https://beckmw.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/how-long-is-the-average-dissertation/

In fact, it mostly depends on the research area, the university regulation and supervisor research 'style'.


How to find OA free to publish journals with a JCR ranking?

Please feel free to edit anything.

Computer Science

Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning

Journal of Machine Learning Research

General

Journal of Universal Computer Science

Mathematics

Combinatorics

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics

Statistics

Journal of Statistical Software


Who can participate in international math conferences?

Pay the registration fee and go. Conferences are generally open to all paying customers. In order to give a talk, you will have to submit a paper, extended abstract, or abstract based on the instructions in the call for papers (or participation) and have it reviewed and accepted. But neither kind of participation requires a credential, typically.


Neuroscience- NIH-IRTA for a international student

Most of the major US founders limited their funding of junior people to US citizens/permanent residents. these same funding bodies (e.g., NIH, NSF) will happily allow PIs to hire international people on grants. Your best bet is probably to find a PI who is willing to hire you directly off a grant.


Can i submit a revised version of a retracted paper to another journal

Of course! If you couldn't submit the revised paper elsewhere, it would be dead to the world - never to be published - which is not a desirable outcome if your paper contains new results.


Is it possible to do a phd in computer science with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering?

This is definitely possible, but the question how much remedial or independent study will you need?

If you're in Theoretical computer science, you will need a good handle on:

Algorithms and Data Structures
Discrete math
Induction and formal logic
Graph Theory
Formal languages
Complexity theory (P vs NP, etc.)
Computability and the Halting Problem
Reductions, both for computability and complexity

In addition, you will probably be expected to be able to program fairly well and fairly cleanly, to not be tied to specific programming languages, and use tools like version control and shell scripting. My experience is that engineers are usually able to pick up CS content pretty fast, but often write messy code, and often are uncomfortable in Languages other than C

Some of this you may be able to learn in your program, as some countries have courses as a part of their PhD programs. But some you may need to study on your own.


Put the current affiliation and make a comment in the title page (i.e., a footnote) stating "this work was conducted as part of a master's dissertation [in the older university]".


Checking Plagiarism among student's work (PDF documents)

As far as I remember (it's about 20 months since I last used Turnitin), the only way Turnitin can check for plagiarism in which the source is another student assignment is if that other student assignment has been placed in the repository.  So you can either choose to keep your students' assignments out of the repository, or check for student-to-student copying, but not both.


Professor asked to write part of reference letter due to time constraints

This is pretty common, actually.

I'd suggest making it an outline, not a narrative. But use complete sentences so that he can copy paste if he wishes. Include the things from your background that you want highlighted in a letter. But, I'd probably not recommend writing glowing praise for yourself. Let him add that part.

You can also include some forward looking things, such as what you intend to focus on in grad school.


I have taught several large classes (100-400 students) with long-form hand-written exams, all of which we graded using Gradescope.  I cannot recommend Gradescope highly enough.

  Is it worth having a teaching assistant help me scan the quizzes?

If you have a proper high-speed, high-capacity scanner, the actual scanning is tedious but relatively painless.  Scanning 300 14-page (7 double-sided sheets) final exams---a bit more than 4000 pages total---took my TAs about four hours, plus another 15 minutes to associate scanned exams with students.

  Is there anyway to structure my quiz to streamline the scanning process?

Have students write answers on the exam handout itself.  Scanning printer paper is infinitely easier than scanning notebook paper or blue books.
If possible, print the exam handouts with a visible border 1/4" from the edge of the paper, and warn students that anything written outside this margin won't be scanned, and therefore won't be graded.  You may also want to indicate a region near the staple; the easiest way to remove staples is to cut off a corner of several exams at once using a paper cutter.
Print and scan everything double-sided.
Gradescope automatically splits large PDF scan into separate exams if every exam has exactly the same number of pages.  For long-form exams, include a small number of pages of scratch/overflow paper in the exam handout, and scan them all, even if they're blank.
Have a clearly delineated box on the first page of the exam where students should print their names.  This will allow Gradescope to automatically associate most of the exams with the correct students using OCR.  This also helps Gradescope streamline the manual matching of the few exams it can't match automatically.
Ask students to write their answers to each question in a designated box in the exam handout.  Then if you can tell Gradescope where each question's box is, it will display only that box by default when you are grading that question.  (The entire exam scan is still available, however.)
In particular, for true-false, multiple-choice, or short-answer questions, Gradescope can cluster similar answers together, again using OCR, so that (to first approximation) you only have to grade each distinct answer once.  (I believe this feature requires a more expensive license.)
Include a fake student in your roster, and use it to upload reference solutions in advance, so that you can set up rubrics in advance.  (Gradescope doesn't let you establish rubrics for an assignment until it has at least one submission for that assignment.)


Should I resubmit a modified computer science conference paper to a journal?

When in doubt talk to your adviser.

It is common in the Computer Science that the delta between conference and journal papers is 30%. That is not updated text only, but 30% of new substantial material, such as new experiments etc.

When submitting paper to a conference, there isn't a 30% rule. Your new paper needs to have a stand-alone novel contribution.

The reason is that CS adopted an iterative publication style workshop -> conference -> journal. So if your extended paper does not get accepted to a journal, you can attempt another journal, but not another conference.


Should I use ‘adapted from’ in an illustration of conclusions based on the results of others

Disclaimer: As the answer to your question could be field-specific, my answer is from an (electrical) engineering point-of-view.

I think the general consensus in my field is that "adapted from" in a figure caption is to be taken very literally: it is to indicate to the reader that a figure from a previous publication has been adapted for use in the new figure1.

Since you are not adapting a previously published figure for use in your manuscript, it seems, then, that the situation you describe does not warrant the "adapted from" disclaimer in the figure caption.

Instead, you should use the main body text to stitch the various references together [with appropriate citations] to support your position, call out the figure in question in the text, and [depending on how much additional detail your figure caption needs relative to the development of the idea(s) in the main body text] an appropriate figure caption.

1An example of using "adapted from" in a figure caption in my field might be the following:

Your competitor's paper A incorporates top-level circuit schematic B in figure C. Your follow-on paper D utilizes circuit B, but you redraw the schematic to highlight the points more relevant to your paper D in new figure E. In this case, the caption of figure E would indicate that the figure was adapted from paper A.


Appropriateness of prospective PhD supervisor reviewing scholarship application before submission

It is totally normal that somebody helps with applications.

This is true, for example, for applications for scholarships (where potential supervisors help) but also for applications for grants (where, e.g., many universities have specialized units to help applicants to formulate their proposals).

Regarding fairness: I do not think that this is the right question. Unless the rules for the scholarship do not state otherwise, you can use any help to prepare your application you can get (of course, cheating is not allowed - e.g. accepting help for an online language assessment by a native speaker would not be okay).


Should I send a second reminder for recommendation letter?

If this is for an application for a US graduate program, the due dates for the main application are stricter than for recommendations. The admission or review committee likely won't meet until next year. I had an advisor that had a habit of submitting these things a few days after they were supposed to be submitted and it was never a problem. Since they acknowledged your reminder email, I suggest you leave them alone. If you arrive at the due date with no submission, then you can send another polite reminder if you feel like its necessary.


If I'm understanding you correctly, you worked on a trial project, it went well, and now you will be continuing work with a funded follow-on.

This doesn't really strike me as a situation that needs a formal or complicated thank you note. Just tell the professor that you're happy things have gone well and are looking forward to continuing to work with them. The best possible thank you that you can give is to continue putting in good effort as you continue to develop your work with this professor.


Will the experience (despite it being in a different field) work in my favour?

Yes.  You will be showing that you are careful and meticulous in lab work, that you follow instructions and follow safety procedures, that you figure things out, that you correctly apply what you have been taught, that you are creative, that you have initiative, that you understand the scientific method, that you document your work, that you know how to take careful measurements and analyze your data, etc. etc.


Self-plagiarism in Publication-based commentary PhD thesis?

When compiling a dissertation, copying parts or entire sections from published papers is perfectly fine and standard behaviour.

If a section is (mostly) identical with a published paper, it should say so clearly at the start. If the paper is submitted, but not yet published, you could either just treat it as published, and cite the submitted version; or you could use the text in the dissertation without further comment, and then add a note to the article that it is based on Section X of the dissertation.


Write a paper based on forthcoming chapter in a book

The main issues here are that you can't self-plagiarize, and you most likely need to convince the referees and editors that there is sufficient "novel" content to justify publication. If there is enough new material in the paper, you should be able to prove this. If you feel yourself "stretching" the arguments too much, then it's probably not such a good idea.

An alternative would be to write the paper as a "successor," rather than as an "expansion."


Professor not responding to my mails after earlier discussions

This happens a lot to the super busy profs. They are too famous and receiving too many emails in their mailbox. They could easily forget about them especially if they are old. Sometimes when the email is hard to response (in your case, the decision is really hard to make), things will be getting worse. They will think about it for a moment, then something else comes up like a telephone call, and then they totally forget about your email.

Two things you could try:

Ask him exactly what you need, like an appointment
Ask his assistant about appointment
Do not over estimate yourself. When talking face-to-face, many profs are always saying positive things about you just because they are polite.


References in a research article conclusion

The two main functions of a reference are:

Make sure that you don't take credit for someone else's work.
As an "external appendix", e.g. "you can read more about this in ..."

If your conclusion contains parts where function 1 applies you have to include the appropriate citations. If your conclusion contains a part where function 2 applies you can do so, but as a matter of style I would be reluctant to do so. A conclusion is there to emphasize the main points of your article. Adding a link to an "external appendix" is not helping.


How to appropriately emphasize the importance of consulting more to a student?

I have a completely different background, I'm in the lab very often and so are my students. Still they can become quite independent and it can be hard to keep an eye on what they're doing exactly.

Suggesting to communicate more and persuading them to ask more questions is (in my opinion) the wrong way to approach your problem. You cannot expect a bachelor level student to learn - all by himself - both running a project and the science that goes with the project. Maybe that could work for the top 1% of students.

I'd start having weekly meetings, and then it's your job to ask them questions, teach them stuff and keep them on track. Suggesting someone to ask questions doesn't really work, so you should really ask questions yourself that force them to communicate about the project.

Really sitting down and discussing the project will lower the barriers on both sides. Your suggestions won't sound like orders, and there will be no e-mail record of their silly questions. Start slow before you start having any real expectations.

At the moment I'd be surprised if they even started with the project.


How do we prevent a professor from releasing our class project as his own research?

You must have documented your reverse engineering efforts in some way (e.g. Student reports). You can publish these online, e.g. On ArXiv.

You might also discuss coauthorship with your professor on future publications.


IEEE-format author line when one author is "Senior Member" and another is unaffiliated with IEEE

I would suggest asking the journal editor.  This seems more like a question of journal style than actual content, and the editor should be able to help with that.

I assume there is a tradition or convention that IEEE members are identified as such.  Otherwise, I don't know why you would include this information at all; I don't see why a reader would care.


PhD Thesis: citation for common knowledge and high level summary

You are being a bit inconsistent here. The reason for the introduction is that readers may not know the background. It would be good for them to see some sources that will fill them in beyond what you say. Mentioning a standard text or similar might be enough.
You also have risk with the reviewer if you don't yield to them. They may have a lot of control over what they accept. Again, pointing to some standard material, would probably suffice. If not, they will hopefully tell you to say more.
While I think  you are probably correct about your interpretation common knowledge and the lack of requirements to cite it, the other factors suggest you should do so in any case.


Importance of PhD pedigree when applying for tenure-track jobs

In philosophy in the US, graduates of the top 5 programs got 37% of the total jobs. Graduates of the roughly 75 programs not ranked in the top 50 all together got 12% of the total jobs. The impact of prestige on hiring is overwhelming.

http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/04/on-sample-data-on-this-years-tt-hires.html

Edit

Spurred by xLeitex's comments below, I did a bit more research and thus am
editing my answer to provide a few more links I've found, since I think the topic is both important, and it comes up somewhat regularly on the site.

First, Baldi 1995 found that "job placement in sociology values academic origins over performance."

Second, Burris 2004, 250 argues that the "social capital" involved in coming from a prestigious department affects not only one's placement into a first job, but also one's subsequent academic career.

Third, Long 1978, 902 argues that scholarly productivity is "facilitated by department location" but that "productivity, as indicated by measures of publication and citation, plays an insignificant role in the selection process."

Certainly the picture that these three articles present makes it looks like prestige of one's PhD granting department isn't merely correlated with getting a successful academic career, but is an important causal factor.


How to handle authorship issues in an international multidisciplinary collaboration?

Lots of folks around here seem to prefer these guidelines which are known as the Vancouver Protocol (quoting directly, here):

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

These are among the strongest criteria, and I would suggest that many scientific publications fail to live up to them. Gift authorship and other sorts of additions to the author list are common. E.g., maybe you include the PI of a large grant as last author even if they only lightly supervised the work and did not read the final draft or write or revise any of the actual words.

At another extreme, the LHC project has a sort of communal authorship process that led to to a recent paper with more than 5000 authors. If you think this paper meets criteria 2 or 3 above, you are kidding yourself. Now, that whole community has agreed to this authorship mechanic, but it is substantially different from the Vancouver Protocol.

You need to ask yourself what the norms of your community are. Does your field have a professional society that has authorship guidelines or guidelines associated with its publications? If so, you can use those to bolster the arguments you want to make with your advisor. If not, you can look to other, similar areas and their approaches. In the end though, you may have to follow your advisor's lead until you are out on your own. This is not a hill for a grad student to die on, and postdocs and junior faculty may want to use caution.


Can I still participate in conferences, while I'm no longer an academic student?

First part of the question:

unless specifically stated by conference organisers, nothing prevents anyone without specific higher education affiliation to contribute to conferences.

If organisers want to know more about your situation as they review paper submissions, they can always get in touch with you before they shortlist selected papers.

Second part of the question:

Your study circumstances are not relevant to assess the quality of your potential conference contribution.

Maybe it depends on your academic field, however there are many conferences where you can see individuals who contribute or a poster who are listed as 'independent' or 'independent researcher'. Just serves to show that quality research is not conditioned by any institutional affiliation.

Using the name of a university you are not affiliated with in any role is a deception. You should not feel compelled that you have to have your name coming with a university's name to increase the potential for your paper proposal to be accepted.


What information to share and what to hide?

I think that you have to consider and balance, at the very least, the following aspects:

Your overall career goals. I would argue that career-wise every researcher wants (and has to) establish themselves as an expert, if not in a discipline, in a particular area(s) of research. With that in mind, it seems pretty obvious to me that sharing your research is much more beneficial then hoarding it. The one potential exception to this approach is noted in my next point.
Your current research (that is, particular study's) goals and priorities. If your current research has a potential to be commercialized and you have desire to deal with that and you have financial means (or your institution's support) to do so (as you know, patenting is not cheap, and, as I imagine, patenting in such a complex field, as computational biology, is doubly so), then you might consider taking this route (should be decided on a case by case basis).
Impact on potential collaboration. Modern research in many, if not most, fields is highly collaborative. Thus, your decision to significantly limit sharing research results and other related information will most likely make you an unattractive candidate for participating in upcoming collaborative research studies and, therefore, will most likely have a serious negative impact on your future research portfolio and, consequently, research career.


May they delay for a long time the decision of a submitted manuscript of someone that already sent a paper which didn't pass plagiarism check?

The people who run good journals are (i) professionals, (ii) people. From the first follows that it's not professional or appropriate to sit on a paper for a year without sending it out to reviewers or making a decision as punishment. That's just not ethical. From the second it follows that the editor is probably not going to bend over backward to ensure the paper gets dealt with today instead of tomorrow. In any case, your characterization of editors as these kinds of vindictive monsters out to get you is incorrect -- that's not the kind of person who would be appointed as an editor.

Either way, there is nothing wrong with writing an email to the editor and asking what the status of a paper is. That happens every day, and it's part of the job of an editor to deal with this in a professional manner. So go ahead.


Is Self-plagiarism allowed in two submitted articles by one author?

If the method is taken from elsewhere you should cite the protocol, and use block quote if necessary. If the method is novel, then pay attention during the submission, you should see one common question asking if the work has been presented or circulated elsewhere, you may use that to declare the potential repetition and let the editors decide. If no such slot exists, it's better to inform the editor in the cover letter.

Moving forward, consider cascading your publications: while paper A is under review, paper B should be being finalized, paper C being drafted, paper D's experiment being done, paper E and on being conceptualized. That way you can avoid problem like such and still maintain a reasonable output level.

To be honest, if I saw two papers from the same author saying "education data were broken down into 3 levels: less than high school, high school completed, and college or above." I will not jump off my chair and scream "plagiarism!!" But people's ideas about this issue are not all the same, I'd agree that assuming the worst would be a good approach.


Including Patients' Pictures in a Manuscript

The BMJ Publishing Group suggests a very simple reason for the change:

  We no longer publish pictures with black bands across the eyes because bands fail to mask someone’s identity effectively.

  We will need the patient to sign our consent form, which requires the patient to have read the article.

If you can "blacken out" the face, then why not just crop it out altogether?