As an international instructor, should I openly talk about my accent?

Accents are tricky, especially in large lecture halls where students hear you over a mic, and can't see your lips. Different regions might have different opinions on what accents are difficult, depending on what other native language groups the undergrads may have been exposed to.

In my opinion, it would go a long way for your undergraduates to say something like:

  As you may have noticed, English isn't my first language. I know sometimes that makes it hard to understand certain words. Please don't hesitate to ask me to repeat something.

This might help with students who are shy or don't want to offend you by asking.

If you like, you could mention the other languages you're familiar with to encourage speakers of those languages to connect with you, or just as a fun fact (personally, I'd be curious to know). I wouldn't mention it to make yourself seem somehow better than them, as that could needlessly add feelings of resentment.


Is there an incentive to submitting a math PhD application before the deadline?

Is there an advantage to submitting my application early, besides the reassurance that my supporting materials like letters of recommendation will be received on time?

I'm not aware of any advantage to submitting a math Ph.D. application early, beyond knowing for sure that you have not missed the deadline.  Not even for letters of recommendation, since it's not clear that submitting early will lead your recommenders to do likewise.

There are certainly advantages to preparing your application materials early.  You'll have more time to revise them, and you can share polished versions with your recommenders before the last minute.  However, this is a different issue than whether you should submit them early.  You might as well submit everything once you're done making changes, but there's no need to rush.

  For example, if the admissions committee starts reading applications early, they may look at my application more favorably when they aren't inundated with applications.

I doubt that many people will look at applications early.  For example, it's common to assign each application to one or more faculty members, who are supposed to carry out an initial evaluation.  (This ensures that no application gets overlooked and that the readers have equitable workloads.)  In such a system, there's no advantage to starting early since the assignments will not yet have been made.

Even if someone does start reading early, I'm not convinced they will necessarily evaluate the applications more favorably.  One can imagine the opposite scenario, in which early readers are harsh, in the hopes that the upcoming applications will be better, while later readers have a more realistic assessment of the overall applicant pool.  Ultimately, I have no idea whether early readers would be more or less harsh, but I'd bet the effect would be very small.  If it's unpredictable and small, then it's not worth worrying about.


How can a I check plagiarism free of cost before submitting my research paper?

Ask yourself a simple question: Did you plagiarise?
Assuming the answer is no, there's no need to check whether you plagiarised.


Delay applying for a year and work on a new project, where you can perform much better (now that you have more experience). Get a publication out of that and work with someone new, who will write you a good recommendation letter.

I know for a fact that many labs are very interested in getting bioinformaticians, so it shouldn't be hard if you are not looking for a great salary (which you shouldn't be: this is a career investment).


What can a PhD student do when a professor is no longer interested in advising them?

I would urge you to not lose hope and keep an open mind about your research interests. If your field is more applied than theoretical, it is very much possible to find advisers from other departments who might be doing the same flavour of work. Contact everyone you can! Talk to other students and see if any of their advisers has funding.

As far as teaching assistantships go, often times departments take applications from students outside their own (this is true particularly for departments that get plenty of research money, example, some engineering ones). Don't hesitate to reach out to the staff in those departments!


What is the academic value of posts on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn certainly has some value, as a general professional networking tool. However, that value has been declining for quite a while and rather rapidly more recently due to various factors, mainly inability (or lack of care/desire) of LinkedIn's management to manage the quality of the community, provide consistent user experience, fix issues and improve features, just to name a few. Whether the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft will help LinkedIn to remain a major player in the market and improve its dominance or, vice versa, will enable its stagnation and transform it into Microsoft's technology- and talent-focused support division, remains to be seen (I make no bets).

Having said that, the value of LinkedIn from the academic publishing perspective is quite bleak (which is a nice way to say "close to zero"), in my humble opinion. The following are some of the reasons for my such assessment.

Quality / scientific rigor. LinkedIn lacks a peer review process, which means that any published piece there should be taken with many more grains of salt than, if such process would be in place (not that is expected).
Relevancy. LinkedIn is not very relevant to academia. LinkedIn's network of people from academic circles tend to be much less comprehensive than academia's specialized networks due to some of their colleagues, collaborators, etc. using LinkedIn rarely, if ever, or just not having any presence there at all. Therefore, disseminating scientific information, using LinkedIn, is a much less effective option. Nevertheless, if one has important academic contacts on LinkedIn that are missing from the person's other networks, it might make sense to publish there a brief post (similar to an abstract) with a link to a full-text article (preferably, a DOI link).
Information persistence. LinkedIn lacks a mechanism of persistent identifiers (again, not that we can expect that from a general networking platform), which implies lack of guarantee that a link to an article published there will not become broken over time (which jeopardizes scientific information dissemination).

P.S. There is no such term, as "job CV" - I understand what you're trying to say, but IMHO it sounds pretty bad and, thus, I would recommend against using such word combination in any context. HTH


In universities, how to team up with your colleagues?

In our department, the assistant professors go out for drinks once a month (a fixed day of the week and a fixed week of the month). That tends to work out quite well: we can let off steam, compare notes on our students (and what senior faculty dish out in the name of advice :)), and generally get a nice group. I've had a few collaborations start because of this as well.

The general faculty also do a drinks night occasionally, but not as regularly.


How give a recommendation letter to my professor when I need it back?

She or he could write your recommendation letter, and put it in a sealed envelope. Then, you submit your application with the sealed envelope.


Applying for second PhD after quitting first one after 2 years on same topic

My advice is not to get into the minutia but say "personal reasons".  Allude to a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.

It's not ideal, but doable.  (like anything.)


What is the backup strategy of online-only journals/repositories on the very long term?

Most publishers use a preservation network such as Portico or LOCKSS. The principle is that numerous electronic copies are saved, and released in case of certain events (e.g. the publisher stops permanently giving access to the works).


Most effective free software for publication-grade structure diagrams

yEd can produce the 'research grade' diagrams that you'd be interested in.

It can produce nearly all sorts of figures includeing graphs, network diagrams, flow charts, architecture diagrams and block diagrams.
It has a whole wide range of auto arrange feature to rearrange your blocks creating a great professional look for a structure diagram.
It can export diagrams in vetor graphics, which includes PDF, PS, EPS, SVG and so on.
It produces graphml as save file making it cross compatible with graphml coders
Most importantly, it is cross-platform compatable, be it Mac, Windows or Linux.


Straight To PHD or work with an MA as part time professor?

This is an opinion question which is disfavored here. It is also a personal choice question which is also disfavored.

But I would think, in general, that there are better ways to start out on an academic career than with such a position. Unless money is a big issue, my advice, if I were your advisor, would be to get into the doctoral program now and try to pick up a bit of teaching experience as part of it.

But that is an opinion, worth just about exactly what you paid for it.


To answer your questions directly, yes, you can submit for publication as an undergraduate or as a completely uneducated person for that matter. Science and other scholarship is about the work, not the author's credentials. It will be credible if it is credible, independent of who you are. But it needs to say something new and interesting to have credibility. It is more, much more, than going through the motions of carrying out a study.

The only real reason for having a professor involved is that you can take advantage of his or her experience in doing research, writing it up, and getting it published. The name and credential is, as mentioned above, not the important thing. Likewise, a joint effort with peers is valuable since it is more likely that a few minds working on a problem will notice issues that need to be addressed and come to a better result. Other than that - little or no effect.

However, if you don't have any experience in doing this, it is pretty unlikely that you will be successful in your first attempt given the time constraints. Learning to do research and get it published, like any other learning task requires both practice and feedback. Many people, even with more educational background than yourself will struggle to reach the point at which it can be done with any facility. Most of them (a few exceptions) have the advantage of being able to bounce ideas off of much more experienced people - feedback.

Of course, if you do write something up and submit it to a journal or conference, it will be reviewed. If it has any validity at all you will get feedback from the reviewers. Hopefully it will be constructive, but sometimes it is disheartening. But it is better to get some local feedback before attempting publication, just so you get the practice and wind up submitting things that need less "polishing" to actually be published.

Like anything, though, you get experience through practice. Early attempts may be successful, but for most it takes a few tries. But the practice needs to be tempered by feedback.

If any of your professors have published material, you might want to approach one of them with some idea for a study. Ask if they can guide you and give you feedback. Even if you don't reach the publishing stage, that feedback will be valuable in figuring out how to approach research and how to make it presentable. Someone with more experience is also more likely than yourself to have an idea about what sorts of things are ripe for research. It does you little good to work on questions already answered and it normally takes a lot of study to understand where the research "edge" is any given field. A more experienced person can help with that, showing you what is the most important thing to look at.


Can a postdoc apply for a standard NSF grant as a PI?

I work in theoretical mathematics.  I have known several postdocs who have received individual NSF research grants.  In fact, I am co-PI on a NSF Research Training Grant which has supported several postdocs, and we have required these postdocs to apply for individual grant support in every year of the job.

Having said that: all NSF grants are of course (i) a lot of work to apply for and (ii) quite competitive to receive, so before taking the time to apply for one I would want to get additional reassurance that not only is it legal for postdocs to apply for your particular kind of NSF grant (as it almost certainly is) but moreover that those who are reviewing the grants view it as reasonable that a postdoc might get such a grant, or -- better -- that some postdocs in your field have actually gotten such grants.

My advice for this is twofold:

  Do some research on this yourself.

Who gets what NSF grant is public information.  Whether the grantholder is a postdoc is something you will probably have to do further web research to find out, but it should be doable.  Try it!

  Ask followup questions to your program officer.

As you describe it, you sent one message to your program officer and got a response, but the response was based on a bit of misunderstanding of your situation.  Okay, then try again.  In your second (and third..., if necessary) try, you can ask additional questions based on what I wrote above: i.e., not just whether it's legal, but how does it work out in practice?  By the way, it is (a big part of) the job of NSF program officers to answer such questions.  As long as you are polite and respectful, you can ask her as many questions as you have...and I encourage you to do so.


The difference in writing style between a book chapter and article in a journal

You would want your chapter to fit into the whole project, whereas a journal article can usually stand alone.

Your chapter should not duplicate material in other chapters, although you may refer to material in another chapter.

You will want your chapter to be generally accessible.  For the specialized journal article, that doesn't matter so much.

The editor (could be more than one) may want to be rather more involved in choosing the content, organization, presentation, etc.,for a book project than for an isolated article.

To get a feel for the style desired, you could ask the editor(s) for one or more examples of the desired style.


Is there an entrance exam I can take to get admitted directly into a European PhD program in electrical engineering without a masters?

Admission and funding in European PhD programs depends a lot on the university and the country's regulations. You should search for the programs you are interested in applying to and read their specific requirements.


Total Grant Amount or Amount from Government on CV

In the US, this kind of arrangement is called "cost sharing." Under current rules federal agencies are no longer allowed to require cost sharing and institutions cannot propose cost sharing, although this was sometimes required in the past.

The way to describe this in a CV would normally be to give the amount of the award as one number, plus the amount of cost share as a second number.

e.g.

B. Borchers.  Searching for Tribbles in the Oort Cloud.  Extra Terrestrial Biology Funding Agency, 2015-2017.  $100,000 award plus $20,000 in institutional cost sharing.


Should I leave my undergraduate research project?

First, ask your advisor for the level of commitments to have a co-authorship on a publication. Do so in writing (e.g. via email).

Dear Dr. ...:

I am making plans for how best to complete the project. Since I am no longer being paid, I need to schedule my time properly. I am especially interested to contribute sufficiently for a co-authorship on a publication. Looking ahead, I cannot however make an unlimited and open-ended investment. In this regard, I have two questions that I hope you can address.

What remaining objectives do you need me to complete in my work toward a co-authorship?
How long do you anticipate that I should need to spend on the remaining work?

I look forward to a prompt response.

Regards,

J P Bear

Second, prepare to leave.

Make photocopies of all notebooks that you kept.
Collect the electronic work that you have done to date. All of it. Every scrape. Organize it as best possible by themes (e.g. Reports, Presentations, Code, Raw Data, ...).
Burn it all on two copies of a CD or DVD. These are the immutable copies of the documents. You might need to find them again some time later. You can also store files in the cloud or on magnetic media. But, gosh what will you do when that cloud is sold to some third party who trashes your files or your magnetic USB stick happens to land in an NMR lab by accident, what then? Or, what will you do when you would be called to a court dispute about the co-authorship on a publication and you have a USB stick that ... well ... they will NOT accept as evidence in your case because it was not an immutable copy?

Third, generate a thank you letter ...

Dear Dr. ...:

Thank you for the opportunity to work under your supervision. I have appreciated the chance to learn how to program simulations for optics for the beam line at Argonne National Laboratories.

I am providing you with a CD that contains all of the electronic files that I generated over my project period. I am also submitting to you all of the notebooks that I kept with records of my work.

--> The wording in the next paragraph depends on what you did and did not discuss. It also depends on what you do and do not wish to continue doing.

[We discussed the possibility that my work will contribute to be a co-author on a publication. I am ready to assist in editing this publication when this decision is made. I am also willing to provide email or phone support to transition my work to the next team member.]

I can be contacted at the address below for questions.

Sincerely,

J P Bear

Fourth, hand the letter, one CD, and all of the notebooks that you kept to your advisor.

Fifth, say goodbye and start the other project.


Is it ok to upload joke papers to arXiv?

There is a long tradition of posting joke papers to arXiv on or around April Fool's Day, especially in astro-ph - see the list below. The fact that all these papers were approved for arXiv offers some evidence (though not proof) that joke papers are okay.

It's probably best to limit joke papers to around April 1, though, when people know to be on the lookout for this stuff - or at least provide some indicator which is very clear to experts in the field that the paper is a joke, such as listing it as being submitted to SIGBOVIK or the Annals of Improbable Research.

A history of arXiv joke papers

(mirrored on my website)

Superiority of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) over Steward Observatory (SO) at the University of Arizona (2002)
On the Utter Irrelevance of LPL Graduate Students: An Unbiased Survey by Steward Observatory Graduate Students (2002)
Cosmic Conspiracies (2006)
Natural Dark Energy (2007)
Down-sizing Forever (2008)
Time variation of a fundamental dimensionless constant (2009)
Galaxy Zoo: an unusual new class of galaxy cluster (2009)
Orthographic Correlations in Astrophysics (2010)
Schroedinger's Cat is not Alone (2010)
Non-standard morphological relic patterns in the cosmic microwave background (2011)
On the influence of the Illuminati in astronomical adaptive optics (2012)
Gods as Topological Invariants (2012)
The Proof of Innocence (2012)
On the Ratio of Circumference to Diameter for the Largest Observable Circles: An Empirical Approach (2012)
Non-detection of the Tooth Fairy at Optical Wavelengths (2012)
Pareidolic Dark Matter (PaDaM) (2013)
A search for direct heffalon production using the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (2013)
Unidentified Moving Objects in Next Generation Time Domain Surveys (2013)
Conspiratorial cosmology - the case against the Universe (2013)
"Winter is coming" (2013)
The CMB flexes its BICEPs while walking the Planck (2014)
Bayesian Prediction for The Winds of Winter (2014)
A Farewell to Falsifiability (2015)
Beyond the New Horizon: The Future of Pluto (2015)
Astrology in the Era of Exoplanets (2016)
An unexpected new explanation of seasonality in suicide attempts: Grey's Anatomy broadcasting (2016)
Pi in the sky (2016)
SET-E: The Search for Extraterrestrial Environmentalism (2016)
Stopping GAN Violence: Generative Unadversarial Networks (2017) (the example from the question, included for completeness)
A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997 (2017)
On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines (2017)
Detecting the Ultimate Power in the Universe with LSST (2017)
Sitnikov in Westeros: How Celestial Mechanics finally explains why winter is coming in Game of Thrones (2018)
Independent Discovery of a Sub-Earth in the Habitable Zone Around a Very Close Solar-Mass Star (2018)
Colonel Mustard in the Aviary with the Candlestick: a limit cycle attractor transitions to a stable focus via supercritical Andronov-Hopf bifurcation (2018)
The Long Night: Modeling the Climate of Westeros (2019)
Worlds in Migration (2019)
Forecasting Future Murders of Mr. Boddy by Numerical Weather Prediction (2019)
A new kind of radio transient: ERBs (2019)
Novel approach to Room Temperature Superconductivity problem (2020)
Quantum Godwin's Law (2020)
An Artificially-intelligent Means to Escape Discreetly from the Departmental Holiday Party; guide for the socially awkward (2020)
The search for life and a new logic (2020)
Making It Rain: How Giving Me Telescope Time Can Reduce Drought (2020)
Searching for Space Vampires with TEvSS (2020)
A PDF PSA, or Never gonna set_xscale again -- guilty feats with logarithms (2020)
Defining the Really Habitable Zone (2020)

Note: since this has become what I think is the most comprehensive list of arXiv joke papers I know of, I've made it community wiki so anyone can add to the list. Any additions should be clearly joke papers and, in keeping with the topic of the question, must be posted on arXiv.


Career options after Masters in mathematics outside academia

This question will probably be closed as it is shopping. You might want to try and learn what people do after having bachelor's in mathematics. There are statistics online and, to my suprise as well, mathematics seem to bring in a quite respectable salary (on avarage, in US). My understanding is that there is some demand for mathematicians in certain jobs. They may train you so you don't really need to know much beforehand.

Given your specific interests a more ideal, non-academic, job placement would ideally use your qualifications. Private companies do have their researchers (for example IBM has researchers for quantum computing) doing serious research. There might be oppurtunities for you, that I am aware of, in communications (coding theory) or data analysis.


Are you limited to the interests of the professors or your advisor during graduate research?

Say you're a professor reading the application of a prospective student who wants to work on topic X, which is not your specific interest (your interest is Y). You may be thinking along any of the following lines:

"I'm doing Y, and I have lots of interesting research ideas around Y. I want students to help me explore these ideas in Y, so I won't supervise a student in X."
"I'm doing Y, and I can supervise students in Y reasonably well. But supervising a student in X for the first time would require a substantial extra investment of time and effort on my part, and I'm not able to offer that right now."
"X is really interesting. It would be useful to develop expertise in X. But currently I only have funding for Y (and PhD offers in our field are always funded), so I can't take on this student unless they are fully funded by an external fellowship."
"X is really interesting. It would be useful to develop expertise in X in this research group. I'll take on this student even though I have no interest in or expertise in X." But then this advisor may turn out to be an ineffective advisor for this student.
"X is really interesting. I don't have any expertise in X specifically, but I do know about the closely related field Y, and I think this expertise would enable me to effectively supervise a student in X, so I'm willing to take on this student." (It may or may not turn out to be true that expertise in Y will translate to effective supervision in X.)
"X is a major up-and-coming topic, which is why I just hired that postdoc with expertise in X to start this fall. With her help, we could definitely get a PhD student started in X."
"I wouldn't take on a student whose main topic is X, because that's not my primary research interest. But if the student was working on my topic, Y, I would be open to also pursuing X with him as a side project."

Since you don't know which of these apply, if you contact this professor, it would be a good idea to indicate that you would be very happy working on Y (if that's true) in addition to your interest in X.


Which professors are involved in the tenure decision (in USA)? (associate, full, tenure-track who becomes tenured before I get tenure etc...)

You should ask your department chair, as practices can vary.

Usually, all promotion decisions are voted on by faculty who have already received the promotion.  So for tenure, only tenured faculty will vote.


Was supposed to do an oral exam, but was instead presented with my grade

There is no ethical issue here if no one was disadvantaged by this. Accept that grading can be an inexact science even in the best situations. The professor made a judgment about the quality of your work overall and suggested a grade. His expectations, apparently, were that the oral exam wouldn't change his judgement. Orals can be subjective in any case, and he  perhaps wanted to avoid that as well as lessen his own work load in the face of it not very likely to affect the outcome.

This would have been different if the suggested grade were lower than your expectations or if someone else were disadvantaged by the system.

In my own practice, I would set a grading rubric that was clear to the students. For example, 700 points earned would be worth a certain grade. Students knew how many points they had accumulated. But if someone earned 695 points they would get the higher rather than the lower grade. My assumption was (a) that the difference was not consequential and (b) minor changes in evaluations along the way might overwhelm the few points lost. Furthermore, I would occasionally let students who had already attained highest marks skip the final exam. It would give them the opportunity to work in their other subjects and was unlikely to affect anything. I think this is somewhat common practice.

Far worse to be overly strict and leave students disappointed in the course, in me, and in themselves.

Furthermore, if the grade "offered" was less than highest marks, you had the choice to take the exam. No harm, no foul.

I'm not sure I'd feel the same about this if the offer was made to only the lowest performing students. In that case it seems more like work avoidance than justice. But even then, I'd want more information before deciding.

And congratulations. I hope that you impressed the professor in some way.


No reply to the referee report from the author of a manuscript

It depends on the journal. The journals I've been associated with have an online system that gives authors a certain deadline by which they have to submit a revised manuscript -- I suspect that the deadline is often set at 6 months. Authors are reminded of this deadline by an automated email a certain time before the deadline expires. Authors can ask for an extension, and it is routinely granted.

If an author does neither, then the manuscript is moved into an "archived" state where the database still has it, but it is not considered a "live" or "active" manuscript. Unless someone takes action, that is the final resting place of these manuscripts.


How much do you agree with Elon Musk statement that non one is going to read your publications?

Well, for starters, Musk is just trolling. I think he does that often enough that people should recognize it for what it is. The statement has a bit of truth and if you exaggerate it enough you get to his statement.
A more accurate portrayal is that most academic publications have a very small audience. Not all, but most. The audience is other specialists in that sub field to which the paper applies. The paper might be very significant to half a dozen people worldwide, but of little interest elsewhere.
Some papers, on the other hand, have a lot of influence. And some of the lesser papers are what eventually enable the big ones.
The publication of his ideas on the Calculus by Leibniz were pretty important and have had a huge impact, and not just on math. Einstein's work has also had a big influence.
If you were to create a graph of the importance of papers vs their numbers, I think it would be pretty skewed. But that is irrelevant if it is the small steps, accumulated over time, that make the big steps possible.
So the "useless" is an exaggeration. And the "nobody" is an exaggeration. The result is just a troll. Smile and enjoy the workmanship of Elon the Showman. But don't neglect your research.
And none of Musk's business ventures would be worth anything without the research that led to the technology they use.
That said, at the moment, it is a pretty poor marketplace for academics. A lot of that is political with too little consideration given to the long term importance of education generally. And, of course, to survive in any competitive environment you have to work hard and get results. If you don't love research and the field you work in, then do something else. The rewards aren't financial for most of us.

To add a personal note. My doctoral dissertation (classical real analysis) was incredibly esoteric, though quite nice in its way. I predicted at the time that no one would ever find a practical use for it. I was wrong, though it took ten years or more before someone found an application. My later work in CS had more of an immediate impact.
And, my gateway into academia wasn't easy to pass through. I graduated at a time when no one wanted to hire mathematicians, since there was a glut due to the race to the moon. My trajectory would have been entirely different had I finished three years earlier. But, life is good. I'm not sorry that I stuck it out.


how should I be positive about financial support?

Depending upon the university, your funding may come from the department, rather than the university, and it thus would likely be the department's responsibility to send you a letter outlining where your funding comes from. (In some cases, this devolves to the faculty member.)

If you have any questions, the best place to start would be the graduate advisor or the graduate admissions officer for your program. They should know how funding letters are announced.


What is the best approach to write a literature review paper?

Usually review papers are written by established researchers in that field. They already got good knowledge about the topic and a library to work with. In that case you won't read all the papers in detail again, just the parts you need. You might read newer/additional papers and yes, ofc you read the whole.

Writing a review while you are not familiar with the topic is common if you start working on that topic. Often profs want new students to write a review which means they have to read the whole literature and afterwards they are familiar with the topic. In this case you should read all the papers. In the end the prof usually gives additional input in case something is missing or wrong.

If you write the review "on your own" you definitely got to read every paper very carefully, otherwise you might miss important details. I advise against doing this.

Writing reviews correctly would be very important since it helps everyone who wants to get knowledge on that field. Sadly reviews are often completly full of errors.


Grad School Interviews with Multiple Programs at same School

I doubt that you would have repeat interviews with the same person unless it is a group interview (group of professors). If they know of your interest in the various positions they will ask whatever questions need to be asked when they meet you.
List the professors you want to work with and ignore the overlap. Let them work out the details.
Of course, someone may want to sit in on more than one interview if the positions are different enough. But they are likely pretty busy. I they come back for more, I'd take it as a sign of high interest.


Can open science project be performed/published by non-scientists?

Yes, of course anyone can publish an open science project. As many of us in the scientific community wish would happen, the project should be judged on merit, not who initiated it, where they studied, or what their background or education is.

These principles are enshrined in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which have been widely circulated and many (unfortunately not a majority, yet) organisations quick to sign up to.


Saying thanks in the personal statement?

No, a statement of thanks in the form you have described has no place in a statement of purpose.

The statement of purpose should be a concise, focused document. Everything in there should be there for a specific purpose: to convince the readers that you would be a strong addition to their department. Anything that doesn't serve that purpose distracts from that purpose and doesn't belong in there.

  The personal statement should give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community, giving the committee an image of you as a person.

None of the things you have written in your thanks "give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community" so they do not belong there.

Besides for being ineffective as part of your application for graduate admissions, it's also somewhat ineffective as an expression of gratitude. Private thanks expressed to the person you are thanking are nice; public thanks (like in a thesis, or a Nobel prize acceptance speech) are also nice. What's the point of thanking someone in a private document, that they're not the intended audience of? If you want to thank your mom, send her a letter, or call her on the phone and thank her.


Having worked at a university in HR, you are classified as an employee and you definitely have a "job title". Since you're a graduate student, you could be classified as a "Teaching Assistant" or "Graduate Assistant". I would recommend reaching out to your HR department and simply asking them what you your title is in the system.


Should/Can I retract a paper that has fatal math error after this paper has been accepted, presented, and released in the proceeding?

For a journal paper you could either retract it, which means to "unpublish" it, or you could add an erratum, i.e. a short note where you explain what parts of the paper are wrong (and how to fix them, in case you know it) and which parts are still correct.

If I understood your case correctly, it seems like an erratum stating that the mathematical proof is incorrect, while the experiments still support the claim, would be appropriate.


If I get an HND then a BSc, can I then go and specialise in any area for my Masters?

Yes, there are several routes to get to your speciality Masters. Once you've got your Bachelor's degree, very few people will care much about the route you took to get it, whether it was an HND, foundation course, A-levels at night school, whatever.


Possibly, quick acceptance for publication

It is very unusual for a paper to be reviewed and get accepted in two days. Of course, there are some exceptions such as:

Solution to a very well known and long studied problem (even in this case, it is highly unlikely for the review process to be completed in 2 days).
Dramatically improving the conditions of a current crisis (e.g. a vaccine for COVID-19 outbreak)
Very short

Other than these extreme cases, I, personally would not choose to publish in that journal, let alone pay for the publication.

Also, you can check this famous list for future considerations.


How should I fill the "First name" and "Last name" in an application if I have two given names and two last names?

I am in your exact same situation: Spanish name with 2+2. I have lived abroad for 6 years now, most of it in Ireland.

There is no way out of misunderstandings, I'm afraid, and your second last name will often be assumed to be your only family name.

Here is a recipe that has worked out for me so far:

For a non legally-critical situation, e.g. your name on a paper or a name tag at a conference, use your first last name only or hyphen both last names. You can then initialize your second (or even first) given names. People from English-speaking countries often have a middle name, so that's not a problem.
For legal and official stuff, use your full name as per your identity document so it cannot be used against you. If they get it flipped over it's their fault.


During peer-review, should I comment on the authors' messy code?

If the authors have provided a link to their code as a reference, then it is appropriate to offer commentary, particularly if the article is based on the code.

However, I would recommend making the critique constructive: offer concrete suggestions for how to improve it rather than just saying it’s “messy” or “sloppy” and needs to be “cleaned up.”


How quickly do masters students and/or PhD students move from being TAs to RAs?

The answer to this question is that there is no general answer.  There is so much variation between and even within fields and programs that any definite answer would likely be misleading.

You should not attempt to answer questions about graduate stipends by polling the audience (nor even by phoning a friend!).  These are questions that you should direct specifically to each and every program you are seriously considering.  Don't be shy: you have a right to know these things, and people will be happy to answer you, although the answers may be a bit complicated.

By the way, you write:

  To support myself while studying, I'd find it ideal to be paid doing work or research that advances my credentials. (TAing is definitely educationally valuable for both a TAer and students, but I feel that, unlike RAing, it loses its value after a while).

If you are not yet in a graduate program, you may not know what kind of support you'd find ideal.  I would also suggest you think about (i) how much money you are getting total and (ii) how many hours of work "for someone else" you have to do for that money.  In many cases, graduate students are paid for much more than the work they do for someone else, and thus they are de facto getting paid to do research that advances their credentials (i.e., their thesis work).  TAing for 10 hours week could leave you more time to get paid to do work that advances your credentials than RAing for 20 hours a week.  Or not: it depends on what you are getting paid to do.  Finally, TAing does not necessarily "lose its value after a while": if you are seeking a career at an academic institution which prioritizes teaching over research (note that well over half of all colleges and universities in the US fit in this category), then having a strong teaching portfolio could turn out to be much more valuable than another routine publication.  Or not: again, it very much depends on your situation...


Citing your own unpublished work (poster)

You can refer to it without putting it in the bibliography. A typical way to do so would be in a title-footnote that says something like "a previous version of this paper was circulated under the name X, presented at conference Y, etc."


PhD Applications and GRE Subject Tests during Covid

Certainly if universities want students in a time of chaos, they need to be somewhat flexible in their admissions. Some will have dropped the GRE requirement, and some haven't had it for a while.
Unfortunately that is an individual decision by an individual university (or perhaps a statewide system) in the US, so you have to inquire for each university to learn a useful answer. Don't assume that any given university has, or hasn't, made changes to their requirements.
However, note that ETS is making accommodations also. It is possible to take the General Test at home under certain circumstances. It doesn't seem to include the Subject tests, though that may change.


Asking for funding opportunities for phd in France if a professor has said yes to me but his university doesn't have any doctoral scholarship

It is possible to do a PhD part time in France. Or rather, it is possible to have a full time job and do a PhD on the side. You will not get a part time doctoral contract. This is common in social sciences or the humanities. In math, this is also common when school teachers want to get a PhD for various reasons, e.g. teach in a university or in a higher preparatory school (or just for the heck of it).

One of the main downside is, of course, that your PhD is going to take much longer than the three years standard. Six years would be a more reasonable target; PhDs can take a decade to complete in humanities.

Let me mention that self-funding is not an option. If you do not have a doctoral contract (aka PhD-related funding), doctoral schools will ask for proof of income.

But you should reread your potential advisor's email. From what you have told us, it does not appear to say that he is willing to be your advisor if you do a PhD part time. This is a completely different promise than saying he is willing to be your advisor if you find funding. You should clarify this with him but I am unsure that you will like the answer.

The best person to ask about funding opportunities is your potential advisor. Without knowing details (what university, what field) it is impossible to answer beyond vague generalities. This is too dependent on local factors such as how many stipends do the ministry or local governments give out, companies that may be willing to cofund PhDs, local fellowships, and so on. You can ask your potential advisor again, but if the first reply was already that they do not have funding, then I would wager that you are out of luck.


Is one or two years' postdoc experience helpful for a (nonacademic) research career?

It's hard to define "helpful": yes, it's better to do a postdoc in a top place rather than staying at home, but if you want to work in research industry, it might be better to do some development for a year rather a completely unrelated postdoc in the middle of nowhere.

If you want to apply for a position, you have to understand the competition you might be facing: positions in the top research labs (public/private) are highly attractive, and you would be facing people with good achievements in academia (publications in top venues, PI for important grants, extensive network for collaboration, etc), and/or people with good achievement in industry (project managers, success for a specific product, good contact with academia, etc).

So, the question is not whether it's good or not to do a postdoc, but what will a particular postdoc bring to you:

a different research topic, increasing your multi/inter-disciplinary skills
a very promising research topic, potentially increasing your visibility by publishing at top venues
a collaboration with industry, thus increasing your academia/industry network
etc

A good approach could be to check, when available, the CVs of the people working at a research lab you could be interested to, as it could give you a good idea of what they did before joining the lab.


What does the With Editor status mean for an Elsevier journal after being with the Managing Editor (ME)?

"Managing editor" can mean many different things, e.g. for one of the journals I used to handle, the managing editors were effectively editor-in-chiefs using a different name.
In your case most probably the managing editor is some kind of gatekeeper to the journal. It could be the editor-in-chief, or it could be an employee of the publisher. They looked to see if your manuscript was within scope of the journal, and if it was, who the best member of the editorial board to handle it is. Then they forwarded the manuscript to that editorial board member.
There's nothing else to do except wait.


Someone cited my paper in an irrelevant manner

Well, what can you do? Not much. I can confirm that it does indeed happen… sometime people even cite a paper of yours to justify a conclusion that you have not reached in the paper, and even one that you strongly disagree with.

One option is to let it slide. You are not responsible for the content of papers that refer to yours, or the accuracy of their citations for that matter. The paper author is responsible, and to some extent, the journal’s referees. (I tend to spend quite some time checking citations  when I review papers, but that might just be me being overly sensitive to this particular issue.)

Another option is to contact the paper’s corresponding author, and ask him point blank. You have read his paper, and you are unclear as to the extent of the connection between his writing and yours. See what it gives.

Finally, in the current way academic research works, you do not really have any mean to call out their behaviour publicly. I do not believe you should, either.


If I get an article published in a journal as an undergrad, but the research is low-quality, can it hurt my chances for admission to a PhD?

A low-impact publication will not, in itself, have that much impact on your chances of getting into graduate school.  Graduate admission committees will pay a lot more attention to your letters or recommendation.  In terms of graduate admissions, the most important impact of having done research is that it should involve you working closely with more senior academics, who will them be in a position to give you strong graduate school recommendations.

Whether the research you do as a undergraduate gets published or not, what is key is that your research supervisor (and possibly other senior people you may have worked with) will know you well enough to write you a strong recommendation.  If your research was done under the supervision of a prominent, respected researcher, that person's letter will count for more.  On the other hand, if your supervisor has a poor reputation (being known for shoddy or crackpot work, for example), their evaluation of your potential will be weighted less strongly by the people reading your application file.  If the low quality of your publication is a consequence of having worked with a rather poor senior researcher, that is something of a cause for concern, although the best course of action is still probably to get the strongest letter you can from your supervisor, even so.


The steps for applying to PostDoc positions

You can also try to approach the best professors in your field and ask them to visit their lab (and most probably they will ask you to make a talk where you present your PhD). It is a hasle to prepare a talk in a prestigious lab, but then you let yourself known, and when a position comes up there you might learn about it first and who knows.
I would try to contact people I would really want to work with and see what comes next.


There's absolutely no payoff to telling your chair that another university might be interested in you unless and until you have an offer you think you might want to accept.

If an interview visit is confidential or, as you put it, "stealth", everyone involved should know what that means and there should be very little risk that word of your visit will filter back to your home institution.


My teammate submitted plagiarized code in a group project

Been there before - I lost credits (not that much, it just canceled a good grade for my task) due to a teammate plagiarizing. The point is that teamwork is not "I do task 1, You do task 2 and we throw this together in the last moment and just get it working".

I didn't understand back then that I should have helped my teammate who was clearly overwhelmed (which I understood before) with her tasks to solve her problems or clearly dissociated myself from her before trying to hand the results of both our tasks together.

Whether your university rules/professor etc. will allow you to re-submit the solution after you believably explain them that you had no knowledge of this (i hope that is true, and that the guidelines don't require you to do plagiarism checking on the submitted work!) is something which can not be answered here and depends on the type of project, the importance and relative amount of the plagiarized code, how clear it was that it wasn't his/her work (e.g. like in my case: nothing is there in the afternoon before handing in the solution and on the next morning, a 20 page report is ready - should have been a warning sign for me), the way in which the teams were assigned (e.g. somebody whom you clearly had not contact with, despite your efforts to meet, and who kept you updating via email continuously on how great everything is going may be a different case than a partner with whom you were doing homework for several years) and last but not least on the written rules of your university/faculty/chair/lab course etc.

The best strategy would be to communicate to the supervisor(s) and clearly apologize for your failure to review the results in detail as a team, make clear that while you should/could have been aware of the issue, you actually were not, and politely ask if it is possible to deduct this in someway from the grade instead of rejecting the submission completely - do not threaten the prof with a lawyer, i am pretty sure that just rejecting the solution is within the range of acceptable options.


Correct Academic Title, Necessity of Adding All Emails, Necessity of Adding Authors Photo in IEEE Transaction Journal?

what is my exact ranking title? A lecturer, instructor, adjunct
  lecturer, adjunct instructor or what?

  How much is it important to be precise for academic title in this
  biography?

If you are uncertain about your official title, talk to folks in your departmental office and/or the human resources (HR) people (or folks in the equivalent HR office at your institution). So long as you are making a good effort to state truthfully what your current title is, I wouldn't expect there to be any problems.

  Is it important to include all authors email in the paper? (I am the
  first name on the paper and he is the second, but he is the
  corresponding author)

  considering the fact that, we only received the PDF of the paper, How
  can we correct the foot note at this stage?

I have seen folks list email addresses for all authors, just the email address of the corresponding author, or somewhere in between. It's up to you: you have every right to have your email address shown on the first-page footnote if you want it there. To make any additions to the footnote (or your biography, or anything else as I mentioned in this answer), contact the senior editor assigned to your manuscript. If you don't know who the senior editor is, the corresponding author of your paper does: contact your corresponding author and ask them to supply you with this information.

  Is it important to add our photo beside biography? Considering the
  fact that we didn't exceed 8 page limit of IEEE in the first
  submission of our manuscript, and the other 5 pages has been added to
  the paper based on the reviewers revision and editing of the editorial
  board, Do we still need to pay that fine? Also, My professor and I are
  Senior member and Student of IEEE organization, does that help us to
  get rid of paying the fine?

Again, it's up to you: some authors have bios with pictures, some do not (some people choose not to even include a bio!). To me, the IEEE Transactions have very clear policies on the charges authors pay for going over a certain page limit: everyone pays these regardless of whether they are members of the IEEE or not.

Finally, don't let your corresponding author "bully" you into omitting your bio/photo just to save on publishing costs. As a corresponding author, even though I don't care if my bio has to be shortened to fit some page-count restriction, I always make sure to save room for co-author bios/photos and find other ways to trim the paper down without sacrificing the overall quality of the paper. The way I see it, if a co-author wants to include a bio/photo to, for example, advertise themselves to the journal's target audience, then they should be given the opportunity to do so.


Is Science Publishing group (http://www.sciencepg.net) a genuine publisher related to the Science journal?

Science is the official magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which has nothing to do with two publishers you mentioned. It is common these days that new publishers (usually publishing online open access journals) use the names, which are similar to the famous publications.

Science and Nature are the most reputable journals (though they are technically magazines) in cutting-edge research. Both have impact factors over 30. The publishers you mentioned publish journals, which are not even properly indexed. Most of the journals by such publishers have an impact factor of around 1 (just mentioned to highlight the difference).

In any case, no reputable publisher asks you to apply. They choose their editors/reviewers directly based on your works. When an email asks you to apply, this is a general advertisement email sent to a long mailing list.


Postdoc position not specifying about required recommendation letters

While it seems unusual, I'm going to guess that he knows what he wants and needs. I wouldn't send things that aren't asked for in this case, as you seem to have already made it over the line. An accidental statement in a letter might actually hurt you, but I don't see how you can be "more" accepted than accepted.

If asked, send them of course. But you will likely learn more at the interview.

Depending on his funding, he may have wide latitude in who to hire and how to do it.


Who gets to write book reviews for academic journals?

I am sure this varies but is most likely one of the following (in some kind of falling order):

you are a well-known and respected researcher/educator in the field

you have recently written material that are key to the book (perhaps referenced in it)

you are known not to know the word "No" (makes the editors work easier)

you are friends with the editor (makes his/her life easy)

I doubt many editors will necessarily take you up on an offer (depending which category you may fall into) but I am sure some might be fine with it. It never hurts to contact an editor and express interest. You should then provide a background for why you should be considered for such a task.


How do the admission committees look at an applicant's profile if he has not yet figured out his area of research?

In CS in the US, you should be fine however you state it. There might be a few exceptions, but as long as the university has a large enough faculty to support both of your interests they will likely be happy to take you other things being equal. The MS level still has a lot of room for "seasoning" and learning what you want to do. There is coursework available in which you can explore each of these more deeply. There is the opportunity to meet faculty who might impress you as being good to work with in one or the other of your interests.

Personally, I see little value in "nailing down" a future too early. There are a lot of variables and there is still time to explore. You don't want to choose arbitrarily and later suffer "buyers remorse".

Note that you will probably be assigned an advisor when you enter. Treat that as a temporary assignment. If you learn you aren't interested in that person's research (or personality) you can (and should) ask another professor to take you on after you learn more about the faculty.

In my own case (long ago) in mathematics I entered interested in both Topology and Analysis. But I don't think the university even knew of that. Once I got there the first courses helped me decide.

There are places, however, and fields, in which you need to be hired into a specific lab in order to be accepted. In such places you need to be "pretty interested" in what that lab does, since you will be participating. It isn't impossible to change in such a situation, but it is harder.


Should I agree to review a paper that I do not fully understand?

I would go with 2, or at least contact the editor saying you would do 2, and asking if they'd prefer 1. There tends to be a shortage of referees, at least in my field, so I'd expect 2 to be preferred. I've been sent a paper to look at one aspect where someone else had apparently already checked a different aspect.

While I hate to say it, I believe in maths it would not really be expected that every tiny detail of a similar paper would be checked. I used to think it worked like that, but the time issues you mention are true for others too, so I guess 'certain enough' has to replace 'absolutely certain'.


What if my research does not give the expected results?

I'm not sure what you mean by "theoretically it should work". The examples you refer to are cases where you're positing some kind of model for the data. That the experiments failed suggests that the implied model is wrong. The question then is: what is a good model, and what went wrong with the model you tried.

It's that kind of investigation that will set you on the path to a paper.


How to respond an email for postdoc process

Congratulations on your new job!
They want to know at which day you can start the job, in order to include the starting date in your contract, which I presume ms. YYY and ZZZ are drawing up as we speak.


Status of "Reviews Completed" in a springer journal

This means that in the next couple of days or so you will hear from the editor for the decision on your manuscript. Basically it means what it says: the journal has received the reviews, the editor is reading them and preparing the letter with her/his decision to send you.


This sound like a classic case of clinician-statistician interaction. Both sides tend to under-appreciate the contribution of the other, and conflicts like this happen a lot. For the future, the lesson is to discuss authorship as early as possible when engaging on any projects.
For now, I'd add two things to consider:

Even assuming that the entire intellectual contribution so far has come from you, the other postdoc would not be entirely freeloading. The first author has a lot of responsibilities, such as deciding on the overall presentation, writing the manuscript, presenting the results in conferences, responding to reviews etc., and I personally think that is a significant intellectual effort. It may be unfair that you were passed over, but in the end the other person will still have to put in a lot of intellectual work, while you are free to move on to other projects.

Ask yourself if your analysis method is a sufficiently strong advance to stand as a publication on its own, i.e. could you write a methods paper using some simulated or publicly-available data. If so, pitch that to your PI, along the lines of "I believe I have found some more general methods to improve PET data analysis, and I would like to write that up with a technical focus, in an appropriate journal. By the way, this won't actually need [other postdoc]'s data". The PI will surely see the cause of this, but as long you're being honest and tactful, nobody should be offended, and whatever the outcome, this should help all parties understand each other's contribution better.


Second round of review is taking longer than the first one

Lots of things can happen to delay the review process. For instance, heavy teaching commitments in the winter can slow things down, although they should now be over. Also, there really should be no correlation between the reviewing times for an original submission and a resubmit after major revision. The referee has to essentially start from scratch.

But after three months, I would say you are entitled to a polite reminder letter to the editor.


Is there any anonymous website that authors can rate journal submission experience?

SciRev comes to mind – is this the sort of thing you're looking for?


What to do when you have small yet additional results to a submitted paper?

As Marc says in his comment, the best thing to do is probably to incorporate the new proof into your revision, after you get reviewer feedback. A small extension not worth its own paper is unlikely to make a difference between reject and revise. If you send it now, it may annoy the editor and reviewers. Also, the reviewers will likely be just fine with more new material you add in revision.


What are the industry career prospects for a CS Ph.D. student who doesn't publish in CS?

It's hard to guess whether your work will help you get a job with any particular company, particularly given that you don't say what area you are working in.  In general, however, let me provide an observation about how many companies think about Ph.D.s that may be useful to you.

First, industry typically doesn't care about publications per se.  This is true even for industrial research, just as it would probably be more true for university academia if there were less metric-obsession.  Instead, industry typically is interested in your ability to help meet business goals, and a Ph.D. is typically expected to bring deeper insight and more rarified skills to bear in doing so.

As such, publishing cross-disciplinary research is likely to be an advantage rather than a disadvantage in applying for industrial jobs.  Scientific publication is evidence of your depth, and publishing outside of your "home" discipline is evidence that you are able to reach beyond your intellectual "bubble" and deal with problems of another field as well.


How can I adapt my scientific writing for the modern web?

For journals, at least, many now publish online in HTML.  This includes many large cross-field publications including well-known venues such as Nature and PLOS ONE,
to name only a few of many.  Your paper will generally be available in PDF as well, but the default that the journal steers people to is generally HTML.

An action you might then take would be to choose to submit only to journals with HTML publication of this sort.


How to properly withdraw an application for a faculty position?

The most helpful thing that you can do is to send them an email withdrawing your application as soon as possible.  They will move on to other candidates.


Who decides about admission of a PhD student?

Let me explain my comment as an answer.

The admission process works in two different ways: Formal enrolment and informal enrolment

Formal

You apply through university web link and select the research areas or supervisor. Then probably you communicate with the chosen supervisor through email(s). If things go well then you might get an interview call or direct admit.

Informal

You approach the supervisor first. Discussions or interviews may go on. If everything is alright, you supervisor would speak with the admission committee for your official admit.

In both these types of cases your supervisor recommends for the admission. However, it is the decision of the admission committee to make the final call.

  Note: I have skipped the recommendation letters related points which is a major part in both these types of enrolment.

Moreover, each University has their own set of rules. It is wise to go through the same.


What does an industry recruiter want to know my Ph.D. GPA for?

The most likely motive is your recruiter believes PhD GPAs are as relevant as undergrad GPAs.  My guess is this recruiter has a plethora of office jobs and doesn't usually work with academics.

It is perfectly acceptable to tell the recruiter you're not interested in working with them


Is it appropriate to include a talk one has given into an application to show familiarity with a certain topic?

I think that it is perfectly fine to include something like "Prepared and presented a lecture/talk regarding {subject}" in either your motivation letter or your cv or in both.


How to deal with PhD advisor ignoring correct answers

Different people have different needs when it comes to motivation, for some, this means positive reinforcement and encouragement when things are going well, for others, this means receiving negative feedback and constructive criticism when things aren't going so well. The issue is often that supervisors aren't aware of your needs, and manage their students with whatever approach they've used in the past / has worked with previous students.

I had a similar experience with my PhD supervisor, and it took us the best part of a year to come to a mutual understanding over how we could both accept things being done. Ultimately though, he's never going to be a positive person, so whilst tempering his approach, he's still far more likely to criticise than praise. A few things that helped me during my PhD:

Make use of your co-supervisor / advisor / members of your thesis committee. Personally, I had a far better relationship with my co-advisor, so would speak to her when things weren't going well / I felt my supervisor was being unreasonably critical. She'd also been in the department with my supervisor for a long time, so could often bring things up in conversation with him that I couldn't.
Make use of your supervisors other PhD students who you know have a good relationship with him. Rather than "I think this _____", go with "I was discussing this with XX and we came to the conclusion that ______"- even if you're still wrong, you avoid some of the initial criticism / hostility.
Own your PhD. One of the hardest bits of advice I got given when I was unhappy with my supervisor was that I  was somewhat responsible for owning my research. From your supervisors point of view this is your project and you should be driving it, more often than not you should know the answer, or at least be aware of the issues regarding your knowledge.


Is it appropriate to ask a professor how my grade was calculated?

You can certainly ask the professor to justify how a grade was calculated and assigned. In most universities and most systems the professor is obliged by the rules to justify to students how a grade was obtained. Moreover, minimal decent teaching practice is that the manner in which grades are to be calculated and the conditions in which the evaluation is to occur are fixed in advance and known before evaluations occur and that the calculations are reproducible by the student evaluated (there are of course particular contexts, e.g. evaluating a student with discapacities or an exam that contains an error in a problem formulation or an interruption (e.g. power outage) in its administration, in which particular modifications might have to be made).

Assigning grades according to some scheme known only to the professor is considered something bordering malpractice in many countries. In Spain, where I work, a student always has a formal right to see how exams etc. were graded and to formally protest any perceived error in their grading.


Can a professor influence the graduate admissions committee if he or she is interested in a particular student?

Being on the graduate committee of my department, if a professor sends us a note that they'd like to have a student admitted and state that they will take on their adviser role, we will only not admit that student if there are any red flags in the file. Most other considerations (including GPA) are not all that important any more at that point.

The reason for this is that what you get to see about a student from their application file is really just a very inexact science. You get transcripts that don't say very much about the standards in each of the classes a student took, letters of recommendation that sound the same for almost all students, and statements of purpose that most of the time are pretty generic as well. In my assessment of files, GRE scores and the statement of purpose often carry most of the weight, but I am fully aware of the fact that GRE scores poorly correlate with success in graduate programs. In other words, if I can get a personal opinion from one of my colleagues stating that they're excited to work with a student, then that is worth a whole lot and it will carry the day unless there are obvious reasons in the file of a student to reject the application.


Cite submitted paper in my master's thesis

Perhaps you can use time to your advantage here and update a citation as you learn more. But submitted, not yet published is a better description than simply unpublished which can give the impression that it won't be published.

But if the thesis itself will only be seen internally at the university until the decision is made by the conference, then it might be safe enough to just give the full citation. And, if it is accepted you would probably want to update it in any case to indicate that fact.

I think you understand already that citation isn't optional and must be done, but only the form of citation is being addressed here. Above all else, avoid self plagiarism.


Why isn't literature search a waste of time if centralized documentation is a better alternative?

These central repositories exists - they are called a (digital) library. What we typically mean with "doing literature review" is going into one or more digital libraries and retrieving all information on the subject. Given how heterogenous research questions, approaches, and scientific results are, it seems fundamentally impossible to provide much more structured information than that across disciplines. That said, for some fields (notably medicine, as I understand it), more fine-grained repository structures have emerged, which allow researchers to query for specific data sets etc.


Has the relation with students changed significantly in the last 20+ years?

To answer the second part of your question: The notion of "students as customers" - probably as unpalatable to faculty as it is loved by administrators - is surely part of this shift.

After all, if students are "paying customers", that naturally recasts the degree into a "product" that they begin to imagine they have an automatic right to.


How to refer to someone consistently who has multiple names/spellings?

You cannot make the different spelling variants disappear. So if there is no "official" spelling, all you can do is to pick one of the variants and use it consistently throughout your work. You might choose the most abundant version, or a version used by the person in question, or the most modern version, or the version used in your group...
If this is a critical aspect in your work, you could also include a short discussion of the different spellings of the name and why you picked a specific version. This way, you can also add some context, so the person can be identified more accurately.


Should I Cite a Journal's Page Number, or an Article's?

I'm not certain what you mean by an article with an independent page numbering system, but I assume you mean the following.  The published journal article is, say, on pages 25-48 of the journal, but there is also a preprint available online with different formatting, and it is numbered from 1-23.  Not only the page divisions, but even the number of pages differ, so there's no easy way to transfer a reference between these numberings except approximately.

The most important rule is to be clear and correct: you should leave no doubt or ambiguity about which numbering system you are using.  If you cite only one version of the paper, then you should use the same numbering used there.  If you cite several versions, then you need to make sure your references are clear.

The second rule is that you should focus on the "most official" version of the paper, whatever that is.  In most cases, a journal paper is more official than a conference paper, which is more official than a numbered technical report in a series, which is more official than a random preprint.  You want to cite the most final, complete, and authoritative version, and the one most likely to be accessible to future readers.  There may occasionally be subtle cases (for example, a paper that has been reprinted in books with corrections or additions), but this generally means the journal version.

P.S.  The only other interpretation of the question I can think of is for journals like Physical Review, where an article has its own page number (like 032326) and then the individual pages are given subsidiary numbers (like 032326-1 through 032326-8).  In that case, if you want to cite a specific page you could refer to it as 032326-3, or maybe just 3 if the context is clear.  In the bibliography, you would write 032326:1-8 or just 032326, depending on your bibliography style.


Attending a conference with self funding and no publication

Firstly, congratulations on getting your poster accepted. If you don't go, I hope you are able to find someone to present the poster on your behalf (this is actually quite common).

In terms of deciding whether or not to go: it depends on your situation.

Some things you should consider:

Your financial situation and how much the cost will be. On top of the flights, you need to pay for registration, accommodation, meals, a travel visa (if applicable), and local transportation (e.g. to and from the airport).
Your career stage and future goals. Are you planning to stay in the field? Will you have future opportunities to attend similar conferences? This affects how valuable going would be to you.
How much networking you will be able to do. Do you know other people attending the conference? If you don't know anyone, it can be difficult to network. But if you know someone there (e.g. your advisor) who can introduce you to people, that can make things much easier. You should also have some idea of who you want to network with. I will sometimes decide whether to go to a conference based on knowing who will be attending and who I want to network with.

Your advisor will know your situation better than I do and can give more specific advice. So, if you are uncertain, you should talk to him more about it.


Supervisor doesn't give me a chance to contribute more and gives himself first authorship, how to approach this?

Well, so let me phrase it this way: Your professor had the original idea (which you then fleshed out and executed) and then did the most difficult parts of the writing. I typically see that what students struggle most with are introductions, providing context, the literature review, and forming conclusions. If that is true for you as well, then the parts your professor wrote would have likely taken you a long time to do. If you see it this way, then it is, at least, not inappropriate that your professor would be the first author.

What I think most people would probably agree with you is that doing all of the writing him/herself is a poor way of teaching you how to do it. Ultimately, we educate students because we want them to become knowledgeable and independent, and that can only happen if we teach them how to do it, not do it ourselves. If your professor is still young, you might want to simply ask to be included in the writing part in the future, and say that you'd like that to happen because you'd like to learn how to do it.


What should I do to figure out what has happened to my paper?

Usually, after a manuscript is submitted to a journal, all the co-authors should receive an email from the editor office or from the editor in charge which will let you know your rights and ways to communicate with the journal. If the under review time is already very long since the paper has been submitted, you can try to reach the journal just by email. But yet for some journals, only the corresponding author can receive the notification, if that is the situation, you have to solve the problem between you and your professor. Alternatively, you can still try to reach the journal for the status of the paper. But eventually, the review comments will be sent to the corresponding author.


Is it acceptable, or advisable, to include self-assessed ratings of your skills on your CV

What scale do you intend to rate yourself on?  Maybe that sounds like a silly riposte, but that's a serious issue.  If you say you're proficient in Java, how does the person reading the CV know what on earth you mean (assuming they're willing to take your word for it).  I would be much more inclined to focus on what experience you have with a language (I have X many years of Java programming experience, I've done such and such projects), since that's actually something which people understand the meaning of.  You also don't necessarily need to cover this in a lot of detail in your CV, since if you're applying for a job where these skills are relevant, you can mention it in your cover letter.

EDIT: In response to the proposal of using stars or a 0-5 rating:  DON'T DO IT!  If you want to write "I'm proficient in Java and have some experience in C" that's harmless but won't make too much of a positive impression either without some more concrete information.  The stars will make you look eccentric at best, and lunatic at worst.  I know that some times the usual convention about how to do things seem constraining and silly, but if you've never seen something on a CV before (and I've never seen giving yourself numerical ratings on an unknown scale), there's probably a good reason.


Why is a PhD course studied by consultation? And how is the study by consultation done?

In other places such a course might be called "independent study" and involves study with guidance by a professor. Normally there would be readings and some exercises or writings with periodic meetings with the professor. Sometimes the "meetings" are in seminar with a few students.
The usual reasons for such courses is that there is low demand for them and if they are assigned to faculty as part of normal load, then other courses with more demand will be harder to cover. Lecturing to one or two students is a poor use of faculty time, especially for experienced students who should be expected to be able to read and find supplementary resources.
Sometimes such "courses" are also given to be able to offer very esoteric subject teaching. Again, these might be seminars rather than individual "consultations".
For faculty organizational purposes, a faculty member might get "credit" for part of the teaching load but less than that of a full course.


My name was misspelled in a citation, what should I do?

In addition to sending an e-mail to the journal, as suggested already, you should check the most common academic databases such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge/Science and submit corrections to them so that they pick up the citation correctly. They have a form to submit this kind of corrections automatically; it will then take a few weeks to apply them.

People often (way too often, actually) rely on these databases to measure the performance of academics, so it is important that they don't miss any of your citations.


How Best To Put The Fact Jigsaw Together In Research

That sherlock holmes trope where discoveries are made through some dispassionate application of pure crystalline logic is nonsense. If you want to do that you should be a protagonist in a fiction novel.
Turning disconnected facts into knowledge is creativity. If there was a universal tool for creativity we would all use it.


What is the best way to publicize the existence of a fraudulent journal?

Send it to one of the successors to Beall's list of predatory journals. Their websites:

Cabell’s whitelist/blacklist: commercial, subscription required for access, but accepts listings
Stop Predatory Journals: open-access, crowdsourced via Github, successor to the now-defunct ScholarlyOA site
Beall's original list: now being maintained by an anonymous European postdoc


How should I present my under-review works in my CV and profile?

As somebody who hires post-docs regularly, the common thing to do is indicate them on your CV as submitted. Giving a current title is good. Where is not as important.

For your on-line profile, I don't look at those - that is what the CV you submitted is for.

Look, I've been there as a graduating PhD with fewer publications than I would like. I will ask you about how your to-be-published stuff is coming, particularly since the interview isn't going to be the moment you submit your application. I will also ask your advisor how things are wrapping up, including the submitted articles.
Further, I realize that not all articles end up in the place they were first submitted.

Don't lie about what is actually submitted. Be prepared to discuss how things are going on the articles. Be prepared to talk about them. Realize there are probably a few more coming in the future (field dependent, I know).


How severe does an error have to be to warrant retraction?

You should definitely prepare a rigorous corrigendum, outlining what exactly should be disregarded and adjusted.
Whether or not your error warrants a retraction is impossible to say for an outsider. If you genuinely believe that the core of your paper is still valid (as you seem to), I’d file the corrigendum and a cover letter with the editor and let them decide. The most urgent retraction reasons include manifestly false results or those based on fraudulent (or false) data. In your case it sounds more like a question of loss of statistical significance (17 instead of 20 studies). How impactful that is, hard to say.
An informal way to think about this would be to ask yourself: after all necessary adjustments have been made, am I still proud of my paper? If yes, go for the corrigendum.


What items should I ask for in my startup package?

I'll hopefully be in your position in another year or two, so I'm not speaking from experience. But a few things come to mind:

Laptop (be specific) and associated technical support
Any software licenses you need to complete your research and teach
Office space and furniture
Lab space
Lab equipment (be specific)
Access to shared lab equipment as needed (be specific)
Access to server(s) where you can test your code/algorithms/etc.
Access to cluster computing resources (if that fits in with your research)
Lighter teaching load your first 1-3 years
Lighter service load your first 1-3 years (not sure if that's something you would explicitly ask for though)
Salary (and benefits where applicable) for any students, staff, post-docs you will need to be successful in getting papers and grants written
Money for other miscellaneous expenses that you envision will be necessary
Money to travel to 1-2 conferences per year

I'm sure others could think of more to add...


Should I leave out bad undergraduate research experiences?

Make sure you have some good talking points about the experience and then keep it on your resume. (My opinion as someone who has reviewed resumes for the company I work for, granted graduate school apps may be different.)

What did you learn about the subject matter or about yourself? What struggles did you overcome or how would you do certain things differently? Is there anything that went well, or that you could spin positively?

I would see it as a bigger red flag if I saw your resume and thought you did nothing over the summer/semester than if I saw you worked and didn't have publications (that isn't an uncommon experience).

As for the letter, you're going to have to make that call based on your relationship with your PI.  If you're really struggling with the decision, just ask your PI about your performance and what they thought you did well/could improve on - that could be telling as to what they would write.


Should a PhD student use his academic affiliation for his publications which are not related to his thesis?

Yes.

The affiliation serves two purposes: acknowledgement and identification.

Even if it is not part of your thesis research, if you are receiving resources of any kind from your institution, you should list them as your affiliation.  These resources include money (whether directly related to your research or not), computing equipment, internet access, printer access, electricity, phones, faculty and student colleagues (whether coauthors or not), library access (either physical or electronic), whiteboards, local coffee shops/bars, and the general intellectual atmosphere that encourages you to do research in the first place. You can afford to be generous.

Also, the affiliation helps identify you as an author, especially if you have a common name, or you publish other papers with the same affiliation.


Is it Okay to Appear Constantly as Offline but Reply Back Instantly?

It's okay to work as you please.
I personally consider communication applications (email, messaging, chat, ...) as a distraction and I prefer to leave them closed, which goes further than appear[ing] constantly as offline...but still reply[ing] "instantly."
You are free to define your own communication strategy. (Assuming you aren't mandated otherwise.) Of course, your strategy impacts others and some adjustments may be necessary.


Does observational data need further proof?

In many experimental fields, it is possible to "generate" a plausible amount of data and get away with it (i.e. publish the data and the conclusions in a peer reviewed journal).

Experiments need to be repeated independently. Otherwise, all sorts of things happen. Real fraud is probably the lowest number. Much more important are cases in which experiments are done without enough care or statistical methods are used in a questionable way.


How to Refer to Enumerated Subsections and Subsubsections?

You should eliminate "sub" from the labels.  It is easier to understand and easier to update when the sections change.


Presenting a mathematical model at a technical conference

We can be sure you do not have more than 20-25 minutes for your presentation.
As you implied, in such conferences you have to satisfy the novice audience along with the most professional one. So it is highly recommended that you try to present for all of the audience in proper time limits.

In my opinion, SOMETIMES it is necessary to get into some details in order to show the professionals what you did (in reputable conferences mostly). Also you should not make your ordinary audiences bored. So you can show the beginners the big picture such as ideas, examples, etc. (not so much detail) and in some few slides you may want to show some details for your professional audiences, though you do not have too much time for that and you should consider the time limits seriously.

All in all, do not stick in details you give a fair chance no one will care about it. But it does not mean you should skip every detail. Also, try to use your colleagues ideas and feedback in your PRE-PRESENTATION practice about these matters. In my opinion, they are the most reliable resources for us. I myself, really care about my friends and colleagues comments before my presentations or even my paper submissions.

And finally it might be worthy to take a look at How to Present a Paper at an Academic Conference. Moreover, It is great to know that you are using LaTex for your presentation.


Postdoc contracts in US - signing an initial one which is superseded by different online one?

From the OP's comment:

  When questioned, I was told that this is what the contract is now.

Hmm.  Most of the point of a contract is that it cannot be unilaterally changed during the period it applies to.  So you can absolutely insist on the old contract -- in fact, just by not signing the new one -- but the last six words of the previous sentence are key.  If you signed a one year contract but have the expectation (or even informal agreement) of longer employment, then refusing to sign the new contract could place your future employment in serious jeopardy.

You are really not being treated properly, but you have to decide whether it's worth it to take action.  I couldn't be completely sure, but it sounds like you are saying that you signed a contract for a certain salary and are now being asked to sign a contract to cover the same employment period for a lesser salary.  Isn't that kind of the gold standard of unacceptable (and of course, illegal) employer behavior?  If I were in that situation I would not be willing to sign a contract lowering my own salary.  I would do my best to work the situation out amicably, but I would understand that this might lead to a parting of ways between me and the university.

In case it's not obvious, this is definitely something to discuss with both your supervisor and the department head.  Their attitude might be "We know it sucks, and there's nothing we can do about it" but even so you should get their advice and, if possible, their support.


Can I list my experience as independent researcher to my resume or CV?

Yes, absolutely add it, along with the publications that resulted. And, you should consider getting a letter of recommendation from the professor. Your lack of formal affiliation is of no consequence. It is the work that matters.

Don't hesitate here.


PhD scholarship in nanoporous material; how to advertise?

Are there discussion boards, social media accounts, or email lists for societies or interest groups that are directly/indirectly part of your field? Can you email the links to other researchers (the ones you cite or who cite you)? Perhaps there are researchers who are particularly adept at their internet presence (websites, social media accounts etc) who would be willing to share the information.

In my field, there are numerous opportunities for free advertising on all of the above-mentioned areas. Most faculty I know of are happy to share opportunities like that for students, since they recognize funded opportunities are increasingly rare.


Should I accept invitation to be an external examiner for a PhD?

Since you do not have a PhD degree, you should check to see if the university's regulations will allow you to serve. The University of Nottingham's regulations state:

  However, it will be appropriate in some cases for Schools to nominate individuals from other suitable environments provided that those individuals are experts in the field of the student's topic of research and hold a professional status which is equivalent to a University Professor, Reader, Lecturer or teacher.

You should check if your experience allows you to serve as a reader. You wouldn't want to get involved and then find out it doesn't count for procedural reasons.

Otherwise, if you'd like to do it, there's no reason why you shouldn't!


The review submission page is more or less similar for many different platforms such as EditorialManager, EES (EVISE), ManuscriptCentral etc.

You would find at least the following three sections after you log into the page:

Rating of the manuscript
Comments to the authors
Comments to the editor

1. Rating of the manuscript

In this section, you will find pointwise portions of the assessment of the manuscript in terms of novelty, originality, writing style etc. which are related to the research work. You may probably asked to enter the rating on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 (based on how the interface has been designed)

2. Comments to the authors

This is the comment section where you are either allowed to attach a file or enter your comments in the text area provided there. You must not be offensive in your comments. It is better to be slightly descriptive and positive in review comments which would help the authors to improve their research or the manuscript.

3. Comments to the editor

This section is confidential (mostly). Here, if you want to share something privately with the editor only, then you can. For example, if you think that the research is plagiarized or something like that. Or, sometimes, you can also praise a paper, if it worth it. This section would make the editor's task easy at least to some extent.


They are asking for the employers, based on recent to oldest...

Depending how the dates go, you may get away with leaving out the last one, but they may work it out especially if they ask for start and end dates...

I would not advise falsifying or mis-representing the situation - may come back to bite you...


Jobs.ac.uk has a page about funding a PhD that includes the following:

A number of charitable organisations, foundations and trusts can help fund PhD’s. These include:
The Wellcome Trust
Cancer Research UK
The British Academy
The British Federation of Women Graduates
The Institution of Civil Engineers
Institution of Engineering & Technology
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Royal Geographical Society
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland
Leverhulme Trust
Action Medical Research


Are dressing habits at poster presentations influenced by implicit sexism in STEM disciplines?

This made me wonder: is there some sort of implicit sexism at play here, and do some of these young female researchers feel the need to impress other researchers (both male and female) with their appearance?

It is certainly possible that this is because of some sexist problems in this specific society / community that are not present in the international community. However, given Occam's Razor, I think we should assume that the more simple and straightforward answer is that this is just a regional peculiarity of these meetings, and that we should not extrapolate too much from this without further evidence.

It is not at all uncommon for individual conferences or communities to develop their own standards and behavioral patterns. Basically, this is true for each event where students are likely to attend over multiple years, hence can learn from their experience in the year past. Assume, for instance, that you are a young female PhD student that attends such a meeting for the first time in casual wear, and you see many other students in a similar career phase dressing more formally. Would you not bring more formal clothing next time? I don't think that this should be qualified as "feeling the need to impress", or as any problem that needs addressing.

It is also not overly weird to see more senior people wear differently - they have been attending this meeting for a long time, and (a) don't care much about the current dress code culture, and (b) have probably been nurtured at a time when the dress code was completely different anyway. These things change over time.

Also keep in mind that your own expectation of what is "normal" wear in conferences has also likely not been set in stone from day 1, but is the product of what you have seen in "other conferences". There is no god-given law that jeans are more natural to wear to a conference than nice dresses, heels, or suits.

(Actually, in most non-science conferences, it is normal to dress rather formally, so one can argue that what you have seen in your conference is closer to "normal" than what you are used to)