What should I do if the lab I am studying at uses a language that I do not understand?

Let's assume you want to stay where you are.  (If not, well, then the problem disappears when you change institutions.)

You are right that it would take a big time commitment and many months to master the language.  However, a reasonable time investment can yield a partial pay-off.  Attend class for three hours a week, put in six hours of practice and study per week at home.  That should be doable, don't you think?

What would this accomplish?  This would show good faith.  This would get you somewhat better connected to people.  This would enable you to understand a few words here and there in the discussions.  Which would help you be more engaged in the group sessions.  The people in your working group will view you differently, more positively, when they see you struggling to say, "Where can I buy a pair of gloves?"

The main things that are going to help you in a direct way:

Prepare for the group meetings.  Have someone explain to the group that you would like to read documents related to each date's topic(s) ahead of time.
Find a meeting buddy or two.  The meeting buddy will be sitting next to you in meetings, jotting down helpful notes.  It is surprising how helpful it is to know what is being spoken about at any given time.  Work out a signal with your meeting buddy, to indicate a reminder to write down the topic.

To recruit your meeting buddies, you will need to be outgoing, fearless, and friendly with your colleagues' children.  Perhaps offer to babysit, tutor them in English.

If you can afford it, you could hire a translator to attend meetings with you.


Is it ok to have paragraphs that have only one sentence in a formal paper?

The Wikipedia article on paragraph says a para could contain one or more sentences. The very purpose of grouping content into paragraphs is to organise similar thoughts into one unit. Too many small or one-sentence paragraphs will affect the cohesiveness of your content.

But a one-sentence para may be fine at the end of a section in a paper if it adequately summarises the content within. (Like this, perhaps!)


Should I round up or down my GPA on a resume?

There are no formal requirements on how GPA is calculated and reported in one's CV unless you are filing an application to a particular company that has articulated such rules (which I have not heard of). Such rules usually exist during the admission process to the universities (especially many caveats and intricacies are present for grades conversion in the case of international applications), some academic awards, and other legal matters (for example, immigration procedures).
Thus, the decision is on you. Rounding 3.875 to 3.9 seems to me fairer when the exact rules are not specified. So, in your particular case you need to round to an available value, and I suggest using "Round to the nearest standard value" without any "ups" and "downs".


Term for a meta-analysis without a literature review

For a wide study that attempts to distill "truth" out of "evidence", meta-analysis would be the correct term.
But for a narrower study that compares a small number of studies and attempts to improve the evidence for an answer to the underlying question or at least improve the search for better evidence, I think "comparative analysis" would probably be better - especially if an editor is uncomfortable.
But you might also think about qualifying the term depending on your actual goal in the paper.


Are professional body certificates any helpful in getting into academia (if I don't have any undergraduate education)?

Usually, these topics are discussed on a case-by-case basis. For example, the professional institute can have some kind of agreement or understanding with some universities, but not with others. The best you can do is to choose a research program that you want to join, prepare your record (including professional diplomas) and ask the faculty that rules the program.

Some universities may accept you without conditions, but I guess the most common case will be that you will have to take some extra courses in their program and get the corresponding credit in order to fit your profile and knowledge to their exact expectation.


My group members are trying to take credit for the group project that only I worked on. How do I stop this?

If you aren't interested in the job being offered, I'd just let this go. As far as the course project/grade is concerned, that issue is past. The project was a group project and was submitted as such. I assume the professor allowed you to organize the group as you saw fit, which resulted in your doing all of the work. I think that is poor practice for the professor. But the ship has sailed. You also had other options at the time for project organization or complaint that you didn't use. Yes, I see that you recognize that.

But if you don't want/need the job you have little to gain by keeping your "friends" from taking it.

If you do want it, however, you should visit the prof during office hours (no email for this sort of thing) and explain that the work was yours. He/she can probably verify this easily by asking you a few questions about it without the need for screen shots etc. I doubt that you would suffer by sticking to the truth, though your friends may resent it and you will need to explain why you treated it as a personal project rather than a group project. Yes, I understand the drivers that cause that, of course, which is why I don't care for the professor's willingness to let it happen.

But also consider the fact that if he hires you and one of your friends you will be back in the same situation again, working with an unproductive partner. That might not be a good outcome for you in any case.

Note: If a professor wants a "group" to create something he/she needs to also teach how to go about that. Letting inexperienced groups self-organize seldom results in a good outcome.


Can a journal once removed from Scopus be reindexed in Scopus?

Yes, provided the reasons that led to delisting are addressed.


Resarch Paper on Conceptual Design of a Physical System

I do not think there is a yes/no answer to your question, at least not without someone from your field to review your contribution. After some time in academia, you will begin to get a sense of what is publishable and what is not. As a new student (I assumed you are), this is the role of your supervisor.
While it is not the same question, the following question shares almost the same concern as yours. You might find it helpful.

How can I efficiently check the originality of my work?


Delaying grad school vs. going to lower-ranked school

I don't entirely disagree with the two previous answers: taking the offer you have now may be a fine choice.  However, I'd give serious consideration to strengthening your application and trying again.

One of the biggest differences between departments is the strength of the peer group.  You will ultimately spend much more time talking and working with your fellow students than with faculty, and being part of an amazing cohort is incredibly beneficial.  You'll spend countless hours in detailed discussions, going into far more depth than any faculty member is likely to have time for, and you'll organize student seminars and study groups.  Depending on your field, you may write papers with your fellow students with no faculty involvement.  In the end, you'll learn far more from them than from courses or meetings with faculty, and these relationships will last for the rest of your career.

If you don't have this opportunity, you can certainly still become an excellent researcher, but you are less likely to reach your full potential, and even if you do it will be harder.  To maximize the benefit, you need to be surrounded by lots of wonderful students, many of whom are just as talented, hard working, and ambitious as you are, and some of whom are destined for even greater things.

As a rule of thumb, as you move down the prestige scale the average level of the students drops off much faster than the level of the faculty, because there are many more students than faculty.  There can be exceptions, such as a department that attracts much stronger students in one subfield than overall, but you shouldn't count on it without concrete evidence.

Here are a few ways you can gauge the students in a department:

When you visit, do you have really interesting discussions with current students, which leave you feeling excited about further interactions?  (Don't take this too seriously, since if you're shy it may be difficult to connect quickly, but it's worth thinking about.)
Does the department regularly produce graduates whose careers you would be happy with?  (Take this one very seriously.  If you are aiming for a job at a major research university but few people from your Ph.D. program get such jobs, then either your goals are unrealistic or you'll really stand out compared with your peers.)

If the answer to both questions is yes, then that's a good sign, but otherwise you should be cautious.

Returning to the original question, this might help you judge the offer you have already.  For the option of spending another year where you are, I'd ask three questions:

How likely are you to get better offers next year?  Of course there's no way to be sure, but perhaps a mentor could help you make an informed guess.
Will you enjoy the next year?  It's not worth doing if you're going to be stressed out and miserable.  Besides, unhappy people rarely do their best work.
Will you look back on it as a valuable intellectual experience, regardless of its effects on your grad school applications?


Graduate student with abysmal English writing skills, how to help

My wife, who was a writing coach for scientists, once had great success with a native speaker of Japanese whose written English was poor. She suggested he write the first few drafts in his native language, so that he could be sure he had the main ideas right. Then he translated his own work into English as best as he could, ready for revision.

Another possible strategy with a similar goal (getting the structure and basic ideas right first) might be for you to sketch a first rough draft, with the theorems in place and some of the expository scaffolding. Then the student could work on fleshing out the proofs and adding details - to be revised, of course.

(I wish I could check that second strategy out with my wife.)


I came across plagiarism. Whom should I inform if at all?

Not to copy and paste my answer from another question, but...

You should contact the editor/publisher of the book which plagiarized (book 2), present your claims, and be prepared to submit evidence. If there's no response, contact the editor/publisher of the original book (book 1) - they may be able to use legal means to force the matter.


Do astronauts get co-authorship for experiments they conduct in space?

Here is a page collecting research performed on the ISS, with citations to published papers.  And here is a list of ISS crew.  The first few papers I checked from the 2015-16 report didn't have any crew members among their authors.

This seems reasonable to me.  Normally authorship is based on making an intellectual contribution to the project: designing experiments, analyzing data, and so on.  I wouldn't particularly expect the astronauts to be involved that way - I'd assume they are mainly just carrying out the procedures designed by other researchers.  It's an important role, obviously, but it's not what authorship is intended to recognize.


Is it plagiarism (or bad practice) to cite reviews instead of source material directly?

Yes and No.

A review is not (or at least should not be) just a list of papers in the field, it is a research paper in its own right. A review should provide some form of new structure or idea that come from reviewing the scientific output the field in question. Thus a review can be useful when either pointing at the results emerging from the review or when you wish to provide an example of where a throrough description of a field is provided. So citing a review should primaruily be for general purposes.

If you need to cite a specific detail provided by one or several references in the review you should turn to the cited articles and check them. There is, first of all, no guarantee that the citations are correct and citing something that is not correct propagates errors in publications. In addition, the cited work may not be all the relevant work supporting a point from your perspective so your sources may become biased. After all your point for writing is most likely not the same as for the one writing the review.

A review therefore has a function on its own for providing overview and synthesis which can be cited but if you need to cite details you must go to the original work and also not limit yourself to the reference list of the review.

EDIT: Just to answer the question in full: plagiarism is only if you copy the text with out quotes. If you copy the references you are not necessarily plagiarizing but you will then give the false impression that you have actually read, in part of fully, the articles concerned and that is in the realm of unethical behaviour. In the best case, it is unwise for the resons given above.


Assistant Prof. doing a post-doc or MSc at the same time

This is a bad idea. Regardless of the "prestige" of your current institution, you have a PhD and are appointed as an assistant professor. Therefore, doing a post-doc or MS will not advance your career but represent a confusing step backwards in your CV.
Why not instead contact the ivy league lab that offered you the post-doc and inquire about simple collaboration? You get to still help with the research and get out (hopefully) top-tier publications, they get to save the salary since they're not employing you. If things go well, maybe there could be joint grants in the future where your summer salary could be covered, or possibly including buying out some of your teaching load to have more protected research time.
I don't have direct experience, but I have some colleagues at teaching-intensive universities, and if you can involve your undergrads in your research and are able to put out high quality papers in respectable journals, the university will likely be willing to go out of their way to facilitate you and you could be on the fast track to early tenure.


How to handle a title (PostDoc) I consider misleading?

In my experience, "postdoc" isn't even treated as a title, and what your contract says is your job title is kind of irrelevant, because you can write it up however you want on your CV.  My contract says I'm a "scientific researcher," but I have what is generally considered a postdoctoral position (because it's after the doctorate), and I alternate between both descriptions depending on the context.  Outside of academia, no one really knows what "postdoc" or "scientific researcher" mean anyway, so I call myself a "mathematician"-- a title which isn't written on any official documentation anywhere.  Furthermore, no one is going to address you by the title on your contract.  No one has ever referred to me as "Postdoc Moonlet" or "Scientific Researcher Moonlet."  The only title I use sometimes is "Dr." (which is ok, because I have the degree to back it up).

As long as you're not telling people to call you a doctor, I don't think there's anything to worry about.


For purposes like this, I would define research as loosely, broadly, and generically as possible. If your definition is too strict, then you exclude valid efforts, and you will likely be bound by the language in your proposal.

For example, if you define research to be "scientific investigation," then you exclude the humanities. If you define research as "investigative work leading to a peer-reviewed publication or conference presentation," then you may inadvertently exclude unpublishable and unpublished results.

If the requirements of the agency do not specify the need for a definition of research, then do not supply one. If you are writing to an agency that regularly supports research proposals, then there is no need to define research - they know what it is. If you are writing to an atypical funding source, like a business, local government, or charity, then they would probably rather you be inclusive (and thus generic) unless you have specific instructions otherwise. Leave the job of deciding whether an entry is qualified research to the judges of the composition.

If you feel that you absolutely need a definition, then "investigative work" is probably generic enough. Your institution's Office of the Provost may also have an "official" definition of research for your institution.


Is age a hindrance of getting acceptance in a PhD program?

I think you can rest easy (and work hard). There are a lot of people who decide to work toward a doctorate later in life. Depending on what your background is, you can bring a lot of experience to the process.

While most programs depend on a certain amount of knowledge in the field that undergraduates normally come with, mostly breadth and a bit of depth, a person who has worked in a field and kept up with the changes required of a professional probably won't be handicapped.

However, as with anyone else, you need to make a case that you are both prepared and have the drive to plunge deeply into research. Everyone is a bit different, but age, itself, is no barrier.


Paper rejection due to being "correspondence": what does it mean?

Many journals publish correspondence or short reports that are brief research works, usually with a single finding, straightforward methods, and not much more than that. They are intended for quick, "Hey, we've always wanted to know the value of X, and turns out it's 7" studies - they belong in the literature, and may be useful, but are not a full research paper.

They are often also referred to as letters, notes, or by other names. Sometimes they're purely defined by concept, sometimes by word count.

For example, consider Ecology:

  "Notes are short papers that present significant new observations and methodological advances. Notes may contain results that are not sufficiently elaborated or developed as to justify an Article, but which are still of considerable potential significance."

vs.

  "...an Article tells a more complicated story with distinct components. The greater length of Articles relative to Reports must be justified by their greater complexity

Or American Journal of Epidemiology, which uses word counts:

  The maximum number of words per article, exclusive of tables, figures, references, and abstract, should be as follows: Original Contribution, 3,500; ...Brief Original Contributions, 2,000 (with no more than 2 half-page tables and 40 references)

or Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology:

  Original Articles should include a title page, a structured abstract of no more than 250 words (see below), a text of no more than 3,000 words, no more than 7 tables and figures, and no more than 40 references.

  Concise Communications should include a title page, a narrative abstract of no more than 50 words, a text of no more than 1,200 words, no more than 2 tables or figures, and no more than 10 references.

  Research Briefs should include a title page, a text of no more than 900 words, no more than 1 table or figure, and no more than 10 references. This category of article is intended for the presentation of short, focused, and evidence-based experimental observations: substantial preliminary and novel results of importance to the journal readership but not substantial enough in content to warrant a longer presentation. Research Briefs undergo the same peer review as longer article types.

Your paper is either too short, or only presents a short, focused result that the journal does not consider a "full" paper. It's hard to know, as they won't exactly lay out the definitions of papers they don't accept, but you may want to look at similar journals to see if there is a field-based consensus for what a sufficiently large finding is.


I want to gain expertise in a specialized topic but not necessarily go on to research career, is a PhD the way to do this?

Whether a Ph.D. is good or bad for your career depends on a lot of things, like your country, your subject area, and your non-academical abilities and interests. In science and engineering a Ph.D. can open up the path to research and development, and any Ph.D. can be helpful to instill trust in clients, e.g. as a lawyer or broker. On the other hand doing a Ph.D. can be seen as procrastinating, i.e. people believe that you rather stay in academia then get a "real job". This is probably a problem in parts of humanities, or if your previous education or your Ph.D. took significantly more time then necessary. On the other other hand this won"t be a problem if your future employee is related to your studies, e.g. when working for a publishing company.

The fact that you are not sure whether you want to stay in academia is not important, since doing a Ph.D. serves to find out whether you actually like research or not. So succesfully doing a Ph.D. and then leaving, even if a Postdoc position is on offer is quite common and nothing to be frowned upon.


Research Summary Article Published. Can I Submit the Full Research Paper Elsewhere?

Almost certainly, but you need to take a couple of precautions.
It is likely that you gave up copyright to the summary article so you need to assure that you don't infringe that copyright. The easy way for that is to let the editor of the original know that you intend to submit and get assurance that they don't object. Perhaps they will issue you a specific license. If you didn't give up copyright then this is not an issue. It is also possible that you already have a sufficient license from the publisher even if you did sign over most of the rights.
But the other issue is that your full article needs to avoid any hint of self plagiarism. I think in this case the easy way is to put in a notice, even a footnote that a summary was previously published of the same material, along with a citation. Then it is clear to a reader what is going on and that (some of) the ideas had been previously published. This note also informs the new publisher of the older work, which is necessary in any case.
The main reason for avoiding self plagiarism in this case is just to provide complete context for a reader. This is especially necessary if there are some things in the summary that aren't in the full paper. But, over citation is a safe way to assure that there is no misunderstanding of intent.


How to dress for visit to math phd program for accepted students?

Math professors tend to be pretty casual dressers compared to those in other disciplines. Wearing khaki pants and a collared shirt (polo or button down) would put one towards the dressier end of the spectrum at most places, and jeans and a t-shirt / hoody are usually unlikely to cause one to stand out.

I think that if you were to wear a suit and tie to these events you’d stand out. Not in a negative way mind you, it’s just that all of the faculty members you’ll be interacting with will be dressed much more casually. If you wear jeans or khakis with a collared shirt and sweater then you’ll look like you put in some effort and are taking this seriously, but aren’t dressed up so formally that you stand out.


How to cite reference in APA style when author names form part of sentence?

In this specific case, as is pointed out by @JeffE, it should be: "Gordon and Metric (2012) provide a wide review of the key mechanisms..."

For a reference, please visit the following page to have a comprehensive collection of APA citation examples.

APA Citation Examples - University of Maryland University College


Can literature review be a research paper on its own?

Literature reviews, often referred to by journals as just "Reviews" can and are their own form of research paper. My very first publication was a review like this, so it's clearly possible.

How viable a paper like that is will probably depend on the conventions of your field. For example, mine generally requires that these "expert reviews" (in contrast to a meta-analysis or systematic review) be solicited by the editor, not cold submitted. That involves shopping your manuscript around a little to see if anyone is willing to "invite" it, having a senior person backing you who can prompt a colleague to invite it, or finding a journal who accepts cold submitted reviews.


Finding all communication related to any research paper

It might highly depend on your field of research... But here is a list of tools / resources that can help you track all the documents associated with a paper:

Altmetrics track all the online activity associated with a published paper, including Twitter, Facebook or blog posts. Exemple here
Pubpeer is a platform for post-reviewing about any published papers
Exemple of open access journals that include the reviews with the publications: eLife , Frontiers

I hope it helps!


Is providing an unpublished dataset worthy of coauthorship?

The Vancouver protocol gives authorship according to the following criteria:

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

So collecting data fulfills the first criteria. Therefore, the nice thing to do is to offer a co-authorship for your colleague. It is then up to him or her to decide whether he or she would like participate, which would entail fulfilling the other three criteria as well.

In this case, “collecting data” means finding and equipping participants with technology to monitor them perform a simple task for a brief amount of time (5 min).

Be careful not to underestimate the amount of time needed to recruit participants. The recruiter usually has to write several emails and advertisements, answer phone calls, brief and debrief the participants, prepare and take written informed consents, etc.
In answer to the comment, if your colleague accepts the co-authorship, ask him or her to write about the data collection, participants, motivation and possible limitations of the test, how the results can be interpreted and so on. Machine learning that matters should communicate something back to problem domain. This would be sufficient to fulfill the second Vancouver criteria.
Anyway, some fields have very different conventions, so your mileage may vary.


Is it unfair to regrade prior work after detecting cheating?

Looking over previous assignments after detecting cheating is perfectly reasonable.  In fact, I'd advise that you should do it if you can.

Revising previous judgment calls about the quality of a student's work could be unfair, or at least extremely upsetting to the student.  For example, it wouldn't be reasonable to say "Remember that paper I gave you an A- on?  After thinking about it a little more, I've decided that I was too generous and your work deserved a B+ instead, so I'm changing your grade."

However, looking for evidence of cheating is different from reconsidering your grading standards.  You aren't changing your opinion of the grade the work would deserve if it was properly done.  Instead, you are trying to figure out whether it was in fact properly done.  If not, then the student never earned the grade in the first place and has no cause to complain about unfairness.

In other words, there's no statute of limitations for cheating.  Just because a grade has already been assigned, it doesn't mean you can't be found guilty of cheating, in which case the previous grade becomes irrelevant.


What are the benefits of becoming an academic administrator?

I feel like I'm pointing out the glaringly obvious, but many people actually want to make their institution a better place, design policies that benefit future students and colleagues, etc.


What does graduated mean in the Netherlands?

I'm Dutch and did my bachelor/master and PhD studies at a Dutch university (Utrecht), but can't claim to know exactly what they want; for that you'd really need to get in contact with the people at the university who are in charge of the admission procedure.

That said, I think they want an official confirmation that you passed all requirements necessary to get your degree, and so it seems that the council letter might be sufficient.


Is it okay to list a PhD student as corresponding author?

At least in my field (theoretical computer science), the corresponding author is often (but not necessarily) the person who did most of the work and prepared the final version of the paper. It is therefore completely normal to have PhD students as corresponding authors.


Are results from CFD analysis enough to write and publish a paper?

Possibly Yes

If you are using an already validated CFD code, then any unique or interesting results that you find would be candidate material for an article.

If you are writing your own CFD code, then you must validate/verify it before you publish your code's results.

[In code validation,]

  The overall objective is to demonstrate the accuracy of CFD codes so
  that they may be used with confidence for aerodynamic simulation and
  that the results be considered credible for decision making in design.
  ...
  Credibility is obtained by
  demonstrating acceptable levels of uncertainty and error. A discussion
  of the uncertainties and errors in CFD simulations is provided on the
  page entitled Uncertainty and Error in CFD Simulations. The levels of
  uncertainties and errors are determined through verification
  assessment and validation assessment.

There are several methods of validation but the two widely accepted methods are:

Simulate a configuration that you can test, then test that
configuration.  If your code's results matches the test results, that's
generally considered a good validation.
Simulate a configuration that you can model with an already
validated CFD code.  If their results agree, that's also considered
a good validation.

Of course you still need to perform a grid sizing analysis and other tests to ensure/prove you're using your code correctly.


Should supervisors read acknowledgments before the printed version of the thesis?

There is no need to remove the acknowledgement in the final version. I know students have done so and for very different reasons, they want to "surprise" someone, they are not on friendly terms with an advisor and does not want the advisor to see it before it is printed. etc. The "surprise" aspect is, I would argue, greatly overrated. To not provide it because of a conflict is not likely to help the conflict. So, even if the reason is non-controversial, not including it might raise an eyebrow of a sensitive advisor. In the end, this is something that should not matter but some people are overly sensitive so ask yourself, are you confident that you will reach your intended effect by doing what you suggest, then go ahead, but if you do not feel so, avoid it. You will sometimes be surprised how much is read into a benign text such as an acknowledgement.


How to recruit a PhD student without a strong connection to teaching?

PhD studentships are quite often advertised like "normal" jobs, i.e. on general job boards/recruting websites. If you have contacts, by all means use them. As for evaluating the candidates, similar guidelines as for evaluating applicants for any jobs apply. I don't think there's a one-fits-all answer. Note that the hiring process may also depend on what institution you'd be working for. They might have an HR department that screens/selects the candidates.


Should I mention a cancelled research summer internship in my document?

You were still awarded a competitive internship.  Just indicate

Mitacs Globalink Research Internship at such-and-such (not held because of COVID)

or something to that effect.


When should we use publication list for peer evaluation?

Q0. Short answer, all kinds; from trying to dig into all details you mention in your backgroudn text to simply looking at the number. My experience says that evaluations often have lofty aspirations but when it comes down to actually performing the evaluation, a time crunch or other circumstances makes evaluations boil down to simple statistical measures.

Q2. The short answer here is, we do not know. In order to say that one approach yields better results than any other we need some form of comparable materials. I have not seen such comparisons made (which of course does not mean they do not exist).

Bibliometricians work with more advanced tools to try to work out comparable numbers. Having been through a few such processes, for organisations not persons, I can say that the results often indicate whether the object is good, average or perhaps poor and not much more; very relative terms. In my experienced studies the litterature is dealt with after having been subjected to, for example, field normalization since different fields have very different publication strategies. This i sone reason why a straight IF or h-index has limited value; it is important to know with what one is compared.

Q2. What immediately comes to mind is funding. If one is looking for a person that will contribute to a department through their activity, looking at their publications may not reveal the whole. Ability to attract funding may be equally important. It is obvious that the two may be well correlated in many cases and really poorly in others so even this would not be straight forward. Again, one has to look at the norms for the particular field to see how these can be used.

Q3. Thhis goes back to my answer under Q2 to some extent. I think, however, that in order to successsfully select a person for a tenure track, one has to be very clear of what one expects from such a person. Looking at publication rate is one thing but let's say that person locks themselves into a room and is never seen except whena new paper is published. Is that what the department really was looking for?

Appointing (good) people (contributors) is a difficult task and I very much doubt that using simple tools is the best way. Surely some tools such as IF end the like can be used to narrow down a larger group but the smaller the group from which to select, the more obtuse such tools become. I believe multiproinged approachs where the search criteria are clearly identified from the beginning and followed up by an assortment of means is the way to go. This usually involves interviews etc. to figure out how a person can and will integrate and contribute to the work environment.

So the short of it is that you get what you deserve if you use simple tools and underestimate the effort that is needed in the recruitment process.

This answer is very relative, I know, but I am convinced that hiring people is so much more involved than what simple statistics can resolve.


Why are all authors credited equally with authorship regardless of level of contribution?

My opinion is that, contrary to what you say about "one main contributor", in most cases, it is absolutely impossible to judge "the level of contribution" from any objective standpoint. Let's consider a (not hypothetical, just missing real names!) example.

A and B spent about a year thinking of a problem and devising a scheme for solution they could not make work.

A discussed the question with C.

C, who wasn't much interested in trying it yourself, passed it to his collaborator on a different project D.

D found an approach that gives fairly good result but not quite what was wanted and told it to C.

C passed it to A and B and during the two week visit of D arranged that A,C,D have a few discussions about it that resulted in some extra ideas but not a full solution yet.

Meanwhile B tried to combine what he knew himself and what he was told by C and obtained an even slightly better result than D (though still short of the exact statement wanted) but under more restrictive assumptions. He sent it to D.

D, upon reading B's draft, realized that the initial scheme of A and B could be made to work after all (what he was missing was in that note from B and what B was missing was a part of D's "general knowledge"), finished it off, and sent the solution to A,B,C, who have read and verified it.

Now, I suggest you try to tell the "level of contribution" of each person keeping in mind that

1) If not for C, D would most likely not hear of the problem at all and it is doubtful that he would come into direct contact with A,B.

2) It is possible that A and B would make their approach work eventually without D.

3) What was a "general knowledge" for D and allowed him to finish the problem off, would hardly come into the mind of A,B,C at all.

4) Without B's draft, D would, most likely, stop at the "partial result" he obtained first.

5) Both A and C participated in the discussion during D's visit and, while everybody remembers all the ideas that surfaced, nobody remembers (or cares much about) who said what.

6) A,B,C,D all argue that the rest 3 could surely do the problem without him, just in longer time, so the current idea of "author credit" C and D have is to publish the whole thing under the name AB CoD.


Is it necessary to double major with math to be considered for theor. physics grad school?

Obtaining a double major is helpful but not necessary.  In making your decision, consider what you would do instead of obtaining the double major.  Research experience will count for more than a double major.


What is a username exactly used for in arXiv?

Yes, that's correct. Here is my most recent paper, and you can't find my arXiv username anywhere on the page.

There is a separate notion of "author ID", which is specifically for the purpose of collecting all your papers on one page, but you have to set that up separately afterwards. It's not the same as the username.


Probably, age at graduation is not the most important factor for a career in academia. But assuming it was, then according to your estimate (30), you should be rather competitive.

  For the 2003 doctorate recipients, the median total time from
  baccalaureate to doctorate was 10.1 years, while the median registered
  time was 7.5 years and the median age at doctorate was 33.3 years.

Time to Degree of U.S. Research Doctorate Recipients

(Being 33 and just about to submit my thesis, I'm right on target.) Also notice that with your pre-PhD degree, you are already looking back at a  a few years of scientific education that your US peers lack, if they start grad school with a bachelors degree. Academic employers know this.

Maybe this is not a full answer to your question, but at least a consolation. Don't panic.


Is it normal that research institutes do not hire their own PhDs for postdoc positions?

As far as I know, there are no official rules prohibiting institutes, universities or even labs to hire former PhD students as post-doc. Sometimes, a supervisor might hire you for a short period of time as Research Associate to wrap up papers and finish work at the lab, but this typically does not exceed 6 months to a year and should be considered to be part of the PhD work.

That said, although there are always exceptions, in general it is a pretty bad idea to do a post-doc at the same lab or department as your PhD. Some people even consider it to show a lack of ambition, competence and motivation; and I've been told it is frowned upon by hiring committees.

Successfully completing a PhD is the endpoint of an apprenticeship relation with the PI and lab. A post-doc is an opportunity to break that relation and take the experience and knowledge from your PhD to perform more independent research, build a new network, diverge into other topics, and experience a different lab culture.


Replying potential PhD supervisor with documents

Yes, this is sufficient and decent.

Only point I'd note is that if your transcript is not in English, be sure to include a translation. You might also need an explanation of what the grades actually mean (e.g. is your grade measured on a 4.0 scale, or on a 100-point scale?).


How to get into research jobs after working in corporate technical jobs

By Academic Research, I assume you mean Phd.

So, I am aware of cases where people chose to move back from industry to academia. A Phd student that I know, used to work for EA, and after 3 (or 5 years) of working as a programmer he switched to academia to the field of Computer Networks to pursue his Phd.

So basically, there is the possibility of getting to such a position directly from the industry even if you have worked on completely unrelated stuff. However, any professor from a medium - top ranked program in the academia will look at you research capabilities in order to accept you as a Phd student.

What I would do in this case, is to create a strategy to achieve the goal. First be realistic with what you really have in hand to offer. What are your pros/cons compared to any other Phd student that want to apply to a given program.

Define your target universities. Maybe you should do some research and look where is deficiency of Phd students. In which country people look less interested to pursue a Phd.

Then look at the specific program that you want to apply for. If you don't have a preferred topic, I suggest that you should apply in a place where your experience will give you the upper hand in the application process.

You say you are interested in the IT security research. Do you like the applicative side or the theoretical stuff (crypto)?

I think there are many variables that may affect your application. The fact that you hold a Masters degree from a distance program, maybe your age, and the fact that you want to switch to a completely new topic (academic-wise, assuming that your Master studies were not related to IT security) are the downsides. But, don't be discouraged, give it a try.

I would target the mid to low ranked programmes and send applications around.

Good luck!


Were predatory journals widespread before publishers of reputable journals introduced the "author pays" model?

Anecdotally, a significant proportion of journals on post-Soviet space in 90s were quite happy to publish literally anything as long as author covers the "publication costs". The peer-review was either very light or non-existent (e.g. authors could invite their friends to act as a referee). This was used by some high-rank officials to secure the publications required for their academic degree, which gives a bearer a certain level of prestige even if they never practice science.

This happened before any OA was introduced in Europe/USA and it is still happening now. The existence of predatory journals is probably more driven by the publish or perish principle, than by OA.


How to acknowledge funding after the acceptance of the manuscript

The first thing you can do is to ask the publisher/journal editor(s) (wherever the paper processing is with the journal in question) to make the addition. Since you are not the first author (assuming first = corresponding) you should probably go through that person. The likelihood of getting such changes done if the paper is published online is uncertain but worth asking about anyway.

Having your funding not acknowledged in the paper is not the end of the world so if changes cannot be made, well there are probably more papers coming later. It is of course always a god way to show the funding source where their money ended up. There might be funding sources that request such acknowledgements but there is no law. some authors never acknowledge anything. The fact that you are not first author is not terribly relevant. Any funding source adding to the total funding of the study is of importance to the results; the paper.

So in the end, I would not worry too much about it. It was an omission, a mistake; it happened, you make an effort to rectify and you will likely remember it in the future.


It is a short conference paper (maybe 2 pages) + a short talk (maybe 5–10 minutes).

Cf. a normal conference paper (maybe 10 pages) + a normal conference talk (maybe 20–25 minutes).

Brief announcements do not usually count as a publication, so you can use them to advertise work published elsewhere, or you can later submit a full version of your work to another conference.

In some conferences, you submit a normal paper, but if it is not quite sufficiently interesting to be accepted as a normal paper, it may be accepted as a brief announcement. In some conferences, brief announcements are a separate track — you directly submit a brief announcement. Some conferences combine both approaches: some of the brief announcements that they accept are "downgraded normal papers", while some of them have been directly submitted as brief announcements.


Will it cause problems if I publish under a different version of my name than I use in my future medical practice?

I really doubt it will cause you any problems in future.

A lot of people would change their family name as a result of marriage and even that not too terrible.


How will failing a PhD qualifying exam affect admission to other PhD programs in the future?

Just because your son failed a qualifying exam for university X doesn't mean he's not qualified to get a PhD at all.

The chances of this affecting future PhD admissions are slim as they would only consider the current qualification and skill-set of the candidate.

  ...you didn't fail, they failed you.

This reminds me about Thomas Edison Mother's Letter. You said the right thing to your son! Because, more than anything else, he shouldn't lose his self-confidence.

You believe in your son and so does his MS advisor. However, whether he has the potential or not, talk to him and find out whether he has the passion for research. PhD requires more of perseverance than skill.

If he still got the interest, then by all means encourage him to apply again to another university.

My best wishes!


Which region should I apply for with a BSc in my case? US, Europe or Canada?

I can't answer your first question, but can give you a bit of background that might help you figure out the US.

First, is that the US doesn't have a national educational system. Some States have policies that cover many (not all) universities within that State. Other places and the other universities have their own policies, with only some oversight. So, your second question depends on the university. Some professors can influence the decision, especially if they have funded labs. Some can but won't. Some can't. But contacting the professors is generally a good thing to do as you get a bit of visibility and maybe some information about continuing.

Second, is that if you get an offer of acceptance that doesn't include funding, you can either turn it down or try to negotiate for that funding. Nothing is very certain unless you are invited to join a funded lab. But in general, nothing is assured until you actually have everything in place.

It is a shame I must give this advice, but this isn't the most opportune time for someone from Iran to be coming to the US. It was much better in the past, and I hope it will be better in the future, but I assume you read the news. Your other options may be better politically, though, among actual academics in the US you are likely to be welcomed. Good Luck.


I would not put that full story on the initial admission, perhaps you could put that time as "research" or somesuch...

If questions in an interview bring it into the open, then you should have an answer ready that is  truthful and relevant. How and what you say is for you to know...


Confusing accusations and mixed messages with lecturer, what can I do to resolve this?

Getting questioned should never be an issue unless the demeanor is hostile. But, you probably have good answers to any questions. Just tell the prof what it is you do and assure them that you, for example, don't code for the students.
In face to face education it is advised that people even professors, normally advise students "with the office door open". You might consider getting a way to retain a transcript of any 1-1 advising you do, just as a check on any misunderstandings.
But, asking the prof for advice on what they feel you "should have done" in anything that they question might help. But keep a record of their advice.
You might also exploit the relationship with the other (former) professor who might have a conversation with their colleague to make sure that the groups are treated the same from year to year and across sections. If they can come to a common understanding and communicate it to you then everyone will be better off. They don't need to say that you've complained, and you haven't, if you just point out that there may be differences that might better be resolved. It might even be a department wide issue.
If the current professor is a novice at this, they may have some learning to do themselves about how to manage a group of students effectively. Especially online.


How detailed should PhD proposal component of a PhD application be?

Yes indeed, I think it is expected that you would first contact the prospective advisor more informally and at minimum get an idea about the potential topics they would be interested in and that would fit with their existing research and the plans they have for the future. It's nearly impossible to guess this as an outsider.

In my case, in Germany and in CS, I had to write this for applying to the funding rather than the PhD position per se (which can be given out with almost no process by the prof). I first sat down with the prof and we talked things over and he agreed to take me on if I could acquire funding. Together with my prospective advisor and the post-doc who would be supervising me on the daily, I then wrote about 10 pages, with a detailed plan of the work I would be doing, including a gantt chart of tasks etc. Definitely not the kind of thing I would've been able to produce on my own.

I also went partway through an application process for a British university, where I had two skype interviews with the prof discussing his research before he told me to sit down and write a draft for the research plan for the formal application and send it to him for comments before submitting. (I ended up accepting another offer before I finished the draft, so I don't know what precisely they would have been looking for there.)


I have found this graphic really helpful for staying motivated in the PhD and reminding me that many, many people go through this. Sounds like you have hit the trough :)
The most concrete advice I've gotten is that the PhD is an endurance sport rather than a sprint. So if you want to finish it sounds like you might need to just persist and stick it out. But I know how you're feeling and it is awful.
Concretely, I can see a few things that might help:

Ask your advisors to help you work out a timeline for graduating in 6 years (or whatever number of years -- just make it fixed). That way you will have clear milestones and deadlines to work towards. It can change later, but write something down now.

Try to take concrete action towards developing a proposal. I find it strange that they don't let you propose by the end of the fourth year; we actually can't advance past it without proposing. It does take some time to pick a topic and build related experience, but in theory, a proposal is what you will do. Is there something intermediate -- like a 1 page outline of the proposal, or a list of three proposal pitches, or a plan for preliminary experiments -- that you can work with them on? (the equipment you're building ostensibly has a purpose). Particularly now, that you can't fully run your experiments, it seems like a good time to take stock and figure out a direction of what will happen, so that you can run with it as soon as things normalize.

Why can't you publish your review paper? Try to understand if this is just a recommendation or a firm no. Is there something you can improve? Is there something you can salvage from it (e.g. an intro chapter of the thesis?) If you're not working on anything else, you might as well be trying to get this out. It's possible that they think it's not good enough for a top publication, but it might help motivate you to have one publication through the pipeline, even if not the most competitive.

Try to find a support community. I have found that meeting other students through summer schools or conferences has helped me a lot. You might be able to undertake some related collaborations to help motivate you, and as a bonus publish that way. For experimental work, maybe you could try to find a lab that you could visit or intern with (CERN? DOE? I am not a physicist) -- joining existing experiments might enable you to publish without setting up from scratch.

Take some time off. If you are burnt out and experiments aren't running, maybe just block off a week or two for complete rest and no physics.

It sounds like your advisor might be thinking longer-term than you are -- for him the priority is probably setting up the lab, rather than graduating you. Hopefully, once the equipment is set up, you'll be first in the queue (and get credited on the publications of the other younger students), but I can see that it would be hard to guarantee this in advance and you risk being taken advantage of. For now, I'd try to be clear that you're having a hard time and need some sort of framework or plan for moving forward. Hopefully that will take the focus back to what you want -- an end goal.
I haven't commented on your outside offer because I think that's really a personal choice. But it sounds like you want to take it because you are having trouble with the PhD, so I tried to think of ideas to solve that. The fact that you're asking this question suggests that you're not quite ready to give up on PhD...?


What does it mean when a department has 'retired professors' as part of their faculty? Can I still work with them?

Retired (or emeritus) faculty are generally not available as research advisors for graduate students, although depending on the university's and department's policies, a retired faculty member may be able to hire postdocs and other technical staff ("soft-money" positions that can be eliminated if the funding isn't there).

As for why they're listed: in many cases, retired faculty still retain some active affiliation and involvements with their departments. For instance, they may be involved advising undergraduate students, teaching classes, or continuing to do their own research, but absent a group to work with. (As an undergraduate, there was one chemistry emeritus professor who was still working in the laboratory—at age 80!)


How can I efficiently check the originality of my work?

Ask people

Doing literature research on your own is necessary, and you should spend some time on this to make sure that the result is not already available. But there is only so much you can find, and it often happens that the result has previously been published with a different name or title, which you could not have known about. More experienced people in the field might have come across those works and know that your result is not new.

So ask people in the field that you can trust. Your supervisor/boss/similar is usually a good start. You can also ask other people in your department. As you advance in your career, you often make new contacts with whom you can discuss such things. And, as you have experienced, peer reviewers will provide an additional "safety check".

Of course, make sure you only ask people who you can trust that they will keep your work confidential. If you are at the beginning of your career, your supervisor might provide further guidance on this.


Is a postdoctoral scholar expected to work during the summer?

In general, postdoctoral positions—unlike faculty positions (in the US)—are considered to be 12-month positions, with the salaries determined accordingly. You are not normally expected to provide your own funding for the summer months, nor are you expected to find outside employment.

If this is not the case, then it should be explicitly mentioned in the advertisement for the position. However, this is so rarely encountered that it would be very much outside the norm for postdocs.


There seems to be no service or tool that let's you download articles in bulk. This is probably so because most journals do have zero tolerance for bulk/automated downloads. Automated downloads are some times (may be most of the times) an attempt to infringe the copyrights.

For example, ACM Digital Library ToS has this restriction.

  Under no circumstances are the following actions permitted:

  Using scripts or spiders to automatically download articles or    harvest metadata from the ACM Digital Library. This activity is a serious violation of  ACM’s DL  usage policy and will result in the temporary or permanent termination of download rights for the subscribing institution.

That being said, irrespective of the field of research, here are some services (free and paid) that offers you a list of citations / cited by articles (other than the journal's webpage for the article).

CrossRef (some services are paid ones)
Web of Science (Paid)
Google Scholar (Free)
NASA ADS (for astronomy and allied fields. Free)

While ACM provide free Cited by list, IEEE provides this for subscribers/members.

Also please note, from NASA ADS FAQ

  In addition, references may be incomplete due to our inability to
  match them with 100% accuracy (e.g. in press, private communications,
  author errors, some conference series, etc.). Anyone using the
  citations for analysis of publishing records should keep this in mind.

which is true for any citation / Cited by lists.


Chances of getting in at a world top 50 graduate school for Economics with a C+ in Calculus II?

If you don't get in to a great school it won't be because of a single grade. More likely it would be that there is so much competition from good candidates for very few actual positions.

In almost every place you apply people will look at your whole record and how you present it in the application materials. It is up to you to make your case. But you will need to make it well, showing that your background gives you the basis and your goals are appropriate and attainable.

It is possible that a few schools with a small staff and too many applicants may have to depend more on counting up chits than most, but it is possible to make your case even there.

But I wouldn't stress the low grade and the reasons for it initially. Give the explanation if asked, but don't put a spotlight on it.

Oh, and it probably isn't a good idea to self describe as a "dunce" in any application. But you know that, of course.

Let me say a few words here for the benefit of future readers. I worry more about an applicant with a perfect record than one with a few flaws. Nearly everyone will eventually reach a point in which things aren't easy anymore and have to deal with struggling through hard problems. If they have never experienced anything close to failure before then, when the going gets tough, they may just collapse. I've seen this happen.

I was lucky to get my struggles behind me early so learned how to work hard for success. One of my sisters totally outshone me in school, but found college a struggle as she hadn't learned that lesson. I was the turtle, but pulled ahead in the end. She wasn't lazy, like the hare in the story, but just hit a wall she couldn't seem to push through.


Etiquette for dealing with supervisor comments on written work

It is an important acquired skill to know when to gently push back against your supervisor or referees in your field of study.

You should not implement suggestions you are not comfortable with without asking for clarifications.  You need to know when to hold ground and defend your position in a courteous but firm way, and this might as well be in discussions with an open-minded and competent thesis director: you may have to yield in the end but in many cases gentle arguments are synonymous to constructive discussions.


Yes, there are some universities in the U.S. that have ways of promoting professors beyond the rank of "Professor". As you know, the U.S. system has a somewhat standard progression of Assistant Professor to Associate Professor to Professor.

Some universities add a fourth rank to this, often by the name Distinguished Professor. This rank is meant to apply to particularly special professors who continue to be highly productive and exceed job norms even after being promoted to Professor.

The other rank above Professor in the U.S. is related to named positions, often called named chairs. These are individual faculty positions that are funded by donations to the university (actually, funded by the interest). It takes a lot of money to create a named chair position, so they are relatively few in number. These positions are typically given permanently to one person, and then a new recipient is chosen when that person leaves the position. They are usually considered the most prestigious faculty positions in the U.S.  You can tell someone has one of these because the position usually has a name attached to it, e.g. Susan Q might be the "Joan Smith professor of chemistry". For example, see the list of named positions in science at Penn State.


Are both GRE and TOEFL a must for a PhD program in the US? Or only TOEFL will suffice?

The TOEFL and the GRE are quite different. The 'point' -- in as much as standardized tests have one -- of the TOEFL is to figure out if you have sufficient mastery of English to study (and potentially be a Teaching Assistant/Instructor) in an English-speaking environment. The TOEFL is generally required of all non-native English speakers. Graduate programs often waive this requirement if the student is enrolled in and about to complete a degree from a US institution (or did so recently). It's possible that they might waive the requirement for a similar student from a university in other English-speaking countries such as the UK, Australia/NZ, etc. but I am not sure (I don't know anyone who has tried.) Sometimes graduate programs will state that they will waive the TOEFL requirement for a student from a bachelors/masters program with English as a language of instruction. Most Indian colleges/universities I know of are English-medium, but I've never heard of an Indian student applying from India who has had the TOEFL requirement waived this way. (I am an international student from India. I was an undergraduate in the US, and the TOEFL requirement was waived for me by all the graduate programs I applied to.)

The GRE on the other hand is generally required for all applicants, domestic and international. Wikipedia says that it aims to measure ''verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are not related to any specific field of study.''

The TOEFL is more of a checkbox - programs just want all their international students to have some minimal mastery of English so they can perform the usual duties of a graduate student. The GRE is more of an actual comparative tool for all the candidates which can actually affect an admission decision. The two tests are quite different in content and questions --- the TOEFL might contain a question which will play an audio clip of a 'usual' conversation between a student and a professor and ask you whether you can understand what was said; whereas GRE questions might ask you to critique the logic of an argument or perform some high-school level problem-solving task.

Notably the TOEFL obviously does not have a quantitative section whereas the GRE does.

At this point in the US, I believe there are very few graduate programs that do not require at least the general GRE of all its applicants. Subject tests are not as widely required, but in my experience the better programs require them.

tl;dr: you will probably need to take both the GRE (general) and the TOEFL. Look into the programs you want to apply to to figure out whether you should take the GRE subject test.


Is there any software to regularize British vs. American spelling in a text?

Yes. There is an add-in for Microsoft Word called myWriterTools that will convert US to UK English and vice-versa. It also highlights changes so you can double-check. It isn't free however.

Alternatively you could use CTRL + A to select all your text in the existing document and set the proofing language to your desired version of English. This will then show the majority of errors as incorrect spelling (be wary of words such as license and licence though which may be used in different contexts) in Word.

Compass in a comment has mentioned an online converter US2UK that may be useful for shorter documents.

I have searched for a LaTeX equivalent but it would appear one does not exist currently.


How should I address my two supervisors (one man, one woman) in an email?

Hierarchy beats Gender in Germany
In a professional context in Germany, hierarchy beats gender, at least according to the Knigge, which is an etiquette guide of nontrivial influence. This goes as far as to be gender-blind. Only rank is important.
So you would address the highest ranking person first, in this case, your professor.


Is it appropriate (as a PhD student) to email other researchers asking about some details in their papers?

As a professor, I've received many emails from graduate students at other institutions over the years asking me questions about my research. Not once has any of the following thoughts ever crossed my mind following such an email:

This student is doing something "inappropriate" by contacting me at my publicly listed email address.
This student is "stupid" or is asking a "stupid question".
Oh, this student mentioned their famous advisor. Their ignorance reflects poorly on their advisor. I will make sure to complain to the advisor the next time I see them.
Oh, this student didn't mention their advisor. Something's fishy here. I need to know who their advisor is, and preferably know it's someone famous who can help me in my career, before I dignify their email with a reply.
Etc etc, i.e. any other bad thought that suggests the student has crossed some invisible line separating lowlifes like them from (supposedly) important, powerful people like me.

Instead, here is a sampling of ways I actually react when I receive such an email:

Oh, how nice. Someone at [name of cool university] is thinking about [name of my paper]!
Oh, how nice. A student of [name of famous advisor I am friends with] is thinking about [name of my paper]!
Oh, how nice. This student pointed out a weak point in the presentation of one of my proofs. I hadn't thought of the question that way, it's quite interesting! Seems like a smart student, would be nice to meet them some day.
Hmm, I'm kind of busy with lots of other things so this email stresses me out a bit. Oh well, I'll find time to reply to it some time in the next few days. In the meantime, how nice that someone is taking an interest in my paper and has interesting things to ask/say about it.

As you can see from these two lists, basically the whole premise assumed in your question about the mindset of a professor receiving an email of the type you are thinking of sending is deeply misguided. Professors (the vast majority of them at least) are simply nothing like the scary, classist, pretentious, easily offended, thin-skinned people that a lot of students and other people seem to think they are. They are busy, yes, but the main thing that makes them so busy is that they are passionate about their work and usually cannot pass on an opportunity to discuss it with someone, regardless of their academic rank. So, good luck sending your emails! I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised by the replies you get. :-)


How to review a paper that relies heavily on references to unpublished work?

Every matter in a paper should be verifiable, including the references. All results should be supported by relevant explanation with sufficient detail.

Instead of rejecting the paper straight away, you may initially tell the author of correspondence (through the editor) to provide the unpublished cited materials. The author is to be obliged to provide you the tangible material from which you may assess the credibility of the facts cited.

Bear in mind that all communication between the author and reviewer must go via the editor of the journal.


How do I find a job that actually uses what I learned in school?

What you'll find is that most positions—whether in academia or in industry—you will not be directly applying most of the skills you learned in school.

As a "knowledge professional," the most important "skill" you'll use is learning how to learn: you'll likely be placed in situations where you have to figure out what you need to solve, and how to come up with a solution. Your background will provide help in figuring out the problem—after all, the principles are the same—but you'll typically have to simplify your analysis (because of time or resource constraints, and so on). Or you might have to branch out into new areas that you haven't learned before: being able to do so quickly will give you a big advantage over the "competition" (whoever or whatever that may be).


What is considered cheating in an open book exam?

In my experience, I've seen three versions of open book exam:

You can bring in a set of notes.
You can use any textbooks and notes you want, but no electronic assistance.
You can use any reference you want local or remote, except for asking other people to solve your problem for you.

As personal electronics become smaller and more pervasive, these are all effectively converging together: if you allow students any open book, then you have to allow the whole internet, and impose an honor code that requires students to not outsource their problems.

In this environment, my feeling is that the only way to run an open book exam is to be testing for mastery of material, rather than problem solving.  In other words: open book works only when the answers cannot be readily extracted from the book (or other resources), but only from the synthesis of all of the knowledge within.  There must be no single "right answer", but a range of possibilities requiring creativity.  Thus, cheating can be detected in the same way that plagiarism can, because every student should be producing their own unique answer.

The best and fiercest open book exam I have ever taken was in an algorithms class as an undergraduate.  The exam was six questions, each asking us to develop the best possible algorithm that we could to solve some curious problem based on the principles we had learned in the class.  We were handed the exam to take home and given 48 hours, in which we were allowed and encouraged to use any resource we wanted, except not to talk to anybody else about the problem.  It was brutal, it was terrifyingly hard, and it was the most fun I've ever had on an exam.  That, I think, is a standard to aspire to.


Doing two Bachelors before Masters degree?

Giving a perfect advice is not possible, but consider:
Those skills are searched for, a semester more could be explained. You should bevable to do so, ideally by being able to show your learnings applied. Any projects in parallel? When asked, mention them. Show why a good knowledge plus experience makes you different.
I ended my university diploma in CS when i was 27, and added a PhD afterwards. I never regretted learning more by drilling some deeper holes than usual. And from the afterwards jobs, I got really well paid.


Is it better to have a strong thesis, or to follow personal interests during PhD?

The papers are more important.   They have way more impact than thesis.  Especially on technical fields.

Your thesis will be pass fail usually.  May be written up just because advisor says you are ready to go.  This us different in humanities.

Depending on your results you may even have to be creative and mash a snowball together from scattered work.  Assigning a theme even if there isn't quite one.   Not ideal.  But happens.

It can also happen if you are strongly productive to just pick one part of your work time be the thesis.  It is also not uncommon to see students do a couple areas and eventually abandon one usually the first.  Often because it has more results.  This can even happen quite late in grad school.

The dirty secret is that the thesis is just a school drill.  But papers for the literature?  That is playing with the big boys.

A different question to ask is if you will produce more by sticking to one area or moving around.  Really you need to make your own guess on efficiency and how target rich the areas are.  In all cases you need to consider what to invest time on. But I don't think of it as thesis versus papers.  It's always papers.  Just on what topics.  Thesis is just a glorified term paper.


I think you basically answered your own question: grants are something where you apply and get money based on what you say you will do. Awards are something you get for work you already did. Some awards do not include any money. I doubt you'll find an authoritative document, because there's no organization that sets rules for the entire academic community. I could image a certain amount of overlap/fuzz, so there could be things that one school/organization calls a grant that somewhere else might call an award.

A confusing additional fact is that the term "award" is also often used as a verb applied to the noun "grant", as in "Professor X was awarded a grant for . . .".  I would not call this "an award" in the noun sense; it is a grant, and "awarding a grant" means "giving a grant" or "deciding who gets a grant".  To me "an award" is the sort of thing described with "Professor X won the ABC Award for . . ."

Here is a page talking about grants vs. "gifts" that restates some of the distinctions you already mentioned, but this is just one accounting context at one university.


Common file-formats for writing research papers

plain text/markup language

For mathematics, I think TeX/LaTeX is the way to go.  This is the standard way to write papers in nearly all areas of math (perhaps not biomath, where collaborators necessitate Word), so there's little extra cost.  One advantage of this approach is that it's easy to automate outputting in almost any format you want.  Furthermore, as new formats develop, we will almost certainly develop tools to convert TeX source to these new formats.  The arXiv is a great example of this model.


Informing supervisor for declining Research fellowship position in light of PhD offer

Could the PhD position wait for a later starting date? Would the internship be open to a shorter period? Could flexibility on both sides be good enough to bridge the gap? I imagine that writing polite emails to both involved parties might go a long way to fixing your problem.

It may be that funding restrictions do not allow the PhD offering university to delay by too much. But it may also be that the starting date is flexible on their end. There is no way of knowing before you ask. Ensure that your message clearly indicates that you are overjoyed to accept their offer, but that you do want to do right by this other university that invested resources in you.

Simultaneously, the other university should see that a fully funded 4-year PhD is a better job offer than a one-year internship. So your email to them should express thankfulness for the effort they put into the visa application, but should also indicate that for career purposes you cannot really afford to decline a fully funded 4-year position.

Sketch a scenario where everybody wins. Maybe you can convince the research internship that you can do a great job in their department from January 1 until August 31, and maybe you can convince the other university that a starting date of September 1 is better for all involved. There may be operational constraints that disallow this, but you won't know until you ask.


This is most likely a very confusing translation of "zulassungsfrei", as opposed to "zulassungsbeschränkt";
the former meaning that there are no special restrictions placed on who will be admitted, you just need to satisfy the basic requirements for being allowed to enroll. In case of a Master's degree, that would probably be a relevant Bachelor's degree.

"Zulassungsbeschränkt", on the other hand, means that there will be some selection procedure because the number of spots is limited. Usually selection is by grades.


Why do editors sometimes reject manuscripts for being out of scope even though they cite references from the same journal?

Cape Code has given a good answer, but it's not the only possibility for such a rejection.  Suppose you publish a paper in, say, "Topology and Its Applications", in which you prove some topological result using (among other things) a set-theoretic lemma. And suppose I later prove some result in algebra using (among other things) your lemma.  Of course, I would cite your paper, but that doesn't put my algebra paper into the scope of "Topology and Its Applications".


Can human subjects be paid using a researcher's personal funds?

I've sat on an IRB panel and we've never been concerned about the source of funds for participant gift-cards.

p.s. Note I'm an ethnographic fieldworker and I often buy small gifts for the families and individuals who participate in my projects. It's too much of a pain to pay for these out of my research account (why do you want 15 stuffed bears and keychains?) so I buy them out of pocket.


Admission in research based Master's/Doctoral programme with a bachelor's from a low-ranked University in India

Focusing on test scores will not get you into MIT.

You need research experience — real, world-class, publication-quality, independent research experience.  A paper at a recognizable (from MIT) conference or workshop would be a big plus.  The top students from the various IITs have such experience.

You need a statement that clearly and compellingly describes your research interests, experience, and vision, with enough specific technical detail to be credible.  As an example: Describe a recent result (not just a paper title!) of your potential advisor, and suggest a credible strategy for applying or improving it.  Also, your statement should frame your ambition in terms of "doing great research", not in terms of "getting into MIT".  The top students from the various IITs write such statements.

You need recommendation letters from well-known (at MIT) academics that praise your research potential in personal, specific, and credible detail, with positive comparisons against other students from your home institution who have gone on to a top-10 PhD program.  Your recommenders must write the letters themselves; you should never even see them.  In particular, you should explicitly waive your right to see the letters later, if such a waiver is possible; most US schools offer such a waiver in their recommendation forms.  The top students from the various IITs have letters like this.

You need contacts.  Or more accurately, your recommenders need contacts.  Coming from "an unknown university" with a "low GPA", there is a serious risk that nobody will even open your application.  If one of your recommenders knows someone at MIT, either personally or professionally, ask them to send a quick email (or have a hallway conversation at a conference) saying "Hey, we have this great student Rahul Thakur who's applying to your department; you should take a look!"  Sending such an email yourself is unlikely to help.  CS professors get tons of emails from random students at unknown universities; we call it "spam".  The top students from the various IITs have these contacts.

You need some strategy.  All else being equal, it is harder to gain admission to top CS PhD programs to study AI than to study other areas.   AI seems to be the default areas for really smart, talented, qualified students who really have no idea what they want to do.  Machine learning is either a subset or a superset of AI, depending on your religion.  (Theory suffers from the same effect, to a smaller extent.)  In your case, you're probably better off emphasizing your interest in ubiquitous computing in your statement.  But remember, you need specific and credible technical detail.

Finally, you need luck.  Graduate admissions is an inherently random process; no one should apply to MIT expecting to be admitted.  Coming from an unknown university, your chances of admission are smaller than someone with exactly the same application coming from a highly-ranked school.  Aiming only for MIT is foolish; limiting yourself to top-20 departments may be foolish as well.  Don't rob yourself of opportunities!

After all, your real goal is to do great research, not to get into a top-20 program.  Right?


If someone would have obtained two MSc degrees from the same university , how do you put that on a business card?

This will very likely depend on the laws of the country you are in and the norms of the business you are in (does it look complete or pretentious to list all degrees). For example, in Austria you would/could just list all titles (except if you work in an especially "young" company where you would probably not list degrees at all).

Since you seem to emphasize "from the same university", could you mabe explain why this could make a difference to "two master titles from different universities"?


Can I include a note on extra-curricular activities in my SOP?

Think about this from the other side of the application: why would these activities cause someone reading the application to believe you a strong candidate for admission to Ph.D study?

If you can make a (non-tortured) case that your teaching skills improved because you taught art, that's a point in your favor; consider including it in the SOP. Badminton doesn't strike me as terribly relevant to molecular biology research, however, so I'd leave it right out.

(The calculus may legitimately be somewhat different for a professional program. The one I teach in looks for community involvement and leadership development, among other things, because both of those augur well for people in the professions we train for.)


Questions about authorship rank and academic politics

I should point out one of the most famous of co-authors in math: Paul Erdős. Erdős never won a fields medal or even wrote a seminal paper as a solo author. What he did do was "wander" around to different universities and help people solve problems. He was an extremely prolific writer (over 1500 published manuscripts) and is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. The ultimate mathematical Renaissance man who could seemingly work on any problem.  I think you would have quite a bit of difficulty in arguing that because Erdős never wrote a classical mathematics paper as a solo author, he was not a tremendous mathematician. (Though to be fair, in the past decade, his paper "On Random Graphs" can now be considered a classical work of mathematics. It just took 50 years for the work to become highly applicable).

I relate this story because having lots of co-authors does not necessarily mean having bad skills. Now I am not saying your professor is the second coming of Paul Erdős (I can't think of anyone currently in academia who can claim that mantle) but they might have other skills you are not giving them their due credit for.

Never underestimate the power of being able to organize a group of smart people and get them to work together on the same problem.

To answer your questions specifically-

It's neither normal or not normal. Tenure positions are rare enough that there are certain metrics that are highly predicative (e.g. individuals who are ahead of the publication curve for their field tend to get hired in tenure positions) but there is no conclusive metric. Individually, there is enough variance within each position that you cannot really say.
Collaborate! Having only solo author publications is probably not wise (unless you are in a field that is big on monographs). Having a variety of publications where you are first author, second author, and a middling author show your ability to collaborate and be a team player.
Yes, clout does increase likelihood of getting accepted. Being a big wig with 10,000 citations at an elite university means you are more likely to get a grant than someone with a handful of publications from an R2. But to be fair, the qualities that led that person to be a big wig probably translate into their writing and research caliber as well.
I have never seen any research or evidence that suggests that.


How troublesome is it for a professor to replace a document posted on D2L?

It is not that hard to change a file in D2L.
Click a small sign (looks like v) right side of the file name, choose “ change file”.   That’s it.

I guess your professor worries what if there is a student(s) who already printed the document out and never go back to D2L since he/she has a printout.

Indeed, D2L has an option “notify students” when the instructor change a file in D2L. Just one click is required to sent notifications to students that the file is updated.


Is it much more difficult to enter an Ivy League much later in life?

Regular college admissions are mainly set up to handle people just graduating from high school. But they do get applications from older students and this can often be beneficial in promoting a certain type of diversity in their incoming class.

Many universities also have explicit admissions and scholarship programs for older students. These often free you from the requirement to live in freshman dorms with 18 year olds or allow you to study part-time.

This is just one example: http://admissions.yale.edu/eli-whitney


My personal opinion is no, editing at that level is not sufficient.

One can peruse guidelines for your field. Taking Nature as one fairly broad journal, they state:

  Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it

Editing for grammar does not rise to that level for me. And, I can say that over time I have edited a large number of papers for grammar and usage, and never would have asked for authorship. A separate set of eyes looking solely at word usage, spelling, and sentence clarity, while broadly useful, is not at the heart of the work. (Heck, the journal may suggest edits, but would not ask for authorship.)

Such, shall we say, copy editing is quite different from having deep conversations on how to do something and what it really means. While these sorts of interactions can come up, particularly in the early draft stages, they are not about editing, but about analysis and interpretation, not grammar.


Is it appropriate to describe our methodological mistakes in manuscript?

It would be inappropriate not mention the mishaps in my opinion. But there is no need to document this in great detail, as you mentioned. I would comment during the revision process that you feel the description of the "skip-logic section" is too wordy, and it should be trimmed to be more concise.

Keep the focus on the positive findings as opposed to mishaps.


Does getting awarded your PhD in physics depend on the quality of university?

The quality of the university and the quality of the theses produced are not perfectly correlated. You are just as likely to end up with a "nothing special" thesis at a Cambridge as at a Random State University. The criterion for awarding a PhD is the completion of an independent and original contribution to the field of knowledge one is studying. There is no requirement that it be "groundbreaking."

That said, given that the "top" universities also tend to have superior resources available to students, the likelihood that a "nothing special" thesis will be accepted by the advisor as suitable for a PhD thesis is also somewhat mitigated as a result.


Postdoc in good environment, but haven't accomplished anything on my own: How long is it reasonable to stick around?

Welcome to the club of being a miserable postdoc!

I was and am in quite a similar situation.  I had the benefit of my first postdoc being with a horrible boss and lab, and my second being with an amazing boss and lab, so it has been easy to figure out which aspects of postdocing are me sucking and which aspects are the environment sucking.  During the second postdoc with the good people, it became clear that the persistent lack of passion was on me.  Even after I finally saw a few projects to completion, the emptiness remained.  I think if you're feeling consistently unhappy, it's a good sign that the academic research life isn't for you.  There are tons of other career paths where you can engage in the activities you do find fulling (mentoring, teaching, counseling, etc.) that don't require slogging through miserable research hours.

It also sounds a bit like you have a touch of imposter syndrome.  Read this for some tips on how to work through it.

I'd hold on to the postdoc at least a few months longer while you start investigating new options and figuring out finances in case you need to go jobless or re-train for a bit.  Once you've figured out a plan, just be honest with your supervisor-- it's unlikely to be the first time they have had a postdoc jump ship.


What is a novelty in a computer science PhD'

In computer science, perception of novelty varies greatly by subfield. In theory, they would consider a new algorithm a novel contribution. In other subfields like bioinformatics or compilers, a new application of an algorithm to a problem would be considered a novel contribution. In Human-computer interaction, improving our knowledge on how people interact with certain types of user interfaces would be a novel contribution. People doing research in architecture, graphics, networking, systems, etc. each have their own notion of what novelty means.

Your adviser is the best person to ask what constitutes a novel contribution in your subfield.

Standards for how much novel work you need to earn the PhD degree vary by University and by adviser. I've seen 100 page dissertations and 500 page dissertations. I've seen dissertations that don't seem to add much more than a single journal paper would, and I've seen dissertations that completely crack open a whole new field of research.

Of course, you will have to meet whatever standards are set by your University and thesis committee. If you think their requirements are unreasonable or unfair, feel free to ask another question.


Should unreadability or sloppiness of students' work be reflected in their evaluation?

I think the most important part of your post is in your comment

  Or for example grant agencies simply reject proposals that fail even slightly given formal criteria.

If a student isn't corrected for sloppy work while in school, when will he or she improve? The question really boils down to

  How best can we as instructors give guidance to students so that they will succeed in the future?

Evaluations in an educational setting can serve many purposes, but fundamentally they should be used as a tool to help students succeed.  Obviously, you have to be careful because a poor grade on a transcript can have long-term ramifications, but ignoring sloppy or unreadable work by trying to see through it is doing a disservice to the student on a particularly key issue: communication of an idea is as important as the idea itself.

To answer your questions:

  1. Should the evaluation include evaluation of readability, proper structure etc...?

Absolutely.  To ignore this would be bad pedagogy.  Determining how to relate this to the student without causing a misunderstanding about the idea itself is the difficult part.  Encouragement or direction to seek out writing help is a good idea, as is having students re-write or re-submit work that is sloppy.  Hopefully the work improves throughout the course; being picky at the beginning of a course can set a good standard for the rest of the course.

  2. Should such deficiencies be also reflected in the grade? If so, how much? Would it be acceptable to even fail a work just because it's completely unreadable?

The answer to this ties directly back into the first question.  I would suggest letting students re-write or submit material without penalty (or with minimal penalty) early on in a course, with the understanding that they must improve by the end.  If your only assessment is a final project, consider allowing a re-write with an incomplete grade.  But, if that is your policy, I'd strongly suggest providing a time for draft review well before the final project is due in order to minimize the need for this route.  As always, I would also spell out in a syllabus your policy and the fact that presentation is a part of the course, and I would also discuss this on the first day of class (with examples of past work that is sloppy!).

You've posed a hard question, but an extremely important one.  I probably suggest rejecting 30% of the papers I review for conferences simply because they are unreadable.  Most of the time I don't even get to the idea behind the work before I realize that it doesn't matter what the idea is because it is too poorly written (and this ends up in the review).  I want more papers that are well presented, because I'm certain some of the papers I give poor reviews to because of this problem have great ideas behind them!  Teachers that encourage students to improve their writing and presentation are necessary for this to occur.


Why is there a general dislike for asian universities?

Maybe because they're less well known (in the US and perhaps Europe too)...?

In the US, for instance, everyone knows about Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. They probably also know about Oxford and Cambridge. But then, few outside of academia will be able to recognize the quality of programs at the other European universities, such as ETH, EPFL, TU Munich, the University of Copenhagen, or, in the case of Asia: at the University of Tokyo, the National University of Singapore, the University of Hong Kong, the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology, etc. Less recognition means general distaste/disdain.

But then, if you ask people in the right niche, they will give much better evaluations. A physicist will know that the University of Tokyo has a very good (indeed, one of the best) physics department, their research leading to quite a few Nobel prizes. A mathematician would likely recognize the Kyoto University Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (again, a few of their faculty members have been honored with Fields medals). A computer scientist might know about the National University of Singapore's computing programs. A biomedical scientist would probably have good things to say about the University of Hong Kong, and so on. There's quite a lot of top cadre research going on in many Asian universities!

Moreover, it can even depend on the subfields concerned: for example, in general computer science, the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA; the French National Institute for Computer Science) might not pop up as a big name; in my subfield, though, it's a very renowned place. The best advice: ask someone who knows about your field very well!

(Of course, I know very little about SNU, and nothing about cognitive science. But someone has to know.)


As an independent/non-affiliated researcher, what would I replace a logo with on a business card?

I have seen plenty of business cards, even for real businesses that do not use logos and graphics and just contain text. However, some are distinctive by the use of coloured card, and other features.

I have also seen personal cards that contain a photo in place of an icon or logo. Really useful to assist contact to remember who the card came from.

Its all about design and function really.


Tools for remotely updating the advisor?

I am in this exact situation right now since I'm on sabbatical and (some of) my students are back in my home institution. Unlike your advisor though, I'm quite comfortable with skype/G+ and use them regularly.

But to keep track of progress, I use a flavor of github that people in my department run (I also use github and bitbucket directly). As long as your advisor is comfortable using version control systems, and can set up their account for automatic emails when you commit something, it's easy for you to keep them updated and for them to see updates you've made.

I also make sure to have an agenda file in reverse chronological order to keep track of what we've been working on and what progress has been made since our last meeting.

One of the advantage of version control systems like git/svn/hg is that it's relatively easy to see what has changed since the last commit, or since 5 commits ago, which will help your advisor. Although if they don't like video chatting or replying to email, I do wonder if they're technically savvy enough to use git :)


What is the optimal balance of time spent on research vs. volunteering/leadership/organizing in grad school and beyond?

Short answer: You should spend "some" time on volunteering and leadership activities.

Unlike an undergraduate student, a graduate student is primarily focused on research, so you don't want to spend "a lot" of time elswhere. Even so, proficiency in other activities is something of a "tiebreaker" against another candidate with comparable research activities that doesn't have "outside" activities.

This is in contrast to undergraduate work, where "leadership" is the "whole game" for some students (for later life)--provided they pass their courses.


My former adviser published an article from my master thesis in a predatory journal without my consent, what should I do now?

I don't want to make my CV dirty by putting an article in it, which is
  published in a predatory journal

All you need to do is just to forget about it. You don't have to waste time on contacting your advisor or Google.

Nobody read predatory journals. The amount of papers in good venues are already too much.
Nobody will remember your name until you have a strong publication record with different sets of authors. (Otherwise people only remember the most well-known authors)
When you are somebody to be searched for, you probably have other publications that appear in the first search results. Researchers are busy, nobody have time for an old paper that has not been cited, in an unknown journal.