What to do when some students pay someone to solve their exams projects and thesis?

I will take a wild guess and speculate that the university referred to in the question is in a country that has high levels of systemic corruption, as measured for example by Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Countries near the bottom of this ranking have the feature that most if not all of their main institutions experience high levels of dishonesty and unethical behavior. That sounds consistent with the OP's description, and conversely, in countries that rank low for corruption it is hard for me to imagine an academic environment where such rampant large-scale dishonesty could be practiced with impunity by so many people and tolerated and ignored by so many others.

Assuming this premise, I find it helpful to reframe the question as a broader and more general one, that would contain the OP's question as a special case:

  What should I do if I am an honest, hardworking person who wants to learn a trade, get an honest job, be judged for my abilities and become successful thorugh talent and hard work; but I live in a country with such high levels of corruption and dishonesty, and such dysfunctional institutions, that I see people all around me getting ahead through cheating and other dishonest means, leaving me no practical way to realize my dreams in the honest way I wish to?

  Should I try to fight this behavior? Should I try to find a rare honest person around me in a position of power to complain to about the dishonesty I observe? Will this change anything?

My answer is probably not a very helpful one, but I think it is the only realistic one: leave. The forces you are trying to fight are so much bigger and more powerful than you, that unless you are willing to dedicate your entire life to fighting them, knowing that you will achieve either nothing or very little, your only other choice would be to keep your head down, either ignore or join in the cheating, and resign yourself to a life of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled dreams.

Sorry it's pessimistic and depressing, but there it is. I would probably vote this answer down myself if I could. :-(


Feeling pressured to publish thesis results by advisor I don't want to work with anymore

You may be overreacting -- there aren't enough details to say that you aren't. In particular, suggestions that your supervisor is acting unethically are very much not grounded, at least in what you've said. Slinging around such accusations carelessly will only hurt your reputation. (You probably shouldn't care much about that reputation if you really have left the field, but given that you worry about your name being attached to something not up to your standards, I guess you really do care about it.)

I would suggest analyzing this from your supervisor's side. He had a student in whom he probably invested a fair amount of resources, including grant money and time spent training that student. The student ended up producing good research, novel enough to be worthy of publication.

Now the supervisor is certainly aware that the student left the field, but he has an interest in getting the results published. He offers to do (or delegate) the remaining housekeeping in putting together a final manuscript, but wants to give credit where it's due. Unexpectedly, the student comes back with "I'm too busy, and I don't trust anyone else to publish my results."

Sure, you can prohibit a manuscript from being submitted with your name on it, and you can also prohibit having your name removed from something where you were undeniably an author-worthy contributor. But now that means the field is permanently deprived of your research. What was it all for, now that you refuse to let it be shared? Being uncooperative to the point where you censor your research can itself be unethical.

  We did talk about trying to publish the results and I was, at the time, very positive to the idea, but I always understood that we were going to "get back to it" at some point.

Well, you never did, so your supervisor is stepping up and doing what needs to be done.

  I don't want to work on this any more

Then don't.

  His first draft of the abstract was either written to be misleading (over-emphasizing a connection to a much cooler subject), or he doesn't understand the context of the results, which makes me feel uncomfortable.

Dressing things up to get attention is not unusual in academia, nor is it unethical. At worst, if one goes too far, one gets a reputation for having too large an ego. If no lies are being told, then don't worry. If you want to micromanage every sentence of the manuscript, then you have to write it yourself and forbid anyone else from contributing.

  I feel pressured to let them write a paper about the results and put my name on it ... I don't want my name on something I didn't actually write

I've seen a lot of papers published by more than one author. In a majority of cases, only one person ever did write all those sentences. (Where this isn't true, there tends to be a disruptive change of writing style.) The other authors contributed in other ways. If you were key to getting the results, your name should be on the paper, whether or not the manuscript was drafted by you personally.

  I'm worried they will misrepresent things and do a bad job

In which case is the world a better place: (1) this research never sees the light of day, or (2) this research is written up in a more grandiose way than your modesty is comfortable with? Those are your only options, and unless this paper is going to be so misrepresentative as to be harmful (and how can you know that given that you've only seen an abstract?), you should probably go with (2). Be wary of making the comparison to (3) the paper is magically written the way you would like without any effort on your part. (2) might be worse than (3), but (3) isn't on the table.

There really is an easy negotiation here. Ask that whoever writes the manuscript be made first author. That way the research gets published, but everyone understands that the style and tone and other such soft features of the writing are probably not yours. If your name is on the paper you will be held accountable for its factual correctness, but no one is going to ambush the second author and say "I think you personally could have given a better account of how your paper connects with that cool subject."


Citing author of visualization source code?

If the software achieves something that would not be readily obvious to most practitioners in your field then it's appropriate to cite it.

A software package for doing line graphs or box-and-whisker plots does not need to be cited, as both visualizations are widely used and understood. I.e. we don't want to know or care that you used MATLAB vs Excel to plot data.

If the visualization is novel or non-obvious then it would be appropriate to cite the person who created the visualization technique. If the software you use does a non-trivial amount of work to create the visualization then it would be appropriate to cite the tool you used to create it.

For example, I would judge the amount of work done to create a box-and-whisker plot (computing the quartiles of a data set) to be obvious and not worth citation. The technique itself is ubiquitous at this point, and nobody cares what software you used to generate it. On the other hand, a software package that automatically picks out and highlights human organs within an MRI scan data set is a unique tool that probably deserves citation.

If you're still not sure, ask your adviser, as they will best know what will be obvious vs. interesting to your community.

Lastly, read the software README or license to see if they have a suggested citation format. Oftentimes academic software products will ask that you cite the paper which explains the software rather than their website, since the paper citations are more valuable than website citations.


Should I report a PhD student’s incompetence to their supervisor?

Emailing the supervisor and saying "this student is incompetent and you should get rid of him/her" would come across badly, for a few reasons:

You lack the information to make a holistic assessment of the student.
Even if you're right and the student is weak, weak students can improve.
The supervisor and their institution undoubtedly have their own methods of quality control.
Most importantly, it's not really any of your business.

It's nice that you made a good faith effort to answer the student's questions, but if the exchange has become annoying for you, your best recourse is to simply stop responding and forget the student exists.


Disclosing consideration for funded Master's during PhD program admissions

If we're talking about a program such as a Marshall or Fulbright scholarship, such awards are usually considered sufficient grounds to postpone enrollment while the fellowship is being pursued.

On the other hand, I wouldn't raise this possibility until it becomes an actual issue. You're introducing unnecessary obstacles in the admissions process that way. If an offer comes along from a school or one of these fellowships, you can deal with it then


Protocol for checking in on a letter of recommendation more than once?

No, it will probably not be considered rude to repeatedly ask for a letter.  The professor agreed to write the letter and clearly understands what it is and why you need it.  If it is a few days before the due date, they haven't turned in the letter and they haven't responded to your last email, they evidently need the repeated reminders.  I honestly think it is more likely that they will be sincerely grateful that you are helping them to complete a task they agreed to do than that they would be even a little bit annoyed with you.  But if they do get a little bit annoyed with you -- okay, maybe that's what helps them write the letter.  It would be highly unprofessional to respond to this kind of behavior from a student by writing a worse letter or not writing it at all, and I honestly don't know of any professors who would behave in that way.

Finally, let me say: faculty turning in letters late is such a common thing that in many circles at least there is a de facto grace period for faculty to turn in letters which is up to a week or two after the actual, posted application deadline.  As a student it is hard for your mind to really be eased by knowing this, I expect, but it helps to understand the faculty mentality: if I turn in a letter two days after a deadline, I would actually be annoyed if it were not considered.  (And I would know it was my own damned fault, but I would be annoyed anyway.)

Good luck, and keep at them.


White paper justifying the publication of a survey paper

If I understand your question correctly, the longer survey paper is mostly or entirely written already, right?

The purpose of a presubmission like this is generally to help the editor decide if the topic is broad enough and well enough aligned to be of interest to a large fraction of the journal's audience.

As such, the introductory material that you've written for your survey paper should be just what is needed: it should already give the scope of the survey, the motivation for it, and an outline of how the rest of the survey is structured.
I would recommend clipping out your abstract and introduction, keeping its references, maybe adding a few other key references if your introduction was reference light, and sending that in.

Finally, in your cover letter, you should say that this is exactly what you are doing.  That will also let the editor know that this isn't a submission in advance of having written the manuscript, but an inquiry of whether to proceed with a fairly mature manuscript.  Speaking as a sometime editor myself, that's very useful information.


Blown up deadline and I choose a large bite to chew

Just narrow the scope.  It is normal for students (and advisors) to make too broad of a scope.  As they get into a topic, they realize it is too much "real estate" to cover.

Personally, I would just write up what you have and modify the introduction to have a smaller objective.  But perhaps things are more strict in Europe.  But it would be very normal for a US doctorate thesis, even, to morph quite a bit.

The other advantage of writing up what you have is that you (and the advisor) are then looking at a tangible object.  Versus arguing about something in the abstract.  When you both look at it physically, it may look like enough.  Plus you need to write it anyways...so it doesn't hurt you, the time to do it.  [This applies to the work world as well.  Don't underestimate the value of a "half a loaf", especially a tangible one that you are looking at.]


Mimeo, Technical report, Manuscript: what kind of creatures are they?

Most often I find that these are works in progress, unfinished or otherwise unsuitable for regular academic publication. I've written technical reports as an undergrad as part of an internal project for a non-research entity that simply described the progress we made on a project. There was little context for publication outside the organization itself, and not enough novelty to try to pull some context together. However, these documents were referred to internally to justify further work in the area due to the feasibility that we showed for the project. Sometimes, when they're not too proprietary, some organizations will put these kinds of reports up on their website to show the kinds of things they are working on. Maybe several will be combined at a later point as the foundational parts of a proposal or a "real" paper.

I haven't seen "mimeo" used ever in my life except in the context of the output of a Mimeograph machine which was an early way to duplicate documents. It's possible that mimeos of technical reports in the scientific report context used to get passed around the big national and industrial labs so that people could find out what was going on internally well before there'd be an internal website or wiki to browse for like-minded researchers. Otherwise, that's not really a common term that I encounter.


research statement for assistant professorship (W1, pure mathematics in Germany)

Assuming you speak German, you could search for guidelines on the evaluation of "Juniorprofessoren" which are published by many universities ("Leitfaden zur Evaluierung von Juniorprofessuren), e.g., see here for one from the University of Magdeburg: http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/rektorat/JPLF.pdf. In such guidelines, you will often find at least information on the content, see point 4.5 in the linked document.


How do I email my professor about assigning me to a group?

Keep it simple:

  Dear Prof. X,

  I'm Hannah Y (ID n. 12345), an international student in your class
  XYZ. Since I don't know anyone in the class, could you please assign
  me to one of the project groups?

  Thank you,

  Hannah

I have international students in my classes and such emails are not uncommon. The important thing is to provide all the pieces of information needed to identify you and the course (professors usually have several).


Is it normal for a PhD candidate to be dissatisfied with their PhD thesis topic, if the field is not hot?

From your question it seems that the only reason you chose computational mechanics was because it was "hot", and you are now regretting your decision because the field is no longer "hot" and thus it's hard to publish in high-impact journals. This is the wrong approach, not just because it's impossible to predict what topic will be "hot" when you enter the job market. More importantly, as a general principle, you should choose a research topic that you are really passionate about. Since doing a PhD is a long, hard, tedious, and sometimes frustrating experience, you will be miserable if you do not actually love your research. What matters at this point to you is not whether such dissatisfaction is common; rather, you should carefully reconsider your decision to enter the field in the first place and reevaluate your values and priorities. Such introspection will help you decide your next step. Depending on which stage you are in your PhD career, switching to an entirely different field might be the best choice.


Can I talk about articles I'm refereeing?

There are different confidentiality requirements involved, some to protect the authors, some to protect the referees.

A) As a referee, you absolutely must not reveal the content of an article you are refereeing to others. In many cases, the paper will be available on the arXiv anyway, and you can speak about the contents of the arXiv preprint, even if you are refereeing the paper, but not about anything you couldn't have learned outside of the refereeing process.

R) It is not customary to reveal oneself as a referee of a specific paper, but there is no strong consensus on how strict this should be handled. It is quite certainly ok to mention that one is refereeing for a specific journal (many people list the journals they have refereed for in their CV).

To your detailed questions:

When discussing the article, do not mention that you are refereeing it. Be careful not to mention details exclusive to the submitted version and absent from the preprint.
When ask by your office mate, it is fine to say that you are refereeing. They should not pry for details. If they know which article you are refereeing, do not mention the journal. If not, you can mention the journal. Better not name the editor.
As mentioned in the comments, it is typically better if referee reports are independent. Do not discuss an ongoing referee report with your co-referees.
Some people do reveal themselves as referees to authors. In general, I would advise against it though.


Is it ok to mention my upcoming post during my conference presentation?

This answer is based on conference experience from CS subfields.

  a) is this common, or should I just stick to the research findings, and

Yes, it is fairly common for presenters to stick in a little bit of info on their affiliation/current research environment, especially if they see themselves in a position where they want to be contacted by members of the audience (for research collaborations, etc.).

  b) if it is indeed common, how to let the audience know?

Mentions of the respective information are sometimes (briefly) inserted at the beginning of a talk, but more commonly at the end (along with saying something like "If you have any cool ideas for .../If you're looking for a project jointventure in ... contact me at ...!").

  But then, is there a chance that my new employer would have a problem with that?

If both your old and your new employer are institutions that see themselves dedicated to the public benefit, e.g. universities, rather than to enhancing their corporate profile, e.g. private enterprises, none of the employers should have much of a problem with that (even more so as switching between universities usually does not mean you cut all ties to your former institution).

If, however, one of these employers is indeed a private enterprise, you may want to ask. In a way, I see the primary concern here rather that the old employer might have a problem with what you are planning, less so the new one. After all, you carried out the work presented during the talk while being affiliated with the old employer - mentioning your new job in such a presentation could be seen like using the resources of the old employer to advertise the new employer.


After a postdoc period, how to understand if you should go for a second postdoc or apply for a permanent position?

This can vary greatly by subfield, country, etc., so there's no universal answer to whether a second postdoc is necessary or a good idea.  People typically make the decision based on several factors:

You should ask your mentors (your postdoctoral advisor, Ph.D. advisor, and other faculty you know) for advice.  They can offer insight that takes into account both your accomplishments so far and the job market you will be applying in.
You should compare yourself with other people you know who have gotten jobs recently.  Making these sorts of comparisons is tricky, so you shouldn't take this too seriously, but it will give you a feeling for where you might stand.  If your colleagues regularly get permanent positions after three years with accomplishments like yours, then you should try applying for such jobs too.  If they don't, then you shouldn't expect to be so lucky yourself.
Most people aren't quite certain, and they end up applying for a mixture of postdoctoral and permanent positions.  That's fine, and it's counterproductive to focus 100% on one type of job unless you are sure the other would be unavailable or undesirable.


Should we ask ambiguous questions on an exam?

I think the focus on ethics is a bit misguided. If your professor genuinely believes that asking ambiguous, "what's in my pocket"-type questions (a closely related concept is that of a "gotcha" question) on an exam is an appropriate testing strategy and serves a useful pedagogical purpose, then I cannot say that they are behaving unethically.
So the problem as I see it is not that the professor is behaving unethically, but simply that if they believe such a thing then they are wrong. I can't support this with any scientific argument based on research; but just based on my own experience with teaching, one major reason why I'm pretty sure this plan will not work  as your professor expects is that students in the US (and other countries I'm familiar with) have been conditioned to expect, over their many years in the educational system, that all exam questions, in STEM and related technical subjects at least, have a single, unambiguously correct, answer (unless explicitly stated otherwise).
Now, a professor might be of the view that this is poor preparation for real life, where situations are typically much more vague and nuanced, and a suboptimal way to develop critical thinking skills. So it's tempting to think "why don't I design an exam that simulates real life more closely, and this way test for more of the things that really matter and encourage students to really think". This is well-intentioned, and perhaps even correct in an idealistic sense of being closer to the Socratic method. If you were gathered together with a small group of students on an island somewhere and had all the time in the world to develop their intellect, and no earthly concerns about schedules, tuition, the need to test and grade hundreds of students in X amount of time with Y resources with no easy chance for a do-over if something goes wrong, etc., then asking such questions would be a wonderful method to stimulate their thinking.
On the other hand, here in the real world, the conditioning I mentioned is so powerful, and the conditions under which students are tested so stressful and unforgiving, that asking questions with more than one correct answer (without stating that explicitly in the question) is a very clear recipe for trouble. A lot of students are already so stressed out and anxious taking tests that it's difficult to them to think creatively or be resourceful in an exam setting. What I expect will happen is that many of the students will obssess over whether A or B is really the correct answer (despite your professor saying they "shouldn't obsess over this minor detail"), will get confused and spend unreasonable amounts of time on this issue, will end up not having enough time for other questions they are perfectly capable of solving, and will end up frustrated and hurt and feeling that they have been treated unfairly over this testing strategy. And of course, they could complain, leading to a nasty headache of a problem for you and the professor to have to explain to the undergraduate program chair.
Here's a final thought to consider: it's hard enough -- by which I mean essentially impossible -- to get students to believe you're treating them fairly when you're bending over backwards not to create problems of this type and "just" giving honest, error-free, clear exam questions each of which tests one unambiguous snippet of knowledge. Even then, some students will still manage to come up with explanations for why they did poorly that somehow put the blame on you and your teaching/testing/grading practices and not on themselves for not studying hard enough. So the way I see it, things being hard enough already, why make them intentionally even harder still? This particular headache is easily avoidable. Let the professor try out their creative teaching ideas during the semester and not in the high-stakes, pressure-cooker environment of an exam. For the exam, my advice would be to stick with standard principles for designing exam questions that follow the same conventions everyone else uses and that students are used to. Anyway, that's my unscientific two cents.


Author wants to withdraw or insist on re-reviewing at proof stage of publication

While you might be in the legal right, I think trying to publish when the author wants to withdraw is likely to be more trouble than it is worth for a small society journal.  You probably don't have the resources to get into a protracted battle if the author decides to be really problematic (e.g., a lawsuit).

As I see it, there are three reasonable approaches at this point, in increasing levels of assertiveness on your part:

If the new content isn't very big (e.g., a paragraph or two and the reference), just let it be; just make the change at the proof stage and let it stop being your problem.  If it really does make little difference to the paper, as you say, then this is a reasonable triage to do to get this author out of your hair.
Reject the paper and send it through a new round of peer review.  It's not too bad a waste of resources, particularly if you use the same reviewers, who will be able to just look at the new version in terms of its differences from the old.
Offer the author the choice between a final rejection (no resubmission will be reconsidered) and publishing as-is.

Which you choose probably should be guided by just how willing you are to invest your time and reputation into a battle with this author.  Some people are known and repeat-offending bullies, and it's definitely worth standing up to them.  Other times, you've got a person who is normally reasonable and who has just gotten a particular fixation on this particular issue and it's worth accommodating them one this one occasion.  If you do decide to accommodate the author, however, you need to make it very clear that this is an unusual exception and you will be holding them to much stricter guidelines in the future.


Why could an accelerated education be seen as negative?

Given this knowledge of the educational system, what could be the reason that professors dislike accelerated education?

There is not a good reason, and most professors do not hold that view.

  How can one highlight the advantages of having taken a fast educational route?

I have not have much success with that, and I am not sure you should try.

The advantage of accelerated education goes to you personally, not your supervisor.  If you complete you degree at a younger age, then you work for more years between that degree and your retirement.  As a result, you achieve more and earn more.  Graduate school supervisors will not care much.  It's true that students who have successfully accelerated their education are hard workers, but they are not the only hard workers.


Are public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in assessing the qualifications of foreign PhD applicants?

No. Universities (almost all UK universities are public) in the UK are not bound to follow any standard or rules when evaluating prospective PhD applicants. Even the requirement for a Master's degree at all is at the discretion of the admissions panel (in fact at least half of the students have supervised had only Bachelor's degrees).


What's the difference between Machine Learning classifications in Computer Science and Statistics on arXiv?

The cs.LG category has a broader scope. As per arXiv's category taxonomy, the category descriptions are:

stat.ML (Machine Learning) -
Classification, Graphical Models, High Dimensional Inference

and

cs.LG (Machine Learning) -
Papers on all aspects of machine learning research (supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement learning, bandit problems, and so on) including also robustness, explanation, fairness, and methodology. cs.LG is also an appropriate primary category for applications of machine learning methods.

More specifically, in this page, an additional guideline for cs.LG is provided (emphasis mine):

Relationship to other categories: If the primary domain of the application is available as another category in arXiv and readers of that category would be the main audience, that category should be primary. Examples include applications to computer vision (cs.CV), natural language processing (cs.CL), speech recognition (eess.AS), information retrieval (cs.IR; includes document classification and topic modeling), crowdsourcing (cs.HC), quantitative finance (q-fin), and quantitative biology (q-bio). Papers discussing the foundations of neural network architectures (activation functions, spiking neurons, etc.) should list cs.NE as primary, as should papers applying biologically-inspired optimization techniques such as evolutionary methods. Papers working with the properties of specific signal types (e.g., sound, EEG, hyperspectral, ultrasound) should consider cs.SD (sound, including music), eess.IV (images and video), or eess.SP as primary. cs.LG is not appropriate for papers studying human learning such as computer-aided instruction, where cs.CY is a better fit. Papers categorized with cs.LG as primary are automatically cross-listed as stat.ML and vice versa.

So, based on the content of your paper, you can follow these guidelines to decide the appropriate category. For papers applying machine learning to other fields, such as computer vision, neither would be the primary category, but can be present in the cross-list.
However, if you need to select one of these two as the primary category, then as per the last line in the quoted paragraph above, no matter which one you choose, the other will always be listed in the cross-list. So, the paper will end up appearing in both categories.


Is it rude to forward an email to someone left out of the email?

This is a bit subtle, since email client software is different for different people. A lot of people replying to an email don't take the time and effort to look at who (all) will get the mail.
In the general case, for a group that communicates frequently, you can, perhaps, establish guidelines. In the specific case, you could ask the professor that sent the email - i.e. A.
But, if the mail is about group work that everyone should see and has no personal elements, then there is little to fear. It was probably just an oversight.


Can you decide to not publish your research at the present stage as the first author?

All authors must agree to publication; any co-author may delay publication, or withdraw, if they aren't satisfied by the results. (Intellectual property law prohibits publication without consent of all authors, in many jurisdictions.)
Author ordering should be agreed early to avoid disputes. Renegotiation is possible, especially when circumstances change.
No author may strip another of authorship. Any author may push for renegotiation of author ordering. Although an author delaying publication isn't reasonable grounds for reordering, it may be reasonable for reordering if delay is being introduced so that author duties change, e.g., when an author is going to do more work than initially considered.


Unpublished papers are not necessarily bad ones.

How can it happen that good papers remain unpublished? Good papers (or papers with good ideas/methods…) get rejected quite frequently. Reasons may be that the authors targeted the wrong audience or journal, or failed to get their main points across. Sometimes this also happens after a first improvement and second submission and then the "papers-get-old" effect kicks in: Some journals don't want to publish papers for which a two year old preprint exists (have read this from an editor).

Even if the paper is rejected only once, it may happen that the main author has left academia and can't/won't work on a revision and resubmission (and remaining coauthors lack some expertise or time). Even simpler: The authors do not care that much about publication of this specific paper anymore as other research projects got more interesting meanwhile.


This would depend a bit on whether the publications are relevant for your request. I would suggest a two-fold approach:

A list of all publications in your CV, in usual bibliographical style.
A list of relevant publications, with a short comment on each, the affiliation under which it was published, and the connection it has to the studies you now wish to undertake, within the statement of purpose.

This will help the people making the decision understand you have a focus on what you are doing. You are not only telling them what you want to do, but also how you came to want it.

Best luck!


I'm also in physics and I use Notion. It is a web-based platform that allows you to build an entire workspace (some call it a "second brain") and really tailor it to your own needs. It also has an Android and iOS app. You can use it for very basic tasks like to-do lists and notes, but once you get the hang of it you can extend it to manage your whole workflow.
For example, I have a board showing each project as individual cards that can be sorted according to the stage of the project, collaborators, topic etc (you can define all of these tags or categories yourself). Then within each project I have a table for the relevant literature and a work diary (essentially a lab book) where I record all my progress and results. Notion supports inline and block LaTeX equations. It has a calendar feature to record events, and I think you can even set reminders through it, though I haven't tried that. It has a database feature that can do basic operations on the cells and their contents, like Excel. I use this to manage my travel and budget.
For all of these things, you can design your own template (or use one of the many community-created ones), so it's easy to write your daily or weekly report, as you have the template ready every time. You can upload images or add them directly from the web. You can link to any page within your own workspace and embed pdfs or other websites on any of your pages.
You can add collaborators to individual pages or the whole workspace. Overall, the whole thing is really well designed and maintained, and so many features have been added in the year or so I've been using it that I'm sure I've missed most of them in my description here. In my opinion, it blows any other competitor out of the water.
The best part? It's free.
Hopefully this doesn't read like a spam answer -- I'm not a paid promoter of Notion! I just really enjoy using it, and it is the first tool I've ever used that has actually resulted in me becoming more productive.


What does the envelope sign after the author name mean?

With Springer journals, the envelope simply indicates that they are the nominated corresponding author for the paper.

Sources: this forum topic and a Springer 'Instructions to Authors' PDF.


Strangely enough, this question was asked on SO a while back with no real good answers. There was a link to this question, which links to PaperScope, which looks promising, although there hasn't been activity on the project since April 2013. I've never used it that tool.

Microsoft's Visual Explorerisn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's related. Hubmed used to have a graph view but I can't find it now, maybe you can.

The problem will be that even going just two nodes out - your citations, and your citations' citations - will include thousands of papers from hundreds of authors. As discussed in the aforelinked SO and SU questions, simply choosing an appropriate way to display the data will be a non-trivial challenge, and making useful inferences from the results will probably be even more difficult. Still, it may be interesting. Good luck!


Can I get a PhD if I did research without being enrolled in a PhD program?

Your best bet is to talk to the professor that is supervising you. Course work is less of an issue in Germany, so you might be able to speed up the process considerably if the professor is willing to accept your research as a basis for the thesis. Whether or not that project is suitable as a basis for a PhD thesis depends on the research that happened and your exact role in it. Maybe your work can count as an entire thesis, maybe it can count as an entire thesis if you do some extra work on, maybe it can count as a chapter, and you need two or three other projects to complete it, maybe it is just not suitable. We don't know, but your supervisor can tell you.


Ethics of the mention of Nazi weaponry for a computational physics task

German citizen here. My feeling is that your example is not at all outrageous or morally problematic per se; but it might lead to some raised eyebrows in the given setting (a German university) and for quite understandable reasons.

You use a German WW II weapon simply to illustrate some computational problem. That is, you don't make any evaluative statement about nazism, German WW II aggression or even warfare and weapons in general. Neither is your problem about making weapons more effective, which could then be seen as an implicit value judgement.

It is also, fortunately, no longer "taboo" to discuss the nazi past. German political culture has overcome the lead-heavy immediate post-war period, in which the memory of the atrocities that Germans had committed was actively repressed together with everything that reminded of them. To be sure, there is a (perhaps large) minority that prefers to rationalize, relativize or even idealize the nazi regime and its crimes. Some of these guys have a strange fascination for WW II memorabilia and nazi paraphernalia. Here it can be hard to draw the line between hobby historians and hobby revisionists.

So as your student I would wonder: Of all the examples that you could have chosen, why this particular one? If the course was about military history or WW II, the choice of example would make immediate sense. But since it isn't, your example seems quite arbitrary. (Wouldn't other projectiles or objects have similar physical properties?) This would probably lead me to conclude that the example is "just and example", but I couldn't quite help to speculate a bit about your motivation and perhaps your historical-political attitude. Less so, however, if you are not a German.


If an editor appoints a non-expert reviewer by mistake, is there any way to convey this to the editor?

The question seems to be predicated on two assumptions:

1) If the review was not blind and the OP knew that the reviewer was his Former Coworker, he could make a convincing case to the editor that FC was not qualified to review the paper.

2) Thus, because he suspects that the reviewer was FC, he wants to contact the editor to find out if this was the case.

The second assumption is really a mistaken one, I think: according to the principles of blind review, you shouldn't know the identity of the reviewer.  If you think you do, you should nevertheless act as if you don't, and if you have partial information, you should definitely not go around sleuthing to see if you can solve the case.  This is one of the basic cultural assumptions of peer review.  I think that if the author goes down this road, it is very likely that he will be told that his actions are inappropriate and will burn bridges with the editor and the journal.

I find the first assumption problematic too, in a more subtle way.  The reason that reviews are anonymous is that you should not be engaging in an ad hominem discussion of the reviewer.  Just because you know someone's identity doesn't mean that you are an authority on their academic and intellectual qualifications.  Maybe FC didn't know your subject well back when you knew him, in your opinion.  How do you know what he knows now?

Choosing a suitable person to be the referee is the editor's call, not the author's.  Calling attention to someone's identity -- even hypothetically, as in "I don't know who the reviewer was, but if it was FC..." -- as a strike against the referee report will be regarded by many as obnoxious.  If you have anything to say to the editor, it is about the referee report itself.  If the referee report contains a comment that through its specific brand of inexpertise suggests to you that it was made by FC, forget about the FC part and explain why the comment is definitively incorrect.  If you can point out clear errors in the referee report that are in the serious to egregious range -- i.e., a reasonable person would worry that they compromise the integrity of the verdict -- then you have a case for getting the report thrown out and/or getting an additional independent report.  More likely the situation is not so clearcut, and in my opinion you should still compose a polite response to the editor if you feel that a lack of expertise played a factor in the report, but you fully expect to resubmit your paper elsewhere.

Getting a bad (as in, less than skilled) referee report and having to resubmit elsewhere is quite a common feature of peer review.  Luckily there is a lot more than one journal, so you can just start fresh elsewhere, and doing so is usually a much better idea than trying to extract reparations from the editor and/or the referee.


Citation problems, in supporting general information, what kind of paper should I cite?

If you want to use a fact, either prove it yourself or cite a reliable source. If that paper does not provide a source for that fact then it’s not good enough in my opinion, but standards across fields vary.


How common is redundancy in the British (UK/Australia/NZ/Ireland) system?

Redundancies are a standard management tool in UK academia at the moment. A quick Google of the Times Higher Education Supplement suggests that there were about 1,300 academic redundancies in the UK in 2011-12, or an average of about 18 per Higher Education institution in 2011-12. At the moment a number of institutions are making compulsory cuts by closing departments. The University of Surrey is one example, as are Warwick and London Metropolitan. I'm sure there are others. The are also a lot of institutions looking for voluntary redundancies.

This all has to do with economic pressures, managerial/strategic rationalisation and either perceived student demand or disappointing internationalisation experiments.

Academic tenure, such as it was,was phased out in the UK from the mid 1970s onwards.


Is it acceptable to submit manuscript to new journal if the first journal provides no response, is unreachable, and might be fake?

Based on what you describe, I would see it as exceedingly likely that the journal is indeed fake. I would formally retract the paper at the journal, and afterwards discontinue all dealings with them. They will likely not answer, but I would just assume that the entire submission is dead as soon as you have told them that you wish to retract. The will likely not publish the paper anyway, if you are not paying them a fee (which you will of course not do).

After you have retracted the submission to the first journal, there are no ethical issues with submitting the paper again, this time making sure that the journal is in fact "real". Some advise you to tell the second journal about the "history" of the paper, but I am honestly not convinced that this is ethically or practically necessary. As long as the paper is not under consideration elsewhere (and it is not, as you have retracted the original submission), the new journal does not need to know where you have tried before to get the same material published. For instance, one also does not typically indicate if a paper was rejected before at a different venue.


Can publications in which I am not the first author be used for tenure-track faculty applications?

You absolutely can. In your research statement you should devote some space to explaining your contribution and degree of involvement. I would imagine that, being part of a multi-disciplinary team, you may well have played some critical role. If you and your adviser find the story compelling, chances are they will, too.


Two concurrent different versions of a paper to journal and conference; do I need to paraphrase?

As Alexandros says, first you need to make certain that the journal you are submitting to allows content reuse by the typical guidelines, as not all journals do, even in CS.

Assuming that is the case, the typical custom is to wait until your shorter paper is accepted to a conference, though it doesn't matter if acceptance has been announced to anybody besides you and the conference program chairs.  There is nothing hard and fast about this custom, however, since your manuscript will be separately reviewed by the journal to its own standards.  Confirm with the editor that it's OK before submitting and clearly disclose the situation in the cover letter so the reviewers will know as well.

If you do this, however, you are taking a risk, because your submission to the conference may not be accepted.  If your paper is rejected then you probably cannot submit to another conference.  This is because the new submission would now be a subset of a paper under review, not an extension.  You might thus end up with a piece of work that stays in limbo for much longer than usual (CS journals often don't have much sense of urgency, because of the existence of conferences).  You need to decide whether you are comfortable with taking that risk.


How to maximize the benefit of an exchange opportunity during PhD

This is standard practice in Denmark (where I'm currently located). All PhD students are essentially required to spend 3-6 months at a foreign institution. Similarly we host a large number of PhD students in our department for stays of about this length. So, this is a question that's pretty relevant.

To take advantage of this opportunity you have to think about what you personally hope to get out of it. I'd say there are several possibilities:

Discussing your research with people outside of your lab and narrow subfield. This can be a great opportunity to get novel feedback and insights. But, you need to make sure you actually have the chance to do this. Does the lab you're going to have regular meetings? Do you have a chance to present your work? Will you be able to go to local workshops/meetings/conferences at the host institution? We sometimes have students who end up not getting a lot of face time with members of their host institutions, which is unfortunate and you want to avoid that.
Learning whether there are other areas of your discipline that are interesting besides what you're currently working. Presumably after you're done with your PhD you'll have to move somewhere else. This may require you "branch out" slightly from your current research work into related areas. This might be a good opportunity to learn about somewhat related work and get some knowledge that might help you start a new project, or land a postdoc or assistant professorship in the future.
Getting a feel for another department. All departments and labs are different. They have different culture, different norms, different levels of social interaction, etc. This is a great time to see how another lab/department/university works and via that experience get some insight into aspects of that environment (and your home institution) that you do and do not like. This can be valuable for deciding what kind of environments you'd like to be part of in the future.
Networking. Going to another institution is a great way to broaden your network. But, you need to make sure you'll actually get a chance to meet people. You don't want to end up going somewhere and just sitting in your office the whole time alone. Make sure there's a network of PhD students you can meet while you there and that you make a concerted effort to meet with faculty. And, outside of work, try to make some friends.

So, to prepare, figure out what you want to get out of the experience and then make sure the institution can satisfy those things (and, as part of that, try to setup the desired opportunities in advanced by scheduling meetings, etc.).


change the citation of preprint version into journal version of article

Is there a major difference (a grave mistake or something) in the journal version? Apparently not.

Is there a grave mistake in your paper that you cite a preprint? I don't think so.

You also cite the version you were working with, which is Ok and a right thing to do.

I'd correct the reference in my database for the future use (and obtain the journal version, of course), but I won't bother with corrigenda. They are for bigger mistakes than just a wrong version of a reference.


MAster's Thesis: How to find the way collaborate and consult multiple people about my work

... a professor/academic ... to help me with literature choices, give me a feedback on my topic choice, and with general help to work on a research topic.

From the last part of your question, the tasks you describe sound like the responsibilities of a supervisor or co-supervisor. If you need that much assistance in your research you should talk to your current supervisor about getting a co-supervisor to help you with topics in which your current supervisor isn't knowledgeable. Also, it is helpful to have a co-supervisor when one supervisor is away for any reason (conference or sabbatical). Usually a co-supervisor would come from within your university, but I have seen cases where professors from two different universities supervised a student together.

Another option, since you're a Master's student, would be to have a PhD or post-doctoral researcher in your department help to mentor you in your research. They won't necessarily have all the answers, but they could help point you to helpful resources or research methods that they have used.

Either way, you really need to talk to your supervisor about whatever is preventing you from progressing with your research. It's your supervisor's job to make sure you have access to the right resources and that your research is moving in the right direction. If you can't reach your supervisor, talk to your graduate coordinator or department head about getting someone to help you while your supervisor is away.

  I am an International student and English is my third language. I am very shy and having tough times approaching people for help.

If you're uncomfortable approaching people for help because of a language barrier, then look into language resources at your university. Many universities where English is the primary language offer language lessons for non-native speakers. Hopefully that will improve your confidence in speaking with others. In any case you should be very proud to speak three languages!


How bad is it to decline the NSF graduate fellowship?

There are no consequences to you if you decline the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  You did waste the reviewers' time.

If you get the fellowship and do not get into your first choice PhD program, then I suggest contacting your first choice and asking them if they will reconsider.  Many places are happy to have a PhD student they are paid by NSF to take, when the usual situation is they have to pay to get a PhD student.


Etiquette on giving negative feedback on a top mathematician's work

The person we're talking about has his place in mathematics cemented whatever he says or does in the latter days of his career. The mathematicians who have been asked to comment on the latest claim know this and do not feel the need to tarnish his reputation by commenting publicly on it. Those who know him well may choose to tell him in private what they think, which he may or may not accept.

At its core, this is a very private story about aging and all of its associated effects. It is magnified by the fact that the person in question is a giant in his field and the public nature that comes along with everything he says. But I'm sure all of us with aging parents/friends/loved ones can relate to the fact that there are no easy ways to deal with this; dealing with it in public does not seem the right approach to me.


Can I list the published papers that I did intern work for even if I'm not an author

However, I went to a CV writing workshop and was advised that any papers I contributed to in any way should be listed.

That's bad advice for an academic CV.  You only list papers on which you are an author.  I haven't ever seen exceptions to this rule - if you list them it will at best be confusing, and at worst seen as fraudulent.

You can certainly list your job as research experience, and in any graduate application, you can and should explain in more detail what you did and how it contributed to published research.  You should also ask your supervisor or PI to write a letter of recommendation which explains your contributions and their importance, and how it shows your preparation for graduate study.


How to explain to my boss where not to publish?

I've heard similar tales.  The realistic side: you can fret, tell your advisor he should try for a better journal, change advisors, or bring it up as an ethics violation.
Yet none of those will get your thesis finished.

You need to concentrate on finishing your thesis. & if that means you need to stop all other projects, then that's what you do.  Apparently, you're sidetracking...writing other papers, in addition to your thesis?    Or, is it that your advisor has a lot of paper ideas (or you get enthusiastic about new ideas and present the ideas to your advisor?) and you've been very willing to work on more projects?  (This can be a double-edged sword...tempting to get involved in several papers/studies, but it keeps you away from your thesis)

You should have a list of journals that are acceptable to you (starting from the best, elite journals to good solid B journals), why are you waiting for your advisor to send YOUR work to a conference or a publication ?   Based on your description of the issue, these papers are actually coauthored (with your advisor)-  your advisor did the writing, with some of your data.

Now that creates a slightly different problem,
-- and it is one you will have to resolve (maybe repeatedly) for your entire career. Some coauthors will send a paper anywhere..because some schools don't care where the paper is presented or published (oh, those schools will prefer elite journals, but at many schools, quantity is more important than quality).

My suggestion: finish the thesis.  Don't show any other work to your advisor.


MSc Programme without a Postgraduate Certificate or Diploma

What are postgraduate diplomas and certificates?

  Postgraduate diplomas (PGDip, PgDip, PG Dip, PGD or PgD) and certificates (PGCert, PgCert, PG Cert, PGC or PgC) usually follow Bachelors study in a similar subject. They are both at level 7 on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and generally vocational in nature, which makes them a popular choice for professionals looking to boost their CV.

  The key difference between the two is that a postgraduate diploma is more extensive. Postgraduate diplomas require that you gain 120 credits, the equivalent of 30 weeks' full-time study. Meanwhile, a postgraduate certificate usually requires just 60 credits, the equivalent of 15 weeks' full-time study. Diplomas take around 6-12 months to complete when taken on a full-time basis, but part-time study can take up to a few years. Both diplomas and certificates are usually classified into distinction, merit and pass.

The exact structure of each PGDip/PGCert usually depends on the university itself, but as @kitty said, in most of the cases a thesis is not required. On the contrary, this is usually in what your PGDip differs from the equivalent Master's Degree.

However, many universities now offer the option to their students to go on after they have completed their PGDip commitments and write up a thesis, in order to reach the 180 credits a Master requires.

It is worth noting all these qualifications are of the same level (NQF level 7). For more, see:

  How does it differ from a Masters degree?

  The postgraduate diploma is often vocational, or at least allows the student to pursue a new study direction. It is, however, on the same level of the NQF as a Masters, and students often complete a dissertation to reach 180 study credits and turn their diploma into a Masters.


Do extracurricular activities matter for a person in academia?

I think this would depend on your meaning of "extracurricular".  In terms of having photography as a hobby, I am not sure how that would help.  However, for faculty, extracurricular activities that benefit the university have been well discussed on academia SE, for example, serving as a reviewer on a journal.  Other activities that could be seen as beneficial is volunteering for a first robotics at the local school (if the university if public, that may be more important for secondary education), or organizing a TEDx event.

In general, I would view the reason anyone would care about extracurricular activities is for students; how does it make the student more diverse, more capable, more knowledgable, easier to work with, etc.  And for faculty; how does it make the faculty represent the university better, improve student or research connections, make their own research more interesting, etc.


In a thesis, is it appropriate to allude to results obtained later on?

Is it appropriate to allude to results obtained later on?

Yes, please not only "allude" to later results, but make it absolutely clear at any point of your thesis what all the components of your argument are. You can, and sometimes should, defer the explanation of those components to a later part of your thesis. Just don't make your reader think "Huh? Something is missing here".

If you feel it is too much to ask your readers to accept a statement until it is explained in more detail, you can provide a very short and abstract version earlier. But this "preview" should only serve the purpose of making the reader aware of a part of the argument that will be explained later on; it should not be a duplicate explanation. (This could be just one or two sentences if possible, but two or three paragraphs at most and only if necessary.)

A thesis is not a suspense story. A crime novel aims for surprising plot twist; a thesis aims for a natural flow of the argument. If your readers are surprised at any point, your writing is not consistent enough.

This is also why in the standard format of research papers in most disciplines, the last part of the introduction is an outline of the entire argument.


Is it unethical of me and can I get in trouble if a professor passes me based on an oral exam without attending class?

I feel like you're overthinking this. What you did seems an improvement to me over taking, say, bowling to fill a last credit, which isn't uncommon in undergrad. The professor gave you your grade and you're off to grad school. There's no reason to revisit it, with yourself or anyone else.

Also, it isn't your responsibility, as a student, to audit how a professor grades a class.  They may have even consulted with others before letting you do this; you don't know.  Don't make assumptions - you did what you did, and the professor decided it was enough to pass the class.

Put this behind you and focus on grad school.


Can low score in GRE hurt the application with good GPA for top graduate school in US

I am not in engineering, but chemistry, and I suspect the answer is very similar.

I won't lie. This will definitely hurt your chances, depending on how low your score is.

For one, many programs have minimum GRE scores for acceptance - that may or may not be advertised. There are so many highly qualified applicants to top schools that the admissions committee have to do something to cut back the pile. While there are advantages and disadvantages to the GRE, it is standardized and using a score level as a filter is helpful to the committee. (Usually this "first cut" is a GRE score well below the average admitted score. We know that some students don't test well, so we'd prefer to look at the whole package.)

Beyond "your score is too low," let's assume you make the first cut. At that point, the GRE matters less, since the committee will read your recommendation letters, look at your transcript etc.

Even then, the GRE matters some. If we're considering a student coming from a school that we don't know, we simply cannot calibrate the GPA and/or the recommendation letters. So the GRE gives us some information on what a 3.9 GPA "means" relative to another student at a school that we know.

Finally, the GRE is a piece of information to the admissions committee. One key thing it tells us is how seriously you took the exam and whether you prepared for it. We know that the GRE is a self-selecting bunch. You only take the exam if you're considering applying to graduate programs. So if someone gets a very low score.. well, that's not a good sign. What do we learn about how serious a student will be in grad school?

All that said, I have talked over the years with colleagues in other departments and other schools. There isn't a huge correlation between GRE scores and success in graduate school. There just isn't really anything better either.


How to handle being removed from a paper for (perhaps) unethical reasons?

The story you tell certainly leaves off a certain fragrance. The key question seems to be whether or not you have been replaced in order to get more "friendly" results. It is clear that it is possible to have an opinion about how data should be analysed and that opinions may deviate. It is also possible to interpret results differently. But, all within reason. If your analysis is sound and provides a certain outcome while a new analysis provides the basis for a different there can be either a matter of academic disagreement or that one or the other is flawed. I cannot judge this of course.

Depending on which case you are facing the necessary, or possible, action would be to write a letter to the editor providing your analysis and view of the results to be published in the same journal, or to write the editor pointing at the error on the publication. In the latter, worse case, you of course need to be able to show without question that your view is correct and that the other is flawed (beyond just opinion). If the results are seriously flawed and may cause serious harm, the paper may even be retracted (see e.g. policy from Elsevier and examples from the New England Journal of Medicine).

So in short, the way forward depends on the seriousness of the flaw. An alternative option is of course to simply walk away and find better collaborators and more interesting vistas. But, if there are serious ethical problems you need to take action. Where you draw the line is not clear but usually a person with questionable behaviour has a history so you may be able to assess the over-all seriousness of the problem.


Is it okay to take a day off as an undergraduate?

Your health is important to maintain. It does you little good to work harder than your mind and body can accommodate.

Burn out is a serious issue. Some people work so hard for so long that they just, one day, decide it isn't fun anymore and quit, cold.

Your mind will continue to work on problems without being conscious of it and without being forced to concentrate on those problems. People often wake up in the morning or after a nap with a solution to a tricky problem.

So, yes, learn to take breaks, whether short or longer - preferably both. Work when you are relaxed if you can make that happen.

You can also, perhaps learn to use some of the travel time to either just relax or to work on things that don't require access to a machine. This might make the "day off" less of an issue. But don't take this suggestion to mean "work always". For example, some people carry index cards on which they write definitions of things or something about a current problem. If they find a moment of boredom, say on a bus, then they can pull out a few cards and leaf through them, just reinforcing their learning.

See Hipster PDA, for example.


Could I submit an abstract for a conference prior asking my supervisor permission about it?

Yes you could.

I'd strongly suggest you not do it.

Your supervisor has a lot of power over you - they aren't someone you want to upset.

It is unfortunate that your supervisor is not supportive of you trying to seek out conferences to present at, but you should address that issue with them rather than try to go behind their back. I would suggest trying to find another supervisor before I would suggest trying to undermine the authority of your current supervisor: there just aren't enough positives for you on that path.

Note that if your supervisor deserves authorship on your work, either omitting their name as an author or submitting without the approval of someone listed as an author could be considered academic misconduct. In some fields, authorship by only a student without their supervisor is common, but if you aren't in one of those fields you should be especially careful.


How do I stay motivated with repetitive tasks as an undergraduate research assistant?

First of all, I think you're taking the wrong approach here. Drawing circles isn't helping you at all in any way. You can't put on your resume that you know how to draw circles. You aren't getting paid. You aren't learning anything. You're burning yourself out by working 45 hours a week and you haven't even started university yet.

In my opinion this is a perfect opportunity to learn programming and image processing. I have worked with many undergraduate and even high school students (I was one myself) in different labs, and I can tell you that you're perfectly capable of learning basic programming skills over the next two months if you work at it. With these skills you can attempt to make software that recognizes these ROIs in your images automatically.

From the sound of it your supervisor is a graduate student and not a professor, and since you're volunteering, they should have no problem with you taking a different approach to solve the problem of identifying ROIs. If they want people to do simple repetitive work, they can use a service like Amazon Mechanical Turk.

So to answer your question, academia is all about coming up with new approaches to solve problems or learn new things. If you want to stay motivated, use this time to learn something new that will help you in the future, and also help your supervisor.


How to obtain average and total impact factor of publications for an academic?

I'm not aware of any specific tools like ResearchGate which provide an average impact factor for a researcher - maybe others know of something? However, you could fairly painlessly generate the average SJR/SNIP value for a researcher through SciVal in Scopus.

If you add a researcher in SciVal, then click on the benchmarking tab, and then click on View list of Scopus Sources for the selected Researchers and Groups this will bring up a list of journals the researcher has published in. You can then click on Export and download the list of journals, with their SJR/SNIP values into excel, where you can then just use the =AVERAGE formula to calculate the average. I just did this and it took me 3-4 mins max.

Back to your specific question, you could use InCites to follow a similar process as above to calculate a researchers average Journal Impact Factor (Thompson Reuters) however it's not as straightforward as SciVal. As far as I know, you can't generate an XLS list of journals a researcher has published in within InCites (so you would need to get this list somewhere else). You can however export a list of journals from InCites with their impact factors but you would then need to link your researchers list of journals with the incites list to collate the relevant impact factors. you could use excel VLOOKUP to do this and then calculate the average. This is a lot more effort though, so it would depend why you want this average measure of research impact in the first place and whether it might be enough to just use the scopus impact metrics.


Scholarships in UK _only_ for UK/EU nationals

Funding bodies in the UK and EU, and elsewhere, have a fairly wide latitude on who they can restrict funding to. There are some protected characteristics (e.g., age) that cannot be used in the determination, but I am not aware of any country that classifies nationality as a protected characteristic.

The Leverhulme guidelines say:

  While the scholarships may be held by students of all nationalities, the Trust has a particular interest in supporting UK or EU students.

The RCUK guidelines say:

  Normally to be eligible for a full award a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the studentship (with some further constraint regarding residence for education).

This is in essence UK/EU citizens and individuals with ILR. So in summary, I believe UK funders can limit the funding to UK/EU nationals.

It is also worth noting that there are also substantially different fees for UK/EU nationals and citizens of other countries, so from a practical standpoint the studentship may not be able to support an international student.

Studentships is only part of the admissions process. There is no reason you cannot apply to these programs as a self funded student.


Can IEEE, Elsevier, Springer detect multiple submissions to their journals?

Surprisingly enough, they probably can't. Modern Editorial Management Systems can detect multiple submissions to the same journal, even if the previous submission was years ago, but the EMS still only works for that one journal. Inter-journal sharing does happen, but as far as I'm aware, it's not common and even then it's often only the reviewer pool. The editors of one journal cannot see which manuscripts are submitted to the other journal.

If you are detected by the publisher, the most likely reason is because one of the production staff handles both journals and noticed it. Alternatively, it's possible the editors of both journals invited the same reviewer who noticed it.


Is it unheard of to pursue writing a relevant master's thesis while enrolled in a capstone-project based masters program?

What's possible is based on what a professor (who has enough authority) will approve. So if you can get the capstone director on board, it is probably possible.

The program may also hesitate to let you NOT do the project that tests and shows off your practical, industry-specific skills. This sounds like a core part of their degree program, including (potentially) the soft and practical skills.

What else should you consider?

For this project to be as good as it can be and valuable academically, you need to identify who has the skill to evaluate your work. To what extent are the faculty of your program industry-based versus academic? For this to help you toward your goal, you would want to work with a professor who has a Ph.D. and actively publishes peer-reviewed work.

If you stick with the project-based capstone, here are some additional alternatives toward your goal:

Take a specialized class that involves a writing research paper with an academically-oriented professor. It may be easier to wrangle in an extra class into the program than to substitute the major requirement, and it's a smaller ask of that professor, if they do not know you well yet.
Try to find a job doing research work with a business school professor. (This might be while you're studying, during a summer term, or after you graduate.) The practical analytical skills you're learning will probably help you wrangle data for a professor, who in turn can show you what they look for in analysis as an academic, rather than as an industry analyst.

Business school professors are probably going to be more open to this than most other professors, especially if the university has few or no doctoral students in business. At the same time, they may be unused to professional students approaching them about research, and they may be wary or protective of their time.


How to publish proof of something if the academic level is lower than expected and cannot publish to a journal or a conference?

I will echo @jakebeal's skepticism about your results themselves - I would suggest having a long, serious, and honest discussion with a professional mentor about the novelty and importance of what you've found. This is important both for presenting your ideas, and deciding where they should end up - I certainly have thoughts that I know don't "rate" $TopJournal.

That being said, there's nothing about being an undergraduate student that would present you from publishing in a solid journal. For example, as an undergraduate working in the field you described, I published in several solid journals. There's nothing that would stop a paper from being published just because the author is an undergraduate.

You've said you've contacted several journals and conferences, and they've refused - have they said why? Have you spoken to your mentors to make sure your paper is actually submission ready - the process is non-trivial, and important even if your findings are genuinely important. What you should do next, if you're genuinely interested in moving your finding forward, is to talk to people in the field, make sure the idea is ready to publish and that you've got a solid notion both of its importance and how to "sell" the concept to an editor, and then proceed from there.


Is there a way to add more ECTS to my degree?

Adding ECTS to your degree after you graduated is probably not possible.

However at least some European universities will let you enrol to a single course/module: you can attend one or more courses without being enrolled for a degree and earn a certificate for the ECTS you need.
You are after some generic not-too-advanced Mathematics/Statistics training which you can find in many scientific (Biology?) degrees at most institutions, so it should be quite easy to find something suitable for you.

For example you can find information about this at University of Milan or London.

Depending on the circumstances this could be expensive, demanding and takes some time (if you really need the credits before applying you need to wait at least one semester, possibly one year), so it is probably better to contact the department offering the MSc you are interested in to try to decide whether it's worth doing.


What are CNRS research units and how are they staffed

Wikipedia is your friend. Read the CNRS wikipage, and look at CNRS official website.

CNRS is the largest public pure research organization in France, with a staff exceeding 31000 persons, located in many geographical areas in France; many CNRS teams share office buildings with e.g. some French universities; several French research teams (UMR) have mixed staff, some funded by a University, and some other funded by CNRS, perhaps even working in the same office room on similar research. Getting employed by CNRS is really very hard, and there is a lot of competition. BTW, CNRS researchers are not very well paid, and most of them are not only very competent, but generally passionate about their research. They are not (contractually) tenured members of some University, even if most of them do teach a few courses somewhere (in addition of their researcher work), either at some University or at some Grande Ecole.

  It's supposedly some unknown research center somewhere in Europe

CNRS is the largest basic research agency in Europe (mostly funded by the French public State budget). It is French (even if of course it gets some research grants from outside, e.g. from French ANR or European Commission's H2020...)

CNRS researchers are working in all kind of science and research (e.g. biology, history, computer science, physics, sociology, paleontology, chemistry, mathematics, etc etc etc ....). Most of them have at least a PhD (doctorat d'université), usually even their HdR (habilitation à diriger des recherches). Even if CNRS researchers are French civil servants, they are not all French citizens (even if most of them are).

There are some other public (French state owned) organizations in France doing research, e.g. INRIA, INRA, CEA, INSERM, (and dozen of other smaller research institutions) etc... Unlike CNRS, these other organizations are usually dedicated to some specific science or technological domain, and usually work on applied research.

  Online material on the cnrs isn't helpful at all

Why do you say that? The Overview page of CNRS website is quite informative (and looks quite objective to my French citizen eyes)! And the CNRS wikipage gives a complementary look.

French economy is not used to fund research (in the sense that private corporations in France spend much less money in funding research, notably in public labs, than their counterpart in the USA or even in Germany). So the funding of French research works differently from North American country (and is lower, in terms of percentage of GDP).

BTW, I don't understand well what the NSF exactly is in the USA. My perception is that it mixes the role of CNRS and of ANR in France.


Which to cite: Review and Survey papers or Research papers?

I want to add to the other answers that, it happens sometimes that researchers read the review papers and not the original papers that are referred to in the review papers; but when they want to cite the content in their papers, they cite the original papers which they have never read.

The point is that, you should cite exactly the source you read. If you are reading that content from a review paper, you should cite that review paper. If you are reading the original paper, cite that original paper. Look at this example:

In case you only have read the review paper, not the original one:

  In the review paper  we read that the method x is perfectly applied to examine that [...][1]

In case that you read the review paper and then read the original paper:

  In the review paper  we read that the method x is perfectly applied to examine that [...][1]. It is clearly indicated in the original paper [2] that the method x only discusses parts of the instances of the experience including; instance a, instance b and instance c [2].

In my opinion, review papers are not always so precise and it happens that some content is misunderstood or wrongly copied in quotation and rephrasing in the review papers; so, if you find some content interesting, go to the references of the review paper and try to find and read the original papers as well.


Do hiring committees actually give preference to underrepresented groups?

While I am in a corporate position, our process has some similarity, and I also discuss these issues frequently with colleagues in more traditional academia.

What I have observed is that at the level of faculty or other primary investigator hiring, direct comparison of candidates is almost always impossible: it is always apples vs. oranges because every candidate is qualitatively different in what they bring to offer the department.  Thus there is no opportunity for a simple positive discrimination like "given two equally qualified candidates, pick the underprivileged one."

Instead, any strong candidate will have an advocating faction whose interests they would support, and opposition from another faction whose interests would be better supported by a different candidate. These pragmatic interests are likely to dominate over diversity considerations in the final decision in many cases.

Where diversity considerations are more likely to factor into the process is earlier on, when candidates for interview are being selected. Here, demographic information can be used so that a group can notice, "Hey, we're only planning to invite white males... maybe we are being biased in our evaluation and should look deeper into the candidate pool." It probably still isn't enough to make up for the implicit negatives, however.


How may I calculate Research Contribution as Per UGC rules?

I was able to download the paper using the link provided, and thus the link is functional.

I have looked at Appendix III briefly, and will offer my interpretation. However, I am not Indian and have no experience in India, so my interpretation is strictly based on what I have read and my background (US, academic + industry, where we do not use such explicit scoring systems).

My interpretation is that the maximum number of points would be awarded if the requirements for each item are fully met.  E.g. if you publish a research paper in one of the specified refereed journals, you get 15 points for that publication, regardless of the number of citations that paper gets or the ranking/reputation of the journal, or even your own opinion of the quality of that paper.  Though it is not stated in Appendix III, I would interpret "max points" as meaning that a lower score might be awarded if the criteria is only partially met.  For example, if you published an essay or commentary in a journal rather than a full research paper, you might award yourself 4 points or 7 points rather than the full 15.  (E.g. I had a letter published in PNAS critiquing a published article.  It went through a review process, but at 500 words would hardly qualify as an "article". So maybe it's worth 1 point in this category.)

In part I base my interpretation at the fine granularity of the scoring system and the many explicit rules and criteria that go along with each item.  I also base my interpretation on the lack of any mention of "quality" or "impact" or "significance" in the criteria.

What my interpretation leaves out is the cultural norms, both across Indian colleges and universities, and also by regions, fields/disciplines, etc.  What ever the official and explicit rules of any scoring system, there are always unofficial and tacit norms as to how they are executed and interpreted.


You face a few options. Suppose that you insist that you must do your PhD in AI.

You should do whatever it takes to find a new advisor or an appropriate co-advisor. This includes talking to other faculty, the department chair, and even the dean of the college and graduate school. When "whatever it takes" fails to be a suitable choice, you must take a different approach.

Suppose that you decide or determine that doing a PhD in AI is not as important as doing a PhD at the university where you currently reside.

You should do whatever it takes to find an advisor + project that is of suitable interest to you for your work. This especially includes talking to other faculty as well as reading in other research areas. When "whatever it takes" fails to be a suitable choice, you must take a different approach.

Alternatively, suppose that you decide or determine that you will do the PhD in AI with only administrative support and no research support from a faculty advisor.

You should do whatever it takes to complete the appropriate research on your own. This includes reading journals and other dissertations in the field and communicating directly with other researchers in the field. This can/should include bringing faculty on to your committee who have the appropriate background in your chosen topic.

Suppose that you decide or determine that you must do your PhD in a certain topic (AI or something else) but for whatever reason cannot do it where you currently are.

You should do whatever it takes to find a new university + advisor + project that is of suitable interest to you. This includes researching where your topic is currently being done at other universities and contacting the faculty at that university directly to ask whether they have a potential opening for you to join the group. When "whatever it takes" fails to be a suitable choice, you must take a different approach.

At this point, you may likely realize that you will not be doing a PhD.


Etiquette for providing manuscript /poster feedback

Your job as a reviewer is to help improve the work, and so any suggestions that make it a better submission are fair game.

I would not hesitate to comment on any of these areas, as long as you are sure the suggestions are really an improvement (and not just a different opinion about style). The formatting inconsistencies you give as examples are certainly real issues that are work fixing.

For these small changes, fixing it yourself with tracked changes rather than suggesting it is usually more helpful.


PhD Application Consultants/ 'Services': Can US/EU professors/ admissions committee tell when someone uses these?

If consultants are honest and do their job well, I doubt that the reader of an application could tell. I also have no issue with using consultants. People who are unsure of how to proceed with an application seek advice many places. Some seek it here, actually.

An honest consultant will work with a candidate to develop an application. Saying that they "write" the SOP is a bit incorrect if the ideas in it come from the candidate. This might be especially true for non native language speakers applying outside their own countries. But the honest consultant will work closely with the candidate, not just put their own ideas to paper.

But a dishonest consultant would be more likely to provide "boiler plate" information, not really related to the candidate. Those might be easier to detect, but only if a given committee saw previous applications that were similar.

But for a lot of candidates who get in to the ivy league, their own parents may be good consultants who do all of what you suggest. Of course, the recent news also suggests a few are willing to pay bribes as well.

I think that writing the SoP, if done properly, is fine. But if a "writing sample" is requested from the candidate, that person should be the one to write it. But even there, seeking advice on what to say and how to say it is probably pretty common.


Will I be penalised if my economics job market paper is coauthored with my supervisor?

Economics is not my field, so my answer is based on what I've heard from other people. Generally, it is preferable if the job market paper has a sole authorship or at least if it is co-authored by other graduate students. However, I have heard of people getting jobs even with a job market paper coauthored with their advisor. Since you have two other papers, and one with sole authorship, that will to some extent work towards eliminating any negative impression that the job market paper may create. However, ultimately it will depend on your potential employers and the practices that they follow. Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.


Does my paper need to mention a hired editor?

The answer will depend on the significance of the editing done.

The one extreme would be significant intellectual contributions to the work -- for example, shaping the overall narrative of the paper, making major decisions on the information being emphasized and de-emphasized, and organizing how the information is packaged into different sections and parts. Such editing would qualify for authorship. The ethical thing to do would be to offer authorship to the editor. If she declines, it would be necessary to at least mention her in an acknowledgement.

The other extreme would be sentence-level editing, like correction of typos and grammar quirks. Such editing would surely not quality for authorship, and it would be up to you if you mentioned the editor in the acknowledgement.

The middle ground between both extremes really is somewhat of a gray area.


does resbmit paper go to the same reviewer?

Does the paper will be reviewed by the same reviewers?

Authors, editors, and reviewers, would all surely prefer resubmissions to be reviewed by the same reviewers. (Authors want their changes evaluated, editors want their selected reviewers to see the process through, and reviewers want to ensure their concerns have been addressed.) However, reviewers may be unavailable or may decide to no longer participate (perhaps they've seen enough of the paper already), or editors may include a new reviewer to get a better perspective. So, resubmissions may be reviewed by different reviewers.


Why do some universities not have a comprehensive exam?

My department does not have a comprehensive exam. The most frequent reason I have heard is that we don't need it. On the other hand, some other departments in our university have comprehensive exams and I have heard that they are primarily used to weed out students after the first year.

I will venture to say that there is absolutely no impression towards graduating from a no-comprehensive program. Research job committees look at publications, letters of recommendation and research experience. Graduates from my program have found jobs wherever graduates from similar programs find jobs.


Why is Reddit not a reliable source of experts?

Well, it's true that it is incomplete from a scientific point of view

Why did you write anything after this sentence?

This is probably a bit flippant. But seriously. It's "incomplete from a scientific point of view", according to your own words. Why do you need anything further to justify the fact that reddit is on a completely different level than academic journals? You are focusing too much on the identity of the writer, when you should have been focusing on the actual content. Science isn't about who wrote what; it's about the research. People can publish anonymously in top journals, if they are so inclined and the editors agree.

Not to mention that reddit (and this website) is a popularity contest. Any random person can create an account and upvote everything. Does writing a hilarious answer filled with private jokes make you a great scientist? No. Does it garner a lot of upvotes on reddit? Yes. Do you not see the conflict here? Calling this "peer review" is laughably naive. Reddit users don't go through the painful process of checking all the details of a comment before deciding to click on that arrow button.

  So if you can trust (to a certain degree) ideas from TED talks, Wikipedia, or Stack Exchange, then why should Reddit be an exception?

Just like with TED talks, Wikipedia, StackExchange, and journal articles, you should use your own judgment when determining what to trust and not believe blindly anything that is told to you. It's also true that if something is presented in the form of a funny anecdote on an anonymous website, you should proceed with extreme caution. I don't even understand why it's up for discussion.

PS: I certainly hope that you don't trust blindly anything written by top users here. StackExchange "reputation" is simply a measure of how much time one has wasted on this website. People who have never done any kind of research or teaching have garnered thousands and thousands of points asking braindead questions and parroting well-known talking points without really understanding what they are talking about.


How much bandwidth should I allocate for reviewing as a PhD student?

Ask your advisor – it's literally their job to give you advice! In particular, they know your situation much better than we do, so they can give much better advice about how much time you should be spending on reviews.

A general rule of thumb is that you should review at least as many papers as you submit.* You're doing plenty more than that, I assume, so it's absolutely reasonable to decline review requests if they're taking up too much of your time: for example if they're taking up too much of your research time or leaving you with too little free time to relax. And, of course, this will vary through time. You might decline a review request that comes in when you're really busy with your own research (maybe a deadline's coming up or you're visiting some other researcher) even though you'd have accepted it if it came a few weeks earlier or later.

Remember, though, that reviewing papers has benefits to you. It keeps you in tune with developments in your field and exposes you to new ideas. Writing good reviews also makes more senior people in your field (the people you write reviews for) more aware of your talents.

* This will vary from field to field and depend on how many authors and how many reviewers a paper typically has.  In my area of computer science, 2–4 authors and 2–4 reviews is about normal, so a one-to-one ratio is reasonable.


Thesis writing - should I write "will be discussed later" or "as was discussed previously"

The answer varies: Readers will sometimes expect introduction there-and-then, in others they'll expect a delay, some readers will be divided. Regardless, generally avoid will be discussed later and as was discussed previously, use section references to guide the reader.


How to find publications from a particular institution in a journal?

Unfortunately, affiliations are a mess. People in bibliometrics usually say that you have to know the institution and its various names, acronyms, institutes, and laboratories very well, to capture all publications from the institution. If you have this knowledge, set up a corresponding search query (advanced search) for Web of Science (you need to have access to this database via your institution) and add the journal as additional condition.

Another approach is to check whether the institution you look at has a publications database and you can search for specific journals in there.


What is the difference in the structure of a conference paper and journal paper?

Expectations regarding paper structure differ significantly between fields. The following answers apply to computer science (which, based on your examples, might be relevant for you):

Question 1: should the 'related work' section come before or after the 'results' section?

The two valid and common options are "after introduction/background" and "before conclusion". The preferred option depends on the details on your paper. Some considerations are:

How much detail do you need for explaining the difference between your work and the RW? If you need specific details that are introduced in other sections, it makes sense to have the other sections first.
How long is the RW section? For a reader who reads the paper from beginning to end, a long RW section might get between the reader and your idea. If your background and RW are tightly coupled and not too long, it makes sense to have them as subsequent (sub)sections.

Question 2: is there a general difference in the structure of conference papers vs journal papers?

Journal papers on average have more sections because journals, unlike conferences, usually do not have a page limit, and journal papers are often extended versions of conference papers. Having more material requires more structure to still have each section as a readable chunk.


Good, neutral source for ISBN linking? (on citing books)

You could use worldcat.org, it is built and maintained collectively by the participating libraries around the world (see Wikipedia article).
They offer ISBN search, e.g. www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn:0060930314


How to avoid being falsely accused of harassment by a student?

I am not sure if my experiences are common, but as a faculty member in a psychology department I have had a number of unique and uncomfortable experiences with female students. I have described the two most egregious cases here and here. As for an answer, I want to start with an excerpt from this answer since I think it is so good

  1) Never sexually harass your students. Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two stops on the side of that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)

In addition, it is important to think about your behavior. I advise always keeping your door open, and remaining on opposite sides of the desk/table when appropriate. You need to be mindful of physical contact with students (cf. What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student?) and what you say to them.

Apart from actually not harassing your students, I advise you to document any awkward interactions you have with students. If you accidently (remember rule 1) inappropriately interact with a student (e.g., physical contact or an odd turn of phrase), regardless of if was you or the student that did/said it, you need to tell someone. Similarly, if a student gets unusually upset about a grade, or anything else, you want to document it. I suggest email so there is a written record. I always told my department chair, but the director of teaching or a faculty mentor could also work. I would advise always telling the same person, so they have some context.

In cases where you know the situation could be difficult or where students have been difficult in the past, you my want to have another faculty member join your meeting. You obviously cannot do this for all meetings (e.g., having a faculty member sit in on all your office hours would not work), it would be fine scheduled meetings with problematic students and difficult situations (e.g., failing a student or academic misconduct).

It is also worth noting that sometimes students want privacy (maybe you are discussing grades or a medical condition). If a student wants to shut my door for privacy, I am fine with it, barring a past history or an obvious difficult situation. If anything uncomfortable happens after the door was shut, or if you are feeling the slightest bit concerned/paranoid, you should document what happened.

  Dear Department Chair,

  I met today with Jane Doe to discuss her medical condition. She requested and shut my door while meeting. At one point she briefly came around my desk and showed me the rash on her arm. It was a little odd and in the future I will make sure students know to respect our personal space. I don't foresee any issues, but wanted to keep you in the loop.


Is it legal to accept this type of scholarship while on an F-1 visa?

It is quite legal and has been done many times. Students attend conferences and get reimbursed for that.