Anxiety and depression about the future of my PhD study

My advice would be to find another advisor, maybe even a different university. If you are just at the beginning, then it is a good time to move.

There is very little worse than an unsupportive advisor.

But if you think it is possible to move, look among the faculty for one or two people who believe in you and can support and application elsewhere. With good support it may be possible to move even if you need to take the qualifiers and do poorly. Your advisor is probably not the one to help you.

Even at the same institution it may be possible to reset the clock on your exams if you move to a different advisor. Sometimes the department head can help and sometimes you just work through a more compatible faculty member.

But continuing on doesn't seem like it is going to be easy, maybe not even possible. Look to your options.

One good thing that has come out of it is that you have learned to read and understand the literature. That is an important and useful skill.

However, if you are overly stressed and seriously depressed, you should seek medical advice, and learn about stress reduction activities.


I asked for a recommendation, then decided I wouldn't, but I've changed my mind again. Will the professor feel annoyed?

Probably yes.

Writing a strong letter of recommendation demands some effort. Make sure of your decision before asking for your professor to invest his time in it.


In the writing phase of masters thesis, is it advisable to take a course that is unrelated?

This is more a way for you to think through your dilemma than an actual answer. Only you can provide the answer.
In theory, there is no reason why a single course should interfere. But in practice it depends on how much time you have and how close is the deadline. Only you can evaluate the parameters.
It is good to keep flexible, and a good analysis course might serve your long term interest well. But so will finishing your thesis on time.
It depends on the level of risk you are willing to take on, and whether you have any safety valves if you get backed up.
I'll also note that focusing too much for too long on one thing doesn't use your mind very efficiently. Sometimes if  you get blocked on one thing it is good to take up something else for a while and you mind may well work through the block unconsciously. It is also why physical activity is good at "block" points.


What is a numerical value in admission application context?

My understanding is that they want to know how much of the total workload of your degree was dedicated to the topic of computer science. You're relatively free to choose in which way to quantify this workload (e.g. total number of hours of the courses on computer science), but since you're in Europe, my suggestion is to use ECTS: you may be able to get the amount of ECTS credits for each course directly from your university student's guide.


This can happen. There are journals where such decisions are made in meetings, and there is a substantial time between meetings. After all, editors typically have real jobs beside being editors. I am not saying that this is an efficient way of doing things, but it happens. In practice, if I sent a paper out I don't expect a decision within a year.

As to what to do about it, don't sent multiple messages to the editor. They have enough to do as is. If they are professional, they will just ignore your duplicate messages.


EDIT: Just to make the perspective clear. Disciplines have varying authorship traditions. In many fields within the sciences, and where I come from, first name in an author list is first author (considered to have contributed most) and collaborative papers are the norm.

Any article where you are first author is "good" for you. Single author articles have become increasingly rare, at least in fields with which I am familiar. The reason is of course that science is rarely done by single persons but rather in groups. Where single author articles are still relatively common are in the form of review articles where a single author can collate and critically assess the state of affairs in for example a subfield.

Going back about 20-30 years, again in the afore mentioned for me familiar fields, single authorship was almost demanded from PhD students and older faculty would basically frown on co-authored articles. Now, single authorship almost carries something odd about it in the sense that one can wonder if the person does not know how to collaborate. The later is of course not a good view to express but it shows how much the views have turned.

So to conclude, writing a well-referenced paper in a high impact journal as first author takes precedence over single or multiple authorship today. I doubt many would look at single authorship as much better than first authorship on a co-authored article today.


Reviewer asked for dataset section within the manuscript

They are not asking you to copy-and-paste the data into the paper in a "dataset section." They want you to devote more space to explaining what the dataset is and where you got it. Presumably, you did not collect it, so it should be easy to post to the government source.
That said, 7920 data points is tiny and could easily be included in a CSV file (but I digress). If they want you to share it, you could upload it somewhere else and link to it. But since this sounds like a publicly available government dataset, your time would be better spent making sure your preparation of the data is replicable.


Can a professor ask for money directly from students to print out handouts for class?

A professor should not be asking directly for money from the students. If the professor is scanning and printing things out for the students at her own expense, then something is wrong. Either the assignments and handouts should have been compiled into a course book, or the department should be helping to defray the professor's expenses.

Regardless of the request, I would be very uncomfortable giving money directly to the faculty member.  It could be paid to the department, which would then reimburse the faculty member. But I would never hand cash or a check over to the faculty. This sets a very bad precedent.


It may be necessary; some universities require students to TA even if they have other sources of funding.  It need not be evil.  It depends on your attitude (do you want to help students learn?) and which faculty you are working with (Do they care if you help students?   Do they care if you learn something yourself?).  Unfortunately you usually do not get to chose who you work with.  TAs (and also faculty) should receive training in how to teach, but may not.

There are many other ways to fund education, some of which pay better than being a TA, and some of which are more prestigious.  They all have limited supply.


Can a company use a method published in an academic paper to make money?

Any idea that is in the public domain, is in the public domain and anyone can do what they want with it. The same goes for results.

Code is a little different, and will be covered by the appropriate copywrite laws, and many pieces of code will have a software licence that has to be adheard to. But thats just the code itself, not the algorithmns implemented in the code. Which are public.

There is no difference in this regard between open-access and paid-access journals.


How much contribution justifies being a co-author of paper

The standards for co-authorship vary greatly from field to field.  In some fields, you can be a co-author merely by supplying a useful reagent, where in others you need to be much more heavily involved with the actual work.  I don't know what the culture for computer graphics in particular is, but no matter how you draw the line, the general principle is the same everywhere:

The authors of a paper should be precisely the people who meaningfully contributed to the success of the work.

Some advocate for the tighter definition laid out in the Vancouver Protocol, which requires every author to be a significant writer of the paper as well.  That, however, has some serious problems, particularly in tending to unfairly exclude students from authorship.

Applying this to the case of your authorship, the answer is not immediately obvious from your question whether you should be an author or be named in an acknowledgements section, because it depends on the value of the work that you did and that's something that only you and your co-authors are in a position to just.  For example, if your work with the data set was just reformatting it from one format to another, then it's clearly not worth authorship.  If you did some real curation of the data set, e.g., evaluating the information to remove artifacts, and this made a big difference in obtaining the results, then authorship is certainly reasonable.  Note that the amount of work that you did is not actually a good measure: if you whipped up a curation script in a few hours and then let it run, it's no less valuable than spending months inefficiently curating by hand.

Finally, it's fine to err on the side of inclusiveness.  If your contributions are a borderline case, and the primary authors found your work valuable enough to merit a co-authorship, nobody will be hurt by including you in a minor author position in the author list.


Is it reasonable to not publish data from research for fear of undermining previous work?

The statement you quote sounds terrible. It points in a direction where things approach the unethical. Publication of negative results are less common that positive although, I suspect, negative results ARE more common than positive. Since I am in an experimental field, I have never obtained the perfect results and always end up describing what went wrong; and I am not alone. Anyway, I think your idea of writing up your experience is good. Naturally, I cannot judge the merits of the experiences in terms of publicability.

So I think your intention is very sound and the reaction of the lead investigator suspect (or at best narrow-minded).

To me " further publications shouldn’t raise more limitations that should have been mentioned in the original publication" (if verbatim from the lead investigator and with my emphasis) sounds as if limitations were not included on purpose in the original study. So, if that is true then I can understand the nervousness. It sounds almost fraudulent.


Publishing on arXiv in preparation for WWW conference

Since the conference will make  the papers from the proceedings open access "The proceedings of WWW are published online (open access) and through ACM Digital Library, and it is considered one of the most impactful conferences in computer science." I don't think the arxiv preprint should be a problem. However, you should e-mail first to the WWW2017 committee to see if this is against the rules.


Relative representation of scientists and engineers on major experiments (especially particle physics)

I heard that postdocs and PhD students at CERN could volunteer for maintenance and similar tasks, and that those who did would have their names on the "Higgs paper" (hence the notoriously large author lists). Was this true and is it still the case?

There are a lot of maintenance and monitoring work performed by Ph.D candidates and postdocs at CERN and they may be entitled to have their names in a paper if they comply with the minimum requirements.

There are a minimum of night shifts and work hours in one of the experiments to be completed in order to participate as co-author in the papers produced due to work performed during the internship. If I am not in mistake, you need at least 6 months working in one of the experiments to comply with the minimum work hours demanded for co-authoring.

Usually the ones attending internships at CERN are from experimental particles groups with collaboration to one of the experiments (CMS, ATLAS,etc). They are not purely experimentalists, but I am sure that they can not be purely theorists.


Should the editor share the names / institution information of authors with the reviewers

This is called double-blind review. It is common in some fields, though I seem to see it more in conferences than journals.

There are a bunch of issues with double-blind review, next to the obvious overhead:

It prevents uploading preprints, since authors risk revealing their identity. This can be a problem in fields with long review times like maths since results would be kept silent longer.
If a paper is accompanied by software, how can it be licensed?
It doesn't always work, particularly when working in niches with few active researchers. Sometimes you can guess the author with reasonable accuracy based on the content and style of a paper. Some people even manage to guess the reviewer based on feedback.

Some take it even one step further to go for triple-blind review, in which:

The authors do not know the reviewers' identities.
The reviewers do not know the authors' identities.
The person that selects reviewers does not know the identities of the authors.

I would like to take this opportunity to suggest quadruple-blind review, which is triple-blind review in which the reviewers do not get to see the manuscript. To ensure anonymity, of course. You heard it here first!


Note: My answer pertains to schools in the US.

  Does any university require students to release their source code in order to graduate?

It depends on what you mean by "university." That is, I think there are fundamentally two different interpretations of your question. Since OP has not yet provided clarification, here goes ...

Interpretation #1

If what you want to know is:

  Are there dissertation committees which require students to release their source code in order to obtain approval of their dissertation?

The answer to this variant of the question is yes, this is fairly common in the engineering departments I am familiar with. Typically what is done if source code is required by the dissertation committee is that it is included in the dissertation appendix. Other alternatives include placing the source code online and citing it in the dissertation (e.g., placing the code on GitHub).

Interpretation #2

If, on the other hand, what you want to know is:

  Are there universities which adopt a university-wide requirement for students to release their source code in order to obtain approval of their dissertation?

The answer to this variant is (most likely) no.


How many manuscripts per day are sent to leading journals?

According to Nature's website, they received 10,952 submissions last year, which works out to an average of almost exactly 30 papers per calendar day. Given that there are 26 subject area editors according to their editorial masthead, it would appear that the average editor gets about 8 papers per week, or one or two per day.

However, their caseload is probably much bigger, since they also have to deal with all of their other "open" papers as well—so an editor might have something like 60-100 active papers to deal with at any one time (ballpark estimate, assuming a two- to three-month life cycle—although I suspect it's actually much longer than that if multiple rounds of reviews are required).


Is it considered a self-plagiarism to reuse (published) abstracts for talks?

In papers themselves, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever copy any previously published text (including yours) without explicit acknowledgment, along the lines of "The background material in this section is a nearly verbatim adaptation of Section 3.2 of X".  Assuming you make it perfectly clear what you have copied and from where (not hiding this information in a note later in your paper, for example) and you have permission from the copyright holder, then this is ethical, while it's not ethical without these conditions.

Of course talk abstracts are not quite the same.  Let's assume we're talking about relatively ephemeral abstracts.  I.e., they might appear on the web or in the conference program, but they aren't carefully archived, citable contributions to the research literature.  (This distinguishes them from "extended abstracts" in CS conferences, which are actually short research papers, and there may be other intermediate cases.)  These sorts of abstracts generally don't list any references within the abstract, and they aren't considered published or treated nearly as formally as published material.

In mathematics, I doubt anyone would get upset about recycling a paper abstract for this kind of talk abstract.  Customs vary greatly between fields or sorts of abstracts, so you should seek advice from colleagues in your area, since "someone on the internet said it was OK" is not a compelling argument.

If you are worried about self-plagiarism, you can simply append something like "(adapted from the abstract of paper citation)" at the end of your talk abstract.  However, that might stand out in its formality.

It's probably a good idea in any case to rewrite the abstract at least a little, since a talk abstract has different goals from a paper abstract.


Applying to Ph.D. as M.S. student but failing to complete M.S. after admission

I would say it depends on the offer/acceptance letter you receive. I know someone who was accepted to a PhD program while doing an MSc, but whose funding (scholarship) depended on him getting a certain final grade on his MSc. I can imagine situations where that is not the case, and where you are accepted to a PhD regardless of what happens with your studies before the PhD program begins.


Poor academic performance - should/can I apply to a PhD program?

You are now in your mid-thirties. You don't give a precise timeline, but based on your description I'll assume that the poor performance from the first university you attended for your master's happened about 10 years ago. In the meantime, you completed a degree elsewhere with much more distinction, and developed a career and a track record of successful achievements.

The logical conclusion is that any sensible admissions committee will look to your recent record as a much better indicator of your potential to succeed in the graduate program than your more ancient school history. The grades from your old school will very likely be seen as largely irrelevant. So, in my opinion this should not be a major concern.

And as @astronat said in a comment, you'll never know what would happen if you don't try. Good luck!


use of "carrier" for affected individuals

Look at the previous research on this disease, and check what those papers are using to designate these people. If there's a conventional way to refer to them, you'll want to conform to that; if they use different words you'll have some options to choose one you like from.


Does it look bad if I apply to two very different fields for grad school?

Based on the title of your question, I thought you were going to apply for two really different fields like French Poetry and Algebraic Topology!  So, while I appreciate the difference between software design and hardware design, I certainly would not characterise machine learning and computer architecture as "very different fields".  Both involve understanding and using computers, and I'm sure there are many people with an interest in both fields.  If anything, your interest in both fields reflects a holistic interest in the field of computer science and would probably be interpreted as a positive.

Regardless of how similar or different these fields are perceived to be, I cannot imagine that it would reflect badly on you to have an interest in both, and to be willing to pursue either field at graduate level.  While academia tends to push professors to become hyper-specialised, it is not expected that we will have worn you down to this point before even entering grad school!


What makes a transcript official vs. unofficial?

An official transcript is usually sent under some sort of seal, with measures to ensure that the document has not been altered. When delivered to a student, it will usually be in a sealed envelope in such a manner as it will show proof of tampering or opening.

The usual method, though, is for the issuing school to send it directly to the intended recipient. The transcript is then authorized as "official" through some combination of stamping or seal. (Nowadays much of this can be and is handled electronically.)

There may be some schools that have specific rules that would prevent them from accepting what another school sends, but you'd have to look at individual schools' policies to know for sure.


Is it possible to get a professor position without having had any fellowships in grad school?

There's no way that you are going to be disqualified from faculty positions by not having a graduate student fellowship. There's no "has a fellowship" checkbox on rubric that search committees use.
What will matter is a holistic evaluation of the quality of your research, your publications, your teaching experience, and your letters of recommendation.

Of course, evaluating junior faculty candidates is difficult and lots other things matter as well and can help reinforce (or cast doubt) on a committee's evaluation of a candidates quality. In that sense, a prestigious fellowship can be an additional positive signal in an otherwise strong packet. In that context, you should think of a fellowship as a "nice to have" — it does nothing to replace great research, great publications, and great letters.

In some ways, not having a fellowship might even help, if it translates into more work as a TA and RA.  This might lead to teaching experience and publications, which will be viewed as more valuable than all but the most prestigious fellowships. For example, I've seen faculty candidates who had made it entirely through graduate school on fellowships dinged for a lack of teaching experience.


Mentioning times cited, F1000 citations in CV?

Conventions may vary somewhat from field to field, but I'll answer with respect to the fields covered by F1000, where people tend to be more interested in citation metrics than in many other areas.

First of all, I wouldn't include F1000 recommendations. I don't think that people take F1000 all that seriously and listing this information smacks of trying too hard.  Under most circumstances, I'd suggest that one not include the citation counts either. As discussed in a recent question, the CV is not the place to do a sales job. If your citation metrics are strong, it is indeed good to bring this to the attention of the hiring committee, but you should do so in your cover letter and/or research statement rather than on your CV. Better yet, have one of your letter writers present this information. You could even get them to report the F1000 figures if that is really important to you. Nor would I list an h index on a CV, no matter how good it is. You could mention it in a cover letter, but again it is something that looks much better coming from one of your recommendation letters.

All of that said, if you really have a paper with >10,000 citations as in your example, this is so exceptional that it would merit a note alongside that paper on the CV. Even then, I wouldn't list citation counts for all papers but just for this one. Even a paper >1000 might merit mention on a CV if you are early career, but I wouldn't list anything in the low hundreds on the CV.

I'll conclude by noting that there is a nice economics paper by Harbaugh and To, entitled "False Modesty: When Disclosing Good News Looks Bad", that deals with almost exactly this situation. From their abstract:

  Is it always wise to disclose good news? We find that the worst sender with good news has the most incentive to disclose it, so reporting good news can paradoxically make the sender look bad. If the good news is attainable by sufficiently mediocre types, or if the sender is already expected to be of a relatively high type, withholding good news is an equilibrium. Since the sender has a legitimate fear of looking too anxious to reveal good news, having a third party disclose the news, or mandating that the sender disclose the news, can help the sender...


Will papers published in other sub-disciplines matter for graduate admission?

Undergraduates are not generally expected to have already figured out exactly what they want to do in research, so it's unlikely that there will be any concern about the fact that you've worked in multiple areas.  The fact that you've been involved in research and published papers at all is a very good sign, even if it's not in exactly the field you are applying to be in: it means you're motivated and inclined toward research and have been able to accomplish significant things already.  In short: don't worry about it, but celebrate that you've got such a strong background!


Scientific Research Publishing - Unspoken Rules

In order:

Theoretically, sure. Practically, almost never going to happen. The chief reason for this is that graduate studies are designed to instruct you on how to conduct and report on original research. Even a bachelor's degree alone will usually not be sufficient; anything less than that, and you probably don't have enough expertise to conduct cutting-edge research.

As @lighthousekeeper pointed out, being a professor usually means you have more experience in producing papers. As with most things in life, practice makes perfect.

Someone in the IT industry -- most certainly. Researchers at Facebook, Google, Amazon, HP, and many other companies have dozens of papers (if not more) published every year at top CS conferences.
An unemployed individual certainly could get published. But see #2 for why this is unlikely to happen. In addition, not having access to research databases and journal databases will stymie most individuals looking to conduct independent research (though not all).

Entirely depends on the field. In some fields, author names are listed alphabetically, so it doesn't matter who is first or last. In other fields, the first author is usually the researcher who wrote the majority of the paper. As a student in CS, there's nothing wrong with having second authorship on several papers. You'll want to eventually have first authorship on at least one or two publications, but any authorship is valuable when you're starting out.


In what sense are UK universities public?

However my understanding is that funding for UK universities comes almost entirely from tuition fees and grant income.

This is incorrect. Tuition of UK students is subsidised (to varying amounts in the constituent countries of the UK). In the most extreme case, Scottish students pay no tuition at universities in Scotland. If you compare 'home' fees with international fees at any public university, you will see that UK and EU students pay substantially less than international students (although it is not the case that the UK government tops up the UK tuition fees to the amount paid by an international student).

Sheffield University has some informative pages on how exactly this funding works. In particular, student tuition is subsidised via HEFCE grants, which vary depending on the course. This page appears to date from before the new variable fee regime in England, so the numbers and formulae may be out of date. But the funding mechanism subsidises the clinical years of medical, dental and veterinary students the most, then lab based courses and the non-clinical years of the medical courses, then courses with some lab or fieldwork, and then everything else.

Private universities do not receive this funding.


Can we mention "most likely" employer as current employer for PhD applciation?

You have no current employer.  If they've offered and you accepted, then they could be listed, but until there's paperwork, they are not your current.

I have seen people list "none" or "Student" as Current Employer.


How do I stop feeling intimidated by my advisor?

I think this is a typical syndrome for young students, or those students who have massive respect for their Professors or Teachers.

Usually the students consider their Professors to be superior to them; In addition to this the student might have some expectations in the future from that guide, trying to impress him all the time, so he is rewarded later on.

The way to solve this is to have more communication with that person and after all realize that he is a regular human being, who sometimes in the past used to be a student, and most probably was intimidated by his guide.

As you get to talk interact with your guide the Myth that you have in your head about him/her will start to get into the frames of normality, and the intimidation will go away after a while.

Long story short: he is a human being as well


Exactly How Important Is The Quality Of My Degree (Grades, GPA)?

Of course, it's no problem to tell people "Hey, I was lazy in school but I'll work super-hard for you." Unfortunately, people won't buy it.

From my time in the software industry, hiring quite a few people, I would actually not normally even look at their grades, unless they were borderline in the interview. Even then, if there was another candidate who was better in the interview, that borderline candidate would not even get a callback.

Some people will care about grades but for computer science 'guys' I find that what most people in industry really care about is what you can do for them. Can you help them more than someone else can help them? If so, then you'll likely land a job.

If you shape up, pull out of your 'funk' and get down to actually learning, you will likely be OK. If you let depression pull you under water, you'll drown.

You've started your degree, you should finish it. However, don't let the past dictate your future. This is the first day of the rest of your life. It's always darkest before the dawn. I'm sure there are more sayings along this line but in the end, depending your area of IT, you can do fine even if you had a bad start to school. If you have a strong finish, it's easy to explain that you should be judged on your 'exit velocity' rather than the start.


Can I share our AIAA journal article on ResearchGate?

According to the guidelines you linked to, you are allowed to have your manuscript published on your "personal website". I would interpret that term in such an extensive way that I would include your ResearchGate profile, for it serves the same function as a "personal website". That is, it serves to showcase your research.
In addition, Sherpa/Romeo (a platform that collects data about journals' Open Access policy) seems to be equally liberal in interpreting the AIAA approach. Pick your specific AIAA journal here and read the guidelines. From what I understand, AIAA journals allow for a Green Open Access policy without any embargo, meaning that you can publish your manuscript (not the final, accepted one) on your private homepage (including your RG profile) immediately after publication.


Do graduate school admissions appreciate individual "free time" study?

I have limited knowledge about this and I speak from experience as a graduate student who has gone through a similar situation (from the outside) as well as being the student representative on our graduate admissions committee (on the inside). Obviously, a professor or academic with much more experience than I have can attest to this in better ways.

In general, formal education is given preference. Grades in relevant courses are given more importance than others. Note that there is a lot of competition for slots in a PhD program. Self study is a very fuzzy area and there is little scope for the graduate admissions committee to evaluate it. There exists of course, two mutually non-exclusive ways exceptions to this general norm:

A respected recommender in the area attests to the fact that you did engage in significant amounts of self study and that has contributed to your overall knowledge.
You do self study. Then you do research based on it. Then you publish in a non trivial journal or conference. That automatically attests to your knowledge in certain ways.

Otherwise, ask yourself this, why would graduate admissions committees believe you, especially when there is usually bound to be a few more well qualified applicants with good scores in relevant courses?


Is searching in article references considered a systematic way of literature search?

I would add to the other answer(s) that you could validate the first approach using the second approach. If your search criteria systematically miss relevant articles in the journals covered by the database, then that's a clear sign you need to reformulate your search criteria because they're clearly not sufficient.

The second thing to add is that any search should also try to find unpublished articles. These are definitely not going to be in databases, but may be cited in papers (thus the importance, at least in my view, of the second approach). It might be worth adding a third approach that involves search conference abstracts, where unpublished (especially recent) work is likely to be found.


Are the words "I, we, us, his, her, he, she" all prohibited in thesis writing?

These words are not necessarily prohibited, but there is an old norm in academic writing to avoid personal pronouns (the pronouns you listed). The reasoning behind the norm is that it makes for more objective writing, but it can also lead to the use of quite awkward passive voice phrasing. Because avoiding these pronouns does not necessarily make writing better, there is a counter-trend today which emphasizes writing clearly, even if that means you occasionally use "I" or "we".

Your supervisor will ultimately be one of the people evaluating your thesis, so it is important to take their preferences into account, but if you feel that writing without pronouns leads to too many awkward phrasings or otherwise makes your writing less clear, then I think it is worth pointing that out to your professor.

Note that this also tends to vary by discipline. In some fields, for example, the use of "we" to refer to the author (and collaborators or the readers) is entirely normal. In other fields, though, I have heard that it sounds pretentious. Try asking your colleagues and other mentors what they think the norms are in your field as well.


Should I correct a course assignment that I already presented? I'm not sure whether the professor will notice the error

How can these affect our/my grade?

If you do not present the error, it can only be negligible or negative.  I do not see a positive outcome without additional influence.

  Should I contact the professor after correcting the error?

You state that the next line of communication will be at the Final?  The Final would be too late.  If you're going to do it, then time should be of the essence.

  Should I correct the work?

That wholly depends on what the professor would want.  Write a brand-new report?  No.  Show that you understand what the issue was, how it happened, and what a 'fix' would entail?  To the best of your ability, absolutely.  You're presenting a problem, and giving a solution -- not presenting a problem, and expecting a solution on a silver platter.

Regardless of if the professor noticed the error, it would be unwise to punch enough holes in your presentation to render it invalid while you're giving it.

I've messed-up on some trivial components before.  Communication works wonders.  If you're unhappy with the turn out after working-it-out; then take it to someone else.

Good luck.


Potential supervisor replied but did not explicitly say if he is ready to supervise

I think the suggestion in the comments is reasonable, but for the sake of providing an answer in the answer section, I will present an alternative.

Yes, list him on the application. What's the worst that can happen?

If he will supervise you, then there is no issue.
If he does not want to supervise you, he cannot raise a stink without looking like an idiot, since he wrote "please go ahead and apply."

I think the most pertinent take-away from his message is that there is only one opening in the stream. My guess is that he is planning to supervise whoever gets that spot (it sounds like that spot will be pretty competitive, so whoever gets it is likely to be pretty good).


When should cited author names be included in the substantive, rather than parenthetical, part of a citing sentence?

Both ways are equally acceptable and used in separate instances. Basically if the author(s) names occur in the sentence type (2) should be used and if the name(s) are not then type (1) should be used. The question is then when the two forms result.

Type (1) is a more passive form used when you, for example, are describing general background where the specific reference might not be key. The form is quite common (but not exclusive) to the introduction section. The sense is that the information is more distant from your own study. Version (2) is used when the cited studies are building the story and is closer to your work and thus more important for understanding the details of your study. A good example may be in the discussion where your results are compared with other specific studies. This is just a generalization since both are useful in all parts of a research article.


When should a college graduate attend a professional academic conference?

Ask one of your professors who attends the conference about this. Ask what you could gain. If the prof is actually going, maybe they could shepherd you around so that you could meet people.

I don't know about the conference, but see if they have things for students, especially such things as a doctoral symposium where you can hear about student work in progress, even if it is a bit beyond where you are.

Aside from the standard program, conferences are a good way to meet people, though for an undergraduate the first one might not be so valuable unless you have a guide.

But long term, building a circle of like minded people, especially potential collaborators, is a major benefit.


How much detail to include for an award listed on a CV

I will disagree with Dan C's answer above and state that you should only be choosing between options 2 and 3. At the very minimum, you want to indicate who gave you the award. Otherwise, it's not all that valuable to the reviewer of your CV, as they may not know whether an award is a big deal or not. If it's a major award, I'd default to option 3 if it's "non-obvious" how it works.

So, in general, I'd opt for option number 2, unless there's some specific information that needs to be shared, in which case I'd go for number 3.


Is it appropriate to ask an editor to have double blind peer review even if journal does not offer such an option?

With the submission management systems of most journals, it will be an incredibly obnoxious hassle for the editors to support a double-blind review if the journal's policy is normally single-blind review.

The reason is that, even if you remove names from the manuscript, most review systems present the reviewers with all of the key meta-data about the paper, including the author identities.  This information is tied to author accounts in the system, the paper production and publication process for accepted papers, and possibly also external systems such as ORCID.  This is configured right into the software, so the only method most editors would have for supporting double-blind would be to have the authors create pseudonymous accounts and then later work with the production staff to manually intervene and change all of the metadata (likely screwing up their records as well) before the paper actually appeared.  Thus, given the degree of hassle and problems involved, I would expect most editors to refuse without some sort of exceedingly unusual extenuating circumstance.

You can always ask politely, of course, but you should expect the answer to be no.


The necessity of having an honours undergrad degree for Msc applications (Canada)

Usually, Canadian Universities ask for a 4-year Bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement. This is usually called B.Sc. Major option.
Quote from Carleton, Computer Science:

Will a Major Degree Prevent Me From Going On to Do Graduate Studies?
Not necessarily.  Many universities indicate that they require an
Honours degree or equivalent to get into a Master’s program, so the
Honours degree is better if you intend to apply for a Masters or Ph.D.
in computer science.   However, a student with high grades from a
Major degree will likely be considered for graduate work.

So, B.Sc. Honours compared to B.Sc. Major is intended (partially) to prepare you better for a graduate school. It usually involves some research component and stricter selection of the required courses. Another quote from McGill:

Honours programs typically involve an even higher degree of
specialization than majors, include supervised research, and require
students to maintain a high academic standard. An honours program
provides solid preparation for graduate school.

So, do you have to have Honours to enter graduate school? No. Would it have helped? Probably, yes. Not necessarily. I would say that even if the program that you are anxious to apply to requires B.Sc. Honours, you might approach them and convince that you can succeed in the graduate studies by good GPA, relevant course selection, impressive letter of intent, exceptional recommendation letters, etc.
Also, there would be plenty of programs that certainly do not ask for Honours degree as their minimum requirement. Say:

M.Sc. Statistics from the University of Manitoba
M.Sc. Statistics from the University of British Columbia


I suspect the translated format will be more useful to the broader readership of the journal, but you could let the editor make the final decision. I don't know the context of your figure, but it's possible if the symbols don't really have a language meaning that the original version is fine as well (i.e., if they are equivalent to labels like "A, B, C, D" rather than having some phonetic or linguistic meaning). If there is some phonetic meaning that is hard or impossible to translate, that might be even more reason to use the original, and include an explanation of the characters for English-readers.

Provide one version with your revised manuscript, and provide the editor a copy of the other version as well, explain your choice, and see what their opinion is. They might decide the translated version is sufficient (with a note that it is translated from the original), or they might want you to include the untranslated in a supplementary figure, or vice-versa.

Another standard to think about for whether to translate or not is "does this content have the same meaning when translated?" For example, if you had a questionnaire asking basic biographical information, you would expect English and Persian participants to read and participate in the same way and the translation is fine. However, if your content is in reference to phonemes or some other language construct, there might not be any direct equivalent, and information would be lost in the translation.


Is it ethical to withdraw a paper after reviews?

There is nothing to do with ethics as question asks. This is simple professionalism. The journal has devoted enough time for reviewing the manuscript. The reviewers have put in their efforts.

If you are really fixed about not go ahead with submission of revised manuscript, then do the following:

Don't submit the revised manuscript to the journal.
If the journal editor asks about the revision, then say that you are extending the article in various ways and would not submit the manuscript. But, thank them for their efforts.

But, I would suggest that you had made a mistake not looking at the journal statistics, you should go ahead with this journal with the publication.


Is the phrase "results show" appropriate in academic writing?

The professor is suggesting that in academic writing one needs to be precise and one also tends to be more formal. Things that are natural in conversation, for example, may not be the best way to express something in writing - especially academic writing.

But it is easy, and natural, to slip up since we normally spend more of our time speaking and writing informally than formally.

But yes, most "results" only give evidence that something is true. Only in some fields do the "show" or "prove" something (say, mathematics).

I think the point is valid - precision and formality are likely good, but condemnation of such terminology is probably overblown. In most cases the reader will make the right assumptions about what is meant. Novices might be misled, however, if claims seem a bit overblown. And intentionally overstating a conclusion is wrong in general.


Postdoc without letter of recommendation

Based on your comment responses, I think that you are working for a young faculty member who is trying to build his group and encouraged his first two PhD students to stay on after they graduated. It's an admirable goal to start building a research group, but in the US it would be discouraged to do so by keeping all of your own students in my experience. US academic research has a bias towards sending one's students out into the world to cross-pollinate ideas and avoid stagnation and closed-mindedness.

That being said, refusing to provide a letter of recommendation to a good student for this purpose is borderline if not outright professional misconduct and wouldn't be tolerated at most US universities (though I'm constantly surprised what weak administrators let star faculty get away with sometimes).

I think you should sit down with your advisor and explain your life goals to him. Include the fact that you are eager to get out into the world and learn more in a different environment. Try to convince him to see it from your perspective without getting antagonistic. If that doesn't work, go see your department chair, but only as a last resort.

You are in a bit of a tenuous position since your advisor could refuse to sign off on your dissertation (or let you defend, or drag his feet on revisions, etc) if he becomes scared by feelings of abandonment in your desire to leave. Bringing in higher authorities could make this worse. It would be best to convince him with the power of good arguments than to make the situation adversarial.

The timing of this can be tricky. He's probably going to find out that you applied for postdocs with out his recommendation and blessing, and given the usual schedule for postdoc recruiting, I'm assuming you will have to apply before you defend. I think it's probably better to be open with him that you are definitely going to apply, find a postdoc, and leave than to do so behind his back. Maybe when he sees your resolve to do so, he will change his mind about writing you a good letter.


Why do journals prohibit authors from acknowledging reviewers?

An acknowledgment, like any other part of the paper, needs to add useful information to justify the journal space and readers’ attention that it’s taking up. The information that the anonymous referee contributed from their time and gave helpful feedback is already known to everyone, and so is not useful or interesting.


What is the minimum one can communicate with coauthors

I think that, ethically, you have reached the minimum. If their names are to be attached then they need to sign off on the result as published. But it may not be necessary for them to see how the sausage is made. So, I think you are fine in what you suggest.

However, you should expect questions about why you made certain changes and you might, at that point, need to share something of the comments of reviewers that led you to make those changes.

The endless arguments may still occur, but at least you will have an updated version about which to argue, rather than just a lot of disparate comments.


Revamping Paper Authorship, *or* Should Papers Roll Credits

There is movement towards contributorship as a concept to replace authorship. Journals like Science and Nature (and others) ask authors to provide a list of each contributors contribution. Add to that a definition of what constitutes contributorship (Vancouver Protocol; see ICMJE for the following example):

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

  AND

  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

  AND

  Final approval of the version to be published;

  AND

  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In this case it is the publishers and editors who will have to implement the tools to provide the correct credit. As an author it is possible to volunteer the information in the acknowledgement. It is of course still possible to give false credit by faking entries for authors who have not contributed but I doubt any system will be perfect.


Should I go to engineering graduate school right after undergrad or after a few years of work experience?

Of the opinions you heard, most make sense to me. However the most important part is what you want to do. If you are eager to go into industry and want to try that, then go with that. If you prefer to do your graduate (and maybe later a PhD), then choose that. But do not plan too far ahead, i.e.: "I'll work 2 years, go to graduate school, do my PhD, and go back to industry." Real life does normally not work like that, and if you really are trying to reach these goals they might give you more stress and worries than help you.

I, after my master degree was kind of tired of University, and worked for a company during three years. After those three years I looked into different options (for personal and professional reasons), and decided to go back in research by doing a PhD.

Try to make a list of "pros and cons", and make a decision based on that.


I require students to fill out a short summary sheet of the reading prior to the start of class for classes with small group work based on required reading. The summary sheet looks something like a structured abstract of the reading. In total it is less than 200 words of writing. I make my summary sheet available after the class. Based on feedback, the students like the sheets since they help them in reviewing for the exams. It also helps them gauge differences between what I think is important and what they think is important.

I divide the class into groups based on if the students have completed the sheet or not. Generally, I tell students to go to one side of the room if they have completed the sheets and the other side if they have not. I and the students can then quickly visually inspect the sheets to see if they are completed or empty. The groups of students who have completed the sheet get to work on the group activity, for which having the sheet is useful. The groups of students who have not completed the sheet work on the sheet and if time allows work on the activity. I make it a point to reassign students if the sheet is filled out with nonsense.


Are there higher education systems in which is not required to write a thesis?

The question is a little vague. Many graduate degrees do not require a thesis. For instance, a law degree (JD), and many business degrees (e.g. MBA) in some universities require no thesis paper.

It has been my experience as a college instructor that university departments are encouraging more writing and defending their written research.


Dealing with professor's death on my thesis

You should definitely keep the name. I've seen that people who passed away during some endeavor usually have their names surrounded with a rectangle.

You can also consider putting some In Memoriam page for your mentor somewhere at the beginning of the thesis. You should consult other people within your institutions culture to make sure that this doesn't come off as pretentious (although I see no reason why it should).


The reviewers are not answering to any of my emails. Why are they ghosting me?

Faculty members are busy. One of the many reasons for that is a constant flood of emails. For example, I receive an email message (on my university email account; I'm not counting personal stuff here) on average every 19 minutes and 5 seconds. I imagine that there are people with much busier inboxes than mine.
In such situations, time constraints require faculty members to keep sent emails to a minimum. After all, I cannot spend all my time on emails; I have educational tasks to fulfil, and I would like to occasionally do some research too. So when I receive a PDF of someone's thesis in the mail, I will file it in the right folder, maybe print the thesis, and move on to the next topic. I will definitely not write an extra email acknowledging receipt, because that half minute can be spent on checking off another task or two.
I appreciate that this might strike students as impolite. The one thing I can offer you is that it is exceedingly unlikely that this is a personal thing. It's not that the reviewers don't like you, or that they don't want to acknowledge your existence; it's merely a lack of time on their side.


Comparison of current work to the state of the art in a (journal) paper

Here are some suggestions based on things I learnt from a seminar on academic writing I got back from just yesterday:

First, what follows assumes that the work you did is truly novel. However, unless you are doing a straight replication of some other work, then there must be some novelty in your work. Your first job is to clearly identify in your own mind what is truly novel, unique and valuable about your work. You need to be very clear about this before you can persuade anyone else.
For the literature review, rather than looking for what literature exists and then comparing your work to the literature, try to write your presentation of the literature to surround what you actually did. Think of presenting the literature like a doughnut. You want to arrange the literature to look like a doughnut with a conspicuous hole in the middle of it--the goal of your article is to fill in that hole.
In your literature review, it is extremely important to not mention research that is not part of the doughnut. I am certainly not asking you to hide any relevant research (if you try that, reviewers will skewer you); I am rather recommending that you not distract the reviewers with any work that is not directly related to the problem that your article is solving. (And to be clear, the problem you are solving should be what you consider novel and valuable, not more than that.) Your work in the literature review is absolutely not to review all the existing possibly related research; it is only to review the research that is directly related to the problem that you are trying to solve, that is, only research that is part of the doughnut with a hole in the middle of it. Less is more: that is, you do a much better job when you present the least amount of research necessary; too much research that is not directly related will lose the reviewers and make them lose sight of what you're really trying to do.
After framing the literature review section, then go back to the introduction. In the introduction, be sure to summarize in one paragraph maximum the top two points from the literature review that demonstrate that you are filling a real gap in the literature. Note that I recommend that you write this part of the introduction last--because the introduction is absolutely the most important part of the entire article, I recommend that you write it last. I do realize that some excellent writers prefer to write it first, but for less than excellent writers like myself, it is usually best to write the most important part of the article last.

I hope these general tips are helpful.


Is this a tired phrase? -- journal article titles that start with "Towards a theory of..."

I think this phrase should be avoided when possible: not because it's tired, but because it is hesitant and unspecific.

A title like Towards a theory of branch sprockets tells me that the author wanted to present a theory of of branch sprockets, but they didn't quite manage and they ran out of time. That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a weak pitch for a paper. The best way to structure your paper is to think of what what you're presenting and put that in the title. Here, you're thinking of what you wanted to present, but can't.

I would prefer a title like A partial theory of branch sprockets or A fast, approximate algorithm for branch sprockets optimization. The point of a title is to let me know whether I should read this paper instead of the other 50 papers I could be reading. These titles tell me what the return will be on the investment of reading. With the Towards a theory... approach, the authors are only telling me what their long term goals are, not which step they took towards this theory, towards which theory in particular they hope to be moving, what steps still remain, and so on.


Actually, in the US, applying for a doctoral degree is almost always preferable to applying for a masters. The reason is that doctoral admission almost always comes with some sort of funding and masters admission seldom does.
The advice is to apply to several institutions that cover a fairly wide range of "rankings". If you apply to only one or two programs you are unlikely to be successful because of the competition. If you want a PhD "eventually", do that now.


How do I recognise a peer-reviewed journal article?

The cynical answer is that in borderline cases it's impossible to be certain what is peer-reviewed without a lot of investigation.  Fraudulent journals claim to be performing peer review, and it's hard to disprove their claims (you have to distinguish between no peer review, incompetent or corrupt peer review, and genuine peer review with a very low requirement for how interesting the papers have to be).  Sometimes someone gets a clearly absurd paper accepted (see SCIgen and follow-up projects such as Mathgen), in which case we know something is terribly wrong.  However, there are other cases where we just don't know for sure, even though nobody really trusts the journal.  It takes a lot of work to investigate, and there are tons of ridiculous "journals" operating on the web, so nobody has the time or energy to look into every case.

On the other hand, this doesn't come up except with pretty weird journals.  Everyone working in a field has a pretty good idea of which organizations and journals are reputable; if an expert doesn't know what to make of a given journal, then that's a bad sign.  I don't know of any systematic way to make this judgment other than based on experience and mentoring, although Beall's list is a useful tool to flag highly questionable publishers.

In particular, I know of no automated tool to do searches only for peer-reviewed articles, and I see no prospects for building a reliable tool of this sort (given that some publishers are simply lying).

This makes the situation sound much worse than it is.  I've never run across a paper I was even remotely interested in where I had any doubt about its peer review status.  However, it's a hard problem if you go dredging through junk journals.

Incidentally, in mathematics it would be a bad idea to limit your reading to peer-reviewed articles.  Preprints are not yet peer reviewed, and if you ignore them until they are formally published, you may never catch up to the state of the art.


How to inform conference organizers about your legal name

Your situation isn't uncommon. In particular, many women prefer to use their birth name rather than their married name for reasons of continuity, etc. Some people need to use an alias for various security and/or political reasons.

Just include a note explaining the situation as you have here. If you are asked, you might offer to provide a photocopy of the first page of your passport for verification. But only if asked.


Why would an author use a different symbol for the same meaning?

I can't speak about the specific case you have in mind since I'm not a mind-reader, but there are legitimate reasons to change a symbol.

Maybe you want to avoid clash with notation used for something else in your second article.
Maybe that "something else" was introduced in an earlier revision and then eliminated, but then you decide to stick with the new notation.
Different symbols are standard, or natural, for different objects. You can write x(f), where x a function and f is a variable, but people don't, and for a good reason. Most of the time, you give it some thought when you introduce a new symbol, and try to pick the 'best' letter (and the best position for a subscript/superscript).
Sometimes, you realize only after writing an article that a different symbol would be more natural for a certain quantity. Possibly because it's related to something else in a different field, or because you find out that another author used the same symbol for this object in an earlier paper and several colleagues are already used to it. Or because two objects that you use in your paper are related, so it would be better to call them A and Ã rather than A and B.
Sometimes, you write papers targeting different journals/communities, and they have different standards, so you use different letters for the benefit of your readers. For instance, I may use Ax = b if I am writing about a least-squares problem in a numerical linear-algebra journal, or wX = y if I am writing in a statistics/machine-learning one.
Sometimes, it's a referee who tells you that you should really change your notation, and you comply. This might happen on the second paper but not on the first.


Do professors ever befriend former students?

First, if you are ever again going to be in one of this professor's classes, then such a friendship is unlikely, at least until you are out of school.
If there's no chance that you will ever again be in a student / professor relationship, talk to her.  Say what you wrote: "It would be lovely to have a professor I could talk to and look up to as I move through grad school."


How do editors publish in their own journals?

In such cases, the editor-in-chief should recuse himself from having anything to do with the review process. This gives the associate or deputy editor for the given paper essentially full control of the process. (In general, I don't think the editor-in-chief is aware of exactly who is assigned to which manuscript.)

One would hope that the editor-in-chief would know the quality and standards required to publish a paper in her own journal; however, should the paper fail to meet those requirements, you should, of course, call that out in the review.


mentioning my country situation in motivation letter to demonstrate dedication for learning

Yes, you should mention these issues.  Your situation is unusual, and it's helpful if the application puts everything in context for the admissions committee.  I don't know whether it will help your chances of admission, but if there are deficiencies in your application it might explain why you could not fix them, and in any case it certainly won't hurt your chances.


Will self funding a PhD hurt employment chances?

There's nothing on your CV that needs to indicate exactly how you were supported during your Ph.D. In fact, if you were self-funded, and managed to get an occasional fellowship or other form of support, that's a plus !

All a recruiting committee should (and does) care about post-PhD is the quality of your work (for faculty positions there are additional issues). No one cares about how you were paid to do that work.


To what extent should a professor give students freedom to do independent research?

At the end of a PhD a student should be able to conduct their own research.  To reach this goal it is helpful to reduce the amount of direction given during the course of a PhD.  When the student starts, some defined goals and guidance can allow the student to make rapid progress.
Students should make unique contributions and understand a broad range of concepts.  For example, producing a PhD thesis just on one tiny component of an analysis is a bad idea.  Students should be allowed to make mistakes, but be prevented from loosing a large amount of time on bad choices.
Within highly competitive research environments one might have to defend a students work with additional members of staff, since students are typically slower than experienced post-docs.
All students are different.  Therefore, the level of guidance needed should be balanced accordingly.
The final mark for the PhD should reflect the ability of the student.

  What do you mean by independent research?

Completely independent research implies that one has to define the project and direction, using knowledge of the field of study.  One needs to read journals and join workshops/conferences to determine what has not been studied and can be studied within a reasonable time frame.  Given this, one then writes software/develops an experiment to measure the chosen parameter(s). (There are many holes that a student can fall into along the way). It is a lot easier to carry out independent research as a post-doc or professor, since one builds up knowledge.

  Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?

Their PhD is typically on one topic e.g. particle physics. The independent research should happen within the discipline that is being assessed.

  If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?

PhD theses contain a fraction of a student's work. They do not contain all of the work of a student. For example, one might build a silicon detector for two years and then spend 1.5 years performing a data analysis. The silicon detector work (even if performed independently) may not end up in the thesis. It is very hard for examiners to assess work that is not in the thesis.

(From ~13 yrs of supervising particle physics PhD students.)


Editor's mail with no reviewer's comment

Instead of trying to second-guess what might have happened you should simply contact the editors and ask what revisions they wish to see you perform. The reasons for the lack of information could be any of the suggestions given but could also be a mistake, an attachment that was not passed on or a mail sent by one person who has not seen your recently provided update, the list of possibilities is long.

So, e-mail the editor or journal and briefly explain what you received and how the lack of information makes revisions impossible.


In the US, a student's performance is typically indicated by GPA from high school through doctoral-level study.

In the UK, a student's performance is indicated by "degree classification" levels for undergraduate and taught masters programs. (The names of the degree levels are different for masters courses than for undergraduate courses.)


Curriculum Vitae advice for PhD (non-US)

While people often spend a lot of time tailoring the format of the CV, the two most important things are: do you have the experience the employer is looking for and can the employer easily find it. So while I agree that career services often suggest a cookie cutter CV one size fits all mentality, it really is a pretty god approach.

Unfortunately what really helps you get a job is a strong track record and not how that track record is presented on the CV.


Should I be a visiting student rather than a non-degree seeking graduate student?

Enrolling as a non-degree-seeking graduate student in a U.S. mathematics graduate program is almost never a good idea, and this is in no way a mainstream option.  (I'm talking about not seeking a degree anywhere.  For comparison, it's not uncommon to be officially seeking a degree at University X but visiting University Y while your advisor visits there.)

It's easy to get the wrong impression from course catalogs, since they give short descriptions of options that may not reflect how they are used in practice.  For example, I doubt the Princeton math department ever admits anyone as a qualifying student; if it happens at all, it is exceptionally rare.  I can imagine it might happen for a clearly brilliant student from a deprived background, but not for the vast majority of applicants.  There's just too much competition for admission.

If you are accepted as a non-degree-seeking graduate student:

You won't be treated in any way like an ordinary graduate student.  To the extent anyone in the department is aware of you, you'll be in a special category of "person who wasn't admitted to the graduate program but is paying a lot of money to take courses anyway", which is not a flattering description.  In particular, you should not expect faculty to supervise your research or interact with you any more or differently than they treat the undergraduates in these classes.  (It could happen, but I'd guess it probably won't.)
It won't help with admission, compared with doing equally well in similar courses elsewhere.  Specifically, any admissions committee will have members who want to make sure this isn't used as an easier back door to admission, and they will be sure to enforce strict standards.

  I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later.

Are you sure you're interpreting these programs right?  In this listing of the categories, visiting students are enrolled in graduate programs elsewhere, while qualifying students are non-degree-seeking students who are trying to make up for weak backgrounds in the hope of future admission.  I'm not aware of any option for undergraduates to spend a year at Princeton, except for some international exchange programs.  However, I might well be missing some possibility.


How to organize a good "special session" at a conference?

A useful start is to try to get some well-known researchers to commit to providing talks to a session. It could be one person or maybe a few more depending on the size of the conference and the session. The point of doing this is basically two-fold. First, you gain interest from others when they see names they recognize. Second, by having someone well-established involved, the session gains a certain amount of credibility. People who may be very selective in choosing how they spend their time are likely less inclined to go to a session filled with people they do not know than one where they at least know one or a couple.

Once you have established a core for the session, the rest might solve itself. You do of course have to consider the main direction of the conference so that the session theme does not deviate to the extent that any person interested in the session finds the rest of the conference of marginal interest. So chose the venue with some care.

Getting the ball rolling is the hard bit. An invitation is usually not enough. It may involve pulling strings left and right to entice a core of attendees to show. In one meeting I co-organized, we managed to get an international group to attend that were looking to also run a project meeting at the same time. This meant the meeting gained a wider interest.


Is it necessary to add experiment to my designed framework for a journal

It depends a lot on the journal, the research area, and the research topic that you are working on. For some fields of computer science, reviewers will immediately reject most submissions that do not include some artifact or implementation with a convincing experimental evaluation. For other fields, this is totally optional (but even then, it may help).

I'm not familiar with the IEEE Communications Magazine or the field of communications in general. However, you can easily find out (and this goes for any other journal as well!) You should do the following:

Look at other papers that have been accepted in the journal in the past, especially related to your topic. How many of them had an experimental evaluation? All of them, some of them, or only a few?
Ask an expert in your research field, such as your adviser or any professor you have access to. They will likely know whether this particular journal expects an evaluation, and they should also be able to offer other specific advice about to your planned submission.
Finally, consider whether your particular research contribution requires or would benefit from an experimental evaluation. Are your main claims sufficiently justified without an evaluation? Even if the journal does not expect it, the evaluation may be necessary to make your paper convincing. Similarly, even if the journal does expect it usually, if your contribution is clearly of excellent value without any evaluation, you may be accepted without it.


That looks to me like a bibtex style, probably alpha. So it's not a formal style (e.g. APA, MLA), it's just a setting for the bibtex package. Overleaf has a full list of the styles.


How to make academic life bearable under stressing circumstances?

Since you seem to have decided that you must accept the situation where you work, let me make some suggestions to make it less depressive. Some of these might not be good ones for you, so pick and choose those that appeal.

the room. One room for 18 people? They don't seriously expect you to use it. What can you use instead?  Do you meet students there, or write conference papers, or prepare coursework? Can you do those things somewhere more pleasant? Your own living room, a coffee shop, a park bench, a table in the library, a classroom that's empty more often than not? Do you have to sit in a crowded place jammed with broken things, or can you go somewhere nicer and get more done?
no funding for conferences. Good for you managing to get a paper accepted and managing to get yourself there. That's probably one more conference than many of your peers. If there is someone who goes to more conferences than you, go and ask them how they do it. They will probably be happy to show you the tricks. In the same spirit, if you can get your own computer you won't care that the department can't provide decent ones.
intellectual connection. The people in the depressing room are half of your peer set - the other half is the A1 and A2 people around the world. Find them! Follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, download their conference sessions and papers, email them with questions about something they published. Use the internet to forge ties with these people - you aren't a moonstruck teenager, you're their peer and they will be happy to hear from you. Who knows, this activity might even lead you out of your current situation some day, but more importantly it will help you grow and solve a pain point for you.
the rest of your life. It's common to push everything else aside while chasing tenure. Do you have any hobbies or habits? Even just following a sports team? Try to ramp up that side of your existence, make some friends who don't work at the university, spend some time cooking or hiking or reading the latest celebrity gossip or watching that tv show everyone watches. Do some fun stuff, whatever fun is for you. Meet some people who can bring you joy.
find a way to be more connected to the university as a whole, not just your department. Join a club or team that has profs from all faculties, or even better has faculty, staff and students from all faculties. Attend (if appropriate) religious activities that happen on campus. Go to the "our university day at X" events. Help with fundraising or political activities that will let you meet people from all over the campus. You're going to be here a long time right? Get to know the place and the people and weave it into your life.
if the tenure you're expecting comes with a raise, start working out now what the consequences of that are. Will you be able to move to a nicer place? Get specific about looking for that place now. Imagine being able to have a lovely view, or a spare bedroom you can use as an office, or quieter, safer nights. The hard work you have put in will be bringing you benefits soon, start to think about those now.

Your department would be amazing if they handed you a bright sunny office, a delightful collection of peers who you enjoy talking to, plenty of important work, a steady stream of bright students, a fully-equipped working environment and a library that's the envy of everyone in your field. But very few places are really like that. So roll up your sleeves and get yourself what you need to excel, and fill your days with work and not-work that make you happy. Your department is never going to do that for you, but you can do it for yourself.


Why is colour use in academic writing disapproved?

People who are good at doing research aren't necessarily the best graphic designers. In fact most are pretty awful graphic designers. For good reason: learning to be a good graphic designer takes a lot of time and practice. So most good researchers do not have time to also become a good designers.

So if I see a researcher trying to be fancy in his design (e.g. use colors) I will automatically assume the design is going to be awful and most of the time that assumption will be correct. So I don't have a aversion to colors in academic writing per se, but it is an extremely reliable warning sign for me that some bad design is coming.

So my general advise to students is to focus on the content and keep the design as minimal as possible.


A paper split in two parts - how to cite it in CV?

Option (a) does seem to be a better choice at this point in time. Later, when one of the parts are published, it would be better to list only the published article instead of the preprint. If you are concerned about the visibility of the other part of the work, you may upload a preprent of just the other part to make sure there are no overlaps in your publications list.

Once both papers are published it would make sense to only include those articles without the preprint entirely.


How is the energy bill split in academic departments?

At the institutions where I worked in the US, a fixed overhead from grants, negotiated with the granting agency usually (e.g. X University takes YY% from all NSF grants held at X) went to those kinds of costs. I do not know of any exceptions, but we were more likely to be running refrigeration units and ovens than ion accelerators and each individual institute may have special exceptions. You would have to inquire directly.


Many job postings are written after the candidate that will fill the position has been selected. This makes sense in academia - I usually want to hire people who were trained by people I know. University policies often require that postings are made for all positions though.
It's therefore very common to interview for a position that hasn't formally been posted. Especially if you have fellowship money coming with you.


Is it a problem that my CV rounded-up my GPA while my transcript shows more digits?

As pointed out in the comments, you didn't lie.  Your actual GPA was a 3.8.  By contrast, it'd have been a lie if you claimed a 3.80.

I suspect that reviewers who see this may have one of three reactions:

No concern.  They'll see this as entirely correct rounding and not bother thinking about it any further.
Concern about fudging.  They'll wonder why you chose to report your GPA on your CV to just 1 decimal place, as this is a bit atypical, and coupled with the fact that it resulted in a round-up, it may come off as a bit of fudging.
Think it dishonest.  Committees in STEM fields should really understand that a 3.78 is a 3.8; that's basic numeric literacy.  However, if you're applying to a field that doesn't use math, they may perceive it as dishonest.

Personally, if I read a 3.8, I'd have taken it as implying anything from a 3.75 to a 3.84999..., such that the revelation of a 3.78 would be entirely expected.  I'd have found your decision to report only 1 decimal place to be dubious, but I'd have already judged you for that upon seeing your CV.  Seeing the transcript confirm that the GPA was on the lower end of the spectrum would strengthen the suspicion of intentionally trying to fudge the numbers, but since I'd already have been suspicious of that, it wouldn't really change much.


Although many physicists tend to like more the physics than the mathematical details, it is crucial for a physicist to master the required mathematical details. Understanding all the mathematical concepts  give you a high level of mathematical techniques which can be applied to various theories in physics. My advice would be to go to the courses, and also to study in great detail what you really like in your spare time, perhaps guided by a professor. Unfortunately, in physics, one must learn the mathematical language, and then the physics associated.


Do you have to wait for confirmation from the journal to consider an article withdrawn?

A journal publication is based on a two-sided contract. To be valid (and executable), therefore, both parties need to agree about the key performance of this contractual relationship, i.e., the Author granting to the Publisher an (exclusive) license "to use, publish, edit, reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, and prepare derivative works based upon the Work" (to cite § 3.3.2 of the "Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship").
If, in the negotiation stage (e.g. during peer review), one of the parties notifies to the other that there is no will to feel bound to such a contract anymore, then there is no contract. The publisher cannot claim to have won a "unilateral contract" against the author's will.
As a result, I would say that you are free to submit your manuscript elsewhere as soon as you notify the first journal about it.
(However, note that I am not aware of a court case about this; it is simply my legal interpretation.)


Considering dropping Computer Science Master

Get that football across the goal line.  Your project is pass fail.  Just finish it.  Don't change topics.

DON'T drop out after so much time spent. After all, all the same options for career redirect will be there even if you have that extra sheepskin in your pocket.

P.s.  I hear you on the procrastination and avoidance.  but you have to find something to spur you on.  For me it was publishing.  Got a lot of egoboo from that.  Then the thesis was a cut and paste.  Maybe that works for you (can even sign up for a conference to push you).  But whatever the "trick" (e.g. "accountability buddy"), figure out something to push yourself.


Is it a good idea to include working papers on Curriculum Vitae?

Work in progress can be a good indicator of both interest and ability. I wouldn't exclude them and a separate section for it would be good. I doubt that a lot of undergraduates are in this position, though my perspective is the US.

Saying where you intend to submit/publish them is a bit speculative unless you have already published in those venues. But it is more likely to help than hurt as it shows you have a plan.

But in general, giving your work in progress shows an active research trajectory that might be carried directly into grad school if the circumstances are right.


What should I do if my master's advisor used a figure from my thesis in a publication without citation or acknowledgment?

The issue here is somewhat thorny. Relative to you, however, there is unfortunately not much benefit in any event, because citing the figure is not normally enough to merit authorship. All you would have is one extra citation, which would likely get "lost," because the publication with which it corresponds doesn't exist yet.

So I would make sure that your new paper cites the old paper, since it is the first to publish the figure. I would also make sure that you mention politely the concerns that you have over the use of the figure without citing.


How are research assistantships for international graduate students funded in the US?

Can international students be paid through NIH/NSF grants that are awarded to the PI

Yes. International students are generally not eligible for personal federal fellowships, such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, but they can still be paid through regular research grants awarded to the PI.

  I was under the impression that theses government grants are usually good for a shorter duration (2-3 years). How can the department be certain of further funds at the time of admitting a candidate?

They can't. This is a major source of pressure for PIs in some fields; they have to secure funding for already enrolled students, as well as future students. If the PI is not able to secure funding through research grants, there may be institutional fellowships, industry funding, teaching assistantships, or other sources of funding that can be used in a pinch.

But, this is not really any different for international students vs any other students.


Working on the arXiv version of a published paper, how should I cite?

If at all possible you should cite the most recent official (published, peer reviewed) version.

You could consider contacting the author to ask if the arXiv  version differs in any way that might matter in your context. A librarian might be able to help with that too.

You can note in your bibliography that a version of article is also available on arXiv.


Is it possible for reviewers to mistakenly reject a quality paper?

Higgs's 1964 paper on the Higgs mechanism was rejected by Physics Letters (where his preliminary paper on the subject was published).

He was told that it was not suitable for rapid publication and that he should send it to another journal. However, he reportedly heard that the paper had been rejected because the editors felt that "it was of no obvious relevance to physics."

Apparently, Higgs acknowledged that the paper "had been short on sales talk," and after adding a couple of paragraphs it was accepted by Physical Review Letters.

Here is an early example of manuscript rejection, from 1842: Mayer came up with the theory of conservation of energy, and wrote an article explaining his idea that "energy is neither created nor destroyed." It was rejected by the leading physics journal of the time, ended up in an obscure chemistry journal, and was mostly ignored by physicists. When the physicists of the time rallied around Joule, who described conservation of energy later in the 1840s, Mayer suffered a mental breakdown. Towards the end of his life, he was finally given credit as a father of thermodynamics.

Nature declined to accept Krebs's paper on the "Krebs cycle" in 1937. The work later won a Nobel Prize. The letter from the editor regretfully informs Mr. Krebs that the editor already has "sufficient letters" for the next 7-8 weeks.

The seminal paper on quantum cryptography, Wiesner's “Conjugate Coding,” was rejected by the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. (A surviving copy of the original typewritten manuscript says "Submitted to IEEE, Information Theory" on it.) It was published about a decade later.

In the same subfield, the original manuscript by Bennet, Brassard and Breidbart that introduced quantum key-recycle scheme (QKRS) was rejected several times by major CS conferences including STOC, and was never successfully published.

Ernst's work on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was rejected not once, but twice, by the Journal of Chemical Physics.

Binning and Rohrer's report on their first experiments in scanning tunneling microscopy, which earned them a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986, was initially rejected on the grounds that it was "not interesting enough."

These are just a few examples. Many more have been compiled in various publications:

Here are some more Nobel-prize-winning papers that were rejected at first.
Here is a compilation of classic economics papers rejected the first time around.
And here are some famous papers in the field of medicine that were rejected the first time around.
This paper lists influential rejected papers, of which several earned their authors Nobel prizes and several became the most cited papers in their respective journals.
And here are some more reports of Nobel laureates who encountered resistance from reviewers and editors to their award-winning work.
And, yet another list.


Can a PhD student accused of plagiarism revise/resubmit the thesis?

I think it's relevant what kind of plagiarism this is.

If it's serious plagiarism, such as quoting large blocks of text without proper attribution, then that can be a serious academic offense. Asking why you can't just change it and re-submit is like asking why you can't just re-take an exam if you're caught cheating or why you can't just give the item back and forget everything if you're caught stealing.

Depending on your institutions procedures you might be allowed to resubmit if it's found that the plagiarism was minor, accidental or not actually plagiarism but I suspect you're missing the point.

Plagiarism in a submitted thesis isn't like a simple technical error to be corrected, it's potential wrong-doing or dishonesty to be investigated.


Is it a faux pas to offer a favor to a professor who has written you a letter of recommendation / served as a reference?

This may vary greatly from person to person, but I, at least, would feel it was inappropriate to accept such a favor from somebody who I had written a recommendation for (unless it would already have been appropriate between us otherwise).

Personally, I feel that writing letters of recommendation for good people is not a favor, but a responsibility, a duty, and a privilege.  It is a responsibility and a duty because it is one of those little pieces of service that is vital to supporting the scientific endeavor and maintaining its quality.  It is a privilege because my opinions get to help shape the future of the field, and by supporting people who I believe in, I get to help make it the environment that I wish it to be.

In short: gratitude from a recommendee is appropriate.  Quid pro quo is not.  I would not hold it against somebody who offered a favor in return, but I would politely decline.

As I said, however, opinions on where the boundaries lie vary.  For example, I would not have requested information about web resources in the same email, as the professor did for you.  I personally think that is a faux pas (but, as noted, I'm pretty hard-line in my opinions here).  Thus, in responding, I don't think that you committed an error, though I would find the whole interchange a bit dubious myself.


Having my first supervision soon, but I have nothing to tell or even ask

I would guess that your supervisor simply wants to stay in touch, in general. I am in mathematics, but/and in early stages and even during their thesis-writing, my students often have said that they have no coherent questions, nothing to show, etc. In recent years I've attempted to more forcefully make the point that our weekly meetings are not at all necessarily about "good questions" (in math, the usual joke is that to be able to ask a good question is often more difficult than proving a good theorem...) nor about "progress". Rather, it's to stay in touch, chat about the project and related matters. Often, by-the-way questions come to light, often disclaimed as "dumb", but these are really the only questions anyone every has, and mostly I can answer them.

In a subtler way, "chatting" about things related to your project, or even only very distantly related, helps your advisor get to know you in that context. Very-experienced people can make a lot of high-likelihood inferences from details of casual technical conversation.

Also, there's the pep-talk aspect. Assuming things are going even approximately alright, your advisor has that opportunity to encourage you, or reassure you, etc. For that matter, especially later, it may become rather difficult for you to see whether you're making good progress, or not. After all, you've not written sooooo many theses? In contrast, presumably your advisor has seen many examples, and can reassure you that, yes, everything really does take this long, even when one works very hard.


The title of a book is different in the catalogue and on the cover. How do I cite it?

List both. The official title is whatever is on the book, no matter what (so even including any typos and stuff). Still, it makes sense to mention the problem:

  Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy [also known as "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy"]. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.

Bear in mind that the title is the one listed inside (on the first sheet of paper), not on the cover (thanks Andrew for pointing this). Also, I would include the ISBN in this case, even if you don't include it for other book references. Either in a standard way as shown above, or in a note like the following; remember that rules for providing auxiliary information are quite loose and you can twist them to your needs:

  Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. [also known as: "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy". ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.]


It asks for willingness, not experience. A simple statement that you are, indeed, willing to work with people from anywhere, industry or otherwise, if it advances the art and the science is enough. Provided that you believe that, of course.

But you also need to be aware that industry partners have their own agendas and they aren't always aligned with dissemination of knowledge. But, as a student, you should be able to get good advice from advisors about how to deal with such things.

Collaborative relationships are generally good as long as they aren't exploitative. So, the advice is to be open, but keep a certain wariness.


Is it wise for researchers to thank Alexandra Elbakyan (founder of Sci-Hub) in the paper acknowledgements?

I'm hoping here that you want to express your opinion that we need a site on which broad copyright license is granted by authors, rather than held closely. I hope you aren't expressing favor of a site in which copyrights of others are simply ignored and not respected and on which illegal activities occur.

I, too, think a site on which people voluntarily agree to a broad license to their work is granted would be a very valued thing. But I wouldn't praise any site that actively encourages the disrespect of authors and their rights.

I don't have a lot of use, either, for journals and other publishers that demand the rights from authors, but that is a different problem.

But, to answer the question directly, associating yourself professionally with behavior treated by many as unethical and even illegal, is probably a mistake. Tactical, if nothing else. You won't really effect the needed change that way.


Is this rejection rude? Should I apply to another position in the same University?

This seems to me like a normal rejection letter.  They normally don't really contain any information except "you didn't get the job".  Some letters do go on for longer about "we had so many great candidates and we wish we could hire them all, blah blah blah" but I wouldn't really say that makes them more polite.

In particular, I certainly would not draw any conclusions about the "healthiness" of the environment from this letter.  It might be a good department or a bad one, but this letter doesn't help you to determine which; you'll need to investigate that in other ways.  See:

How can I detect a toxic environment while on the interview circuit?
"Warning signs" that candidates should be aware of during an academic job interview
What things can I do as a job market candidate to gauge the internal political culture of a department that is hiring?


If I may paraphrase your question, it sounds like you would like to use money to tilt the playing field of a faculty search in your wife’s favor. You would like to know if your plan can work.

Sadly for you, but happily for our society and the health of our academic institutions, this has zero chance of working. Faculty positions at respected universities are offered based on merit - that is exactly why those places are respected in the first place. If your wife has what it takes to get a job offer, she will get it without the need for any subsidies. If she doesn’t, she won’t get it with or without your subsidy offer. At all US universities where people I know and respect work, the only conceivable reactions to your offer would be bafflement at your cluelessness, if not outright derision and anger at your presumption to be able to influence their hiring process by offering money. Conversely, any institution that would seriously entertain your offer (and I suppose there may exist some third-rate, cash-strapped universities that might) is one where I would not advise your wife to take a job.

To be clear, even respectable institutions may put a price tag on their reputations. If you were to offer, say, a donation of 50 million dollars conditioned on your wife being offered a faculty job (you’d better ask for her to get it with tenure in that case), and your wife was reasonably well-qualified, I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing that there are departments that might find such an offer tempting. A university can do a lot of good things with such a large sum of money, probably enough to offset the risk of any reputational harm they might suffer. But five years’ salary and change? That’s a complete non-starter.

Anyway, good luck to your wife in her job search.


what does [citation] mean in google scholar search results?

[Citation] means that Google Scholar has not been able to find a source for the publication, but that it has inferred that it exists because other publications cite it.

Taken directly from Google Scholar help
"These are articles which other scholarly articles have referred to, but which we haven't found online. To exclude them from your search results, uncheck the "include citations" box on the left sidebar."


Will I be allowed to reapply for a mathematics NSF postdoc next year after declining one this year?

If you accept another position before the NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships are awarded, you should officially withdraw your NSF application.  The way the NSF postdocs work is that there is no second round of offers: if you are awarded one and turn it down, then it won't be offered to their next choice of candidate, who might have received it if you had withdrawn your application.  Furthermore, I believe withdrawing will preserve your eligibility for next year, while you will not be eligible if you decline an offer (according to the official instructions).