Benefit of having more than required courses on a Ph.D. transcript

Once you have your doctorate people are very unlikely to care which courses you took to get there. Especially in academia, though there might be some value for a specialized industrial job.
The trick, however, is whether sitting in will give you enough incentive to learn the material enough to benefit your research. Probably it will, based on your question, but some people need a goad to work hard.
If the knowledge will be helpful and you can put in some effort, then I'd suggest just sitting in (or auditing) would be best. You don't want additional courses to actually interfere with your research.


If you need a reference that supports the factual information that roses are red etc., then you have to look up the original sources and cite those. If, however, you refer to a synthesis of the information that the author of your sample text has derived from the original sources (for example "flowers have different colors"), then you must cite the sample text.

Having said that, it is sometimes advisable to look up the references also in the latter case. First, because the information contained in them might be interpreted in different ways, and second, because you might learn something useful from them.

Only when you absolutely cannot access the original source, you may resort to a secondary citation, such as [3] as cited in [1].


acceptance of a publication by the number of the citations

17 pages of manuscript usually shrink to eight or ten in the journal, and 37 citations does not sound like an exceptionally large number.

It depends on the journal you want to submit this paper to. Change the typesetting to the format of that journal, to see how many pages you actually have, and then compare to other articles in there.

Generally: It doesn't matter, if it's not totally off. Is you article well written, scientifically rigorous, referencing the scientific background, and adds something new to it? Then submit it to a journal where it fits in.


Which is better at verifying that a conference is reliable: Scopus, IEEE Xplore or DBLP?

Anyone who is reasonably experienced in your field (i.e., anyone who might hire you) will know which venues are "relevant".  They won't base this on IEEE Xplore, Scopus, or DBLP, but on their own knowledge of the field.

Hopefully, anyone who would hire you will also know enough to evaluate your work directly to some extent, rather than relying on the reputation of the venue as a proxy for the value of the work itself.


PhD advisor wrote a review of my PhD work without me, any grounds for complaint?

If the images were properly cited, and your advisor got permission from the publisher (or other copyright holder) to publish copies, then there's likely little you can do. You likely assigned copyright to the publisher during the publication process. If there are proper citations, then there's probably no plagiarism.

You may not get the citations directly, but you will get traffic to your articles if the review article is decent. Many people prefer to cite the original rather than review articles. There's several examples of citations to non-original articles leading to inaccuracies since the review may get some facts wrong about the originals, thus there can be some wariness in some communities to cite review articles.


Is it called research misconduct when someone publish his own work under the name of other people?

This does not sound ethical at all. I would say that both your friend and the people who are willing to take credit for his work are lying and misrepresenting their accomplishments.

Furthermore, what your friend is doing is extremely short-sighted. If the material in his publications is remarkable as you state, then he will gain far more citations in the long term by having his name on all of them, rather than trying to artificially inflate his citation count for short-term gains.


Do I need to make a Bachelor's thesis to apply to a master's degree from a top 100 University in the world?

I've never been on an (academic) admissions committee, but I can hardly imagine that, instead of reading the title of still another bachelor thesis, I find "exempted by university from writing bachelor thesis because of my course performance near the top of class," and consider that a negative. So I don't think you should sweat that. In most fields, undergraduates are not expected to have done research prior to taking up graduate studies; exceptions, as I have learned here, include math where this appears to be more commonplace. For some of your target fields (eg, supply chain management), I know it isn't, or at least wasn't, as some of my research was arguably on the most theoretical end of it, but I had no relevant experience with it prior to writing my paper; but that could have changed. I don't know about the others.

In terms of being accepted at a good school, the ranking of your alma mater is probably what I would worry about most. You'll need strong letters, ideally from people known internationally (check their publications; ask them). You should definitely approach someone from your U.S. experience for a letter.

Finally, your first, second, and last question (as well as part one of your question 4) are highly personal decisions that you are unlikely to get feedback on here. They are off-topic, and even if they weren't, I wouldn't ask such questions on an anonymous internet forum. Ask friends, family, any mentor, and yourself.


Academic Affiliation - Paper will be Resubmitted during PhD but published as an AP in another institution

Affiliation is primarily so that people can contact you and so that names can be disambiguated. On the other hand, you probably need to honor the institution that enabled your work. List an email and and affiliation that will be useful to people after publication. But in the acknowledgements you can indicate the prior affiliation with appropriate thanks.

However, their are some scientific fields in which work is only possible in a lab funded by some entity that must be credited. In those fields, the PI is generally also listed as a co-author of the work, even if s/he does little of the actual research. In those fields it may be necessary, largely for political reasons, to use an affiliation under which the work was done. In such a case, it will be a bit of a dance to do something in the paper that helps readers find you if necessary. Or else you can arrange to have all attempted contacts forwarded to you in the future.


Should I get a BSc at a top-ranked university or a MComp at a lower-ranked university?

If you can attend a top university, do so.  Having other excellent students around can provide a much better learning environment--to the point that in three years at a top place you may learn as much as in four years at a more mediocre institution.  If you do well, you can always do another one or two years of graduate study after your bachelor's degree.


Thesis adviser is demanding i hand over all my work

This sounds like he sees value in the work and wants it completed. It also sounds like you are refusing to collaborate in its completion and so he feels that he has to carry it on alone. But you hold the data he needs to do so.

Whether he is entitled to the work or not depends on how much he contributed to it. But no researcher likes to leave ideas unfulfilled so he is frustrated and probably acting badly. But if you refuse, absolutely, to help, then you are probably acting badly also. Unwillingness to go beyond the minimum requirements isn't a very strong recommendation.

It would be good if the work could be completed and papers written with your name attached to them. Even if he does the work and lists you as second author in some publications you have gained something.

But withholding the work won't get you or anyone anywhere. Others may actually do the work following similar but independent lines of thought leaving you out entirely. Parallel, independent, work is a very common phenomenon.

If he hasn't contributed anything and you intend to finish the work independently then the story might be different, but that sounds unlikely from what you write.


Procedure to follow when added to conference abstract without permission

This kind of thing happens sometimes. It is reasonable to request that you be removed. In many cases, this will be possible while still keeping the abstract. It comes down to how far in advance the conference material is printed/published online.
The organizer mentioned on the conference website can handle this request or forward it to the poor grad student who manages the book of abstracts.

There are a few variables here. If you request the removal of your name directly from the shady collaborators vs. from the conference organizers themselves, it might be helpful in preserving a good-ish relationship with the collaborators. It might also not work if they don't comply.

If you request the removal from the organizers before abstracts have been selected, this might affect the success of that abstract. However, only if the organizers are also the program committee, aka small team.

Ime, this shouldn't affect the group's reputation in the future. Fields probably vary.


How can a grad student get funding without doing research?

Teaching assistantships (TA-ships) should be your savior. I am on the doctoral committee of a graduate student in our department who wants to teach at liberal arts colleges post degree and therefore wants to gain as much teaching experience as possible.

She is still doing research and getting published in top conferences - just not at the scale at which other students (who want to focus primarily on research) are.

Another lesser seen but useful mode of funding is through what most schools call graduate assistantships (GAs). Here, you will be assisting in academic administration or other managerial responsibilities closely associated with research activities but not actual research itself.

I encourage you to explore those options. Departments usually have a limited number of these options.


Why do reviewers summarize a promotion application?

In a typical letter, the overlap with the CV is just a small portion of the letter, so I don't see why it's a problem.  (If it accounts for most of the letter, then something is wrong.)  You're right that it's not logically necessary in a world of people with perfect memory, but it helps remind people of the basic facts and puts the subjective comments in context.  Only a terrible letter would announce "Smith has published seven papers" and then never say anything more about the papers.  It's much more reasonable to lay out the facts and then go on to offer more detailed and evaluative commentary.

There are also issues that are specific to letters of recommendation.  For example, letters of recommendation are often updated over time.  Perhaps the first letter I write for a graduate student is part of a fellowship application.  When she graduates and applies for postdocs, I substantially edit the letter but don't necessarily rewrite it from scratch, and the same document may even last until her tenure case (of course it evolves dramatically over time - by the end four or five substantial changes have been made, and almost none of the original letter remains).  Now one purpose of reciting basic facts is to make it perfectly clear that my judgment really is based on her current accomplishments, and not just thoughtlessly recycled from a previous letter based on older information.  Of course this is far from the only way to show that, but it can't hurt and might sometimes help.


Is it okay to post textbook solutions online?

While I don't think there is anything formally standing in your way of doing this, as long as you don't post the questions themselves or answers from the publisher's answer key, I don't think that it is a wise thing to do.

But I'll focus on future students rather than professors to explain why it isn't wise. For many things the only real way to learn them is to practice. This is true in math and the sciences as well as in, say swimming or chess. Learning involves changing the brain. See, for example, the book The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull.

The implication of this is that, very often, the most important part of a published textbook is the exercises, not the explanatory text. Students need to, perhaps, struggle with those exercises to learn the material. If you give them a shortcut to getting the answer, while it feels good to them, it makes it harder for them to learn the material. Too many students don't understand this (hence the need for a book like Zull's). It isn't a question of being able to turn in "homework" as much as it is having useful practice exercises that you can't short-circuit.

If you want to meet your own goals and also publish something useful, publish a set of additional exercises for a good book instead of answers for the existing exercises. You will find (a) that this is harder and (b) that it increases your own knowledge by changing your own brain.

You could also, as some publishers do, publish solutions to half of your questions. Some textbooks, for example, have solutions to, say, the odd numbered exercises in the backmater.

You might even get an offer from a publisher to do that for other books. Some textbooks, in fact, have the questions provided by other than the author.

But publishing answers is a disservice to other students, not a service.


Submitting a trivial correction to a CS assignment/coursework (i.e. source code)

Contact your professor.  First, stop trying to trivialize your error - it's big enough that your code won't compile, so it's a serious error and that's that.  If the assignment marking requires them to run your code, then you are assured to get a 0 for code that doesn't compile, so you've honestly got nothing to lose here.  If, on the other hand, it's marked by hand without running it, then you need to address the error and how it happened.  This is especially an issue if you showed output from a previous version of the code - you submitted code that clearly didn't produce that output, and that can sometimes be construed as academic dishonesty.

Your professor has probably been around long enough (read: a few days) to understand that undergrads sometimes submit code with errors accidentally.  Perhaps they submitted the previous version by mistake, or fixed "just one little thing" and forgot to test it.  You would not be the first such student, and usually the professor will not get angry about it.

However, all of this being said, this doesn't mean that the prof needs to actually do anything about it.  Depending on their particular style, you might get ignored.  For instance, if everyone had the same deadline and it has long since passed, then submitting a correction is probably not something that the prof will allow - what evidence does this professor have that you didn't spend extra days perfecting bad code and now are ready to submit it?

But to answer the original question - these sorts of requests are made all the time, and it is unlikely to affect you negatively.  The longer you wait, the worse this gets.


What does it take to get a tenure track position at an Ivy League School?

The Ivy League is an athletic league, not a list of the top universities.  They are all very good, and some of them are great, but nobody thinks UPenn is more prestigious or a higher-ranked university than Stanford (despite the fact that UPenn is in the Ivy League and Stanford is not).

Furthermore, the strength of individual departments is correlated with the overall prestige of the university, but there's a lot of variation.  The prestige of the university plays some role in recruiting faculty, but departmental strength is the primary factor.

Finally, schools really shouldn't (and generally don't) care much about the pedigree of the candidate.  They are much more interested in accomplishments than educational background.  Of course, there's a strong correlation between accomplishments and pedigree, for at least two reasons.  Talented, ambitious students are likely to have the opportunity to attend top schools, and they often take that opportunity.  Once they are there, they benefit from an environment full of top faculty and other students like them.  So it's no surprise that many professors at top schools studied at such schools themselves, but they didn't all do so.

As for what other factors come into play, that's a very broad question.  At top research universities, the big question is how good your research is, primarily judged by external letters of evaluation.  There's nothing special about getting a job at a top school, beyond the degree of competition.

Regarding the Ivy League students who end up teaching at lower-ranked universities, that's numerically guaranteed.  Every research university graduates more Ph.D. students than it hires, and typically far more, so there's no way they could all get jobs at schools like the ones they attended.  (But keep in mind that most colleges are not research universities and do not offer Ph.D. programs.)  To a first approximation, most Ph.D. recipients from top universities will get jobs at lower-ranked research universities (or other types of jobs entirely, for example teaching-focused or industrial).  Most students from lower-ranked research universities will not get jobs at research universities at all, although of course they may still end up in academia.


What's the proper response after receiving an email from an unfamiliar sender accusing an academic of my discipline of misconduct with evidence?

There is no action needed or appropriate on your part unless you are part of some official investigation.
You might want to be wary of both parties in the future, however. Especially the email sender. Accusing others with such mail is a form of defamation.


I failed a written exam and I don't know how to reply to my professor

Tell the professor what happened.  If the professor already knows about your issues, there's no need to belabor them further.  If not, summarize as you did in your question here.

Explain that it was incomplete because, although you worked for the entire allotted time (if you did), you didn't finish.

Your question suggests that you may be used to an oral component on exams.  If that's the case, perhaps the professor would examine you by telephone, or Skype, or something.

The professor's email, as summarized by you, shows that the professor cares about you and wants you to do well.

Addendum: If you have academic trouble, always start with the professor.  If you get an answer you don't like, you can then move on to department heads, academic or disability services, etc.  Please give the professor a chance first.


How to deal with lots of information as a Computer Science student?

It is hard to diagnose a problem at a distance and I'm not sure I have a good sense of the core issues, but one thing seems to stand out in your post. I wonder if you are trying to treat every fact and bullet point as of equal weight, value, and importance. That normally isn't true, even in technical subjects like CS. A good lecturer will come to class with a few (about 3) important points that need to be made. Everything else will support those. You want to walk away from the class knowing what those are.

Of course, some professors will walk in with a big powerpoint deck and just run through the slides as if they are all important. Those lectures may sound good, but a more focused approach would be better for them and for you. You can't affect that, of course. But if it is possible for you to do it, try to get the professor to distribute those slides prior to class. My strong advice is to print them out on paper, maybe 2-up or 4-up, and take notes directly on the printed slides. No more than a few words per slide. Don't try to capture every word.

I also wonder what you mean by "summarizing" your notes. Some people would, again, mean trying to capture every thought. Capturing them by typing them isn't actually very effective in getting it into your brain, as opposed to your computer. What you want is to distill the notes into the few key ideas that make the rest of it easier to grasp.

However, don't neglect to do the assigned exercises. That is where real learning occurs. Focus especially on the assignments.

If your university/professor permits, it might be worth forming a study group with some (three or four) of the other students. Get together a few times a week and exchange ideas about what is important and also ideas about how to learn the stuff.


Why did the editor give my peer review to another peer reviewer before their review was written?

This depends a bit on the journal but is not that uncommon.

If a paper is resubmitted after a first round of reviews, then the reviewers at the second round can sometimes access the comments from the original submission.  In particular, this allows the reviewers of the updated version to check how the authors have accommodated the comments of the original reviewers.

It can also happens that a second referee report was never submitted, or that some glitch has delayed the refereeing process; as a result the editor has to find a trusted referee to quickly submit a second report, and this trusted referee can be given access to earlier reviews to speed up her/his decision.

It may also happen that the original reports of two referees disagree in their recommendation, and that the editor sends all the relevant material, including referee reports, to an adjudicating referee.


Is it counter-productive to admit obvious weaknesses when applying for a position?

Describe yourself accurately enough to let the program organizers decide if you will benefit from the course. In that sense, yes, you should admit your weaknesses, but it's indeed counterproductive to actually phrase things that way - you are the applicant; it's not your job to decide what is a significant weakness.

You obviously think you are ready for the course and would benefit - let the organizers know what your reasons are, and why you are enthusiastic. If you are applying on the strength of being a good software developer in general, including a link to some public code you've written might help.

(And if you are feeling self-conscious about not having an undergraduate CS degree, go and get something like Cormen et al.'s "Introduction to Algorithms" and go through it cover to cover. You will hit most of the things you would be expected to know cold.)


What are the advantages and downsides of a broad PhD thesis?

There are dissertations of either kind: Those which are clearly focused on one topic, and those which cover a wide range of different topic under some rather loose "umbrella title".
Clearly, the traditional approach is the former. But the latter is rather common these days.
Whether the latter is acceptable depends on your committee, and thus to a large extent on the advisor who writes the report and sits on the committee.  If that person/those persons agree, there should be no problem. Overall, as far as I can tell the latter should be no problem these days, as long as the overall scientific output is on par.
On the other hand, you should take into account that looking in too many directions at the same time might be detrimental to your PhD in a different way, if its consequence is that you explore many directions but complete none.  In that sense, staying more focused is a "safer" option.  On the other hand, a PhD is a good time to exlore different directions, if you make sure that you don't use this as an excuse not to get projects finished.


Bad GRE scores, but otherwise decent application to PhD program. Still worth it?

Good question. Have considering applying abroad where you might benefit from not needing to report the GRE? If you can go abroad, then you should strongly consider applying to universities where you would not only benefit from being able to show your strongest suit (i.e., all of your grades and achievements rather than GRE) but also facing less competition, cost, and higher probabilities of funding. Let me know if this is an option and, if so, I can add more.


How to deal with these so called "Minor revisions"?

Both the reviewer and editor are very polite and guarded in their answers. Reviewer #1 basically says that the analysis section of the paper is too light. OP seems to accept that in the comments. "if I simply these discussions (!), it will be revised a lot." Reviewer 1 says the analysis needs to be beefed up, but he is not going to do it. ("Leading the authors further toward a stronger analysis falls beyond the scope of the review...")

Reading between the lines of @Enze Ma's comment, I think I can see the potential problem: The author uses macroscale experiments ---it would help to know a bit about the area in order to understand what that means --- but uses microscale theories to explain these results. This is always going to be a problem and needs to be addressed honestly and directly. What is it about the macroscale results in the paper that make them different from previous work? Are the microscale theories, in fact, able to shed new light on the macroscale resuls? If not, what is the contribution of the paper to existing literature?

This final question is, of course, the most important and should be addressed first. There should be no waffling about the contribution. "I think my paper may extend the field ... " is not going to cut it. "My paper extends the field in these ways:..." is much more positive, stronger, less speculative, and is likely what reviewer #1 is looking for.


Timeline of "Quick opinions" in math journal refereeing

I've been asked for "quick opinions" from a variety of good-to-best journals, and I try to meet the obvious goal of "quick...", if nothing else.
In some cases, I've easily seen the need for various sorts of revision, and immediately recommended that, with a promise that I'd look at it again later when it was more readable.
In some cases, I do also easily confess that, while I myself may not see the point or interest of a project, perhaps there is one... and, if nothing else, the author(s) perhaps should revise to make that clearer (if possible).
Anyway, usually I succeed in giving "quick responses" in a week or less, as one data point.


Is it OK to thank the examiners in the acknowledgements of the final draft of a PhD thesis?

Peer-reviewers of academic research papers are not supposed to be authors' friends, and on many occasions are direct opposite. However, it is not uncommon to thank them in the final version of the paper, because their contribution often helps to improve the paper considerably.

In the same way, I think that it is OK to thank the examiners for their suggestions, which helped you to improve the presentation of your thesis.


"scholarly activities" vs. "research activities" in Australia for the purpose of applying to a lecturer position

I am currently out of academia, but have worked at Lecturer level in Australia (US equivalent of Assistant Prof).  To my understanding, asking about your "research activities" is a cue for you to talk about your published (and in-progress) papers, and your field of research, and "scholarly activities" is a bit broader, allowing you to talk about other activities that do not result in publications to you (e.g., refereeing papers, editing a journal, holding an administrative position in a professional body, etc.).  That is how I would interpret it, but if in doubt, be proactive and contact them; there is zero chance of your enquiry being taken negatively.


Sending the same proposal to multiple funding agencies

It really is better to not do it. At least simultaneously (might be ok if the proposal was rejected).
If you absolutely have to go ahead, try to fine-tune and change the proposal as much as possible according to the agency requirements.


Is there any reliable website other than google translate to translate from Chinese to English?

Please pay a mathematical freelancer on Upworks.


Value of Print on Demand Publishing of PhD Dissertation

I am wondering that if a PhD dissertation is of sufficient standard to be passed by the relevant university (assuming the University is reputable itself), why does it need to be peer-reviewed?

In an ideal world, that could be reasonable, but in practice it's unclear what the standards are for a dissertation.  For example, imagine a student who works diligently for years but doesn't accomplish much.  Many advisors, even in very prestigious departments, will eventually let the student graduate with a minimal dissertation.  Or what about a sloppy student whose dissertation is full of minor errors? Hopefully the advisor will put pressure on the student to fix the errors, but sometimes, given the choice between letting the student graduate and keeping on struggling fruitlessly with this, the advisor caves in and approves a shoddy thesis.  Perhaps this shouldn't happen, but occasionally it does.

Of course peer-reviewed journals are also far from perfect, but their judgments are somewhat clearer.  A paper accepted by the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society is a more meaningful guarantee of quality than a dissertation from a top-five math department, although on average the dissertations will be better.

Peer review can also lead to valuable feedback and suggestions.  A dissertation has often not received many comments from anyone not on the thesis committee, and getting anonymous feedback from other experts can be important.

  Also, if it is reproduced as a book by POD, why shouldn't it add to the publication record of the author.

The problem is that it doesn't "add" anything that wasn't already there.  Your dissertation is part of your academic track record, and your decision to let a company print it on demand is not additional evidence of quality or impact.

It's certainly useful to try to get visibility for your dissertation.  In a field where this is considered appropriate, posting it online (for example, on the arXiv) is very valuable.  Far more people will look at it there than via any POD publisher.  Letting someone print it on demand too can't hurt, as long as there are no copyright issues, but it won't help much either.

  The PhD is often the first major work of many students (I fall in this category) so making the most out of it is the only way to add value to one's CV.

Certainly.  In most fields, you can make the most of it academically by turning it into journal articles or a scholarly book.  Mathematics isn't a book-based field, so I can't speak to this from personal experience, but my understanding is that publishing a dissertation as a book involves a lot of review and editing, and it's really not the same as letting a POD publisher reprint the dissertation.


The editor is probably referring to another round of review - more than likely sent to the same reviewers, though this statement does not explicitly say so. Essentially, based on the previous round of reviews it seems the paper need not be rejected outright but requires some major revisions such that reviewers need to evaluate whether those revisions alleviate their concerns.

If the editor meant that it was to be sent to a new reviewer they would have said "an additional reviewer" rather than additional review.

Of course, it's also possible that the editor messed up the English, though I think that is unlikely in this case; the situation sounds pretty clear because of the need for revisions. If a paper needs to go to another reviewer for an editor to make a decision that would usually happen before any revisions (this would normally happen if the previous reviewers disagree, or if the previous reviewers indicate in their review that there are parts of the paper they did not feel qualified to assess).


What is the page limit for an open access review paper in IEEE or Elsevier?

IEEE say on their FAQ-page:

  There is no page limit for articles

It is more complicated for Elsevier, as different journals have different page limitations, you simply have to check the journals' webpages.

Having said that, a paper of 80 pages seems to be rather long - in my field this would certainly result in an immediate rejection, unless you explicitly classify it as a review paper - and that seems to be what you should do. In my field, however, you are not simply writing a review paper, but are usually asked to do so and then it is clear/obvious (even expected) that the paper will be long.

So, if you were asked to write a review paper, everything should be fine, write as many pages as you want. If you have decided on your own to write a review paper, check if you can classify it as a review paper during submission process - if not, tell the editor that this is a review paper (the referees have to know this).


How do journal editors and reviewers view previously published conference paper?

I do not think you really have a choice here: if part of the paper has been previously published elsewhere, you need to mention that fact explicitly.  Not mentioning such is generally considered self-plagiarism and looked on very badly.

Now, depending on how you are re-using the material, there are two different ways that you might do it.  If you were doing a typical "extended version" paper, then the appropriate thing to do is to state this fact both in the introduction and in the cover letter.

It sounds, however, like it's less an extended paper than a repeat of a particular section.  In that case, I would instead recommend putting early in the repeated section a statement like:

  "This section has been adapted from [citation]"

For example, I often do this when presenting background sections, on which the new results of a paper will then be built.  The background section will be adapted to fit the circumstances, of course, but rather than artificially try to paraphrase definitions just for the sake of avoiding self-plagiarism, I prefer to handle the issue by making a clearly stated reuse of background material that is similar in spirit to a block quotation.


Does APA style satisfy AEA style requirements?

No, AEA uses a modified Chicago style. APA formatting will not meet this criteria. PubCSS is currently some distance from being able to implement an AEA paper in CSS. At the moment, I recommend sticking with the AEA-provided LaTeX template.


What if my paper is accepted, but later my institution doesn’t allow me to publish in this journal?

Your question is the result of going against the grain. You should have looked first if your university had any rule regarding which journal to publish. This is important even now as you can re-submit to another unwanted journal by the university.

Depending on the limited data given by yourself I suggest you  get a confirmation from the journal that your article will not be published by them. Until that time, do not send your article to another journal for review.
.
Again I assume that perhaps you wanted to fund the article through university and that is why university refuses article. Is this the case? If it is, then you should either publish without any funding from the university or follow above mentioned suggestion.


What to do when you are suspicious about numerical results in a submitted manuscript that you are reviewing?

You say that you don't have a mathematical reason to be suspicious. But have some reason. You should formulate this as a reason in your report as well as you can.

Moreover, I think that it is totally reasonable to ask for code and data to reproduce the results. Probably the journal has some policy about reproducible research and you could refer to that.


What to do when a referee asks for changes I am not willing to make?

In your question, there is no mention of an editor for the journal to which you have submitted your work. If you disagree with one or more of the reviewers, there is nothing remarkable about that; it is common, a review is an educated opinion about your work, supposedly based on facts. Normally you would provide an account for how you have met the comments (as you seem to have done) and in the cases where you disagree, you provide an account based on facts and reasoning why you think your way is better than that of the reviewer. It should then be up to the editor, not the reviewer, to decide whether your revisions make the manuscript acceptable or not. In some cases the editor will request a second round of reviews, this is normal, particularly if the revisions have been so substantial that the manuscript is quite different from the original.

This is what I see as a relatively typical way for a review process to take place.


One of my profs did his PhD at the University I want to apply for my math PhD. Should I get a recommendation from him?

As a tiebreaker, it might be nice to have a strong letter from someone who went to the target university, especially if it has a highly specialized or unconventional program.
However, yours is not such a marginal case. You stand to benefit more by getting a letter from a professor who knows you closely and can say positive things about your research ability.


Should I consider my conference paper as published, if fee is paid but I didn't attend the conference?

If the proceedings have been published and your paper is included (and usually at this time it is included), your paper is published.

Check the proceedings.

Is this kind of link of the conference that you need: index of proceedings

I think it will be published later. At this point if nobody presented your paper at the conference, it has to be considered public after inclusion in the proceedings only, so you need to have evidence of such proceedings publication.


They aren't that low. For example, here in Finland:

a typical salary for a PhD student: 2400–3000 e/month
a typical salary in the industry for someone who just got their MSc degree: 3500 e/month.


Admission into masters degree without partial or full transcript

It should be fine; we're aware of the disparity between our application deadlines and your graduation dates. When you graduate you'll likely have your grad-school acceptance (here's hoping!) and you'll have to send an official transcript to that school to confirm your degree.


Co-authors not willing to publish after rejection. May I drop them?

It depends what the co-authors did. If they were involved in the work they should normally be authors of the paper. I think the important questions you need to answer are:

What exactly do you mean by "showed no interest after repeated calls"? I have never heard of someone who does not want a "free" paper published, unless they disagree with the methods or conclusions in the paper. What is the reason they are not interested?
Did you ask them if they agree to not have their name on it? If they agree: problem solved. If not, that means they do agree to be co-authors: problem solved.


Developing a work ethic, or learning/doing things you aren't interested in (prelim topics)

In this case, the best way to motivate yourself to study this uninteresting material is to try to become interested in it. It's important not to specialize too early, and as a third-year undergrad, you should only now be in the process of deciding a broad subfield of mathematics to specialize in (usually Algebra, Analysis, Geometry/Topology, Applied Math, or some combination of the above). Given that you're interested in becoming an algebraist, it's simply too early in the game to be crossing specific sub-fields of algebra off your list. Especially not Galois Theory, the basics of which you will very likely be expected to know if you take graduate courses in algebraic geometry, number theory, or the like. And even if you don't directly use this material in the future, it's a chance to develop mathematical maturity and intuition. (I'm glad to have been exposed to Galois Theory as an undergraduate, and I'm an analyst!)

As for this particular class, it sounds like it's simply going too fast for you. Which there's no shame in; I certainly had the same experience when taking graduate classes as an undergrad. If you revisit this material in a few years, you may be surprised to find yourself enjoying it. In which case you'll be thankful for anything you learned the first time around, even if it didn't fully sink in.

Basically, you should motivate yourself by keeping in mind that the effort you put into this class will benefit you in ways that aren't apparent right now.


Does having a more successful professor write your letter of recommendation improve your chances of having your application accepted?

Recommendation letters are all about trust: why should the person reading the recommendation letter believe the person who is writing it, when they say that they should place trust in you?
Thus, all else being equal, a professor with better qualifications provides a stronger recommendation.

Other considerations, however, can be more important, as it all boils down to the basic question of trust.  For example:

A little-known professor who knows you well and has worked together with you is a better recommender than a world-famous professor who can only say: "This student was one of 100 who got a good grade in my giant class this year."
A professor with a close colleague in the department where you are applying may be much more trusted in their recommendation than a world-famous professor who nobody in the department knows personally.

Furthermore, you probably will have more than one letter writer, and diversity in your letter-writers can be a virtue: some more prominent, others more in depth, etc.  Thus, you really need to look at this as a whole package, and say: "What is the combination of people who will, as a collective, present the most favorable and trustworthy picture of me to the particular places where I am applying?"


Is it possible to change something on a research paper between the period of acceptance and publishing?

My advice is to contact the editor of the journal and ask about your desired change. The editor may send it to one of the reviewers, or may accept the change without further review. But communication with the editor is what you need.


What is an "international equivalent" in the sentence

What does "international equivalent" to high school refer to?

The typical American university is not going to know if your local school is "good enough" to be equivalent to US high school.  If you have completed whatever schooling is customary before enrolling in a university in your country, then if you claim it is equivalent to US high school you will very likely be believed.  Do plan to provide a document showing you completed whatever schooling, translated as necessary, in case someone asks for it.
While the vast majority of US university students have graduated from high school, plenty of people get university degrees without graduating from high school.  So this is not a question that needs careful thought.


Creativity of master students in developing new methods

I categorise potential thesis topics into high-stake and low-stake ones:

For low-stake topics, I have a clear plan what should be done in which order – unless some unexpected obstacle occurs or something new and exciting is found.
The student still needs to apply their skills and knowledge to solve smaller problems along the way, but I do not expect any obstacles that I cannot solve with a day’s thinking myself.
Thus, I can always keep the thesis work from stalling due to this reason.

Such a thesis may produce a publishable result, usually if the student works efficiently and thoroughly.
High-stake topics (like developing a new method) involve a considerable amount of trial and error or a considerable creative leap.
In particular, I do not have a good solution to the problem in mind (otherwise it wouldn’t be a high-stake topic).
However, I have at least a few approaches in mind to ensure that the student has sufficient work to do.

It may happen that the student will spend their entire thesis pursuing dead ends and their thesis will be a catalogue of what they tried and what didn’t work.
The student may still get the best grade for their thesis, but it may be a very frustrating experience, and there is likely no further useful by-product from this thesis, such as a publication.
On the other hand, if the student succeeds, this usually means that their work is really useful or interesting and likely to be publishable.

I would never give such a topic to a student without informing them about the above risk (there always are some low-stake topics lying around; so they always have a choice).
Also, I would only offer such a topic to a student who shows at least some promise in terms of enthusiasm, discipline, history, knowledge, and intelligence (though it is often not possible to assess all of these factors).

Note that, while there technically is a grey area between the two, few thesis topics actually fall into it (at least in my field).

Now, why am I telling you all this?
If you want to provoke your students’ creativity, you need to give them high-stake topics that force them to brood over it for some time.
However, this does not work for every student, and students should not be exposed to such topics only with prior warning.
The latter is not only to allow them make an informed choice but also to prepare them for what is to come, should they take the challenge.

A few further notes and answer to your specific questions:

  Is there a point giving this task to a student or should I forget it and solve it myself?

Never rely on a thesis to produce anything.
Even promising students may turn out to be overconfident, lack discipline or stamina.
There simply is no feasible way to judge a student’s prospects for a thesis.
If this is important or promising, do it yourself.

  More general: What creativity can I expect from master students to create new methods? Am I expecting too much?

That’s hard to answer as it depends on what makes for a new method in your field.
In general the best I would expect is combining existing and adapting existing methods, not developing something new from scratch.

  How can I foster creativity in my students?

In my experience, to be creative about a given scientific problem requires:

Familiarity – give your students time and encourage them to familiarise themselves with the problem, investigate why established methods fail, etc.
At least in my field, this makes for a considerable portion of the thesis time.
Just writing down the problem and thinking very rarely works.
Inspiration – talk with them about the problem frequently; ask them questions about their approaches; encourage them to browse the literature.
Being open to failure – encourage your student to practice a lot of trial and error, and be clear that their is no shame in exploring dead ends.
Freedom and time – do not demand regular results from your students in a phase where they may need to reflect their results, failures, the literature, etc.
Make it clear to your students that their problems require such phases.


How do you manage to study and have a balance in your life at the same time?

Yes, it matters that you are in grade 9. It is probably a good thing that you are able to do what you like to do (math and computing), but it seems too early to focus yourself quite so much on narrow interests. The problem that might arise is that you get burned out before you are 20 years old with no backup plan for your life and also poor health and no relationships with people. That would be sad.

It is good to work intensely at something, but not quite as good to do so to the exclusion of other things. There is a lot to learn, and you are recognizing that now, at least a bit. In fact, making time for those other things, such as exercise (aerobic especially) and relaxation (reading, talking, ...) can actually make the intense study that you do more effective. At least this is true for most people, though there are exception. But, for most, continuing to push hard against an intellectual problem, say in math, can just waste time and lead to a deeper block, than taking a break. It turns out that, again, for most people, the brain/mind will continue to work on putting connections together when you are engaged in other activities, even sleeping.

But, for someone as young as yourself, I'd suggest that you think about the following priorities. First, your health, both mental and physical. Next, your relationships, both family and friends. Next, getting a lot of experience of different kinds, studying lots of things with deep study of a few of them. You seem to have the deep study part mastered, but may be missing out on the wide experience that can make the deep study more meaningful and also give you options to change direction as you grow older.

It is good to have some direction in your life, but not, yet, a good idea to exclude all other potential paths that you might follow.

As for time management, you can do it formally, or informally. If you joint a sports team or other directed activity, then your schedule will be set for you. But you can also just decide that you will ride your bike for an hour every day - preferably with a few friends. Or you can just decide, even more informally, that when you get stuck on a math problem that you take a walk in the woods for half an hour, or read a chapter in a book. Something to provide a bit of variety.

At a later stage in your life you will be forced by circumstances to specialize in something. It is good if you put that off for a while so that you have the opportunity to make the decision about where to specialize with more background knowledge and experience than you now have.


Translation of academic papers from Japanese?

The American Mathematical Society's publishing arm puts out the series Translations of Mathematical Monographs. A significant portion of the series (for reasons beyond me) are translations from Japanese language originals. Getting in touch with the editors of that series may be a good place to get started.


I've come to associate complex sentence structure with "correct" scientific reporting, and anything less complex as too informal/colloquial

For science to be correct it has to pass the review process. The reviewers are usually experienced and native to the narrow field that is covered in the paper, so however complex the language, they can handle it and gauge the science behind (unless we are talking about extremely obfuscated writing, of course). From that standpoint, the language complexity doesn't matter.

The degree of colloquialism that is found in papers usually depends on the field. As an example, when computer science began to shift towards personal narrative ("we did...", "our research..." vs. "if x is done...", "one can deduce...") a number of years (or decades) back, the new papers gradually became more colloquial. Compare that to a typical mathematical or physical paper.

You should also consider that there are a lot of non-native English speakers out there, who struggle to express their thought in a foreign language.

Finally, inexperienced scientists and students tend to "overdo" the writing, using complex structures to convey maturity and confidence. Judging importance of information and expressing it eloquently are skills that are acquired well beyond grad school.

  Is there room for "writing like you talk" in journal publications?

Sure there is, as long as it is professional, i.e. avoid jargon, jokes, etc.

  How do you figure out the correct balance?

That comes with experience, every subsequent paper you write will be an improvement. It is important for you to strive to become better. Experience in writing is not the only thing that will benefit you, but experience while reading as well. The more papers you read, the more patterns of good and bad style you will encounter. Reflecting that on your own style will improve it.


Does an author have to submit an article to Math databases once it has been published in a journal?

For Zentralblatt or MathSciNet, which are by far the most important databases in mathematics, there's no need to manually submit anything.  I would assume the same is true for any comprehensive database (if you depend on author submissions, you won't get anywhere near complete coverage), but I suppose it could depend on the particular case.  I've never heard of ResearchBib, so I can't say anything there.


Should list my advisor as an author on a paper I wrote alone?

You should be a sole author for two reasons. First, your supervisor did not contribute to the paper. Some journals actually make you write out what each author accomplished, so you would be at a loss there anyway. Second, a sole-authored publication will demonstrate that you can work independently, which looks great to faculty search committees! When you are on the market, they want to hire people who will become independent researchers. You are demonstrating that by sole-authorship! If you want to publish with your supervisor because she is well-known in the field, my suggestion is that you talk with her about an additional paper project that both of you can work on.

On a side note, your supervisor might have described your paper as "perfect and complete," though this is only one reviewer's opinion. Though the paper may be at a stage for journal submission, please be prepared that the 2-5 blind reviewers may have different opinions about what is "perfect and complete." You still may get A LOT of revision requests from them. I'm sure you did a great job, I just don't want you to get discouraged if the reviewers end up being more critical.

Best of luck!!!!


When do I use a footnote in a thesis and when do I use parenthesis for extra information?

This is mostly about the reader's flow. Something that is parenthesized is something you expect the reader to actively read, but you're signalling that it's secondary information. The main drawback to parentheses is that if the text in them becomes too long, the reader has to work very hard to remember the main point you're making. You're essentially talking about a lot of unimportant stuff while you have an unfinished, important sentence going. So make sure you put only short, simple things in parentheses.

If you put something in a footnote, you're signalling that the reader should skip it on first reading and they should only investigate if something is unclear, or if it's a second reading and they need all the details. The drawback to footnotes is that they are often more tantalising than they should be. While the reader should ignore them, they are too curious, and break their concentration to look up the footnote. This pulls them out of the text for something they were supposed to ignore.

On the whole, try to avoid both as much as you can. In your example, ie. this method is also known as X, parentheses should be fine and a footnote is probably overkill. However, you could also consider finishing your main point first, and moving the parenthesized statement to the end of the paragraph as a full sentence. That way the reader can finish absorbing the primary information unencumbered by details, and gloss over the aka's once the hard work is finished.


Is It a Common Practice to Contact the Reviewers?

My strong advice is a clear NO!

There are several reasons:

The journal might contact other reviewers, not the ones you suggested.
Possible conflict of interest, even if you don't send your paper with the review request
The reviewing process is a business between the editor and the reviewer. It is specially designed to enhance the quality of the accepted papers (Blind, double blind reviews, etc). Once you contact the reviewers, any chance of a blind review goes up in smoke.
If the potential reviewer that you contact, is not selected by the journal he/she might feel offended.

So, in a word:

 NO


Is it acceptable to ask or present a recommendation letter from a professor who left the university?

Yes he can give you a reference.

But he can’t say he is still at X university , it has to be clear he has moved on just in case they try to contact him.

People move all the time...

Some universities still receive reference requests for professors who are no longer available (death, no contact etc) and organize another professor or the Dean to write a reference to help the student.


Failed entrepreneur applying for master oversea

At least for admission to strong CS departments in the US, I strongly recommend that you take the GRE, especially the subject test in computer science, and do well.  Otherwise, the evidence that you would complete an MS program is rather thin.

Also, you must have recommendation letters.  Otherwise, your application may not even be reviewed by the admissions committee.  (In my department, for example, incomplete applications are automatically flagged by our admissions database system, and applications that are still flagged several weeks after the application deadline are automatically rejected without review.)


How to ensure committee reads and comments on dissertation draft prior to final examination?

This is a real problem in practice. Basically everyone I know (and this, at times, includes me -- though I make it a point to set aside sufficient time to mark it up throughout and return the comments to the student) reads theses the day before the defense, with all of the consequences you mention. I have had more than one case where a student thought that receiving no comments meant that everyone was ok with the content of the thesis, just to find out that the defense did not go well and the committee wanted to have substantial additional work before they will approve the thesis. Not good.

I think the most common cause is that committee members simply don't have the time. To read and mark up a 150 page thesis thoroughly takes well over a day of full time work. To a committee member, this is unproductive work -- no publications will come of it, no grant funding, very little appreciation by the department. So it slips to the bottom of the todo list until it can't be pushed off any more (the day before the defense).

The second most important cause is that theses never get finished on time. I have received theses from candidates the day before the defense -- that's definitely not enough time and the candidates should have known better. I now ask that they at least send me the draft they have two weeks before the defense, but not always are they in a form that makes it worth reading through.

In the end, there is probably little you can do to affect the underlying problem, which is that committee members have little motivation to give a candidate good feedback. Your best bet is to keep them up to date with regard to what you do: make an appointment to go see them every 6 months and tell them what you have been doing; if you have drafts of individual chapters, send it to your committee members as soon as you have it; invite them to seminar talks you give; etc. Build a relationship. If a committee member is interested and feels engaged, you're more likely to get good feedback at a time when it's useful.

On the other hand, if the only time when you see your committee members is (i) when you enlist them to your committee, (ii) for your proposal defense, (iii) for your final defense, and if you give them the draft of your thesis 3 days before the defense, then don't be surprised if you get negative comments during the defense or in reply to your thesis.


How to reply a faculty to ask him to recommend you to another faculty who might be recruiting this year?

No - this professor doesn't know who you are or if you're any good. They saw your research interests, and they didn't align to what they're looking for right now. Somewhat doubtful they even read your CV.
If they didn't say "I recommend you contact Dr. Y," then there is nothing material you can get from them.


Is it illegal to cite books that were illegally downloaded or accessed from a library?

The illegal act of course is the download, never the citation. @Federico Poloni answered that correctly.

However:

  If they aren't available in the university library, if you can't really afford the books

besides the possibilities @StasK mentioned:

In many countries there exist inter-library catalogues (e.g. GVK) that tell you which libraries have the book you're looking for. Once you know that (or your local librarian found out for you), you can ask your local librarian to either get the whole book via inter-library loan, or
to order a partial copy (e.g. the chapter or the exact pages you need).
There are also commercial document delivery services (see for an example: Subito). Which offer tracking down documents and again either loan of the book or partial copies.
Even the linked commercial service charges only 9 € per book inside Germany for non-commercial customers and 25 € worldwide for commercial customers but excluding UK and USA (I don't know why).
If you're talking about a thesis: university libraries usually have a copy at least of all PhD theses done at that university, for Bachelor or Master theses you'd often have to ask the institute (or supervisor) where the work was done.
In Germany, the national library has a copy of each book published in Germany or in German (or about Germany) from 1913 on. There are also field-specific large libraries, as for example the  TIB Hannover for technical literature.

So, are you sure "can't really afford" is a valid argument?

(Whether you nevertheless download pirate copies, or ask your neighbour to let you have a look into her book, or buy it despite the fact that the neigbour at the other desk owns it as well, stays entirely your own choice.)

If I have to get a book by inter-library loan, I try to make a copy of the vital chapter. This is legal here in Germany (single copies for personal use, reseach or teaching of not too large part of a book).


How to cite lecture notes? (and should I even do this?)

You should make a good-faith effort to find and cite original source of the results (to give proper credit).  You should only cite the lecture notes if (1) they are the original source, or (2) the original source is inaccessible, either literally (out of print or unpublished) or figuratively (written in a foreign language, with excessive generality or formality, or just badly).

Finding the original source may require significantly more scholarly diligence on your part than the author of the lecture notes, since most lecture-note authors (including myself) are fairly sloppy with references.  Such is life.


Comparison between benefits of publishing a paper at a conference and a journal

This depends on your field. In computer science, publishing at the best conferences is worth more on your CV than publishing in journals. In most other fields, journal publications (even in mediocre journals as long as they are properly peer-reviewed) are worth much more on your CV than conference papers at even the best peer-reviewed conferences.

Assuming that you are not in computer science or a field that shares its unusual norms, a good journal paper will be:

A more meaningful line on your CV;
More likely to be widely cited (or cited at all);
More likely to be thoroughly peer-reviewed, which may help to improve the paper (peer-review at many conferences is cursory or non-existent);
More likely to be indexed by Web of Science and Scopus so that it can be easily found and so that your citations can be counted;
More likely to be assigned a permanent DOI and permanent "home" on the web and in library collections.

Publishing via conferences does have advantages, though:

The publication process is usually faster, which can be particularly
important in fast-moving fields;
Conference papers are (in many if not most fields) much easier to get accepted for publication than papers in good journals;
Conference papers can be a good way to get early feedback on - or publicity for - work in progress;
Some conferences are closely associated with scholarly societies and their journals, and conference papers are sometimes considered
drafts of potential journal papers (authors of the best conference
papers may be invited to submit extended versions to a journal, for
instance);
Some treat conference papers (or at least, conference seminars) as a way to get publicity for already-published journal papers;
Attending conferences is a great way to build connections within your field, learn about the latest work of other groups, and meet
people who may be interested in your results or in working with you
in future. They can also be great fun.


How to address a professor in person at US universities?

"Professor Lastname" is a sensible default, unless and until the professor asks you to call them something else, or you become aware of local customs that are different.

"Sir" and "Madam" are normally not used.


Should conference papers be counted as publications?

If the conference paper was refereed before been accepted for the conference, that counts as a refereed publication. If it was not, it is a non-refereed publication, and should be counted as such.

Different fields have different rules for how publications are accounted for, specially in how multi-author publications are handled, so you should at least state which field you are talking about.


Bachelor's thesis can i use wordings from my supervisor

Do you have a supervisor for the BA thesis? If so, that's the person to talk to. Assuming you get to choose a supervisor, it'd be sensible for you to pick the person you co-authored the paper with. Presumably, they will have no objection to using the text in full for your thesis (including the parts they wrote).

There's no issue with plagiarism, unless your institution has an unusual interpretation thereof. The point of rules against plagiarism isn't to make you pointlessly rewrite your previous work and in any case, co-authored papers don't allow for distinctions between the paragraphs you wrote or the ones someone else wrote, even if you personally can tell them apart.

It's also expected that a supervisor provided input to the thesis and (at least in the US) it's not unusual for that to include substantial editing or clarification. Especially if the thesis is good enough to be published down the road: might as well get started on the process early. You address this by thanking your supervisor in an acknowledgment section, along with other people who read your thesis or provided ideas.

Taking plagiarism rules literally would lead to absurdities like citing "personal communication" over coffee or drinks. If someone provides a really cool idea and you use it, it's polite to thank them in a footnote; but that's the extent of it. The point of the rules is for you not to go take an idea from someone else's paper, then claim it as your own insight.


Bachelors thesis supervisor headed for emeritus; professorship won't be restaffed

You already gave a good summary with the three questions at the very end.
If you are very interested in the topic, already know a lot about it and can work on your own without much help, then go for it.
If I were you, I would sit down and try to figure out a topic for your thesis. If you have the impression that you have a reasonable idea then ask the professor if this is ok for him. If not, I would think about going somewhere else where you get more supervision.


Is it possible to publish a paper on a topic about which you already wrote an online article?

This is perfectly acceptable.  It is, in fact, fairly common to "upgrade" a white-paper, technical note, or other such non-peer-reviewed publication into a peer-reviewed publication.  Two important caveats, however:

The appropriate form for a peer-reviewed publication is generally very different than for a blog post or similar informal format.  You will likely need to almost entirely rewrite the publication in any case.
If the other material is durably available or has been circulated in academic circles previously, however, you should acknowledge this fact and reference the prior publications.  This may be in the form of a citation, or in the cover letter of the article, or both.


Should I use only SI units of measurements in review papers?

To avoid confusion and to ensure the comparability of the results, you should use uniform and consistent units throughout the paper. You can write a note explaining that in the original paper the authors used pounds, furlong per fortnight etc.

And of course, yes, use the SI units. Nowadays all non-SI units are defined in terms of SI units. However, don't trust random sources for the conversion factors: an up-to-date and recommended source for conversion factors is the NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B: Conversion Factors.


Should "I" be used in a science fair conclusion?

Writing styles differ but using the first person singular is generally acceptable. The other option that is commonly used is to speak in passive voice or to talk about the work. You can say "I programmed Gumby to ...". You can also say "Gumby was programmed to ...". Or "The work shows that if Gumby is programmed to ...".

There are places in which a more formal (passive voice) is preferred, but if you were in such a place you would probably already know that. Given that you ask the question, I assume you are in a more informal place, such as the US, in which using I is fine for describing your own work.

But you might experiment a bit with how the report sounds to your own ear before deciding. You can also consult with your project advisor/instructor for advice.


Could I e-mail my professor and ask what my final grade will be before I graduate in two days?

If you're concerned about your grade, then you can try to send a polite email. However, you may also want to check if there's a policy whereby grades for graduating seniors need to be turned in early (which may or may not be the case, given the need to make sure students can graduate.

If not, the grades might not be ready, if the submission deadline has not yet passed. (But how can they schedule graduation before grades are due?)

Also, the answer may depend on how large the class is: the bigger the course you're worried about, the less likely the grades will be ready early.


My PI is irresponsible and I worry about my career as a postdoc

Of all you say, the only indication I see of irresponsibility is his desire, you say, to send you back to the lab before it is safe. The rest is understandable.

We live in perilous times. He may be entirely correct in focusing on his parental duties and may have no other option with child care essentially non existent in many places. Many people are depressed now, but it isn't a sign of lack of responsibility. "Forcing" you to write a grant can be a boost to your career and he might have wanted to do that in the best of times.

Not getting accepted into the top journals can be pretty common and may not be his fault, or at least not entirely.

And yet you say he has many good qualities.

As to what you should do, I recommend that you maintain social distancing for your own safety. But beyond that, just carry on as best you can and hope that the horrors of the current situation don't increase or become cyclic. Make sure that you don't burn bridges with your professor, as that will make your next career steps (after the pandemic) much harder.

Encourage the professor to deal effectively with depression if you can, and deal with your own if you feel those twinges.

You are in a bad situation. A worldwide pandemic tends to cause that. It is no consolation, but in other times and places it was much worse.

Another consideration you might make as to the level of his responsibility is how helpful he is at getting postdocs their next position. If he gives good support and they wind up in good positions, then you can put up with some things that wouldn't make sense otherwise.


Asking my advisor about our lab’s funding situation

The cultures differ on this point. In some countries, a PI's lab is a bit like his "private" business, or an extension of his/her house. The success of the lab fully depends on the PI's recognition, achievements, and sheer luck with the funding bodies. Naturally, PIs can be over-protective about what happens in "their kingdom", particularly if things are not going well (do they ever?)

In other places the Lab "belongs" to a University, and PI's simply inhabit it, just like postdocs, PhD students and technicians. They have some academic powers and are still responsible for finding the money to keep the place running, but the management powers are to a large extent taken away by HRs, Finance's, Senior Management, etc. It is often, but not always, lead to a better transparency, because University acts in the best interests of all employers, or at least tries to make it look like this. However, in this case PIs may not be fully aware what the situation with their funding is, particularly if University is not doing well.

In theory, as someone working in the Lab, you are a stakeholder and have all the rights to know what's going on and how long the place will run. In practice, the situation can be terribly unpredictable, and even you PI may not know what is going to happen.


What is an example graduate admission grading system? How much is GPA weighted?

Don't bother looking for a magic formula. Everything that is considered by the committee matters, and it's unlikely that you'll ever find someone who will tell you explicitly a specific cutoff for GPA or GRE that will get you in, because you could have a high GPA but lousy letters of recommendation or vice versa, and neither case will likely result in admission.

Moreover, many schools will not operate on such a system, particularly in smaller departments that do not have huge numbers of applicants. I know that I've never used such a system at any of the institutions I've worked at.

So the best advice, trite as it is, is to try to work on everything. It's more important to find someone who's willing to champion your application in the admissions committee than try to "check boxes." You never know what it is that will get you in—perhaps someone's letter of recommendation resonates because he or she was a classmate or personal friend of someone on the committee, or perhaps you expressed an interest in your personal statement that attracted the attention of someone looking for a new graduate student. (And, of course, a high GPA never really hurts.)


Is it acceptable for professors to listen to music using headphones in the workplace when expecting student contact?

Yes, of course. As long as they turn it down so that they can talk over it when the student comes by, why would it be unacceptable to have music on while they are waiting? If they are listening on headphones while waiting, it would be preferable if they could see the student approaching, but there's nothing unprofessional about it even if they don't. The student can knock on the door, wall, floor, desk, etc. in order to get their attention.


Are multiple PGCE required to teach multiple subjects in the UK?

It's not uncommon for teachers to teach related subjects, but computing and physical education is a bit of a stretch.

You would not need a second PGCE, but it would probably be in your favour to get some kind of professional experience or some kind of qualification that displays your dedication to the subject.


Can I use figures from papers published by other authors in (the literature survey part) my thesis defense presentation?

I've seen many conference presentation showing figures copied from published research papers (of others), giving credit by citing them. This is common practice, so you would not worry. Whether it adheres exactly to the law, I don't know (I doubt it, as you don't re-publish the figure).


What is relationship between post-doc experience and number of publications on Salary/appointment levels in New Zealand universities?

New Zealand is heavily invested in the "Publish or Perish" mindset, to the point where it's not even funny. Research funding is allocated entirely on the basis of an exercise called the PBRF (http://www.tec.govt.nz/Funding/Fund-finder/Performance-Based-Research-Fund-PBRF-/) and academics spend a significant amount of their time preparing for this. More publications are better; the venues are not so important (although New Zealand academics do not typically publish in predatory journals.) The quantity of publications is probably the single most important factor in any hiring decision by a New Zealand university.

[PS. Looking at your questions, many of them seem to be about "New Zealand Universities" in general. Bear in mind that there are only eight universities in New Zealand, several of which might not have a program in your area. It might be a good idea to address your questions to people who are in New Zealand, rather than random StackExchangers who may be tempted to Google the answer to earn internet points. For example, you could look for an Australia/New Zealand mailing list for academics in your subject and try asking the same questions there.]


Moving from a R2 university to a R1 university

Who can say how individuals would react, but I would find it preposterous if anyone counted it against you. Of course, the competition for such faculty positions is very fierce, so make sure that you build a record of accomplishment in your first job and build a strong "stable" of collaborators.

The difference between a given R1 and a given R2 can be quite small, and not consistent across fields. Do the best you can and you will be more likely to have the best career you can have. It is more up to you than to somewhat arbitrary and subjective designations.

It may take a while to move up, of course. And don't give colleagues the impression that you are unhappy or that you think you are "below your station".


Accepted post-doc and have subsequently received offers for full time faculty position - quandary

Maybe I shouldn't start the answer with the judgey part, but if you don't feel like you can accept the faculty positions because of your previous commitment, why the hell didn't you pull your name from consideration the moment you accepted the European job?  On my personal list of academic job hunting sins, not withdrawing your name from a position you've decided you can't accept is much worse than declining a postdoc offer for a TT.  So, there's really no ethical choice at this point, so you may as well do what's best for you long term.

That said, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of starting the TT job with a delay.  This is very common in mathematics (my field); I've done it, and I know dozens of other people who have as well.  I can imagine reasons it would be harder in mechanical engineering, but it's worth a shot.  An important thing to remember as a job candidate is that once you have the offer, the tables are reversed.  They've shown their hand, they've made a time, financial and psychic investment in you, and their other candidates are slowly slipping away as they wait for your answer.  They really want you to say yes, so a concession like letting you take an initial leave is a small one.  After all, they don't even need to pay for it!  Universities are very flexible about letting you do things if they don't have to pay for them.

I mean, really they should want you to do this, since you'll come to them better trained, with more fresh ideas, and a wider perspective.  So sell it on those grounds, and I bet you'll succeed.


What percentage of papers submitted to a conference or journal have been previously rejected in the same or another venue?

I haven't found anything in computer science, but this has been well-studied in other fields.

For example, one study1 surveyed authors from 923 scientific journals from the biological sciences in 2006-2008 and found that

  about 75% of published articles were submitted first to the journal that would publish them

(implying that 25% of published articles were rejected by another venue before finding their ultimate home).

A more common approach found in the literature is to follow up on the fate of rejected manuscripts from a particular journal (as opposed to the original target venue of published manuscripts).

For example, a study of manuscripts rejected by the British Journal of Surgery2 found:

  From the 926 manuscripts rejected by BJS, 609 (65.8 per cent) were published in 198 different journals with a mean(s.d.) time lapse of 13.8(6.5) months. Some 165 manuscripts (27.1 per cent) were published in general surgical journals, 250 (41.1 per cent) in subspecialty surgical journals and 194 (31.9 per cent) in non-surgical journals. The mean(s.d.) impact factor of the journals was 2.0(1.1). Only 14 manuscripts (2.3 per cent) were published in journals with a higher impact factor than that of BJS.

This trend is not especially new. Studies from decades ago also show large numbers of rejected papers being accepted somewhere, eventually. For example:

A study of 350 manuscripts rejected by the Annals of Internal Medicine, a general medical journal, during 1993 and 1994,3 found:

  Of 350 rejected manuscripts, 240 (69%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 64% to 73%) were eventually published after a mean of 552 days (95% CI: 479 to 544 days, range 121 to 1,792 days).

A study of papers submitted to the American Journal of Roentgenology in 19864 found:

  At least 82% of the major papers and 70% of the case reports that are submitted to AJR are eventually published, either in AJR or elsewhere

An interesting study I came across measured the reverse phenomenon: published articles that are subsequently rejected5.

  As test materials we selected 12 already published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.

  With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected.

1 Calcagno, V., E. Demoinet, K. Gollner, L. Guidi, D. Ruths, and C. De Mazancourt. "Flows of research manuscripts among scientific journals reveal hidden submission patterns." Science 338, no. 6110 (2012): 1065-1069. DOI: 10.1126/science.1227833

2 Wijnhoven, B. P. L., and C. H. C. Dejong. "Fate of manuscripts declined by the British Journal of Surgery." British Journal of Surgery 97, no. 3 (2010): 450-454. DOI: 10.1002/bjs.6880

3 Ray, Joel, Michael Berkwits, and Frank Davidoff. "The fate of manuscripts rejected by a general medical journal." The American journal of medicine 109, no. 2 (2000): 131-135. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9343(00)00450-2

4 Chew, Felix S. "Fate of manuscripts rejected for publication in the AJR." AJR. American journal of roentgenology 156, no. 3 (1991): 627-632. DOI: 10.2214/ajr.156.3.1899764

5 Peters, Douglas P., and Stephen J. Ceci. "Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5, no. 02 (1982): 187-195. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X00011183


Professor keeps students tests. No taking notes home when reviewing them.

Talking to anyone other than the professor them self comes off to me as pointless because there are typically no similarities between how each professor handles their course material.

A common reason in some of my courses was this: some questions come from a publisher's test bank, and the university has agreed that materials containing the questions won't be distributed. It doesn't make sense to me at all, and end up a way to continually reap money as banks change, ultimately never helping the students.

What I would do is schedule regular office visits if it's within her time to do so to go over the course material you're struggling with. My suspicion is she's rather set in her way. Yoou definitely don't want to go over her head as this would earn some demerits!


Change of research field from physics to biology

There is absolutely a need for physical scientists in cell and developmental biology as well as cancer. Take a look at, e.g. this story: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201003/nih.cfm

I know many, many physicists who have moved into experimental biology, and PhD to postdoc is a natural time to do this. However, if you are going to need to be trained in a wet lab, you need to ensure you are moving into a group that values the other skills you bring - rigorous quantitative thinking, computational skills, spectroscopy or microscopy - enough to train you in the biological part.

How do you find these people? First, I'd suggest reading deeply in the field you'd like to go into, and seeing when people use ideas from physics (e.g. groups studying phase transitions in RNA granules, or collective behavior of cells, or entropy and information in developmental biology), or look at mechanics in detail. Those groups are more likely to be receptive to someone with your background. Other tell-tale signs are groups who are listed in "quantitative biology" programs or who are housed in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering, etc. If you are interested in cancer, places with Physical Sciences in Oncology centers are natural fits.

My impression is that, though there is a lot of competition for postdocs in biology, students with strong quantitative backgrounds who want to work in wet labs are hard to find.


thesis: a plethora of technical parameters, how to present it concisely?

As a general rule, if you are presenting a large body of numbers in a structured way (e.g., similar parameters corresponding to a set of experiments) it is best to present them in tabular form.  I would suggest trying to put your parameters into a clear table-format that allows the reader to consult the parameters for each individual experiment easily.  If this is material that must be included for completeness, but is not interesting in its own right, you might also consider relegating this table to an appendix, and referring to it in the body with an appropriate reference.


Colleagues present same data analysis for years, each time with different "framing". Ethical?

What venue are they “presenting” the work in, and does it carry an expectation of originality?

Publishing multiple minor variations of the same piece of work would indeed generally be considered as unethical, or at best borderline-ethical “salami-slicing”.  That’s because publishing carries an expectation of originality/novelty: you’re not supposed to publish the same work twice.  This is deeply entwined with the ways that publications are used as a metric of productivity.  However, it sounds like this isn’t what’s happening here, if your colleagues haven’t succeeded in publishing the work.

Whether presenting multiple minor variations of the work is ethical depends entirely on what venue they’re presenting in (major conferences? informal workshops? the departmental seminar?) and whether it has an expectation of originality like publications would.

This varies between fields and subfields, and between conferences within subfields.    In pure maths (at least in the subfields I’m familiar with), conference presentations have no expectation of originality.  You can present the same piece of work every year for a decade, and people won’t be very excited or impressed, but it won’t be considered as unethical.  In computer science, on the other hand (again, in the subfields I know), presentations at major conferences are like a smaller version of a journal publication, and as such, are explicitly required to be original: re-using material between them would be unethical.  But in less formal settings (e.g. local workshops), again there’s no such expectation of originality, and re-use of material (with or without variation) is fine.


Contacting professors for PhD supervision past the formal application deadline of the university in USA

In the US this would certainly be unusual and at many universities, impossible. Admission to doctoral programs is done by a committee and there are cost implications for admitting a student. Space is needed, if nothing else. An individual professor, most places, has little control over that.

You can ask, of course, and there is no issue with exploring options with the professor.

But in the US there is more than research involved in a doctorate. There are, at least, qualifying exams. And most students require advanced coursework in order to pass the exams. This normally occurs before the serious dissertation research begins, or at the earliest stages of exploration. Many students don't choose an advisor until they pass comps, since failure means you will be asked to leave.

But, another option, provided that you are good enough is to state your case and show that you are a worthy "independent researcher" who wants to work with the professor now on some ideas and that you will be applying later to the degree program. Some professors might find that interesting, others not. It might depend on where they are in their own career and how generally busy they are with their normal duties.

And, I'm going to guess that you aren't alone in this wish and that your query might just get lost in the mass of others. Think of a "renowned professor" as a kind of magnet for such interest.


Cold emailing potential search committee members

TL;DR: it can't hurt!

It's likely that if you approach them they will at the very least know your name (they have seen your application and references). I would think that showing genuine interest in their work and hinting at a potential collaboration would help your chances of getting invited for an interview. However, directly asking about the status of your application would probably not get you anywhere.

Good luck!


How can I get a PhD position to work on solving a particular mathematics problem that I have formulated independently?

Unfortunately, I expect it will be difficult to find a supervisor who will take you on under these circumstances.  It's not impossible, but it will require finding exactly the right match, and that will require a lot of luck.

Here are some of the issues that will worry potential advisors:

What if the problem is too easy, and turns out not to be substantial enough for a Ph.D. thesis?  Will you drop out from graduate school in disgust?  Will you angrily insist that you signed up to write your dissertation on this topic and now they have to let you graduate?
What if the problem is too hard, and you spend several years in graduate school with no hint of progress or even the potential for future progress?  When your advisor suggests changing course, will you listen?  Or will you keep banging your head against this problem until they kick you out for lack of progress?
What if the problem doesn't end up being nearly as interesting or important as you hope?  Will you accept this outcome, or will you turn into a crackpot who insists that the rest of the research community is just wrong?
Are you too emotionally invested in this problem to judge whether you are making progress or how interesting it is?  How painful or awkward would it be to work with you on this topic?
Are you interested in learning how to do anything else besides work on this specific problem?  The purpose of a Ph.D. program is to train researchers with some breadth, not just to solve one specific problem, so you need to maintain some perspective and longer-term goals than any single problem.

It's possible that none of these issues is an actual problem, but few people will agree to supervise this thesis unless they have enough knowledge of both you and your problem to feel reassured.  Unfortunately, the bar for "enough knowledge" is probably pretty high.  I wouldn't do it unless I knew you relatively well and had spent some time thinking seriously about the problem.  This is not going to happen during the ordinary graduate admissions process.

Instead, I think you're probably best off not worrying too much about graduate admissions, and instead just focusing on convincing people that this is an important problem.  If you can make a real intellectual connection with a professor based on this problem, then you can explore whether it might be a suitable topic for a Ph.D. thesis.  Otherwise, applying to graduate school for the sole purpose of working on this problem is likely to be fruitless.

(To be clear, I might be wrong about this, but it's my impression based on the limited information in your question.)


How do I cite — in APA style — a Creative Commons licensed image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons?

Section 12.18 of APA 7 states:

To write a copyright attribution,

state whether the material was reprinted or adapted (use "From" for reprintings and "Adapted from" for adaptations);
provide the title, author, year of publication, and source of the material;
indicate the material's copyright status...; and
provide the permission statement as requested by the copyright holder if permission was sought and obtained.

Place the copyright attribution as follows:

For a reprinted or adapted ... image ..., place the copyright attribution at the end of the general note for the table or figure ...

(American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 389)

In other words, the copyright attribution goes into the general note for the figure, not in the references section.
As an aside, APA 7 has some differences from APA 6, one of which is that you no longer use "Retrieved from" unless the source is likely to change often (as in a Wiki page).
For the references section, visual works are covered in section 10.14. I would do something like this (with hanging indent):
Morin, B. (2018). Standing white tiger [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standing_white_tiger.jpg


How to find out where a College's Graduates are now?

If your looking at PhD's who presumably wanted to go on to academic careers, and if you can get a list of the graduates from a particular year, then you can generally track those people down by searching for them using Google.  Most people who've remained in academia have at least some presence on the web.  Folks who go to work in industry often become invisible.

The hard part is getting a list of graduates from a particular year.  This can sometimes be done using commencement programs.  I have done this using the mathematics genealogy project at:

[http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/][1]

Despite the name, this database has records for computer science, mathematics, and statistics graduates from many institutions.  You can search by institution name and year of PhD (e.g. I'm Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1992.)


How to prevent calluses from writing on chalkboard?

A couple ways. You may consider products called "chalk clip" or "chalk holder" like this one:

They make the girth larger and less likely to produce a small pressure point on your finger, which causes callus.

Another option is to get some "foam tubing" from general hardware stores. They are cheap and in different sizes, thicknesses, and even colors. Cut a 2 to 2.5 inches long segment and put it over your middle finger. To improve comfort when bending your finger you can make a small vertical incision on the tube (palm side) so that you can bend the finger more freely.

Volleyball players also have elastic finger guards like these:

You can get a set of them from sports stores. Just pull it down a bit to protect your last joint rather than the middle joint. My experience (as a volleyball player not chalk writer) is that the ones with nylon outside and a thin foam layer inside work are the most comfortable.

If technology permits, you can also consider projecting your hand writing using a projector, computer tablet, or even interactive screen. Those methods allow you to write with a lighter grip.


Find article link by bibtex citation key

The citation key in bibtex can be anything you want. What you call JagadeeshChandraBose2010, I can call 1234567 or abcdefg, as long as I call it the same thing in the tex file as in the bib file.

Since that key can be any string you want, there is obviously no way to map between that arbitrary string and the article.

Now, if the string follows a particular format - like JagadeeshChandraBose2010, which seems to be a name or names, followed by a year - then you can search for that article using that information. For example: Google Scholar search finds two papers authored by Jagadeesh Chandra Bose in 2010.