Bad departmental funding, when do you leave the ship?

Step 0: Document all your efforts to find a solution to this situation. Save a copy of that email from your chair. If you need to resort to Step 4: Hire a Lawyer, a paper trail is invaluable. Also, as @JeffE noted in the comments: stop working until you are paid. This is your most powerful negotiating tool. Don't worry about breach of contract; your employer did it first by failing to pay you.

Step 1: Meet with your immediate supervisor. As a postdoctoral researcher, some/most/all of your salary probably comes from grant accounts, and not the department's general payroll. If there is a financial problem in your department you should still get paid.

Unless, in order to pay you, money has to be transferred from the grant account to the payroll account. This is how it works at my institution. If the payroll account is wonky, then you cannot get paid, regardless of where the money comes from.

Step 2: Meet with your department chair, one-on-one. He/she may be more willing to be forthcoming with the details in a personal setting. There could a rational, if scary, explanation for what is going on. It may be outside of the chair's power. It could be that the department was expecting payments from grants that did not happen. It could be that an allocation from the institution or state or whatever has not arrived due to budgetary problems. If meeting with the department chair is not satisfactory, go on to step three.

Step 3: Contact your institution's central payroll or human resources office. Ask about the situation nicely and politely, but make it clear that you want to know what is going on and when you will be paid. As these folks are either 1) removed from the situation if it is department specific, or 2) closer to it if it is institution wide, you will likely get an answer. Indicate that you believe the department/institution to be in breach of your contract and that you are consulting legal counsel (even if you are not yet). Sometimes, that will grease the wheels.

Step 3.5: Sit tight for a little while and see if it does not go away. If your institution/department does not have a history of such shenanigans, this could be a one-time, but very annoying, blip. Also, look for another job. Be honest with your supervisor about why you are doing so - this financial snafu has you worried about the security of your contract.

Step 4: Hire a lawyer. By failing to pay you per an agreed upon schedule, your employer is in breach of your contract. I would only go this way if you are desperate. 1) The litigation route is likely to take away a large portion of your time that you should be spending doing research or looking for another job. 2) Depending on the ratio of legal fees to missed pay, you might lose money overall. 3) The heavy handed approach may alienate your department, robbing you of recommendations.


How to reduce a paper's size for a page limited conference?

Before you go about the longer process of deciding "what to delete," have you first tried to remove the "dead weight?" Academic writing is often quite leaden in style, and can be trimmed quite substantially. Following Strunk's commandment to "omit needless words" can often cut down a page or two out of your manuscript without sacrificing "actual" content.

If, having pruned your text, you find you still need to reduce things, ask yourself the following question:

  What information do I want my readers to retain?

Then ask yourself:

  What sections of the paper do not provide information necessary for the reader?

Those should be a fairly good guide about what to delete.


What to put in the CV for a masters application

Mine has been organized like following and I received a very positive feedback from my current supervisor (from world top 20 school) within contacting him for the first time with my CV:

Contact Information: actually, I can assume that you didn't name it, but implicitly are going to consider.
Research Interests: an important part, because the first impression of your CV on potential supervisor could be her persuasion about your agreement on the same research topics, potentially.
Education: Top-Down chronological list of educations from the most recent one to the others (Don't forget to cite corresponding GPAs).
Publications: The impact of journal publications are often higher than proceeding ones for the reader. So, I'd just classified my publications into two groups as Journal Papers & Proceeding Papers. You better consider a hyperlink for each paper's title addressing to the internet webpage of that paper. Probably, the potential supervisor will be eager to check some of your publications. If you do, she might be more satisfied than sending you an email and asking you send her the target paper.
Honors and Awards: Just do mention really glorious things, such as scholarships, amazing ranks, olympiad medals and so on. As an instance, my B.A.Sc. was nominated for the best thesis award of IEEE Iran section and it was among one of 5 finalist papers; and I did mention this stuff within this section.
Academic Experiences: I filled this section out with my TA experiences. Furthermore, I did assert my experiences to collaborate with some journals and conferences as guest reviewer. You may find a variety of other different items to cite.
Industrial Experiences: Some positions (for example technical Ph.D. positions in north Europe) are considerably industrial, in that the applicant will be supposed to work on a project defined by industry. In such cases, you can address your relevant professional experiences (if you have any) to show your familiarity with industrial atmosphere and its required level of commitment.
Computer Skills & Programming: Inseparable implicitly-required items from almost all kinds of positions. But be careful just to mention the capabilities of which you are master, noticeably. Because the reader will expect you to be fluent on all the things you have already claimed.
Linguistic Skills: Just pinpoint grades of your linguistic tests (TOEFL, GRE, etc.)

Arbitrary sections: I did consider sections, below, but one may posit that they are not necessary:

Memberships: If you are member of any particular organization "related to the target program", you can address it. As an instance, being a PEO (Professional Engineer of Ontario) may be interesting for a potential supervisor with an industrial project.
Hobbies: be careful list the things not to present you as a nerd. :)

Good luck


Deciding about publication venue with Advisor

To be honest, I don't see a problem here.  You seem to have a very good relationship with your advisor, who both repeatedly asks for your input and gives you the benefit of his expertise and experience.  You have weighed in helpfully on the question at hand, but not definitively, because you don't yet have a definitive opinion.

The part where I get a bit confused is where you wonder whether you should "intervene" even though (i) you trust your advisor to make good decisions and (ii) you don't yet have a clear opinion to intervene with.  So...unless/until you acquire a strong opinion of your own, go with what your advisor suggests.  If/when you do, talk to him about it.  If the decision has already been made and then you have thoughts about it, you can still talk to your advisor about it, but you should frame it not as questioning the decision but rather as a learning experience for you.

I think you're good.


How are scholars supposed to use LinkedIn?

I think that this use is fine, and some professors may add their subspecialties to these skill lists (e.g. Algebraic Geometry). I think that being prescriptivist about how a social networking site is used is a bit fallacious in the first place. Professors may use LinkedIn to find connections that lead to work in similar ways to non-academics. There is no "supposed to be" in this context.

For example, at most US universities faculty are responsible for finding funding for their summer salary. That might come in the form of teaching summer courses, finding grant funding, or working as a consultant to a business or national lab. Putting oneself out there on LinkedIn might be a great way to find or be found for consulting gigs. Also, not all profs are permanently committed to their current jobs, so being on job-based social networking sites may lead to their next opportunity.

I agree that it's a little silly for senior people to be listing skills like this and farming endorsements, but I think this is more like the future than it is like the past. I wouldn't be surprised to see LinkedIn add features that make it more attractive to academics to use. The site is already an online resume for non-academics, adding academic-style publication references, grants, courses taught, etc. might allow us to use LinkedIn as an online CV. The site already has publications, but they don't really support them like ResearchGate, Google Scholar, or other academic publication aggregators (yet).


How to provide price comparision of commercial products

I have cited prices in academia.  Is very relevant in energy, etc.  I was OK with approximate prices because I was comparing items with orders of magnitude different price, so figuring exact prices, discounts, was not critical to the report.  The info was not public, so I had to run a couple customer interviews to get it.

You could also consider to just buy a copy of each (if reasonable) and charge to the grant.  Also allows you to do testing, etc.  One other option is to just have some app do website scraping for the prices.  There are services that do this or you could just write your own.


How do I know if I am fit to do a PhD in my area of interest, specifically, theoretical CS, when my background was mostly applied EE?

Until you try, you wouldn't know if you can or cannot do it. There are plenty of people who make more radical switch of fields and make meaningful contributions. If you are very good at applied signal processing, you probably can get good at applied discret math and theoretical CS. One way to ease into the field is to take relevant grad-level courses. Try taking a theoretical CS class and put your best efforts to excel.

(I switched from CS to EE. I was very much into logic and computation theory before starting my PhD in adaptive signal processing.)


If you are uncomfortable answering any question from anyone, you can always tell them that.

From my experience in the US, it is common among close colleagues and friends to discuss salary. In fact, some (all?) states release salary information to the public. As a grad student, I have discussed professors' salaries with them on several occasions. But again, if you aren't comfortable with doing so then don't.

It probably isn't a big deal. Your advisor may just be genuinely curious or maybe he is looking out for you to make sure you are getting paid adequately. I can't imagine someone who invested so much into you as a student to do something bad with this knowledge.


Such programs are rare enough that I don’t know any. I would look into universities that have campuses in multiple countries, and if they allow you to transfer campuses during the program or something along those lines. That would allow you to get the same effect without there being a specific program for it.


Is it possible to get into a good masters program in computer science with a 3-3.5 GPA?

It's up to you to decide whether to pursue a master degree or going for the industry. However, in case you selected to pursue your master degree I would see no reason to be so pessimistic about your chances. You're currently studying at a prestigious university and that's an important point to consider.

The grades of the last 2 years of bachelor program is so important as you would take most of your specialized courses during the last 2 years of the bachelor program.

Be optimistic and keep up working towards achieving your dreams!


How to do research in two very different fields?

You can find a way to tie math into damn near any field or topic. Often at the graduate level you end up working with tools from "outside" of your discipline to solve a problem within it, or using the machinery of your field to solve otherwise-untenable problems in another. It's getting very multi-disciplinary out here, and very translational, and whatever other term you like for that kind of thing.

Essentially, if the tools are applicable across fields, it's no big deal: your literature familiarity just has to have more breadth than typical. If they're legitimately unrelated and you aren't interested in trying to connect then or your solutions to the problems in the fields, it will be a very hard row to hoe.

From a fellow MechE, take further classes in both and see which field looks most promising and exciting to you and follow that one professionally. Keep up with the other casually and consider how your understanding of one facilitates your work in the other.

Good luck!


I don't think it makes much of a difference; both are used widely. Some people like to write their names as well, eg. J. Doe may write, 'Doe et al [22] demonstrated...'.

The last one is important if you're submitting to a double-blind review. Between the first two, it  depends on how much attention you want to draw to the previous work- it could be of prime significance, or it may be an offhand, supporting reference. In the first case, you may like to use 'we' to establish your group as an important contributor in the field. Nothing hard and fast, it's quite subjective and a matter of style- most people would consider 'the authors demonstrated' to be a more formal expression.


I agree with your assessment that this is misleading behavior on the part of the authors. I have run into this kind of behavior myself, including from authors who were famous researchers (and who were famous because they actually did very good work and not because they were good at misleading people about doing good work). It seems like it’s just human nature for some people to feel a need (probably driven by insecurity and lack of self-worth) to play up their own greatness and belittle others’ achievements.
As for what to do, I’d say just keep publishing good work and don’t worry about it. It’s not worth the time and energy it would take to fight such petty misconduct, especially when there is no hard evidence for a dishonest motive. Moreover, the advantage that these authors derive from such underhanded behavior probably does not outweigh the disadvantage of other people looking down on them and not wanting to work with them (I’m willing to bet you’re not the only one who noticed this), so their behavior is self-defeating and self-punishing. And your own contributions are documented in the scientific literature, so in case a dispute ever arises over something important, the truth will will be easy to establish and will come out.


In biology, can one publish results that were already published in a conference proceedings?

Yes I believe this is possible, but depends on the policies of the specific journal and the nature of the conference publication.

Actually I know of cases where journal editors contact authors of work published in conference proceedings, and suggest submission of an extended version in their journal. This would typically happen in a relevant sub-field where both journal and conference publications are possible, such as bioinformatics.


Is it recommended to have a free-standing background chapter to avoid cluttering the main text with different topics?

I don't know if there is a broad consensus but I have seen background chapters in several papers I read recently in my field (computer engineering). If you have the space to spare (I guess a master thesis will not have a strict page limit?), this seems perfectly reasonable. Make sure to only describe things that are relevant to your research, and highlight/foreshadow how they will matter to the rest of the paper. This will also help clearly demarcate your own contribution from prior work.


Can I get into PhD in Physics with a high GRE score and an unrelated masters degree?

Typically the only reason that PhD granting institutions in the US give out a master's degree en route to the doctorate is the existence of capitation money in some states that reward them for each advanced degree they grant. You don't need a master's degree. I never got one, and I could have for $50 and two weeks spent converting a couple of journal articles to thesis format. Nobody worth talking to expects you to have an MS when you apply.


Using .tex files from arXiv as a template for new papers

In my opinion (as a senior academic, frequent poster on arXiv, and non-lawyer), it is reasonable and legitimate to make use of the source code in the way that you describe except that "giving credit to the authors of the original paper in the source code" is not enough.  You must give credit in the body of the paper itself.  If you do this, I believe that you would be satisfying any of the Creative Commons licenses used by arXiv.  (In the case of one of the enhanced license choices of ShareAlike or Noncommercial-ShareAlike, you should adhere to the additional conditions.)
If you give credit only in the source code, putting legality aside, you would be trying to avoid publicly acknowledging the way in which you have used the work of the original authors.  That is unethical, in my opinion.  (I expect you would agree that well under 0.001% of arXiv downloads are of source files.  Please do not look for the least possible defensible acknowledgment of the original authors.)
If I were in your field and your action led to increased notational and typographic consistency, I would be happy about that.  It would make papers easier to understand.
[Addition to respond to Nate Eldredge:  You make an interesting point that we do not acknowledge Knuth or Lamport or the authors of various standard LaTeX packages.  It does soften my view.  However, I maintain that there is a difference between the `obviously intended use' when someone publishes a LaTeX package and the rather surprising use of someone accessing source code to use macros.  I still recommend that the original questioner acknowledge the use of source code in a way that is visible in the compiled version of the document.]


Is it ethically questionable for me (an undergraduate) to hire "research assistants"?

All that jumps out at me is that you won't be able to find and supervise someone capable enough for the amount of money you have, which I assume is on the order of tuition or less. You know research is really, really expensive right? People like Ph.D. students - and yourself - do it for cheap out of extreme valuing of their own educational and research experience.

You can't provide a six figure salary (what an industry researcher costs), you can't hire out your own research passions to someone; you have no play.

This, in theory, comes up in the professional world too. As a rule you can't really hire someone better than you to solve your problems... you'll run out of budget for them as they bleed your personal checkbook, or they'll get hired and take over your work (which is probably very bad for you). There's no "ethics", it stops at the pragmatics.

I think the ethics of this are kind of a moot point because there's cultural reasons this can't really come up. A more practical ethical question might be if you can hire researchers to work on parts of your project for you. That's a pretty different question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, that's what a research budget is for (and your undergraduate underlings would of course appear as co-authors, which is a big part of why they took the opportunity).


In the EU, can I start an R&D company and apply for research grants?

A significant part of the EU's research framework program (current Horizon 2020) funding is for industrial and technology research, so companies (or consortia which also contain companies) are eligible for funding.  However, the idea here would be to ultimately aim for developing a product - thus, a pure R&D company like what you mention might not be the right target.  (Of course, you can always aim for having a company whose product is intellectual property.)


Should textbook acknowledgments be included as publications on a CV?

You can put anything on your CV that you think contributes to your professional standing. For honesty, I'd suggest using a separate section, however, not the "publications" section unless you are listed as an author. Perhaps something like "Contributions to published work" or similar.
Overstating the case can have a negative impact, not the positive one you want.


Logistics of asking for letter of recommendation after graduation

Just send them an email (or make a telephone call).

Any time you ask for a reference (to include job hopping when 40), always try to help out by being brief (but explanatory) and giving info on what/why you are trying to do something AND helping the letter writer with any info on what the recipient is looking for as well as your particulars.

"Hello, Professor Buffylaw:

I was a student of yours in Euro history 1 (required) and then Babylonian Craziness Seminar (elective).

I very much appreciate the great education I got from Enormous State University and have done well as an insurance adjustor for Franco.  But I have recently decided to go back to school for a law degree.  Think I can do a good job there and the added degree will help me move ahead.

Could you write me a letter of reference for the Amco fellowship in Law for Roadrunner Devices?

I think Amco is particularly interested in candidates from ESU, so emphasizing the unique things we do here would help the cause.

For a refresher on my interaction with you:

*A in EUH01.  A+ in BCH05 (special dispensation to take course as second semester freshman).

*Strong oral presentation in round table seminars in BCH05, including debates with much more senior students with more historiography training.

*Weekly submission of 2 page (max) precis in BCH05 and mastery of the format after first two papers.


How to tackle the bibliographic work as an entering PhD student?

To be honest, it sometimes feels like a sneaky way of procrastinating:
  I'd tell myself that I'm still not ready to tackle my problem and that
  I need to make a little "detour" by existing works; and when it's done
  I don't feel more at ease to answer my questions. Or is it a normal
  aspect of research?

It is probably the most common way that new grad students attempt (consciously or otherwise) to avoid doing research :)

You have to remember that prior knowledge is an ocean you're swimming in, not a cup that you have to finish drinking. There's literally no way to "read all the prior literature": there's always something more.

General reading is perfectly fine, but when you have a problem to work on, it's best to break down bibliographic research into:

what does prior work say about your problem and what's the key open question (and this is something your advisor can help you with)
Once you start thinking about a specific problem and are trying to apply some specific tools, is there material to help you understand those tools better ?
When you're writing up, what related (not prior) work should you be aware of ?

At each stage, read only as much as you absolutely need to, in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. And remember, as a new Ph.D student, it's not a terrible thing if you reinvent something that someone discovered before, and only learn of this after the fact. You just don't that happening at your dissertation defense :)


Choice between A13 Z and E13 for a post-doc position in Germany

A E13 position may have a little shorter working hours per week, for eaxample in North Rhine-Westphalia you have to work 39 hrs 50 min/week as "Angestellter" (E13) and 41 hrs/week as Beamter (A13). At least until you are 55 years old, as the working hours for Beamte get gradually reduced as you grow older. But I guess this would not apply to a post-doc position as academic work groups usually do not record the time of their scientist (this means, they often work longer hours without recompensation).

As posted by Roland in his comment above, a Beamter has to get a private health care plan which can be expensive, depending on your age and health status, but as the state pays approximately half of your health care bills, the conditions Beamte get by the private health care companies are much more favourable in comparison to the ones offered to "regular" clients and in the end a Beamter has a higher net salary.

A Beamter has furthermore to pass a health test and perform a vow on the German Grundgesetz (constitution) and the German laws and is not allowed to go on strike. In case of permanent positions, the pensions for Beamte are significantly higher than the pensions for Angestellte. So if you are planning (or hoping) for a permanent position I think a position as Beamter might be more beneficial.

Your family status is also relevant for your salary as Beamter, this means, if you are married with children you will get a higher salary.


Is it advisable to report a 56 percentile in GRE maths subject test if i am applying for Phd in neuroscience?

I am in your field, and I think the answer Peter L. Clark gave in the linked post is a good answer. My sense is that most Neuroscience programs don't take the subject exams too seriously. If you have a great score, then send it. But, if not,

  A missing subject GRE score just means that we don't take this part of the application into account.

Personally, I would not send it.  That said, with a publication forthcoming and a strong research background, you will still be a competitive applicant, even if you do not send in subject scores. For reference, I had a strong research background and did not even take the subject matter exams. I do not think this hindered me in the application process at all. I applied to 10 schools and got interviews (and subsequent offers) from 5. I'm a second year Ph.D. student now.

Hope this helps.


Same review for Math Reviews and Zentralblatt

The Math Reviews Guide for Reviewers addresses this explicitly:

  Reviews in other publications. You may find yourself asked to write a review of the same item for another publication. In general, the community is best served by reviews written independently. If you have already been asked by another publication to review an item, please let us know and we will transfer it to another reviewer.

So, if you have already reviewed the article for Zbmath, you should decline to review it for MR.  I didn't find a similar rule on the Zbmath side, but I would say the converse should also hold.

Also, per your agreement with Zbmath, when you submit a review to them, you grant them "exclusive exploitation rights".  So if you submit the same review to MR, you're infringing Zbmath's copyright.  I doubt they will sue you over it, but this shows it's actually illegal as well as unwanted.

In view of this, you may want to contact MR and ask them to withdraw your previously submitted review.

Evidently, one should not assume that the MR editors will check who reviewed the article for Zbmath in order to avoid inviting the same person, since they apparently failed to do so in your case.  (Another possibility is that they did check, but your Zbmath review hadn't been posted yet.)


How to deal with a team colleague submiting a bad article?

As a teacher, if I were to put a student in a team, is for the student to join and learn; and possibly (as it may be your case), to relieve the team from some tedious work. And actually, writing down a paper could be a good way of making sure he understands everything that has been done. Assuming there is no favouritism, I don't have any reason to make the guy get "research points" if he doesn't learn something in the process. So, if I am convinced he is affecting negatively an otherwise successful team, he is going to get little sympathy from me.

On the other hand, you are in a bit of a "he said-she said" situation, so you have to be careful and show that you have tried to collaborate with your teammate and attempted to solve the problem in a civilised manner. Show that when he joined the team, you didn't just dump the task on his lap and forget about him, but you actively tried to help and teach him what you did (because you tried to help, right?).


How do weak students who want to do PhD's get into masters programmes in the first place?

As per the comments, you are interested in finding information from various places around the world, so I will provide a perspective from Germany (possibly limited, as there is a partial focus on computer science and closely related degrees, with which I am more experienced compared to other areas):

  If I'm not mistaken, master's degrees are, in some places, often seen as the first of a two-part process to getting advanced degrees, where the PhD is the second part.

As described elsewhere, Bachelor and Master often form a consecutive unit in Germany. The reason is historical, as the former Diplom degrees were cut into two parts approximately in the middle to insert the Bachelor degree after the first part of the studies. Studying for a doctoral degree optionally followed for some students after graduating with a Diplom, and likewise, it now optionally follows for some students after graduating with a Master's degree.

Therefore, at least in Germany, the Master's degree is the second of a two-part process of getting "basic, industry-level" degrees (the first part being the Bachelor's degree). Accordingly, in 2011 and 2012 (sources only in German, sorry), about 3/4 of all students who graduate from a German university with a Bachelor's degree continued to study for a Master's degree.

The doctoral degree is something separate that only a smaller fraction of students who graduated with a Master's degree start, as it usually focuses on research rather than educating a highly skilled employee for the industry.

Therefore, as an answer to your first question

  So finding a terminal master's programme doesn't sound that simple to me, although this may depend on the field.

While there are some disciplines (chemistry maybe?) where traditionally many Master graduates continue for a doctoral degree, entering the Master's degree as a terminal degree before completing one's higher education and starting to work full-time is rather the default in Germany.

  I would imagine that there's still a need for decent grades / recommendations / etc. to get into a master's programme in the first place.

Again related to the aforementioned historical development, there is a strong feeling that whoever has successfully completed their Bachelor's degree must be allowed to continue their studies if they so desire (as with the former Diplom degrees, no-one would be kicked out in the middle of their studies, either, unless they actually failed the requirements).

While I am not sure whether it is always possible at all universities to accommodate everyone who would like to continue with a Master's degree, I could get some limited insight into the "selection process" for which Bachelor graduates may continue with the Master studies on a few occasions. The general guideline was that unless there were any absolutely terrible obstacles (with previous marks that are bad, and just enough to fulfil the minimum requirements to get a Bachelor's degree explicitly not counting as such an obstacle), every applicant should be accepted.

Hence, getting into a Master's programme is not an overly hard problem; chances that one has to abort these studies due to failing exams during the Master studies are likely to be considerably higher.

This leaves two final summarizing statements:

  If so, how viable it is actually to get into a terminal master's programme

In Germany, probably rather viable.

  in order to boost future applications to PhD programmes?

In Germany, it's not a "boost" in the sense that improves chances prior to getting the degree; for most, if not all doctoral programmes, having a Master's degree is a minimum requirement.


European fellowships for neuroscience or anatomy?

A primary mailing list for computational neuroscience, which includes jobs all around the world (many in Europe) is

http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro

That would also be a better place to ask your more specific question about fellowships, etc. There are many such opportunities in Europe, but your question is not specific enough right now. If you ask on the comp-neuro mailing list, you should say more about your current position, location, and experience. Have you published anything? What research topics have you been studying? At what institution? This will help people focus their answers to help you more. You can also start by looking up the major European institutions that are strong in comp neuro (of which there are many, and there are lists all over the internet) and see if they sponsor any programs directly.

On a related note, as a mathematical neuroscientist myself, I think you will find the neuroscience area much more intellectually stimulating than anatomy. Computational anatomy is, in many ways, a more limited set of topics. A lot of it involves image processing and 3D reconstruction, which are already included as possible sub-areas within neuroscience. So you could always get into that sub-area of anatomy later anyway.


Shows vs. suggests: Is there a substantive difference?

This is what my take on these two words.

"Shows" refers to "It is true" i.e. the conclusion follows from the evidence with probability of 1. For example, the results obtained in this study 'shows' whenever x is increased, y is decreased by 2.78. Therefore, we conclude that...

"Suggests" refers to "It is highly likely to be true" i.e. the conclusion is not certain to be followed from the evidence. For example, our study suggests an increase in parameter x results in y decreasing by 2.78. Since the present study is constrained in the domain of the parameters x and y, it could be concluded that ...


Is it common/ ethically acceptable for PhD advisors to propose and supervise topics on which they lack basic knowledge?

I can't really judge whether the OP's treatment was appropriate or not, but there are situations in which it would be and, in those situations the answer to whether this is "acceptable" would be yes. I also think it is somewhat common, but far from universal.
The bottom line is that at some point along the line the student becomes the expert in the research topic and leaves the advisor(s) behind. In some situations that comes earlier than in most. The fresh PhD is the world's foremost expert in whatever the specific topic of the research is.
It is also true that in many fields the process of research is distinct from the actual questions asked. In those fields a person can advise another on that process and check that they follow correct process to the end, even without knowing a lot about the specifics. Research questions that rely heavily on statistics fall into such a format, though there are many variations that need to be considered. In mathematics, the validity of a proof can be checked by someone who didn't develop it.
However, for a meaningful and worthwhile advisor-advisee relationship to develop, the advisor(s) needs to be honest about what sorts of help they can and cannot provide. That understanding needs to be reached at the beginning of the relationship and if not satisfactory, then either the student or professor(s) needs to withdraw. Some students (a fair number, but not universal) can excel in situations of minimal specific help. Others (almost certainly the majority) need a bit more. Some need a lot more.
Moreover, a lot depends on what the advisor(s) are willing and able to do to advance the career of an independent student after they complete their work. If they are completely supportive, then there is little reason to be alarmed. The fact that you are exhausted at the completion of your degree is not a valid measure here. Nearly everyone (I suspect) feels that way to some degree.
Red flags arise when you aren't told you won't be helped, or if you are told you will be but abandoned. Other red flags appear when the advisor abandons you after you finish. But having to do much of the work of it on your own, isn't, in itself, a red flag, though it doesn't work for everyone. Be glad you finished successfully. Congratulations.
I'd suggest you reevaluate your decision to leave them behind. It may not be the right decision.


Statistics is pretty widely applicable, of course. Some parts of physics deal with large sets of data handled with statistics, I'm sure. It isn't my field, but one of the ways to discover things in large data sets (star maps, etc) is to look for statistical anomalies. I'm sure that, along the way, you would learn a lot of physics in some domain.

I once worked in math and computing with a geologist who was interested in wave action at the shore. We never went very far (and I was pretty unsophisticated then), but I realized I'd need to learn quite a bit about his domain to help with what he needed to study.

This sort of career could be carried on at a large university with a number of different disciplines represented or at a research institute focused on an area of physics that interests you. You might need to be able to make a case about how you would fit in, but everyone needs to do that anyway.


What if a conference is not ranked but IEEE sponsored

Checking on IEEE Xplore, it certainly appears to be a real conference, and if you search for it on plain Google Scholar (rather than Scholar metrics), you do find publications from it.  Scholar Metrics has a much tighter filter than general Scholar, and even some significant conferences don't show up in whatever arbitrary black-box algorithm Google uses to generate it.

In this case, however, this conference appears to be rather low impact, and also has a major red flag: its call for papers is about everything and nothing. Thus: legit, but not a particularly good choice of venue unless you have some particular reason to want to talk to the people who go there.


What is recommendation/reference draft copy?

It is fairly common, though not universal, that a professor will ask the student to write a draft of a recommendation letter. More generally, he is asking what you would like him to stress in the letter. This frees him from the need to investigate the requirements of the individual university and will refresh his memory about what you did together.

So, yes, provide a draft. Say what you have done and what you think your future potential is. Don't make it too obvious that you are writing about yourself, of course. But make it positive.


How to be a good reviewer when suspecting dubious results or being sent contributions outside my field of expertise?

In any field, once you start reviewing, you're going to see a lot of problematic submissions, because there are a lot of people out there who submit really bad manuscripts. In some cases, the authors are unaware of their problems, while in others they're trying to slip a minimal paper past peer review because they aren't really interested in the science---they just need the publication to graduate or get promoted.

Your job as a reviewer is to make sure that what gets published is credible.  That means that if you don't understand something or don't feel that the evidence presented supports their conclusions, you have a duty to report that as a problem with the manuscript. Depending on the severity of the problem, you might recommend either revision or rejection---and the handling editor will make the actual decision.

You shouldn't, however, demand that authors to do new work just because you think it would be interesting. You also shouldn't expect to know every tiny detail of their methodology.  So, where to draw the line?  Here is how I think about it:

The authors need to provide enough methodological detail that no significant implementation decisions are missing.
The conclusions need to be well-supported by the evidence presented.
The overall thrust of the paper should be interesting to a typical reader of the journal (this one varies highly by journal).

None of this will allow you to detect clever fraud, but not-so-clever faking often leaves a clear trace (data that looks too nice), and cherrypicking of data is usually detectable because the authors present data from very few samples or trials.


What version is published online under "ahead of print" for an accepted paper?

Depends on journal policies. The one I'm most familiar with, the "ahead of print" articles are complete in every way except they've not been assigned to a volume & issue. If this is the case for you then of course they will send proofs to the author before putting it there.

Alternatively they can put the accepted manuscript there. If this is the case it will look very unpolished; it might not be in the journal's style, the figures might be on separate pages, and so on.

A glance at the articles already in the "ahead of print" section should reveal which is the case for you.


How much guidance you get depends on your advisor. Some give a lot, some give none at all. The latter is not the ideal. Some will give you a problem to work on (or several) and others expect you can come up with your own. The latter is not the ideal.

Part of your experience is due to the fact that PhD students have little experience as yet in advising.

Most advisors, I think and hope, and closer to the ideal, will assist you in coming up with a suitable problem and with help along the way. But they will also expect a lot of initiative on your part.

Becoming a good researcher isn't something you necessarily learn how to do on your first outing. You should get pretty far along on the learning curve while doing a doctorate, but there will still be things to learn and refinements you can make.

But, if you are getting in to the process at the beginning, look for an advisor who suits you and your ability. Some people will actually want no assistance, but most will want at least some guidance throughout. Don't choose an advisor randomly or for the wrong reasons. It is an important first step.


What are some reasons to get your work rejected?

It would depend on the field obviously but I'll have a go at the most common I see in my area.

Outside the scope of the journal
Has been done before
Incremental - minor value
Value of the work was not clear
Not appropriately supported with experimental results
Badly presented in the context of the discipline
Badly written


Link IEEE Xplore article with its arXiv version in Google Scholar

Google Scholar will eventually find the IEEE version of the paper. Just give it some time.

See the last item of the "coverage" page of the Google scholar FAQ and the second item of the "search tips" page.


First postdoc as "the big filter": myth or fact?

Like many other things in academia, this depends.
Having an unproductive postdoc is a point that will definitely come up with any future hiring committee. I’ve sat on a few myself (CS departments) and productivity is considered at every period of your academic life. Of course, if a candidate had a stellar PhD it will make up for it to an extent, but it’s entirely possible that such a candidate will be passed over in favor of a candidate with a less impressive PhD but a more consistent performance overall.
Such “performance gaps” always raise questions - does this indicate an issue with working independently? Working in a group?
Another point to consider is reference letters. Your postdoc host is not likely to write you a glowing letter if you are unproductive, which will hurt your chances of landing a position later on.
That being said, research does not always result in publications. If you made progress on an important problem and have at least a preprint/workshop publication, this may be enough. Hence, your focus should be on productivity rather than on the end product.
A postdoc is also an excellent time to show your commitment to the research community. Organizing workshops, taking on higher-ranking roles in program committees, setting up tutorials, writing a useful blog... All excellent ways of putting yourself out there and making yourself more marketable. Of course - research should absolutely come first, as it is the main evaluation criterion.
Remember - you successfully completed your PhD, you can (at least according to empirical evidence) succeed in this as well! Good luck!


Choose a referee who knows me better or one who is better known?

On any sort of application, for school or a job you want to build a portfolio that highlights your suitability for the desired position. Neither of your referrers will be there with you if you get the position. All they can do is speak to your suitability as they see it.

So, choose the one who can best speak to your abilities and general characteristics that suggest success. This would seem to suggest the "other" person.

However, you know something about each of them and are a better judge. But it isn't the capabilities of those giving references that will be judged. It is what they say about yours.

Later in your career it might be different, if you have a powerful sponsor who will continue a collaborative association with you going forward.


Yes the reviews matter in a number of ways. They are generally considered by tenure and promotion committees and consistently awful reviews can prevent tenure/promotion even for someone with excellent research and service. Committees look both at the average/median and the spread/extremes of any numerical scaled questions as well as the open comments.

The evaluations are also used by some people to actually improve their teaching. This is obviously much harder to enforce, but in my experience no one sets out to be a consistently bad teacher.

Very rarely would a teacher be fired based on student evaluations since they have a number of inherent flaws. First the scores and comments tend to be much better in electives than required classes. Scores also tend to be better in small group teaching versus large lectures. Some topics also tend to score higher than other topics regardless of who is teaching. There is also the issue of bias. Student comments can reveal a shocking degree of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Finally, the timing is really wrong to evaluate how much the students learned and how important it was. Asking for an evaluation before the student can see how the class fits into the entire education, and future job, misses so much about what a teacher is trying to do.


What questions do prospective advisors ask during first meeting?

From the perspective of the prospective advisor, their goal in the meeting will be to determine whether they want to take you on as a student, so their questions are likely to be based on accomplishing this goal.  This is very much like a job interview with a prospective employer, so you should prepare yourself in the same way.

(1) Make sure you have "done your homework" on the research interests of the advisor, and whatever research group they are in.  This means that you should have read their faculty webpages, read about the projects they have done, and have a reasonable idea of the kinds of publications that advisor has done.  I would expect that you have at least looked at the list of papers published by the advisor, and if you are well-prepared, you might even have skim-read a couple of them.  You might be asked questions about why you want to be supervised by that advisor (or work within that group), and you should be able to respond to these with specifics.
(2) Depending on how this university works, you should either have some existing knowledge of projects that they want to put you on, or if you are expected to come up with your own project, you should have some reasonable ideas for this.  If you are proposing your own ideas, make sure that they are within the expertise of the prospective supervisor, or else consider a different prospective supervisor.  If you have already constructed a research proposal, bring this with you.  You may be asked about your ideas for projects, or broad fields of research, and in this case the most important thing to do is to make sure you can explain your ideas in clear and simple terms.  When a potential supervisor asks you to describe a project idea, often they are just looking to see if you can communicate your idea in clear non-technical terms to someone who has never heard it before.  They want to know that you can communicate about your subject clearly, without falling into a muddle, or giving a stream of jargon.
(3) Your prospective advisor might ask you about your previous experience and courses, to get an idea of your level of existing knowledge.  If you have sent them a CV and academic transcript in advance then this will help to narrow down the questions.  Some advisors like to ask detailed questions about past courses, grades, etc., and others will just assume that if you got into the PhD program then you have the desired background.  This varies a lot, but be prepared to talk about your past education/work, and give some highlights of things you have done well in (without appearing to brag).
(4) You ought to be able to make a plausible case for how you will fit into the advisor's research group, and how you can add value to this group.  Expectations will be modest here, since you are a novice, so they are not going to expect you to have any expertise that is lacking in the research group.  Still, you should be prepared to explain why you think you would fit well into that research group/project, and show that you have the potential to learn the material rapidly.
(5) Make sure you display an attitude of eagerness and flexibility, and are not too rigid in your desire to work on a particular project.  A prospective supervisor will generally look for a student who is able to be slotted into projects where they are needed, and who can adapt to changes in a research project.  At the level of a PhD candidature your supervisor will also generally want you to have a broad interest in the field, rather than a narrow interest only in a particular project.  It is therefore helpful if you can display an enthusiasm and knowledge for the your field generally.  (Some PhD students occasionally ask if it will harm them to show interest in multiple research subjects at once, on the basis that this might dilute their commitment to one project.  Although academics often become highly specialised, this is not an expectation that applies to starting PhD students, and at this early stage it is best if the student has a broad interest in the discipline.)

Initial meetings with a prospective supervisor vary wildly, depending on the attitude of that academic.  For some academics it is treated as little more than an informal meet-and-greet, while others may ask detailed questions and "grill" the prospective student.  So, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!


What will happen to my IEEE conference paper if the status of the accepted paper is "AAR"

I think the flowchart in your question is pretty clear as to what happens next. But I'll break down the relevant part of the flowchart into words.

You have to make thorough revisions to your paper, and then resubmit. It will then be reviewed again.  As a result of the review, it may be accepted, and it may be rejected.

AAR: your paper's current status - accepted after revising. It's now up to you to make the thorough revisions, and to then submit the revised paper

REV is the status your paper will have once you have submitted the revised paper.

RVI will be its status when the revised paper has been sent out to review. Judging by the flowchart, it will get sent to the same editor and reviewers as before, because a revised paper does not pass through the WFR stage of waiting for review, where reviewers and editor are assigned.

It may then be accepted (ACC), rejected (REJ), or conceivably, according to that flowchart, get returned to you once more as AAR for further revisions.

The flowchart also suggests that whether it's accepted or rejected, you still prepare a camera-ready version. That would seem to be very unlikely: I find it very hard to believe there's any use for a camera-ready version of a rejected paper; only an accepted paper would need a camera-ready version.


Should I contact the universites that have not given me a decision yet after I have taken a offer?

It would be polite and helpful for you to let them know as it reduces their work. But a simple mail/email is all that is required.

"Thank you for your consideration, but I've accepted another offer."

No more is really needed.


How to implement contradictory comments/suggestions from collaborators?

I handle conflicting suggestions as follows: Consider all suggestions for this point, work out a suggestion based on the other suggestions and send an email to all collaborators and write something like "In this respect I got conflicting suggestions namely... I would suggest to proceed as follows... because... ".

It would be best to collect all the points of conflict in one message.

You may reduce the number of conflicts a bit by adding another step to your workflow: Before starting to write the paper have a session/discussion about the structure of the paper, its focus and the notation. This costs some time and be difficult, but can considerably reduce the number of conflicts. Especially you may point out that some issue has been already discussed in this session.

Oh, and by the way: I would not suggest to encourage all coauthors to cc their comments to the whole group of authors and have the discussion like that. Then the thread may loose focus pretty fast and things may get messy.


How to deal with past unintentional and unpunished plagiarism?

First, it is unreasonable to blame your instructors.  For what reason?  If they had done something years ago, you wouldn't feel bad now?  Probably it was not obvious to them that you had plagiarized.  (Plagiarism can be more obvious or less obvious, depending on many factors.)

Second, people make mistakes in life, and not all mistakes are fixable.  You just have to do your best to be honest and correct now and in the future.  You might consider contacting your old professors to let them know what you did, and that you now realize it's plagiarism and that you are sorry.  If you need to do this to feel you are "deserving" of your situation, you could also redo your projects and send them to your old professors, but this is not ethically necessary.  Who among us deserves the fortunes granted us?  Not I.  I can only appreciate them.


Professor doesn't respond to notice of inability to take a test in his class

Professors get a lot of emails every day, and depending on the size of your class, they could be getting even more. I would not after only a day

In any reasonable department, you are fine.  You documented your case by emailing him as soon as you knew you needed to reschedule, and have a doctor's note dated yesterday. If you really want to cover your bases, call his office and leave a message.

In the US (at least), it should not be necessary to go to the exam and ask to be excused*. You don't say how bad your concussion was, but I know that the last time I had a bad one, it would not have been safe for me to travel.

Please rest, you have all the documentation and can figure it out after.

As pointed out in the comments, if your professor is truly a nutcase, you may be able to go to your disabilities services department for help.

* Some might wonder if you're healthy enough to do that, why can't you take the exam?


Why are papers without code but with results accepted?

For me it seems that the reasons are two:

the belief that code is only a tool, a particular implementation being secondary to the idea or algorithm,
the historical residue (it was unpractical to print a lot of pages; especially as no-one could copy-paste it).

Additionally:

many scientist seems to be afraid to show their code in public, as they are aware of its poor quality (see also Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?), so they don't want to risk reputation (for both quality and catching possible errors).

Moreover, things related to current incentives in academia (where publications, not code, are related to one's career possibilities):

sharing code may mean risk of being scooped (instead of milking the same code for years),
cleaning up code takes time, which can be used for writing another publications.

  Do people have to submit their code privately to the reviewers at least, so that they can reproduce the experiment if possible.

Typically - not. If the code is not made public, almost for sure no reviewer have checked its existence; much less - correctness.

However, many scientists are starting to notice the problem (and they see how open source culture flourishes). So, there are new initiatives addressing such issue, like Science Code Manifesto:

  Software is a cornerstone of science. Without software, twenty-first century science would be impossible. Without better software, science cannot progress.

Or e.g. this manifesto. Try to search for reproducible research or look at things such as knitr for R and this intro to IPython Notebook, or read about using GitHub for science. And it seems it is taking off.


Apply to the same University after a rejection

I would suggest that it would be worth re-applying only if something substantial and important has changed. The change could be with you, or it could be with the university.
You say that the job description is not the same as previously. That is a change, but I can't say that it is a sufficient change. Presumably the place has pretty high standards and a lot of applications.
It could also be that the recent emphasis in online education has made you a better fit. Or a possible drop in the number of likely applicants for the new position relative to the previous announcement.
But the change could also be with you. Have you improved your CV since the previous application? Have you gotten an important new advocate to write letters for you?
Maybe both things have changed enough for you to be a better fit now. But if not, it is unlikely to be any more successful in this cycle.


How to effectively write a paper of N>2 co-authors?

Git! Or more generally, version control systems, if your co-authors are technically inclined enough to know/learn how to use one.

If not, probably... write the text in google docs first and designate someone who will do the formatting in the latter stages, and decide what to cut to make the page limit.


Is there a standard format for sharing data?

No.

Depends greatly on the field and kind of data.

Some fields do have relatively standard formats:

In Astronomy, FITS is considered pretty much the standard for imagery.
In machine learning, CSV/TSV is relatively common -- though as the data set sizes get larger and richer, other formats come into play. You can troll the UCI ML Repository to get a feeling for what's common.

In general though, I'd argue that plain-text based formats are what you want to preserve. If, happiness of happiness, your paper becomes hugely influential and you only provide an .xls file, you can bet the first thing that's going to happen is a bunch of ersatz plain-text copies will appear.

If you want to annotate your data, and that's what is swaying your advisor to Excel, perhaps consider something like XML or JSON -- easy for the computer to process and plain text based, yet free-form enough that you can annotate it however you'd like.


Which tenure-track jobs would a new math PhD have a shot at?

You've gotten solid advice from your advisor.  At the math departments at many research universities, it is very rare to seriously consider an applicant straight out of a PhD.  However at most teaching jobs this is not rare at all.

These are rules of thumb, not absolutes.  Eleven years ago in my department (UGA) we hired someone straight of a PhD program.  This was a joint hire with engineering.  Sixteen years ago we seem to have done something like this: we hired someone to be an NSF postdoctoral research fellow and an assistant professor.  Nevertheless I think the chance that we would hire someone straight out of graduate school in 2015/2016 is essentially zero, and when someone decent applies only for an assistant professor position who is still a PhD student, I sometimes write to them to tell them that they should apply for a postdoc instead.

The number of postdoctoral jobs is safely smaller than the number of tenure track jobs at research universities, so we can conclude that some research universities are hiring tenure track faculty straight out of their PhD.  For top 50 departments, this is very rare, but not impossible.  On the other hand, you should feel free to apply to any university without a PhD program straight out of a PhD.

If you are not sure whether you are too junior to be seriously considered, what should you do?  You should apply anyway.  I've been on the "seeing hundreds of applications" side of it, and yes it is slightly annoying to see an application from someone who is too junior to be seriously considered.  But that's ten seconds of annoyance, and it carries no lasting stigma against the applicant.  In fact, often my reaction when reading the application is "Definitely not this year, but..."

I will risk a personal anecdote.  When I was a graduating student, I was so naive about things that I assumed that even departments that didn't advertise postdocs nevertheless had postdocs to offer. (Oops.)  In one case I got a reply, from a professor at an Ivy League school thanking me for my application for a tenure track job but telling me that they would go for someone more senior.  (I will not name names, but suffice it to say that he wrote the book on elliptic curves, then wrote its sequel, and has written several other seminal texts in the years since.)  He was remarkably gracious.  About ten years later he visited my department, and during a group lunch I told this story.  His response: "You never know who the young student will turn out to be in the years to come.  So you might as well be nice." (Which was really a nice thing to say!)  Anyway, clearly I had burned no bridges with my silly application.  You shouldn't worry too much about this.

  I also wonder why this state of affairs exists. If hiring committees are in fact burdened with such a quantity of under-qualified applications, why don't they filter some by clearly delineating what they are looking for in the job listing?

Job postings are heavily scrutinized for EEOC issues.  If what you wrote last year got approved and worked decently enough, it is easiest not to mess with it.  Here is a line from this year's job posting in my department:

  A Ph.D., or equivalent foreign degree, in Mathematics or a closely related field is required.

I have asked in the past what a "closely related field" means and been told "Maybe nothing; we'll know it when we see it." I think I was involved in adding the "equivalent foreign degree" part: I believe that in Russia the degree is not called a PhD...The idea here is that if you list something as a requirement and then hire someone that doesn't meet the requirement, all hell could break loose.  So even if we think that the chance that we'll hire someone without post-PhD training is 0.01%, that's still probably enough not to make that training a requirement.

Added: David Z points out that the possibility of taking multiple postdocs shows that the "we can conclude" above is not a watertight proof.  I think a more protracted analysis of the number of tenure track jobs versus the number of postdocs and the number of postdocs one can take and still be competitive for a tenure track job would lead to the same conclusion.


Is It OK for an academic to have broad research interests?

There is nothing wrong in showing interest in various topics, as long as you obtain deep results in at least some of them.

Without having any deep results in some of the fields, it really looks bad, because it looks like that you are unable to advance enough in something to push the topic forward. It more looks like you chicken out of any serious job, because, frankly, in most disciplines the way to obtain deep results is quite painful.

But, as long as you obtain reasonably deep results in your topics of interest, you should be fine. Then, it shows that you are willing to learn new things, able to tackle problems that you don't know for a long time etc.

However, bear in mind that the boundary between the 1st case (no deep results) and the 2nd case can be very thin, and different people may consider it differently. For the sake of a Masters or a PhD, I think that each of them should be quite narrowly focused. On the other hand, it does not harm at all if you have a thesis on your primary field that contains good results, and at the same time you publish something in a secondary field.

Last, but not least, you have to remember one more thing: Who is funding you? Does he mind that he spends his project money on you and you work on something else? Your supervisor should be aware of the fact that you work on something else and should, at least to some extent, approve it.


What to do (if something) when someone gets your paper wrong

If the paper is already published, the only thing you can do is to get the journal to publish a correction. This is usually a huge hassle and only justified in extreme cases such as if the paper under question is mainly a response to yours. Being known as a pain in the posterior is usually much worse than being cited in a misleading way.

You can also use your own future papers to set the record straight. "Contrary to BLAH 2018, BLAH 2016 did not advocate to eat all the cookies". In minor cases, I would not do this either.

Things are of course different if a paper is not yet published, in this case, you can just write a polite email to the authors. Of course, in many fields papers are not circulated early. You can of course also write authors of published papers and correct their misperceptions so that they will not describe your work wrongly in future papers. In any case, be polite and not accusatory.


Publishing in the lower quartile journals: better than nothing?

In the UK the value of a publication is often based on the REF and the QR model. For the REF, only your top 4 publications in the 5 or so year return window matter. If you have less than 4 publications, low quality publications are definitely better than nothing. For the QR model, only research which is considered

  Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

is worth any weight to the university. No one really is willing to define what "internationally recognized" means. This means that for hiring and promotion purposes, assuming you have 4 high quality publications, multiple low quality publications are not worth anything.

While the REF and QR model influences hiring and promotion decisions, as well as funding body decisions, I believe there is still a place for low quality publications. They can be helpful in allowing you, and other, to refer to them in later higher quality publications. It is also a way of archiving and sharing your research.


How much should university ranking matter while choosing a place for graduate studies?

This is a very good and tricky question to answer. In my field, ranking doesn't really matter unless the school is one of the top 5.

If this is the case in your field too, then you would use ranking to help you make a decision if everything else is very similar (in my field, advisor's reputation and research topic is way important). I imagine that highly ranked schools have very reputable faculty too, but in a PhD, the specificity of a topic plays a higher rule. Not all too five schools have resources/faculty to study/test topic X. For instance, in civil engineering, UC Berkley is one of the prestigious school and always have a  1-5 ranking at any given year. It very famous for earthquake engineering, however if you would like to study something like structural fire engineering (keep in mind both earthquake and structural  fire eng. are sub fields of civil engineering), you are better off going to a school ranked way below Berkley (or even to a Canadian/European  school)!

As for the faculty, I'm not sure if some departments have more "young" faculty as oppose to older faculty. I have worked with both and can assure you that it is highly dependent on the faculty member persona. Age of a faculty doesn't or shouldn't be a very important criterion. If you are thinking in the line of being active, have unique ideas and stuff like that and you are worried that being with an older faculty member would mean that you will be working with an old school arrogant guy who you will meet once a month and publish minimum number of papers, then fear not!

You will be surprised of how many young professors who get their PhD and think that they know everything. Also, you will be equally surprised of how many well established professors who think anything new (for instance, FE simulation) is a type of a gaming platform.

The key is to choose an active faculty with high reputation and who is easy to work with. Do your research and ask graduate students. They should have better insight and can provide with behind the scene information.

One more thing, good professors will always be on top of their research, aware of the up-to-date technology and current research regardless of their age. It is true that well established faculty might have better connection and funding. This is due to how long they have been around and their natural progression. It is also true that younger professors might have a better grasp at newer technologies. But keep in mind that those young professors that might have graduated in the last few years most likely had an "older" advisor.


phd advisor hasn't kept a promise (and may not care) - do I address this directly? if so, how best to do that?

I would not assume malice or intent when just plain forgetfulness is likely. There are times in academia where all you are thinking about is the "next thing". Finish the revision for this manuscript, proposal deadline due in three days, grant proposal due date coming this Friday, a consulting client is demanding another meeting, classes have started and you still need to organize and revise your course based on feedback from last semester, etc, etc, etc.

In short, the scholar might just have forgotten. If I were in their case, I would probably be a little embarrassed at my own forgetfulness, apologize, and then put a meeting (and reminder) in my outlook calendar.

My suggestion is send a polite email with a reminder. Just a

Hi Dr. So and So,

I worked for you in ____ project. We had discussed setting up a meeting for you helping me with _____. I wanted to see if you had time to meet now? If you are able, I can schedule a call about it.

Thanks,

Bleepgloop

I think this is a nice little reminder email that is not accusatory and would probably work well.


Do faculty hiring committees inform the candidates of the results?

My own experience was that whether and when a response came appeared to be exceedingly arbitrary.  Some places gave a rapid "no", others gave a "no" after many months (one after more than a year), and some never said anything at all.  I have heard of similar experiences from other people.

I have not been able to discern a pattern of which organizations are likely to fall into which category, and also know that different people seem to have different experiences with the same organization, presumably based on who is running the committee in a given year.


What happens if your handling editor leaves the editorial board?

I sincerely hope there was more communication than just 'after more than one year'. It sounds like there are some organizational changes within the journal that may be working against you.  I've had that situation too, and it led to unreasonable delays in review.  I suggest you go straight to someone on the editorial board and politely ask for some relief. Problems within the journal editorship should not impact you so negatively, which it clearly has.  In my case, this worked, and the review was immediately reassigned to a new action editor and fast-tracked. Don't be afraid to speak up, just state the facts and be polite. The main point is to ask the journal what they think the best course of action is.


Should I do anything about a recent article in a respected math journal that is not up to its usual standards?

You could consider "doing something about it" if the article was indeed questionable in terms of its science,  i.e., if the data seems fabricated or you find faults in the proofs. Finding that this article's contribution is not exciting  enough or minor language issues almost certainly do not qualify. How substantial the results of a given paper are is rather vague and subjective, and spelling errors almost certainly are not grounds for retraction. The best you can hope for, in my mind, is a corrigendum of the spelling errors.

You should also keep in mind how your supplemental arguments will appear to an outsider:

  the authors of the paper are from country X, and the paper was communicated by a person from country X as well

First of all, this is not "suspicious" as it happens all the time. Further, and this is the big concern,
replace "country X" with "the United States", and see if you would still find this suspicious. With concerns like that, it is very easy to be perceived as judgemental or downright racist, so I would be extremely cautious in following this line of argumentation any further.

  the whole process (from "received" to "received in revised form") is only 3 months, and I wonder if enough time has been given to review the paper.

We all know that the review process is capricious. While 3 months is certainly well below my average review time, it's not outrageous to assume that the paper had the usual number of reviewers, all the reviews were returned reasonably quickly (in one to two months) and found the paper acceptable, and the authors only had to do minor changes for the revision. While most manuscripts don't go through as easily, this does not appear particularly suspicious either.


The answer to your question really depends on which country in Europe you want to go. In Italy all the open PhD positions are assigned in the fall, while in the Netherlands every professor that has own grant can create a PhD position and hire you any time of the year. I guess this reflect also the different status that a PhD student has in these two countries: in Italy you are a student with a scholarship, in the Netherlands you are an employee of the university with a temporary contract.


Physics Talk by an Undergraduate Student -- Preparation

The slides you linked to are using the Beamer LaTeX class, specifically that looks like the Copenhagen theme without a table of contents.  Beamer makes beautiful slide shows that will take you at least three times longer to make than Power Point, more if you're including images or other formatting beyond bullet points and text, or have never used it.

Personally I tend to use it for everything and then complain about how much less time I could have spent on it if I had used PowerPoint.  Pick what works for you.

My general advice when it comes to mathematical formulas in slide presentations is to exclude everything possible.  I find even when I am familiar with the research, it's very hard to parse a formula on the fly, while it's up on a projector for 60 seconds.  Obviously if it's crucial then your audience will just have to cope, but always try to use narrative or images or other easy-to-consume-on-the-fly formats to make your point where possible.  If the audience is interested then they'll get your paper and study it to understand all the equations.

The other important universal rule to presenting like this is that you will take up way more time than you expected.  Practice is good, but regardless, lean toward less material and slower, more detailed discussion of it than trying to cram in tons.  Remember that you don't have to make every point of your research in one presentation.  Present enough to convey the broad idea to everyone, and convince those so inclined to read your paper where they'll learn the rest.


Re-typesetting an old paper, what to do with the result?

The copyright will be owned by Nature, so it would be illegitimate (and, as @AnonymousMathematician says, somewhat rude) for you to distribute it yourself.

However sending a re-typeset version to the original authors isn't distribution, but simply correspondence.  If they want to re-distribute this, they're in a better place to do so than you are.  This may not have occurred to them, and your action in suggesting they do so, will be at the very least encouragingly flattering!

I doubt Nature would be opposed in principle.  Their author licence policy says that ‘[Nature Publishing Group] actively supports the self-archiving process, and continues to work with authors, readers, subscribers and site-license holders to develop its policy.’  That's a fairly vague remark, of course, but many universities and funders now mandate 'self-archiving' papers, and journals have no option but to go along with this; therefore the authors may have already have a way of distributing this in a way which is low-hassle to them, and unobjectionable to the journal(s).

Detail: Authors aren't, typically, allowed to distribute the publisher's PDF version of a paper, but are increasingly allowed to 'self-archive' and distribute the 'post-refereeing authors' version' (that is, the same text as in the published version, but typeset by the author).

So, get in touch with the authors.  It sounds like you'll be doing the community a favour.


Is there funding for non-research related projects?

Sure:

The DFG in Germany awards grants for projects to organize digital libraries.
The ministry of education and research in Germany funds large projects on higher education (one of them is the Qualitätspakt Lehre - you hire people (often at the PhD or postdoc level) to organize or develop new courses, course concepts or course material).
There are grants for projects on history of science.
Universities offer reduction of teaching load or sabbaticals for writing books (which is really some kind of a grant, you get paid with time not money).
In books you often see acknowledgements for some funding.

Granted, in many of these grants the money or time does not go to PhD students or postdocs but at least the first three things fit the bill.

Note however, that as soon there is no research involved, you can not get a research degree for this work. So these kind of positions are not attractive to some students.


General idea on how do Committee Members read PhD thesis

I think that many, though not all, committee members will try to do a good job, but they may fail. My perspective is mathematics in which a dissertation is very arcane (or can be, anyway) and few people in the world are as well versed in the particular tiny research area as the author, and, perhaps, the advisor. It may be a bit different in some other fields and perhaps wildly different in dissimilar fields.

But people are also busy with their own work and don't have the time or the inclination to learn every part of the background of a given (math) thesis. Many will try to read it, but will get stuck at some point. Questions from those people are likely to be to ask for some explanation of what is going on at the point that they got stuck. If you know your work well, these are fairly easy to answer, though it is possible to give an unsatisfactory, overly pedantic, answer. If you can provide insight about how to continue then you get a win.

But many people, being busy, will just defer to your advisor. This is especially the case if your advisor is a well respected mathematician. A couple of days (maybe hours) before the oral exam, they will go the the advisor and ask: "This is ok, right?". The advisor will assure them that all is well and so they have the confidence to sign off on your work. Proof by Authority, I suppose.

If you think this is cynical, then ask around. I know that it happens, both from being a student and from being an advisor. I won't admit, of course, to that behavior when I was another committee member.

However, as Bryan Krause says, things differ. You may get an eager committee member who has examined your work in detail. If they disagree with it or have a certain sort of personality, you might get uncomfortable questions. You need to give reasonable answers, of course, but you can, I hope also depend on your advisor to serve as your shield from overly critical things. You won't be required to give a perfect answer to every question, but need to demonstrate mastery of the ideas in the thesis and the surrounding micro-field.

But, in particular, you can't be expected to give snap answers to questions that require study and reflection to properly answer. If someone has seen a paper that you don't know about and it seems to say something different from what you have written, then it may take a lot of analysis to see (a) whether there really is a difference and (b) why the different results arose.

My committee was something like the following. My advisor knew everything that I did and he supported the work. Another faculty member was in the same research group and understood it well, but had few questions. But he had the background to follow it without a lot of detail. Another one, I think, just deferred to my advisor. Another who didn't ask questions in the "defense" came to me afterwards and admitted that he couldn't understand it very well (his sub field was different) but he found a few typos and gave me a list.

On the other hand, I heard of a case at the time, possibly apocryphal, in which a candidate in chemistry was denied a degree because the talk mentioned ph throughout. In that place, an external (out of field) examiner was required and that person asked for a lay-person's explanation of ph. The candidate froze up and couldn't answer, though it is a subject studied in first year chemistry. But, the fact that such a story was remembered (or made up) points out how rare such things really are.


I am a Mechanical Engineering PhD, Electrical Engineering MS, Bioengineering MS, Electrical Engineering BS in USA. I was an international student and I met my wife who was also an international student when we were B.S. In order to keep our relationship, we stayed in US as students. Last year I got my green card (No green card is very difficult to find job in US, even if international student may apply working visa. Not much company is willing to hire a temporary working visa people).

Currently, I am a contractor in a small private company. My hourly paid is as same as a B.S. student that I taught when I was a PhD student. My previous labmate who is a US citizen got a government job, the other one also citizen got a position at NASA.

PhD is almost no value to most of industries. I used my PhD title to get my current job, but this job is totally unrelated to my research. Small and middle size companies do NOT spend time to train you. They need someone knowledge more than creativity.

If you want to use a PHD title, so that you can a professor. At least in USA, you need to have a few years of post-doc training first. Moreover, there are 400 applications per assistant professor position open in my previous university (Top 100 NOT Top 10).

Do NOT do a PHD if you don't have to.


Gamified course: how to deal with the massive amount of grading needed without using specific software?

I'm a former gaming engineer (many years ago), now college CS lecturer. Personally, I resist attempts at "gamification" of courses -- in short, it seems to me like a corruption of the gaming concept, and something that weakens both sides of the enterprise.

It sounds like you're struggling to get your arms around a desired major overhaul of the course. I think that many "reform" proponents would suggest that you take smaller steps, trying out some small single component in a course, assessing how well that works, and then iterating. Also consider: Will future courses use this gamification approach? Or should you be preparing your introductory students for the expectations of "normal" college courses with which they will be interacting in the future?

My top suggestion, as a first step, would be to work in some programming assignments which the instructors do manually grade throughout the semester. Feel free to make the assignments fairly simple and standard; directly from the book is fine. Have programs that take obvious input and output some kind of deterministic result -- write a simple batch file to compile and help test the functionality. Run them through an automated plagiarism checker (Stanford Moss). Also read the code and give feedback/points for proper style. I do this for ~8 assignments per semester, ~25 students per section. If you have double the students, then maybe halve the number of assignments.

Personally I think that you've got to commit to some kind of personal assessment of actual code for a proper programming course. Students that don't get that and wind up in my programming 2 course very much struggle at that level. Yes, this is more work than just one or two exams alone. But if students can't write code, then you should probably fail them, and if you want to think of those grades as your academic "gamification", then maybe that will help you out.


Advisor drops incoming student four weeks before Master's program starts

Thats too bad but not absolutely surprising given the instability of academia. I would say to advise him to take a temp job for a year and then reapply--for next year he should not have trouble. Can he work as an intern somewhere, etc.? This wasn't his fault so the situation shouldn't hinder his employment opportunities elsewhere.


Listing Research Universities (Highest research activity)

The Carnegie Classification ranking system that you link to is fairly reliable. The details of how the rankings are calculated are here and include:

  research & development (R&D) expenditures in science and engineering
  R&D expenditures in non-S&E fields
  S&E research staff (postdoctoral appointees and other non-faculty research staff with doctorates)
  doctoral conferrals in humanities fields, in social science fields, in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and in other fields (e.g., business, education, public policy, social work)

They then do a series of statistical manipulations on the numbers to get a final ranking. It seems that the weightings of the factors are less malleable than other rankings (e.g., US News and World Reports). The data seem to be collected from reliable sources (e.g., http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/). The choice of factors seems malleable and potentially unreliable. It seems like it is likely that if you were to replicate the process with the same factors, you would come up with a similar answer.

The real question, at least in my mind, is if the factors considered, are at all informative for your needs.


Would research internship experience lower my chance of getting a technical job?

I can answer this question from my undergrad experience and work ex in India.

Short Answer: No, having research experience doesn't hinder your chances of getting into a technical job.

Long Answer:
Having a good research project/internship demonstrates your deep thinking abilities and capacity to do challenging work often with minimal guidance. Good companies often admire these skills. In addition to this, research internship along with good implementation part(CS specific), count heavily to your favour.

The advise of your college senior (without any offense) is directed primarily towards service sector companies and is misleading. The reason is not that your research internship would not give you proper skills for the job, but that your research experience may give them an indication that you would leave the job for higher studies. There are many other factors such companies consider for minimizing the attrition rate and maintaining high reserve manpower, and research experience is certainly not at the top of that list.


How to mention your work in a peer-review?

If your paper is a relevant factor, then by all means mention it in peer review. I understand your concern about appropriateness, but in the situation you describe it seems unambiguous to me that you should recommend your own paper.

If you are worried about it, there is typically a "confidential comments to editor" section where you could note that you're recommending your own paper but it's for a good reason. I wouldn't bother doing so unless, say, you've made four reviews in a row for the same journal and every one of them has the same recommendation.


As an editor, when I need peer-reviewers, if I don't know someone with expertise in the topic at hand, I look to see who has published peer-reviewed work in a similar area recently. No-one signs up to do reviews, it's up to me to go out and find them. Which means, if you haven't published peer-reviewed work recently, you aren't likely to get any invitations.

So, in my case, if you want to do peer-reviews, the first step is publishing something in a peer-reviewed journal. Otherwise, no one will know you're there.

This doesn't mean someone who isn't publishing is never qualified to provide a peer review. But if I don't know you, and you haven't published anything yourself, I have no way to evaluate if you are qualified to provide a good review.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the distinction between an interesting paper, and an interesting publishable paper, may not be clear to someone who isn't actively pursuing academic work in the area.


How do I sign a letter of recommendation, if I've left academia?

In your case, write on personal letterhead.  As Alexander Woo has said, the first paragraph should be something like this: "I'm writing in support of the application of Bob Brown to your doctor of divinity program.  Bob was my student when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Close Cover Before Striking University."  Then you go on to explain briefly your qualifications to make the recommendation and in more detail why Bob would make an excellent and successful DD student.


Is there an equivalent in another country of the French "CIFRE"?

Yes.

CIFRE is a mechanism for PhD students in France to be funded and work with industry.

The US NSF offers similar opportunities through the Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Opportunity.


Should medical conditions that affected performance be stated in personal/research statement? And how?

Your potential advisor is interested in (mostly) one thing: your potential as a graduate student. To that end, your personal statement/interviews/etc. should serve to convince him that you will be able to do excellent research. Any issues that could be a potential problem should be noted and addressed.

With that background, do you think this condition could be perceived as affecting your output as a graduate student? From the way you posed it, I would suggest that the answer is "yes". As such, I would mention the condition towards the end of the letter/interview, but I would state  with confidence that past performance has demonstrated that it will not affect output, and you're confident it would not be a problem in the future. Don't dwell; just mention it as you would a disclosure and move on.


Is it common practice for an admissions office to ask a transfer student for the current semester's grades?

It's not so weird.  A lot of places do admissions the week before classes start, or even after classes start.  Only selective universities plan many months ahead.


tips for Assistant Professors applying for new Assistant Professor positions after being cut

You are being let go for a reason that apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with your individual performance; your program was cut, and you as the (most?) junior person, are being let go first.  That should not be interpreted as a reflection on you personally, or the quality of your work.  Everyone in academia knows that things can be unusually difficult right now, and people are losing jobs that would have been totally secure under normal conditions.  Of course, you will need to explain why your position has gone away in your application package, and your recommenders can explain it was well.
Actually, the kind of recommenders you have available in this situation could potentially give you a significant advantage, relative to other applicants for the same positions.  You already have experience working as a full-time (possibly tenure-track) faculty member, and you should get a senior person in your department (the department chair being the most natural choice) to write a letter on your behalf that talks not just about the quality of your research, but also addresses your capability as a teacher in a full-time faculty position and your service work.  A chair's detailed recommendation that says that they are extremely unhappy about losing you, due to budgeting changes completely beyond your control, could be very compelling to hiring committees.
All this being said, given the current economic situation, you are probably going to be in for a rough ride.  In fields where whole majors are being cut, there are likely to be few new jobs opening up, so competition is likely to be extremely fierce, even for people who already have faculty experience.


Encourage student to participate without him helping too much

You can have some tasks where they each do the same thing (as you've been doing), but also some tasks where they need to do different things.  For example, have them write different functions that are both necessary in a larger program.  If you choose the tasks carefully, X will be too busy with his own work to meddle with Y's.


What would be my affiliation if I'm a Masters student?

Yes.

And be sure to get it in there before you graduate. Though if you are not moving straight to another uni and plan on publishing more, if you talk to your prof they might hook you up with "affiliate" status. This means no money or much of anything else other than the ability to claim affiliation.


How many papers accepted in Special issue call For paper?

This may depend on your field of research. In my field, it is often considered easier to publish in special issues, because in general

all contributions are submitted to review en bloc, so there is a chance for weaker contributions to be 'kept afloat' by stronger ones
special issue editors have incentives to be lenient with rather negative reviews on individual papers, because they want their special issue to be published and therefore need a sufficient number of papers to survive
the competition for slots in a special issue may be lower than for slots in a regular issue, due to the narrower topic
papers whose general contribution may be questionable can still work in the context of a special issue with a more narrowly defined topic.

It is not possible to give a reliable estimate for acceptance rates, as this depends on many factors; however, it is likely higher for special issues compared to regular issues of a given journal.

As for the call for papers, the chance of your paper being accepted depends on whether the special issue editors seek to fill an empty slot in the proceedings of an earlier workshop, panel, etc., or whether this is an open call (and then of course on the quality and fit of your abstract/paper).