I think that there are two questions in here that it may be useful to separate out:

Should you spend the time to prepare a well-written analysis that you make publicly available to others?
Should you make your analysis available in the form of a peer-reviewed paper?

For the first, it seems that you've done much of the analytical work already, and that there are people who will appreciate it.  I thus see no reason not to produce a good write-up and publish it.

Whether you should publish it as a peer-reviewed paper, on the other hand, is not so clear to me.  I don't think that you need to worry about being looked down upon for publishing such a paper: that concern is more about bad work, not work with a clear, intentionally limited scope.  I just don't think there's much to gain from going through a formal peer review process here unless your work involved more experimentation and surprises than it sounds like it did.

Instead, I would recommend posting your analysis as a technical memo (many institutions have a mechanism of this sort), a whitepaper, an arXiv pre-print, or other such semi-formal document.  A semi-formal publication of this sort can place your work in a permanent archive with a DOI and clear means of citing if people find it useful, yet also is fast, easy, and need not be a significant distraction from the main thrust of your research.


What does "paper rejected provisionally" mean?

I've seen language like this before as well, and feel that it is unnecessarily confusing. Usually, what I have found is that it's effectively equivalent to "Major Revision."  Here is a good heuristic for distinguishing:

If they give you a date that they'd like to see the revised version by, then it's equivalent to "Major Revision."
If they don't give you a date, then you've been rejected, but they really are inviting you to submit a better version when you are ready.


Postdoc in China. Looking on advice about culture shock and pursuing a career in industry

As someone from England who did postdocs in Thailand (for 4 years) and then taught in high schools in Shanghai (for 3 years), not so recent, but within the last ten years:
Working conditions depend a lot on the people you happen to be around, and Shenzhen is not Shanghai (although in terms of "internationalisation", they are similar), but based on my experience (the following was all TRUE for me, although everyone's experience is different):
Another factor which is sadly crucial but you haven't mentioned, is your ethnicity. If you are white then people will stare at you and you will be a target for rip off/con artists/people trying to sell you junk everywhere you go. The violent crime rate is zero (although, there are pickpockets; and the official train ticket seller in a railway station tried to overcharge me once), but you will have to have your guard up at all times.
If you have darker skin then you might have a hard time. I have heard Chinese friends say things about Africans and non-Chinese Asians which would be unbelievably racist in most western countries. However, I don't know what practical differences in behaviour/treatment might arise from this.
If you look Chinese then people will assume that you are, which means you will get pushed around more on crowded public transport, etc.
(I myself am white, but my Korean-American friend was always complaining about being shoved around on the trains, even more than me - this is just how people behave towards each other in China, and queuing is nonexistent).
Culture shock: You will find it hard to buy certain basic things you are used to in the US (although you will not know which until you are there). You will find that many products are of much lower quality than in the US, that you cannot obtain higher quality products at all.
You will also find a lot of people hawking up phlegm and spitting on the street, dropping litter, and smoking indoors (even in restaurants, even where there are non smoking signs).
Food: someone on the street tried to sell a live hedgehog to me to eat. Even in large supermarkets you will find live frogs and very strange animal meat on sale. If you do not eat such things, you will find it surprisingly hard to find restaurants which sell edible food (I don't regard KFC or McDonald's as edible either). Some people in the comments think this is an exaggeration. I have seen dog carcasses hanging outside restaurants in Shenzhen. OK, I suppose you are not likely to get served something like this accidentally, but that doesn't mean it's not there and cooked in the same kitchen, with questionable hygiene standards (food inspectors are routinely bribed). China is notoriously bad for animal rights. Remember also the poisoned baby milk powder scandal ten years ago.
Language barrier: Very few signs will be in English (let alone people who speak English). For getting on buses etc., you really should have your address or road name written down IN CHINESE CHARACTERS to check. (By English I really mean "Roman script" - if something is written in Polish or Swedish, or some other European language I don't know, at least I can read, copy and memorise things. This is also a problem in Thailand of course, although at least Thai is alphabetic).
Working conditions: make sure EVERYTHING is written down and agreed in GREAT detail. You should expect your employers to lie and cheat about everything. Do not expect any reasonable behaviour or holidays from them. Maybe you will be pleasantly surprised, but plan for the worst. "We missed Monday due to a public holiday, so therefore we will all work on Saturday". One time, both Monday AND Tuesday were Chinese public holidays, so we had to work over Saturday and Sunday (and still work the following Monday - Friday as normal). So, we were forced to work 10 days in a row!
Prices: China is nowhere near as cheap as Thailand, say, nowadays. A good meal in a restaurant will cost you >10 US dollars, easily, unless you are willing to eat strange and/or low quality food. China is fine for buying cheap, low quality junk, but even expensive products will still be low quality, you just cannot escape it. (E.g., I have had DVD players, washing machines, etc. break down within a few months).
"International" cities: absolute nonsense. People say the same about Shanghai, and it is not international at all. All the ways in which it is "international" are very superficial. Nowhere in mainland China is "international" in the proper sense of the word. Only Hong Kong is international (although I don't know about Macau).
Money/exchange: you will find it very easy to change US dollars to yuan, but very hard (within China) to go the other way when you finally leave (and international bank transfers will be very hard). China discourages you from taking foreign currency out of the country. (Yes, even staff in the Bank of China will blatantly lie and pretend not to have foreign money). For cash exchange, by far the best option is to go to Hong Kong. You will have to pay for almost everything in cash.
Freedom/internet: yes, China really does spy on you, block websites, block Hong Kong TV news broadcasts, etc. etc. You need to show your ID at internet cafes, to buy petrol for cars/motorbikes, to buy long distance bus/train tickets, etc. etc. When you first arrive, someone from your apartment building will speak to you and be very friendly. That is the communist party representative who lives in your neighbourhood (EVERY neighbourhood has at least one, who reports back everything they see, especially regarding foreigners). There really are undercover spies everywhere watching you and reporting back to the Communist party.
General evilness/legal problems: if relations go bad between you and your employer, do not expect any kind of fair treatment. They might, e.g., collude with your apartment owner to have you thrown out or overcharged; they might forge documents and try to charge you money for false compensation/refuse to pay salaries owed, etc. etc. Even though the law theoretically protects you, in practice very few people will help you (and even if you take them on and win, you will not be compensated the amount you deserve). Always have your passport handy and be prepared to run if things start to go badly downhill.
At least you are not actually at risk of imprisonment unless you do something really bad.
Shenzhen does have one advantage, that you can easily go to Hong Kong for brief escapes (unless the border is closed due to Covid etc.); if you are working in Shenzhen then you will get a multientry Chinese visa, and Hong Kong I believe allows US passport holders to enter frequently for short tourist visits without fuss.
Shenzhen is newer and less polluted than Shanghai, although it still seems about the same as London to me, which I think of as quite polluted. To be fair, I think Shenzhen is the nicest large Chinese city I've been to (and I have been to quite a few), although there is no history (unlike Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and even Hong Kong).
Make sure you are not the only foreigner who works there! At least they will have dedicated staff members who will help you to find an apartment, get visas/work permits/etc. etc., because they know that most of these are basically impossible if you don't speak Chinese.
Health: they WILL test for diseases like HIV, Hepatitis, Tuberculosis, etc. etc. I don't know where to find the full list of diseases, but if you have anything like this, you might find yourself stuck in China abandoned by your employer (with hefty medical bills) if you fail the medical test. Also, doctors in China are NOT TRUSTWORTHY; some WILL overcharge, recommend dubious or unnecessary treatment, etc. (Of course this may also be true in other countries). Also, what actually will happen if you catch Covid-19 or some other disease? Make sure you ask in advance and have it written into the contract what they will do in this case.


Is it OK to exclude 'extra courses' from the GPA reported in my CV?

If you write

  GPA: 3.5

in your CV, this implies that your official cumulative GPA as per university records is a 3.5. So to write this is misleading, and unethical.

If you want to list your GPA only for courses in your own department, you can write

  Major GPA: 3.5

or

  3.5 GPA in physical science courses


Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor?

Yes, it will make it harder to get a job as a professor of computer science.

A distance learning PhD is not well suited for learning certain skills that one would learn in a traditional PhD, as described in more detail at Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?. Some of these skills are important for getting a job as a professor and/or doing the job of a professor. For example, you would not get any teaching experience in a distance learning course, and most faculty applicants are expected to have at least some teaching experience.

Furthermore, by doing a PhD by distance learning, you miss out on a lot of the networking and exposure to other academics that happens in a good computer science PhD program. This plays a major role in getting a faculty job afterwards.

The exception to this is if you were to get a job where the PhD is necessary only as a formality. For example, if you are already so well known in your field that every university wants to hire you, but can't because their HR departments insist that faculty candidates must have a PhD, then a distance learning PhD might be sufficient.


Is a bachelor in Computer Science Engineering a viable idea if my ultimate objective is to be a mathematical modelling engineer?

From my own experience, Im doing PhD in computer graphics, mainly physics simulation, and I have a master in mathematics, the program was called "mathematical modeling" it was mainly analysis, partial differential equations, numerical analysis and continuum mechanics.

Physics simulation is nothing else then solving partial differential equations and I can see that a math background is much more useful then computer science background when I look at my peers.

So I would recomend a math degree with a focus on numerics and physics.

edit: I see that you are a little bit worried to study math, that it might be way too much math for your taste. However, you are in a great position because you have a great motivation to study mathematics. You can always come up with things to model with math you are being thaught at school. From using projective spaces in computer graphics to fourier analysis in image processing . BUT remember one think. Do not expect that profesors will motivate you(it is a bonus if they do) but you have to activelly look for things that motivate you, everyone gets excited by different things.


Am I breaking any law by digitalizing a curve from a plot on a scientific Journal if I cite the source and I mention the tool I used?

At least in the USA this is explicitly OK, so long as by 'digitize' you mean 'find a mathematical expression of the nature of the curve'. As long as you do not use the original image, you can even reproduce the curve from the that information. Data, as in observations about the natural world, cannot be copyrighted.
If you are 'digitizing' in the sense of creating a digital image, most journals will request you obtain permission to reproduce the image you found in the original article. "Creative and expressive' mediums, such as data visualization, are fully copyrightable.
You also might consider reaching out to the authors anyway, to get their own data used to produce the curve. Reviewers and readers will prefer this, as it ensures the description of the curve is accurate. Almost any author should be amenable to this.


Do academics/researchers benefit from permanent access to conference paper abstracts?

There's a huge range of conference formats.  At one extreme are conferences at which presentations are given with an abstract but without any associated paper.  These presentations might be associated with journal papers published at a later date.  At the other extreme are conferences in which every presentation corresponds to a paper in a published conference proceedings volume and those papers will not appear later as journal papers (or perhaps only extended versions of the papers will be published in journals.)

In cases where there are only abstracts, these abstracts might be published in a printed program of abstracts or (more commonly these days) might just be available on a conference web site.  Some people do cite such abstracts, so it's a generally a good idea to keep them in some permanent form.

As an example, look at the AGU meetings abstract database.  These abstracts describe presentations that were made at AGU meetings, but in many cases the presentation never gets turned into a journal paper.  These abstracts are sometimes cited by other authors.  The AGU has maintained this database over the years.

https://meetings.agu.org/abstract_db/


It is best to be consistent with how one writes his/her name in a paper. If the author usually writes his/her name in full (or vice versa), then you should follow that pattern. This makes it easier for other researchers and software to verify that two papers were co-authored by the same person.


How reliable are QS Top Universities rankings?

I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy.

This statement, in its given generality, is false. The US, like most places, has very good schools, ok schools, and a reasonable number of pretty bad schools. If you explicitly are looking for very cheap schools, I would not assume that the remaining selection is necessarily any good, just because it is a "school in the states".

POLIMI is a pretty good school in CS. To be honest, if I had the choice of going either to POLIMI or to a low-ranked US school, I would almost certainly choose POLIMI.


If I write a really bad, but controversial, paper, can I increase my h-index?

Yes, you can!

But that it is possible is by no means to say that it is ethical, practical, wise, or otherwise commendatory. I would be especially concerned about becoming known as the 'person with a kooky idea' rather than as a serious academic researcher.

The question becomes, "It is possible to write on a very controversial topic, create a media firestorm, attract a lot of attention, increase your h-index, and still keep your credibility intact?" The answer will be highly variable dependent on the validity of your research, your previous reputation, and the sheer capriciousness of luck.

First, assuming that your work is valid,  even if you have proven the viability of a very controversial position, your work is likely to attract some negative attention as well as attempts to disprove your research (or you-- ad hominem attacks are unfortunately common). However, if your work can and does stand up to scrutiny, all the brouhaha may actually work in your favor-- you have proven a controversial theory to be true, your h-index will increase and your credibility is not only intact but also bolstered by your success.

On the other hand, if your work does not stand up to scrutiny (which seems to be the scenario you are picturing), you will have made a public fool out of yourself and the slight increase in your h-index will be more than offset by the decrease in your credibility. Neither the counter-moves of serious researchers nor the attacks of fanatics are likely to help your academic career, especially if your work cannot stand up under scrutiny.

So, write a really bad, but controversial, paper only if you are willing to sacrifice your credibility for the slight increase in your h-index.


Should I include non-winning positions in my CV?

Yes if

there is content relevant to the readers of your application and
if you are able to properly communicate/present/demonstrate such relevance.

My slightly analogous context: I'm including research projects in my CV even though I got graded low.

After a year in industry (finished master's last year; applying PhD's for next year), I've come to realize my accomplishments were not graded.
Even if they were, the grade is not as relevant as much as what the experience says/could say (depends how you present!) to what you could do for your intended job/program application.
If I'm wrong, then I guess I can trim down my CV. The analogy is supposed to be that my low grades is like your not getting into the finals.

Better analogy: Having a great thesis/acting performance but not winning best thesis/acting award in your batch/for the year

I mean gee, had you been born a year earlier or later you could have been in the batch/year where your thesis/acting performance would've been better than the best thesis/acting performance of their batch/for the year.


How will taking upper level undergraduate courses online affect graduate admissions?

Given your terminology (you wrote "research university"), I'm going to assume you're in the US.

This is a bad idea.  Admissions committees will have no idea how to evaluate the online classes, and will probably not put very much weight on them.  As @ff524 notes in his comment, you will not have any good letters of recommendation, which are essential for an application which is a bit outside the norm. You are incredibly unlikely to get a spot in a graduate program that is likely to result in a becoming a professor at a research university if you depend on online classes instead.

So, what should you do instead?  Well, first reconsider if being a math professor is what you want.  You're absolutely right that there's a real risk of it not working out, and a lot of competition.  But if by trying to keep your options open, you do less to make yourself a qualified candidate (both on paper, and in actual point of fact), then you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage, and making your chances that much worse.   You will be in very bad shape if you don't get a BA which includes a math major, and take a lot of advanced math courses (more than the bare minimum required for a math major!) in person with faculty at a well-respected research university.  Note, that doesn't necessarily preclude getting another major.

On the other hand, there is good news.  The people who get BAs in math, or start mathematics grad school and don't finish, or who finish but don't get an academic job (or one they want) do find other things to do.  If you have complementary skills in computer programming, then you will be very well set up to do a lot of things.  I don't suggest starting a math PhD as preparation for a job at Google, but I do know several math PhD's who do have such jobs.  So, if getting a BA in math and then perhaps a PhD in math feels like what you want to be doing in the moment, then I think you can reasonably do it, and figure you will find a job if the academia thing doesn't work out.


How to prevent being intimidated by juniors in your group publishing before you

First off: if you are not a full time student, it's natural that you will take longer than others (who I presume are full time students). Don't feel too pressured by this.

Second, if you are involved with your colleagues' papers, should you be a coauthor on them? Especially if this took time you would otherwise have spent on your own projects?

Most importantly, have you discussed your specific problem with your advisor? It appears like getting a publication accepted would be helpful to your peace of mind. Your question has a faint whiff of perfectionism, which may prevent you from submitting and publishing. Your advisor would be the logical person to discuss this with. He should have a good understanding of the expectations in your specific field. If he considers you one of his best students, this is a good starting point!

I would recommend that you write your advisor an email along these lines:

  Recently, some other students in our group got accepted in upper tier
  conferences. I am extremely happy for them, and this motivates me
  immensely to follow their lead. I would like to get something accepted
  in a comparable venue soon. However, I feel unsure of what level of
  quality is sufficient for publication - at what point do I stop
  polishing and submit?

  Could we have a meeting in which we discuss some of my current
  projects and work out what I still need to do to get a manuscript into
  submittable form, ideally with a time plan? Thank you!

Finally, I assume you have already read and taken to heart this canonical question, right?


Avoiding use of a red pen in providing handwritten comments on student work

In the past I have also received suggestions about marking in red, and had various discussions on the topic. My only reason for continuing to mark using red is that it contrasts strongly with the typical blue or black of the submissions.

It is often cited/claimed that red is an "angry" colour, or students find it demoralising, and so it should be avoided. But that doesn't really follow when the markings are "ticks" or other constructive affirmations.

Using blue pen when the work is blue or black does not provide a good contrast and corrections are more easily overlooked. (I have used blue pen for marking when, after having had students ask if it matters what colour they use to write, I have received work written in shades of pink. In that case, blue gave a better contrast than red.)

Green has been suggested as an alternative, but then there are studies to indicate that information written in green is not easily remembered, and if the reason for writing corrections is to help the student learn, green would then be counterproductive.

Other colours such as purple and black also do not give a good contrast. And you may well find that the students who complain now that they don't like red will later complain that you didn't show them the correct answer/method/result because the new colour used didn't stand out from the rest of the work.

There is also the issue of marking individual items or questions and then totalling the marks across multiple pages. The individual marks need to be easily seen by you so that you don't inadvertently miscount and record a lower mark or grade for the student work.


what is the usual time to start applying for jobs and other positions during a phd?

Yes, you should start applying for jobs.  You should have started several months ago, since it can take time to find a job, and after you do it may still take some months before the job actually starts.  This depends strongly on what kind of job it is.

Of course, if you are looking for an academic job in the US, the interviewing season is roughly November-March, so you want to time things around that.  For industry jobs and academic jobs elsewhere, there is not usually a particular season to focus on.


Salary determinants for faculty at public schools in the US

In addition to @eykanal's list, there are several factors that can lead to salary variance even within a single department:

Negotiating ability — Some profs are simply better at negotiating for better salaries than others, even with comparable publications, funding, students, teaching evaluations, etc.  Conversely, some people have lower salaries simply because they don't realize they can ask for more.
Time in the department/time since PhD — All else being equal, the longer you've been here, the higher your salary.  But as usual, all else is never equal.  In particular, faculty hired with more post-PhD experience are generally paid more.
Performance — In most departments, faculty are reviewed annually, if only very lightly, to make sure we're doing our jobs.  Salary is one of the few levers that department chairs have to reward faculty who are doing exceptionally well, or motivating faculty (especially with tenure) who aren't (seen to be) pulling their weight.
Offers from other institutions — This is one of the biggest sources of salary jumps.  If a valuable prof in your department starts getting offers from other places, you department is very likely to raise their salary to keep them.
Administrative bonuses — Faculty who hold significant administrative positions (like associate head, or chair of the undergraduate program) often get a salary boost.
Variance in the job market — New assistant profs are generally hired at the prevailing salary rate for new assistant profs.  Departments do not collaborate explicitly, but information does flow through applicants who get multiple offers.  For example, about 10 years ago, a top-rated US CS department (not mine) decided to significantly increase its salary offers to new profs, to gain a strategic advantage over other departments.  It didn't work; other departments (including mine) just raised their offers to compensate.  It took several years to correct the resulting salary inversions.
Variance in university budgets — When times are good, faculty get raises.  When times are not so good, faculty don't get raises.  These times do not necessarily align with fluctuations in market rates.
Intramural politics — Academics are human, and subject to human failings.  Everyone who reaches a position of power arrives with their own agenda; sometimes that agenda favors certain people or groups over others, for reasons that are more personal than objectively fair.  In some departments, fights over limited resources can be ugly and brutal ("because the stakes are so low"); sometimes that ugliness is reflected in salary differences.


Should I grant an extension on an extension?

This would, to me, seem to depend not on dates and length of delay, but on the reasons behind them. I can easily see deciding in either direction, based on what the student gives for an explanation.

Everything may be perfectly explainable, including not sending emails. Or you could decide that the student was just slacking. But base your decision on the reasons, as best you can determine them, not just the time factor.


Specifically academic alternative to LinkedIn

ResearchGate is more academic. It allows you to add your research publications, not just papers. It also has a stackexchange like section and a Jobs section, that features listings to research and advanced positions (PHD, Post-Doc) in academic institutions and in business.

As @StephanKolassa noted you should scout Research Gate before joining (follow the link in his comment), as any other alternative.


Can an extended journal version consist of more than a conference paper?

An extended journal version might well combine multiple input papers, though this is somewhat unusual.  In general if somebody was an author on one of the papers that is a source, then they should be an author on the composite.  The only exception that I can think of is if the resulting composite paper drops sections from some of the inputs, and certain authors had only been involved in those sections.  Again, this would seem to be a rather unusual situation, though plausible.


What is the probability of rejection for a long-time-review in the revised version of a manuscript?

In short: We can not tell. There are many influence factors to be considered.

Maybe the following thoughts help a bit:

Usually the same reviewer are evaluating a revised version of a paper. If one of those reviewers is late (due to whatever circumstances), one usually waits for them since they are much more competent in reviewing the revised version then a new reviewer would be.
If they still do not deliver, the paper might be moved to a new reviewer. They again have 8 weeks of time (even though one usually asks for a rapid response).

This sums up to 8 + ~4 + 8 weeks, which is 5 month. Add one month for the editor and you are at 6 month just for the review. With your 18 weeks I would say the paper is within a  time scale in which you don't have to become nervous.

I would recommend writing on your thesis since you did the work and it can be part of the thesis regardless of the acceptance of this specific journal.

If you don't have a response at the end of January (Christmas break for finishing reviews, Jan. for the editor), I would recommend to politely ask the editor about the status.


Re-posted faculty position. Worth waiting? (and two-body problem...)

I really want to get this position...and I don't know what to do at this point.

There is not much you can do at this point. The search committee has your application materials, and will get back to you if the position is relevant.

  My spouse is also in academia, and this might be my only chance to live with him...

This might be in your favor. Did your spouse recently get hired? Could they try and negotiate for a spousal hire for you? It is possible that you may be able to negotiate a position for you if your spouse's faculty wants them to stay. It may not be the most ideal position for you, but it will be something. After all, it is more than reasonable that your spouse leaves if you aren't unable to get your career started at your current location. If they want to avoid that, they need to help you figure it out.

  Is there a chance that I hear from them this month or November? Or should I just stop hoping and try to find jobs out of state...

You might never hear from them, you might hear from them tomorrow. We can't answer that. However, you should most definitely keep looking for alternatives, and assume you have nothing from them until they send an offer letter for you to sign. If I were in your position I'd look for positions wherever I can. I would also explore how open my spouse is to relocating if need be.

Good luck!


How to improve the narrative in a piece of academic writing?

As a non-native English speaker, I found the use of linking words lists very inspiring. I printed this cheatsheet and carry it with me along with the paper draft of my thesis for immediate access.

I also took an afternoon to brush up on my English (which, I believe, was already fine to begin with) and ended up reading most sections on this Guide to Grammar and Writing. In particular, I paid special attention to the page on Transitions, and it might help you too. On this page, they show how you can turn this hard-to-follow paragraph:

  The ancient Egyptians were masters of preserving dead people's bodies
  by making mummies of them. Mummies several thousand years old have
  been discovered nearly intact. The skin, hair, teeth, fingernails and
  toenails, and facial features of the mummies were evident. It is
  possible to diagnose the disease they suffered in life, such as
  smallpox, arthritis, and nutritional deficiencies. The process was
  remarkably effective. Sometimes apparent were the fatal afflictions of
  the dead people: a middle-aged king died from a blow on the head, and
  polio killed a child king. Mummification consisted of removing the
  internal organs, applying natural preservatives inside and out, and
  then wrapping the body in layers of bandages.

into this nicer one

  The ancient Egyptians were masters of preserving dead people's bodies
  by making mummies of them. In short, mummification consisted of
  removing the internal organs, applying natural preservatives inside
  and out, and then wrapping the body in layers of bandages. And the
  process was remarkably effective. Indeed, mummies several thousand
  years old have been discovered nearly intact. Their skin, hair, teeth,
  fingernails and toenails, and facial features are still evident. Their
  diseases in life, such as smallpox, arthritis, and nutritional
  deficiencies, are still diagnosable. Even their fatal afflictions are
  still apparent: a middle-aged king died from a blow on the head; a
  child king died from polio.

There are others resources grouped into "Word & Sentence Level", "Paragraph Level", "Essay & Research Paper Level".

Finally, if you need help writing transition paragraphs between sections, I'm not sure whether resources exist about this. I would suggest thinking about the high-level view of your work and reminding yourself (and the reader) why the previous section exists, why we are going to start the next one, and how they are connected within the big picture. During this paragraph, imagine your reader all of a sudden stops and says: "why the hell am I reading this already?" -- this is your chance to remind them.


Switching to philosophy after a PhD in mathematics

Maybe you do not know what an undergraduate degree at an American university means.  You do not study, say, philosophy, you "major" in it.  Depending on the university and your own choices, you may take anywhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of your courses in the area.  You will also be taking basic courses on writing, social sciences, very broad courses in the sciences, and so forth, that to many well educated Europeans would feel like high school all over again.  The idea of getting a PhD and then coming back for an undergraduate degree would be regarded as crazy by most American universities.  I agree.

In general, yes, a PhD in subject X should get you out of having to do an undergraduate degree in Y and you should be thinking of enrolling directly in a PhD program in Y.  But forgive me while I pick apart your question a bit.

  I've always been torn between philosophy and mathematics, and I'd like to give philosophy a chance (now that I have the "safety net" of a PhD in mathematics).

The idea that someone regards a PhD in mathematics as a safety net is very amusing (or bemusing?) to me.  If you have always been torn between mathematics and philosophy and got a PhD in mathematics, surely you must have devoted some serious study to philosophy, right?  If the answer is "no" then I don't really understand the situation.  If the answer is "yes" then I hope you have been exploring the connections between mathematics and philosophy, which is something appropriate for someone considering doing multiple PhDs.

If you want to study an area of philosophy with connections to mathematics (most obviously, philosophy of mathematics, but there are many other areas of modern philosophy which draw upon mathematics), then having a PhD in mathematics at a "world top 10 university" should be a tremendous advantage.  The level of mathematical expertise you bring will probably be superior to that of some of the faculty you would be working with.  Thus at the very least you should be looking for some kind of specially worked out, accelerated graduate program.  I would encourage you to also look for postdoctoral and other temporary faculty positions: these can be places to transition from one field to another.

The desire to start up an undergraduate program after having received a PhD at a top place is frankly a bit worrisome to me.  You've probably spent your entire adult life as a student, roughly 10 years of it.  You now want to turn around and spend another roughly more 10 years as a student?  That's about a third of your adult life.  Don't you have other things that you want to do?

Added: Although I do not think you should consider enrolling in an undergraduate degree program, if you really haven't taken any courses in philosophy at the undergrad level [by the way, in the US it would be really screwy for someone to have a lifelong interest in X and Y, do a PhD in X and never take an undergraduate course in Y; but maybe less so in Europe] then I think you should enroll in -- or audit, or whatever -- at least one or two as a non-degree student.  You just need some amount of assurance that academic philosophy is anything like what you think it is.


Changing affiliations and conference registration

There are no hard and fast rules here, and the conference organizers almost certainly do not care.

For most circumstances, the only thing that matters is this: which one do you want people to think of you as being from at the conference?

Most of the time, this will be your new institution.  If you know you're going to be there when you register, why not just give that affiliation?
Otherwise, you may end up doing what I've often seen people with recent changes do, taking a pen and modifying their affiliation on the spot.


Is is appropriate to specify what a general studies degree was in?

My advice:

*B.S. Electrical engineering

*B.S. General studies (math, psychology concentrations)

List them both, with the EE first--it is the one you would list if you could only list one, right?


Should I warn my professor about some errors that I've found in his paper?

Ask him. It sounds like none of the errors is serious so if your question is just one of etiquette, all you need to say is that you think you found a few typos and little mistakes in the paper and ask if he'd like a list.

If the final version has already been sent to the publisher, it's probably too late to fix that, though there's the opportunity to correct small typos when reviewing the galley proofs. In many fields, people put their papers on their web page, too, so he'll probably appreciate the opportunity to fix that version, even if the version in the journal is already set in stone.


Can I write an article in a reputable CS journal not with results but conjecture?

You can certainly publish an article based on a conjecture.  (One famous case is Subhash Khot's 2002 paper introducing the Unique Games Conjecture.)  On the other hand, you need to include some supporting information in the paper.  Why is your conjecture plausible?  Can you supply examples or applications?  What are its implications or connections with related work?  Answering these questions may be much easier than resolving the conjecture, but they can still require some serious work.

You're most likely to be able to publish the conjecture if there's no straightforward way to resolve it.  If it's clear in principle what you should try, and the only issue is that you don't have time to try it, then you're more likely to meet resistance (it may still be possible, depending on the publication venue, but this would probably rule out many of the more prestigious conferences).


Should I apply for a position which I previously applied and had an initial interview?

Yes. The cost of an application is essentially free -- these days you don't even have to pay postage. Unless you were specifically told that you were categorically unsuitable (e.g., you had a felony conviction and the job required contact with minors) then there's no reason not to reapply.

It's more curious why the same job popped up again. Either the search failed or the candidate bailed after being hired. You might want to delicately inquire as to what happened.

You clarified that this is for a post-doc or other temporary position. In that case, there's all the more reason to reapply. While applying should just take you about an hour of your time to brush up the CV and letter since you did everything last year -- As aparente001 notes, you may want to invest just a bit more time to figure out what the committee is looking for and hone your application a bit more.


Is it right for a supervisor to try to prevent his students from pursuing other research directions by simultaneously working with other professors?

First and foremost it is the advisor's responsibility to aid and guide your research to get you out the door and into a career. But there are many ways to do that.

One interpretation of the advisor not wanting you to work with others  is that it is a distraction and leading to your loss of focus. That would be a good reason for "preventing" your work with others.

But, after two years, if you don't yet have a problem to focus on, then the advisor is falling down on the job, perhaps. They should be making suggestions about questions and directions and suggesting starting points, etc. But if they have been good at directing your research then you should have no issue with them.

You have hearsay evidence about their letters of recommendation, but no direct evidence (I think). It is probably best to ignore it.

I doubt that it is in any advisor's best interest to "keep people around." Everyone is better served by getting people out the door and new people in. There are a few exceptions, but you don't give indicators of that here.

The advisor is correct to try to get you to focus. You will be best served by leaving other things aside and focusing on the one big idea that will lead to success. Perhaps the issues with "exchange" opportunities is also about getting you to focus, but it is impossible to say from a distance.

If you have a lot of ideas, I suggest that you simply record them in a "future research" notebook and then let them go for now. It is very useful to start a new job with such a notebook. But wandering around a vast landscape won't get you to that spot on the research frontier that will lead to success.

Nose to the grindstone.

However, there needs to be mutual trust between student and advisor. If you have truly lost that, then it might be best for you to give up your current advisor and move to another. It might mean starting over, and it might or might not have an effect on your ability to "focus".


Is it ok for PhD to come from same school as BA?

Many people refer to PhD programs accepting students from their BA programs as "academic incest." (The same term is used for hiring PhD students from the same program into the tenure track).  The reasons why doctoral programs generally don't want to commit academic incest are:

As with physical inbreeding, academic incest reduces the intellectual gene pool. You've already studied under a singular group of faculty for your BA, go to another program for your PhD to widen your intellectual horizons.
As with physical inbreeding, if your program is known for academic incest, it dissuades possible future candidates from applying -- or at minimum, feeling that you prioritize your 'own' over others.

There are clear reasons why a program might not want to be known for incestuous tendencies. However, the question is whether this hurts a candidate. Here, the risk/benefit analysis is a bit more murky.

Pros: If your program is indeed the best in X-Studies, why not remain at the best?

Cons: There is a risk that you might be seen as parochial -- that you only really know the intellectual currents at your single alma mater. To be honest, I'm not sure how significant a risk this is in terms of jobs although I would for the reasons of scholarly diversity above, still suggest that students not apply to their own PhD programs.

Fine print: Note that claims of the negative aspects of academic incest are much more pronounced (and pernicious) in the humanities and social sciences; and are much less common in the lab sciences. If there's only one university lab in the USA that does the type of gene splicing you want to do and you're continuing a project that you've done as an undergraduate, it'd be silly to think of going elsewhere.


How to get back on track after falling behind

I want to give you one piece of advice which I think is very important:  Sleep more.

If you don't get enough sleep, your brain won't work as well and so it will take you longer to understand things.  You will be able to work much more efficiently with enough sleep.  Also, your brain does a lot of important work during sleep, helping reinforce connections made during the day etc.  So the time spent sleeping is not at all a 'waste of time' as far as your study is concerned.

Try not to view sleep as something optional that you can leave out if you don't have time.  Have a go at sleeping at least six hours every night for a couple of weeks (I need at least eight most nights, myself, but six would be a good start at least) and see if you feel a lot more on top of things after that!

In my Honours year I found that it was hard to get to sleep if I had been doing maths within the last two hours before going to bed, so I made a rule that I had to stop doing maths at 10pm every night.  I mostly stuck to it, and it worked very well.

Also, I'd like to offer some encouragement that having to work this hard now doesn't mean you couldn't do a PhD or continue in academia if you wanted to.  I am now doing my second postdoc, and have never worked as hard as I did in my Honours year (that's like the first year of a two-year Masters).


You will almost certainly have to recruit study participants yourself. As others have suggested, speak with your advisor to out whether there are any participant pools he's used in the past. If you find others that he hasn't used before it's a good idea to make sure he's OK with the pool before you dive in, so to speak.

Note that, in some fields, the pool of participants can be a significant limiting factor to the generalizability of the study results. Think very carefully about exclusionary criterion before settling on something. Note also that your IRB may require you to provide justification for exclusion/inclusion of certain populations (i.e., children, pregnant women, drug users). Try to make sure your population sample is as inclusive as possible.


Applying to a lab as a post-doc; I am peer-reviewing their work

If you have previously peer-reviewed their work, you are obligated keep that information confidential unless the journal policy says otherwise.  If your potential employer somehow finds out you reviewed their work, they will know you did the right thing.

If you are currently reviewing their work and applying for a job with them, you should stop reviewing and contact the editor.  Tell the editor you now have a conflict of interest and cannot continue reviewing.


How problematic is going by a preferred name while publishing with my full name?

I don't think this will be a problem. A large part of the research community will know you through your publications, and as long as the name is constant across those, you won't have a problem.

Amongst colleagues/researchers who also know you personally, this wouldn't be an issue since you can convey the dual name to them during interaction. For instance, your email signature could be something like Jay (John Doe). Similarly, if you use academic networking sites, you could either give the full name or the dual name (i.e. Jay (John Doe)).

The only case where this could potentially be a problem is, X talks about you to Y as 'Jay', and Y searches for 'Jay' (s)he may not come up with the right results. I think this is largely surmounted if you use Jay (John Doe) in written communication often enough, so that X passes that information along to Y. I have had colleagues tell me about a person, and also what name he publishes under, so that I can find him. If people hear it often enough, they make a strong association.


How does a university award honorary doctorate?

Some universities allow faculty to nominate those chosen for honorary degrees. From what I understand, some even allow certain members of the graduating class and/or student council to nominate & vote. At other institutions, the senate, department heads, deans, president or chancellor may pick the candidates. Some institutions may have a nomination body and a voting body. I would think that it depends upon the size of the institution.

To find out for sure, check out websites for specific universities. Often times universities have focused areas of research or a campus wide research goal for which they have TONS of funding. On most occasions, honorary degrees are awarded to those who are conducting research in that field. They often award honorary degrees to those who are active in their communities as well.

Another common thing with honorary degrees: once an individual has been granted one other institutions will sometimes scramble to recognize that person as well. This is especially true if both institutions are located in the same area, or if they largely focus on the same research matters. People who make a difference on a global scale are often chosen as recipients of honorary degrees not only because they've made a difference, but because a university is, after all, still a business. If they give someone famous an honorary degree, you can bet it will be on the news. It will even get better coverage if other universities have also awarded the person with honorary degrees! Sometimes they look for a unique person to give an honorary degree to- because that will also get more coverage (for example, people from minority groups or from third world countries).

Each university has their own policy regarding nominations and different criterion, but they're all about creating a buzz. They may pick a First Nations community leader as a recipient in hoping that they will attract more students from that community. They also use honorary degrees as a way to network. If they want to meet their idol, they award them with an honorary degree so that person has to come and meet them to accept it (it is, after all, only polite, right?).

If you're curious about individual schools, you can look up the honorary degree recipients - they will often state why the person was given the degree. The key thing to remember is that they could come across anyone and find a reason to nominate them. They may see a firefighter on the news who saved the lives of people by rushing into a burning building. They attribute great courage to that person, so they nominate them to receive an honorary degree in emergency service operations. Their spouse, friend or neighbor may tell them an inspiring story which urges them to do more research on the person. Then that person ends up nominated! Yes, they have criterion, but it is flexible. They can word their statements for nomination in such a way that anyone would be fit for an honorable degree.


State-of-the-art writing in machine learning

State of the art refers only to the very highest accuracy ever achieved up to the point that you write your paper in computer science (I work in the field).


Mapping connections between topics covered in academic papers - does such a tool exist?

ScienceWISE is one of the attempts:

The ScienceWISE project aims to develop a scientist-generated on-line knowledge base fully integrated into the physics ArXiv.org
The ScienceWISE system allows scientists, in the course of their daily work to

dynamically generate professional-field-specific ontologies: add concepts and logical relations between them; provide expertly-written, community-ranked definition articles and links to other existing resources;
to create an interactive semantic environment, annotating scientific research papers, uploaded to ArXiv.org, and linking them to the ScienceWISE ontology, thus expanding content of their papers with supporting material in the form of encyclopedia-like articles.

(See also info on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/help/sciencewise)


What should a lecturer do when an international student plagiarises and the student claims it was unintentional?

If your institution keeps a record of academic misconduct, be sure this gets into the record.  If you don't do that, you enable serial cheating.

Do not allow a "do over."  The message you send is that there's no penalty for for misconduct, even if one gets caught.  Misconduct must have some irrecoverable penalty, however small.  It need not be a grade penalty; it could be extra work, but see below about setting a penalty.

Follow University policy if there is one.  If you have the opportunity to set the penalty, and I hope you do, consider the magnitude of the offense.  A single un-cited paragraph from a work listed in a bibliography is far less egregious than a substantial part of the work copied with no attempt at attribution.

It is not your problem that the student missed the plagiarism lecture.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.

It is not your problem that the student might lose her visa.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.


How to cite a google survey in an original paper?

If you designed the survey and this is the first paper in which you discuss the results, then you don't need to cite it you need to present it as original research with all the detail that requires. The fact that it's a google survey doesn't seem especially important, but you can probably find a good review article on methodological considerations for Web based surveys.


If I appeal an admission decision by a German university at the court, would the department take it personally?

This depends on a lot of factors:

Who was involved in the decision to reject your application and replying to your inquiries?
Only these people (plus their superiors, such as the head of the admission committee or similar) have to be involved in taking this to court and know of it.
However, to what extent you can rely on only these people being involved depends on administrative legislation, which probably only a specialised lawyer¹ could tell you about.

If your application was rejected due to lacking strict formal requirements, this was probably done by administrative staff, and you are strictly speaking only “attacking” them.
If on the other hand, your application was rejected after an interview process or by a committee involving scientific staff (i.e., usually professors), the situation is different.
Is the application handled by the university, faculty, or the department?
(You can usually find out by looking at whom you interacted with so far.)
Now why would this be important?
In Germany, there is usually a certain animosity between departments and university-level administration.
Scientific staff usually won’t care much if their university’s administration is attacked because they are used to them botching things, but they can get protective of their own department’s administration, who may be much more valuable to them.
How valid is your claim? Your case will be viewed differently if somebody really botched something during the process than if all you have in your favour is a technicality.
Did you exhaust all other options? Even if you have been clearly been wronged, directly escalating to court instead of trying other methods of resolution will not be in your favour.
What happens if you succeed? The best you can expect in most cases that the admission process is resumed at the stage where you were rejected.
For example, if your application gets rejected on the entrance check, you still would have to go through an interview process.
Unless you and the university want to wait for the next regular round of applications, this means you get an extracurricular interview, etc.
Now, if everything goes really professional, all those participating this application will only learn that your application has to be re-evaluated due to a clerical error.
But you have to ask yourself how likely this really is depending on the above.
Are the positions limited? Would you be taking somebody else’s place? There are master’s programs where everybody with a suitable bachelor degree will be admitted, and the crucial selection is who gets a scholarship (because most students need one). In this case, suing for admission is more likely to be seen as an administrative issue (which the academic staff doesn’t care much about).

At the end of the day, a lot can happen between the full range of:

Only a few people you will never interact with again know that you went to court.
Everybody knows that you are the person who sued themselves into the programme due to a technicality and nobody will accept you into their group (for a master’s thesis) since you are presumed trouble. On top, everybody hates you because you are the reason that the admission process was overbureaucratised the next year.

¹ whom you should probably consult anyway


How to handle the fact that the advisor is disappointed?

This is part of the process. You will continue to make mistakes. It's likely that all your supervisors made similar mistakes when they were first learning and they likely will continue to make mistakes. Starting over from the beginning isn't ideal in terms of completing research or publishing papers, but it's often necessary, especially if you wish to learn from your mistakes instead of continuing to make the same errors.

I think I spent the entire duration of my master's studies making mistakes. Some of these were errors in estimating how much time an approach would take. Others were misjudgments of expected results. Most of my mistakes, however, were about what people expected from my research. I thought I needed to single-handedly provide enough solid results for a Nature paper. I was clearly incorrect.

I would encourage you, then, to discuss with your advisor what their expectations of your research are. You both should expect to make mistakes along the way.


Transitioning from Electrical Engineering to Astronomy/Physics

The gap from electrical engineering to astronomy or even physics is big for a PhD. The other way around it's easier as physicists anyway specialize after master in a distinct topic, while electrical engineering is already quite specialized. Astrophysics is a field of physics that needs a thorough background in most of the physical theories apart from condensed matter physics. You would have to catch up a quite huge background. Only option I see is to dive into a very specialized PhD topic like, e.g. pulsar radiation or solar physics and trying to do simulations/data analysis on such systems. Other topics will need a lot of self-teaching and I'm not sure, even if you would be willing to spend this time, if supervisors or professors would like to offer you this time with alternative candidates. And many physics students want to get tenure in astrophysics, the competition is much higher in this field than in big fields like condensed matter physics.

I would rather suggest to you to look into topics and fields of condensed matter physics like spintronics, quantum sensing, quantum computing. Electrical engineers sometimes will have here an advantage over candidate with a master in physics concerning a distinct topic/task like circuitry development for superconducting quantum computers or quantum sensors.


Marijuana use and job/grant opportunities

Regardless of current policy, your career may be affected by policies 30 years in the future. Although the trend seems to be towards increased tolerance of marijuana, it is not possible to predict how things will be throughout your career. When I was a teenager US federal policy seemed to be moving in the direction of eliminating poverty and racial injustice as important objectives - see the "Great Society" programs.

You seem to be in a field that may lead to US government employment, or needing a US security clearance, or both. That makes you very vulnerable to changes in policy. The consequences of not being able to truthfully deny ever using illegal drugs could change in either direction.

You will have to make your own trade-off, but remember that you need to consider what could happen over several decades, not just what is happening now.


How to specify Russian (foreign) authors in the bibliography of an article in English?

The purpose of a bibliographic reference, from your reader's standpoint, is to be able to find the original work. So, if I have any hope of finding it, you must provide the original title, as it appears on the publication.

Now, since I don't speak Russian (and unless your paper is on Russian literature, most of your expected audience won't either), your reference is, for me, just a bunch of weird symbols. So, I will benefit if you provide a translation of the title and authors. That would, at least, give me the topic of the article, and if the authors have any international projection, I'll get a rough idea of their work. The different citation styles dictate how to exactly refer to the original and translated title. This is an example for APA style:

  Piaget, J. (1966). La psychologie de l’enfant [The psychology of
      the child]. Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France.

In your case, you would also transcribe the name of the author, and possibly translate the name of the journal, so I know what kind of work is it (it wouldn't be the same a paper published in a Psychology journal than in a pure Maths one).

Note that sometimes, work is published in national venues, and later translated into English. Having the names of the authors and translated title can help me find it, if it were published after your paper.


The reference style seems to be called "Taylor & Francis Reference Style X Harvard" (TF-X Harvard).  A more detailed guide for it is at https://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/reference/tf_X.pdf .


Referencing future ideas in abstract of a research paper

A paper containing a concept X can be cited with respect to X if any one or more of the following applies:

X is clearly defined
An intuition of X is provided
A constraint of X is explained
An application of X is experimented
An application concerning X is accounted
A logically contradicting definition of X is theorized

A mere inclusion of the name of the concept X does not mean that it deserves to be cited


No rec letters from subject area of master's application

Oh, it doesn't really matter.
If it is course-based CS master, not researched-based CS master, then a recommendation letter only takes a very very small portion of it, so whether it is from a math professor or a CS professor doesn't differ too much.
GPA is the most important.
One of my friends who worked in the admission process before told me that the first admission step is to filter out students whose GPA is lower than 3.5 no matter which university they were in.


How is a part-time degree (from a reputed institute) perceived in the academic job market?

The fact that you have done your degree either part or full time will not change your degree's value. I have never heard of part-time degrees being treated differently from full-time degrees. In fact, it would be unusual to list a part-time or full time status on your CV so it's not clear how people would know. And I doubt many people would react differently.

Your decision to do a degree part-time or full-time has other important implications on your long term goals but they are indirect. If you want to go into industry, choosing a part-time degree might mean you have more time to build up industry experience which might be nice. If you want to go into academia — and you can afford to go to school full time — do the full time degree because work in industry will only slow you down from the pursuit of your long term goal. Being a part-time student might also mean less attention from faculty who might think you are less serious about an academic track while you are doing the degree.


Is it possible to get a PhD position with only a Bachelor's degree?

It's certainly possible -- in fact, in the USA it's more common to start a PhD directly after a Bachelor's than after a Master's. In Europe, having a Master's first is a more typical requirement, but I have known some people to start PhDs straight after their Bachelor's (in physics, in the UK). Having significant research experience and published papers will certainly help your application a lot.

Why not apply for PhD and Master's positions at the same time? That way, you may get accepted to a PhD, in which case great, if not then you will likely have the Master's to fall back on.


Can personal projects that required reading other's research make up for lack of my own?

How valuable is the information I just listed?

Very, since it shows that you are capable of reading and understanding the literature, and capable of implementing what you read (the true test of understanding).

  Does the attitude demonstrated above make up for the fact that I don't really have terribly original research?

I doubt that any faculty, anywhere, expects undergrad students to have published research. I think the attitude you describe is very valuable for grad school.

  What about the fact that my professors probably aren't that well known?

Well, having a famous professor vouch for you certainly counts for a lot. But not having that network at an undergraduate level shouldn't preclude you from getting into a good graduate course, especially if you have some nicely implemented projects up your sleeve.


What is it called when authors trade citations?

In addition to the terms suggested by Scientist, another relatively common term is citation ring, here ring being used with the meaning (from Merriam-Webster):

  7 a : an exclusive combination of persons for a selfish and often corrupt purpose (as to control a market)
  b : GANG

Here are a few examples of usage of citation ring:

  SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers
  retracted

(Retraction Watch)

  Some other problems of the method were well outlined by Ulrich Korwitz (pp. 107-110): the problems of self-citation and the citation ring [...]

(T. Roper, "Citation Analysis of the Veterinary Literature: A Tool to Understanding Scientific Communication" in Libraries without Limits: Changing Needs — Changing Roles: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries, Utrecht, 22–27 June 1998)


Philippine grade equivalent in the UK grading system

Converting from one grading scheme to another is a nightmare: How to convert from one grading scheme to another?. In general, you should try and avoid trying to calculate an exact GPA in another system. That said, many US universities have a hard cutoff of a 3.0 GPA and many UK universities have a hard cut off of a 2.1 degree classification. Within these constraints, it seems reasonable to ask if a particular GPA in one system is clearly above, clearly below, or near the minimum admissions bar.

In the UK, there is an attempt to normalize the degree classifications across different universities. This is done by having external examiners on the exam board to prevent grade inflation. At Russell Group universities, about 10-15% of students get 1st class degrees and over 70% of students will get a 2.1 or higher. At lower ranked universities, fewer students will get first and upper second class degrees. Assuming a reasonably respectable university in the Philippines without rampant grade inflation magna cum laude would be well above the 2.1 bar and would probably be close to the 2.1/1st cut off.


Mysterious dashes in transcribed interviews for a dissertation

APA style does not cover transcription. You need to ask the author what transcription style they are using (or possibly what software they used). In the absence of author/publisher feedback, you need to pick a transcription style. It is not my area of expertise, but the style I have seen most often is Discourse Transcription.


Mentioning my published papers in the motivation letter for postdoc application

You can mention a publication, but you can also simply refer to what you have done, as in "I have researched / worked on / etc. [subject matter]. I am interested in exploring it further.". If you are certain that the relevance of this is obvious to the people reading the letter, then you don't need to be explicit about it; mention some keywords in [subject matter]. If you are not certain the target audience knows of the connection, then you should certainly mention how [subject matter] is connected to whatever they are investigating.

The full bibliographic details are presumably available in your CV or list of publications (or both), so I would not mention anything more than the title of the paper or some prestigious collaborator (in my paper with professor blargh, we discovered...).


What it takes for a Math department to develop a minor program in Statistics?

Other than my "context" comment above, this standard simply will not be the same at all schools.  Your best bet is to ask your department dean/chair who will either know the answer or where to find the answer.


I've been rejected from every research program/professor I've applied to for summer. What do I do?

How are you writing your emails? Make a list of your interests and match it to professors and their area of research. Be clear when you email them as in:

Introduce yourself succinctly and explain what your technical/major related background is, what your interests are (ideally match this with the lab). Perhaps related classwork/projects would fit here.
Read up the research the professor/lab has done, even if you don't understand everything. Mention specifically what papers/projects interested you in the email.
Ask to have a conversation with the professor, i.e "I'd like to learn more about x and the lab's work in y, would you have time to meet to discuss this blah blah".

Overall, keep the email short but make sure each sentence has a purpose. You might not always get a response, or maybe they won't have space and only have time for a conversation. But hey, you at least made a connection and can always try another professor after. Maybe stagger your emails from your first pick to second etc, and you could title it as something related to 'interested in undergrad research blah blah'.

Worst comes to worst, be specific about the classes that you take in an upcoming semester. Pick professors whose labs you want to work in and work hard, go to office hours etc. I can't see you failing in that scenario. Depending on your major, perhaps you could also work on a personal project during the summer and be able to showcase the project/skill in the upcoming school semester.

Lastly to add I'm not a professor, but I maybe wouldn't hire/accept a summer-only student unless  they already had some skills. Its just a fact that when you're earlier in your major, it takes longer for you to get up to speed and running. Something that could take you a week will take someone a day maybe. Professors know that and are willing to invest in the student, but you in turn should be willing to return that investment, and show that you are willing to work during the year etc


Why some universities don't require GRE AWA section?

It's only a guess but as an admission committee member I have weighted AWA lower than the other two as well for the following reasons:

The range of the score is pretty narrow (0 to 6 with 0.5 increment) and according to the guideline, it appears a good tool to find out who can't write, but not who can write well. Anything about 4 is kind of hard to tell.
Verbal and Quantitative have algorithm that is carried out by machine. AWA is graded by hand, thus can make admission committee feeling doubtful about the objectiveness or specificity to their program ("GRE's thoughtfulness is not our kind of thoughtfulness!!"). And I'm not to say algorithm is perfect, but it may still beat grading by hand (for instance, you can get locked into a low-score path just because you got the first question wrong, making the first few questions more determining than the rest.)
Most of the writing skill and thought process can be gleaned from the personal statement. (Of course, conspiracists can also argue that the statement may be written by someone else. But they should also know that all GRE writing topics are publicly available (1, 2). Two of them will be randomly selected and presented in the test. In a way, the students could have also gotten external help on this part prior to the test as well.)


Should a peer review for an academic journal include a recommendation for acceptance?

Remember that the final decision is always up to the editor regardless of your recommendation. And (hopefully) the editor reads your entire review, not just the recommendation.

I usually include a recommendation in my reviews, but I always try to justify it thoroughly, so that the recommendation itself is essentially a redundant summary of what I have already said. If I do not have a strong opinion either way, I will say so.


How to add self-study workload in the ECTS credits?

You can estimate it: if your previous programme expected you to work full-time on it (40 hours a week), and let's say you have 3 courses per semester, then each of these courses would be 10 ECTS (assuming equal load). As there is 60 ECTS in one year, i.e. 30 in a semester. 1 ECTS is equal to 28 hours by the way.

But calculating ECTS is hardly something you need to be doing on your own. You should approach the German university about this, chances are they have conversion tables, or at least some precedence on how to convert these figures. Moreover, the ECTS requirements is just a metric of what they actually want to measure: relevant experience. So you can also discuss your personal case with them and provide them with the study guides of the relevant courses you've followed to see if you fullfill their requirements.


Concern about possible conflicts between research sharing policies

From a UK standpoint, I've yet to see an example of two open-access funder/institution policies that fundamentally conflict with each other. There is a lot of variance between them in details, and some are more stringent than others, so you could certainly do something that would be enough for Policy A but not enough for Policy B.

However, it's very hard to think of a situation which would be required to comply with one but also prevent you from complying with another.

The main problem in practice is not that they conflict, but that they're all subtly different and they ask for subtly different things. This increases the reporting burden on institutions/researchers who may have to demonstrate compliance with subtly different policies, and provide almost-but-not-quite identical reports to different funders. It also increases confusion among researchers ("which policy applies here?"), and can understandably lead to frustration. More friction, more indirect costs, more headaches for all concerned...

On the plus side, there is definite interest in convergence. I strongly suspect that within a few years, we'll see more funders adopting a standardised OA policy (perhaps one of two or three versions - all-Gold, green permitted, etc), which should help solve this issue.


What should I do if I do not like research in a particular field?

There're a few ways to interpret why you don't like research in this field:
First way: you don't like the particular field because the papers are confusing and technical. In this case I want to point out that from your description, you've done spectacularly well. I was barely able to understand one single paper when I was an undergraduate, and you understand seven! You have nothing to fear about graduate school in this field, in that case.
Second way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is boring. This is a more serious objection. If you genuinely find the topic boring (that is, you find the end goal boring, even if it is achieved; or if you find the problems that you'd solve daily uninteresting) you might want to work on another topic.
Third way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is complicated and difficult. Unfortunately enough, graduate study in virtually every field is complicated and difficult. That's a big part of the reason why many people never attempt it. If you genuinely do not like complicated and difficult things, you might want to avoid graduate school entirely.

If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field?

Ask someone who's researching in that field. If you don't know anyone to ask, try asking the graduate students and/or professors in your department, even if they don't work in that field. It's possible your department will have a graduate advisor of some kind. Here's an example from Stanford. Even if you are not a graduate student, you could still ask the graduate advisor.


Effective use of extra time during a PhD

Very interesting question, the answer of course depends on you and your preference. A few pieces from a Y3 postdoc...

Advice 1: Think of a skill that you feel as your biggest weakness. If possible, try working on improving it. This can be a management workshop, a presentation class, whatever. As a postdoc, having a well-rounded skillset is going to be useful.
Advice 2: Think of an area adjacent to yours which you considered to learn about, and then try to take an online course or something like that for it. Having broader overview helps a bunch.
Advice 3: Present your work to others. Write a bunch of profs of interest that you'd like to visit their lab and give a lecture about your PhD topic. But also, consider giving public-oriented "outreach" lectures, so that interested general public knows what's happening in your field. One feels this to be  important, given we're usully paid from their taxes.
Start writing that book that you always wanted ;)


In an English work, can a non-English source be cited even if there exists an English translation?

There are two things to address here. First, relax. The exact sources you are citing in a writing sample for an MA program are NOT what the admissions decision will be based on. It is unlikely anyone is going to check up on your citations and even if they do, they are not going to care.

The second thing is, it is generally best to use the original, untranslated source. When the original source is not in a language you are proficient in, using a translation is reasonable. If you are writing in English and need to use a translation, then using the English translation is best, unless there is a compelling reason not to. In the future, you may want to work with English translations, but again for a writing sample, no one is going to care.


Is IEEE Signal Processing Society Membership enough to add "Student Member, IEEE" on a Journal author list?

Consult IEEE Editorial Style Manual: As per April 10, 2020 (and certainly for many years before):

  IEEE Membership Grades

  IEEE Membership Grades included in the byline and biography are Student Member, Graduate Student Member, Associate Member, Member, Senior Member, Fellow, Life Associate Member, Life Member, Life Senior Member, and Life Fellow.

  Note: Affiliate Members are not considered members for the purposes of the byline and biography.

These refer to general IEEE Membership grades, not Membership in a particular IEEE Society.

Therefore, if you are an IEEE Student Member, you can (and should) add Student Member, IEEE to the

Byline
Biography

Therefore, if you are an IEEE Member of any grade (excluding affiliate memberships), you can add this grade to any IEEE journal papers regardless of your membership in the society.

Quick notes regarding the memberships and differences between them:

For the purpose of the question, only the general IEEE Membership is important
In addition to general IEEE Membership, one can join IEEE Societies within IEEE. Many exist: IEEE Signal Processing Society, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, etc. Membership in these societies have their own benefits (access to journals in IEEE Xplore, discounts on conferences, access to certain educational materials, participation in committees, etc.), but is not required in order to add Membership Grade to the byline or biography
One can join an IEEE Society directly without having a general IEEE Membership: that will be Affiliate Membership. In this case, the member joins the society for a slightly higher Society Membership fee but does not pay an IEEE Membership Fee. If one is interested only in getting benefits from 1-2 societies and general IEEE benefits are not relevant, that might be a viable choice from the financial point.
Thus, if a researcher is an Affiliate Member of IEEE Signal Processing Society they should not add IEEE Grade next to their name.
It is very unlikely to be a Student Affiliate Member. I do not know about IEEE societies that have this option, as IEEE Student Membership is very discounted as well as some IEEE Society Membership fees for students.

Disclosure: I am a Vice-Chair of Membership and Benefits Committee of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society.


Publishing academic research in more than one field

Interdisciplinary research is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Interdisciplinary research is advantageous because the interaction between fields is often extremely productive in creating new knowledge and breakthroughs.  Lots of extremely important things start out as interdisciplinary research, and it's where entire new fields tend to emerge.  In my opinion, most of the most exciting research you'll encounter is interdisciplinary in nature.

The disadvantage is that until the new area starts to be recognized as important, interdisciplinary work isn't well "claimed" by any discipline.  This means it's harder to get published, harder to get funded, and generally harder to get respect from colleagues working in "core" areas.  There are often very few people who fully understand the content of an interdisciplinary project, and the importance of an interaction is often only recognized in retrospect.

This tension is, I believe, the reason that you often see articles calling for more interdisciplinary research.  Many people recognize its importance, but if it was well-supported by existing community dynamics, they wouldn't need to write these articles.


What are the most valuable skills to learn to be considered for a quantum optics PhD position?

You can get a PhD position without specific knowledge of the research area.  For quantum optics, commonly desired skills include:

English language skills
Advanced mathematical skills, including statistics
Broad education in physics
Experience conducting research

You do not need a "certificate."  You will need a masters degree (which can substitute for a bachelors degree in countries that require a bachelors degree).


How to judge the reputability of a journal that seems to be of poor quality, but has a distinguished editorial board?

You've already identified part of the problem:

Deceased individuals like Paul Samuelson and Ilya Prigogine should not be listed as "editors" of a normal journal.
The editor-in-chief of the journal should be clearly identified.
They're claiming to have an Impact Factor when they're not indexed by the services that publish Impact Factors

You can see Beall's full list of criteria on his blog Scholarly Open Access.


Phd admissions with strange academic record and multiple schools?

I've had a somewhat similar rough start of college, with about three wasted years. I expected that it would very much be a problem as well. I'm now doing my masters and have a job that is very relevant to my field, and I've had some other relevant jobs as well.

In the interviews for those jobs, and during my application for my master, the subject of my unusual first years of college came to the table of course. However, I found that when you talk about it, it shows openness which is generally appreciated. What I also experienced, is that it can give you a good way to talk about how you have grown as a person and what you've learned from those experiences. In my case, it made me much more determined, and I could easily tell what I now am capable of, instead of focussing on what I was incapable of. It sounds like this could also hold for you! Because with your story about the load you're taking on, I feel like nobody will really care about that one year, and people can and will focus on what you're doing now.


How hard is it for someone who already has tenure to find a tenured position elsewhere?

"Poaching"—"stealing" a tenured faculty away from one department to another by offering a more lucrative package—happens in academia with some frequency.

Obviously, if the position you're interested in applying for is a tenured position, then there might be a chance that the search committee will consider already-tenured candidates for the position. However, it is not a guarantee that this will be the case. (It depends a lot upon the candidate and the relative "fit." Also, a candidate who is fairly close to retirement may not be at the top of their priority list—simply because that means the search may have to be repeated in a few years anyways!)

One other thing to keep in mind—the working relationship you have with your current faculty may be significantly strained if you handle this the wrong way. You may want to see what you can find out on a confidential basis before committing to applying for positions. Once you've sent it out, it's out there—and could cause problems for you if word gets back to your present department.

You may therefore want to have a discussion with your department chair, but I would strongly recommend not using "these schools are more prestigious" as a reason for applying to them. If that's the only reason you're doing it, then you may want to reconsider, as switching schools is a time-consuming and nontrivial process.


European BS - American PhD (Graduate Admission)

I don't think there will be a huge problem in taking a European bachelor's degree to a US institution, so long as you do a little explanatory work in getting ready to apply. The reason for this is that in those first two years, you will often have more major-specific work than most US students will have completed in three years!

So, I would recommend contacting the graduate admissions of programs you're interested in applying to, and explaining your situation to them. Take a look at the undergraduate programs they offer—and in particular, the list of required courses, and show that you have a similar amount of preparation (or more!). Then ask if there's anything else that you need to do.


Is it possible for an applicant to be disadvantaged by negative comments sent via emails without his/her consent?

This is a supper difficult problem and is responsible for much of what is wrong with academia.

Its definitely not unheard of for a recruiting academic to call contacts at institutions a candidate has been associated with and ask.

If you are in Europe, and you are turned down for a job you were sure you were the best candidate for, you can issue a GDPR demand to the universities in question, and they must turn over any materials that contain information about you. This should include both formal and informal references. Obviously if the bad-mouthing happened over the phone, there will be no record of it, which is exactly why people often use the phone for this sort of thing.

You could then try claiming that the university treated you unfairly in the hiring process. You'd have to be careful because the university could try saying "We didn't select this candidate for other reasons, nothing to do with the reference. Here is the documentation that lists the criteria we used and the candidate's scores".

You could also try suing the phantom referee for libel/defamation if you were really into long drawn out legal battles.


How to deal with important but lazy collaborators?

Honestly, this is a fairly common problem.  You see it  a lot at even the basic office group level where one person ends up doing a majority of the work.  If you've put in a lot of work and this is the only way forward then accept it and move on.  If you can't live with that outcome then pull your contribution and move on.

In the future...well now you know what you look out for!

Either way, don't let this consume you.  There will be many more battles to fight in your academic career.


Asking the institute about the status of the application

I would initially say probably not, however there is no way of knowing for sure.

I am not sure if using strong words is advisable when waiting to hear back. I hope your 'sacrifice' of other positions hasn't left you with nowhere to go.

For what it's worth, I would try explaining in the future your situation in a way that makes it sound like you need to know in order to make a decision, as opposed to sounding like you are upset with them for not informing you yet. There are often multiple people involved in decision making and it can be hard to get everyone together to decide.

In other words, I think it may be better to say something like "I have other offers, and would like to know what your decision is before making my final choice" and giving them a solid date that you need to know by.

Cheers.


Can't find research area in my master thesis topic

Companies usually set the topics they offer for Master's thesis students, and you usually cannot come with your own topic. At least in Germany, companies pay Master's Thesis students (even though it is very much below the market rate), so they want to get something useful out of your thesis work. Sometimes (not always), they exaggerate this and make students do mostly implementation work, with very little research.
On the other hand, professors do research so they naturally prefer supervising Master's theses that are research-oriented. Some (again, not all) professors also feel that the student should learn something from the thesis, and see implementation-only theses as "providing cheap labor" to companies without the student actually learning much.
This means that, if you want to do your thesis at a company, you have two options:

Find another topic offered by the same or another company, which involves more research
This should be the preferred option if you are at all interested in doing research afterwards. There are companies that offer more research-oriented Master's theses. You can also consider a government research institution, which is more likely to offer suitable topics.

Find another professor that is willing to supervise your less-research-oriented topic
There are professors that are happy to supervise more implementation-oriented theses. You might want to look at other departments in your university that work on similar topics. This should be your preferred option if you do not want to do research afterwards or if you like the topic of the implementation-oriented thesis very much.


Should I be concerned about the rank of the journal/conference when asked to be a reviewer?

"Concerned" is not quite the word I would use, but it seems very reasonable to take the quality of the publication venue into account when deciding whether to accept the referee request.

Most academics I know hit a certain threshold age / level of seniority after which they get more referee requests than they can reasonably take on [here I should say that in my field, mathematics, refereeing one good paper can be a lot of work -- it is no exaggeration to say that doing so may require putting one's own research on hold for several weeks].  So they have to pick and choose which requests to take.  They pick papers through a combination of personal interest, sense of their relative expertise (if you feel that you are one of the only people in the world qualified to competently referee a paper in a reasonable amount of time, it's pretty hard to say no) and estimations of quality of the author/editor/venue.

Based on what you said, considerations like the above seem to point in the direction of your declining to referee the paper.  If you are so junior that you have almost no refereeing experience at all, then you might want to take it anyway...but then again you still might not.  I would encourage you to discuss this with your thesis advisor (if you are a graduate student) or with a faculty mentor.  You want someone with intellectual and sociological expertise in the field to weigh in on whether this would be a good use of your time.


How far should you go in compromising your work to get it published?

When I started writing papers, my supervisors advised me that I should consider the reviewers' comments and suggestions but not be bound by them. When revising papers after reviewer feedback I would write a response letter addressing each point, whether I had incorporated the reviewer feedback or not, and importantly - why (or why not). In most cases I found that the editor considered a justification for not amending (a portion of) the paper to be acceptable.

In one case a reviewer wanted what amounted to a literature review of possible alternative solutions, which we considered to be far beyond the scope of what we were reporting in the paper and we ultimately withdrew the paper and submitted it to a different journal.


Transitioning from a BS in CIS to an MSE in Software Engineering

Most MSE programs in the US do not require you to have a BSE in the relevant field. The listed prerequisites for the courses are often requirements that undergraduates need to fulfil before being allowed to enrol in the graduate class. That said, you may need to take some undergraduate classes to get up to speed and you may need to work harder to make up for starting slightly behind. If accepted, it is likely that the admissions committee thinks that your previous background is enough to be able to succeed in the program.

In summary, admissions committees do not accept students that they think will be unable to complete the program.


How should I cite the ministry in my own country in APA?

The standard in APA when citing something titled in a language other than the one you are writing is to use the original title (transliterated to the Latin alphabet if necessary) but to also include a translation enclosed with [ ]s.
For an example from the link below:
https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2018/09/how-to-quote-a-foreign-language-source-and-its-translation.html

Bussières, E.-L., St-Germain, A., Dubé, M., & Richard, M.-C. (2017). Efficacité et efficience des programmes de transition à la vie adulte: Une revue systématique [Effectiveness and efficiency of adult transition programs: A systematic review]. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 58, 354–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000104

See also https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-languages and https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-scripts


Is there an association for academic managers?

The Association of Deans and Directors might fulfill what you are looking for: it is not clear from their website the degree to which it is international, but there also seems to be nothing that indicates it is not.


CS PhD application with low GPA but extensive research experience

You need to check the requirements of the individual schools to see if a transfer is even possible. For the German schools, at the very least, the computer science degree is often subject to "continuity" requirements, which make it very difficult to enroll in a master's program unless you already have the bachelor's in the same subject from a German university (or can demonstrate "equivalence" of your degree if it's coming from abroad).

In addition, admission often depends fairly strictly on GPA, at least at the master's level. Recommendations hardly matter, if they even count at all. At the PhD level, the process changes, and becomes more like getting hired for a job. So it may be better to wait until you're applying for PhD positions.


How to write a letter to nominate an awesome Professor for an award?

First, thank you for wanting to do this! Once the awardees have been announced, no matter the result do let your professor know you did this, and pass on the award packet you created (let any letter-of-support writers know you plan to do this, as a courtesy; they probably won't be fussed about it). Your respect will mean more to your professor than the award!

Now, to your actual questions.

Pointers to mention. Think of this like a cover letter for a job application. You want to address as many of the listed criteria as possible as specifically as possible. (Award-ceremony emcees often quote from nomination letters, so try for good soundbites!) You don't have to hit every single one (especially as that list is rather long), but try to touch on half to three-quarters of them.

Length. Often the award criteria will specify this. If not... honestly, I'd call or email somebody in the office sponsoring the award and ask what's typical. I've seen one page up through almost ten, and it's not good to err in either the too-short or the too-long direction.

Tone. Err on the serious side. If you have an anecdote displaying your prof's sense of humor, use it if it speaks to one of the award criteria ("quality interactions outside the classroom" or "classroom effectiveness" might fit), but be absolutely sure the humor is one hundred percent harmless first -- you don't want to land your prof in hot water, you want them to win the award!

Good luck to you and your prof!