Switch fields from Physics to Electrical Engineering in US: MSc vs BSc?

It depends on his goals.  Since he wants to do research, it doesn't matter that much whether he has a BSc or a master's as long as he can convince the department he applies to for his PhD that he has the necessary knowledge.  A master's might be slightly better since he will naturally get more research experience, but it is possible to get research experience as an undergrad by volunteering in your professors' labs.  The disadvantage of going straight to a master's is that he won't have the same background as the other students.  This means that either (a) the department will ask him to take prerequisite courses, at which point the master's program will take almost as long to finish as the BSc, or (b) he will be expected to catch up with the other students on his own time, which will be a lot of work.

If he thinks he might want to work in industry at some point, I would recommend doing the BSc.  Engineering is a professional designation in the US, so without the BSc, he can't call himself an engineer.  This doesn't mean he can't get hired, but it means he will get hired under some other job title ("technician", say) and may get paid less than he would if he were hired as an engineer.  Considering that this would affect his whole career, I would recommend investing the extra time up front, especially if he can shorten the BSc by reusing some credits from the physics degree.


My name was added to manuscript as co-author without my consent; how to get it removed?

Yes, it is definitely unprofessional and unethical to include someone as an author when they do not agree to be one.

If you have contacted the corresponding author and asked to have your name removed, and they refuse or ignore the request, all you have left to do is contact the editor.

Simply say that you have come to understand that your name was included as an author on a paper submitted by (corresponding author), that you did not participate in the work, and that you would not like your name associated with the publication.

That's it. No need to make further accusations or statements, that should be enough information for the editor to act. If it's a reputable journal, they'll realize how wrong this all is.


My current PI is telling me that I am a very shy person and he is really pissed off, what I should do?

This answer will only focus on long term strategies that might help you avoid such situations as you move forward.

To succeed in academia you can't really seem to be shy and certainly not seen to be less of a contributor because of it. No matter how good your ideas are, if they don't get considered then you have very little impact.

However, that doesn't mean that you can't actually be shy, or introverted. Many successful scientists are very introverted and even some are quite far out on the autism spectrum. Shyness isn't a defect or a flaw, it is just a personal tendency. Introverted people, in fact, often are extremely productive as they gather internal strength from reflection, consideration, and thought.

But the trick is to learn to act as if you have a different set of preferences than you actually do. You can act like an extrovert naturally would even while remaining an introvert. You play a role in public situations that lets your thoughts and needs get notice in the deliberations and conversations.

But it is a skill that can be difficult to learn. I know, and I did it. The "face" that I show to the world has evolved over time. I once suffered from an "inability" to speak up when I should have and it cost me extra years in a doctoral program. But after that, I learned how to play the role so that my ideas weren't ignored by those with a bigger mouth.

In fact, you aren't limited by your shyness unless you let it overcome you. You can look people straight in the eye and explain your ideas to them. You don't need to defer to louder people.

One person, a friend, who is very prominent in the CS community and is a marvelous public speaker is naturally, and in person, extremely quiet and has some characteristics of autism. But he taught himself to do what needed to be done to have his ideas accepted and to act in public in a way that seems to others to be comfortable, even if it is not. One of his tricks was to join an acting group in which he learned how to "put on" a role and act within that role.

Some people just freeze when confronted. Other people explode into inappropriate behavior. Both of these need to be avoided. Practice is what you need to overcome them if you tend to do that. Preparation for meetings, with notes on what you might want to say can help.

Finally, let me note that people reading your several posts here probably don't think of you as a shy person. In your writing, you are able to say what you want to say. Some of that is the anonymity that the site affords. In a sense, you can hide the "real you" behind a certain invented persona. The trick is to learn to do that same thing in person. Invent a persona for yourself and act in the way it suggests, hiding your "real self". Yes, I do the same thing here as Buffy.


Students with physical disabilities - blindness, deafness, etc

I would like to echo the other answers and enhance by focusing specifically on the breadth of ability challenges that may be faced by various students.  There are many different types of physical challenges that students may face, and even for a given challenge the answers may be different.  For example, did you know that most blind people can actually see, just so poorly that it cannot be effectively corrected, and that "blindness" actually covers a wide range of different conditions?

The key approach to any student with physical impairments that need accommodation is:

Do not assume that you should be handling it alone, or that you have the necessary knowledge to make an appropriate accommodation for that individual.
Ask the student.  They are the world's foremost expert on their condition and needs.  You'll generally do much better if you begin by just treating them like any other capable adult.
Get the university's experts involved, who will help you work out an appropriate plan tailored to an individual student.


Study technique for courses that involve reading and understanding research papers?

My strong suggestion is that you write and keep notes on the papers you read. There is some evidence that hand writing the notes is superior to typing them for learning purposes. The goal is to engage the mind more fully in what you are trying to learn and note taking is a good way, especially if you don't have exercises to solve.

But even better is to summarize your notes a bit later. You can do this by entering your summaries onto electronic media for saving and later searching.

But one thing that is worth considering is to take your notes in a way that allows you to later extend them as thoughts occur. This is much like a "research notebook" in which you record yet unsolved problems and your thoughts on coming up with solutions. These problems might just be thoughts that occur to you as possible research areas but that you need to defer for the moment while you do higher priority things.

But the key is to fully engage the mind. For most people reading isn't enough. It works for short term retention but not well enough for long term learning. Writing is a better mechanism - especially writing by hand.


Confused about bibliography in old books

A quick search of the current Bodleian catalogue turns up this record.

Selecting the 'find & request' tab indicates that the three volumes are still available with call numbers 55.b.59-61. Thus, it would appear that the bibliography is specifying call numbers in the different libraries (much as modern bibliographies list DOIs!).


... is it possible to get rejected for such stupid mistakes?

It is possible, but very unlikely.

  To what extent such [minor] mistakes can impact the opinion of a reviewer?

Very little. (More significant or more numerous mistakes can lead to rejection.)

  Does it have a potential influence on the overall paper review process?

Very little.

My answers are all subjective.


What is appropriate number of keywords for conference paper?

Honestly, I don't know if there is much reason other than history and tradition to continue to put keywords on conference papers.  Most people will find your paper via search engines, rather than by searching for keywords in some specialized interface, and search engine technology is good enough these days that keywords are not usually particularly necessary for improving the chance of your paper being found.

The places where I know that keywords still actually matter, at least marginally, are:

Putting in a keyword can be a good way to include a term that isn't otherwise explicitly stated in the paper (and thus might not show up on search engines).
Some reviewing systems use an author's history of keywords to help figure out which papers they are likely to be a good reviewer for in the future.

So, given all of this, how many keywords should you choose?  My own inclinations are as follows:

When required to use the ACM classification system: two, because it's a pain to look up something appropriate in their ontology, but I feel like I'm shirking too obviously if I try to get away with only one.
When I get to pick my own keywords: 3-6, plucked from the air over the course of a few minutes by free association.


In layman's terms, what is the difference between OpenAthens and Shibboleth?

The Shibboleth Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

Shibboleth is a single sign-on log-in system.... It allows people to sign in using just one identity to various systems run by federations of different organizations or institutions. The federations are often universities or public service organizations.

So, Shibboleth is a software program that large organizations can use to handle having users sign in. It's free software that the organizations can download and use. One nice thing about it is that it supports interoperability: for example, two affiliated universities can form a "federation" within Shibboleth. This allows them to each provide content to their students without sharing content with each other. Better yet, students enrolled at both universities won't need two separate accounts. But, Shibboleth must be set up and maintained by the institutions themselves.
As your link above says, OpenAthens is very similar -- it is more-or-less a large Shibboleth  federation that is managed by a non-profit and comes with a dedicated IT team and help desk. So, a university could just pay to join OpenAthens, and OpenAthens' own employees would help to set everything up, maintain it, and provide user support. Since many institutions use OpenAthens, it is convenient for the end-user as well -- they can use one account for many different content providers, even content providers who don't have any direct relationship with each other.
Note, this is not exclusive to Academia -- large businesses could use this software as well. But in my experience, many people encounter these concepts when dealing with universities or academic publishers.


CS graduate admissions for masters level

Most schools are unknown schools; there are just too many for the admissions committee members to have an idea of the quality of all of them.

So the standard approach is to de-emphasize the GPA and make the decision based more strongly upon the other parts of the application.  If the GPA would be troubling if it were from a good school, then it's still troubling; otherwise, it's more of a threshold ("Well, that's good enough--let's look at the rest of the application.").

(This is generic advice for all academic fields; there's nothing special about CS in this regard.)


How does an engineering undergraduate apply for master in humanities?

While I think the other way around (transitioning from the humanities to the sciences) might be harder, if you can demonstrate that you are serious and prepared to undertake graduate training in the humanities, it is definitely doable.

In my sociology department (PhD track, we didn't have a separate MA program and most entered straight after undergraduate school), many of my colleagues did not have any sociology training. While most of them came from related fields of economics, political science, and psychology, there were people with math and physics backgrounds and these were sometimes the people who were doing the most innovative and interdisciplinary work. The selection committee was fine with accepting them as long as their proposed research area fit with the department faculty's research and they showed promise as a sociologist.

While a degree in the field isn't necessary, make sure you address how you have been working to fill the gap you have on your CV. A personal statement will be a good place to address this. In addition, you can take additional courses, read as many works in your proposed field, and try to have a well developed study plan to give confidence to the committee that you are as competitive as the other candidates. It might be a good idea to also build contacts with professors in schools that you are applying for and go talk to them to see if they will be interested in working with you. If you plan to specialise in a society other than where you are based in (especially in case of anthropology), make sure you demonstrate regional expertise, language skills, knowledge of the society, or maybe work and/or living experience. Also, since those departments (in case of a PhD program) will likely ask for a writing sample, start working on one well in advance so the committee can see that you can indeed to the work in the proposed field.


In my opinion what you are suggesting is brushing up against plagiarism.  Done just once as you suggest, it will surely not be a problem.  But if this is an example of something done more systematically in your writing -- or is indicative of the way you look at borrowing others' ideas and words -- you may in fact have a problem down the line.  Certainly I see room for improvement.

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's ideas or distinctive language without sufficient attribution.  So your explanation as to why you are not plagiarizing is not really convincing: the language was distinctive enough for you to want to copy it.

Now you have taken a rather short "rhetoric element" and changed it a bit, from

  Wise men have had the brilliant, although not fully correct idea that A

to

  Wise men have had the brilliant, yet slightly wrong idea B

I think it's an interesting question why you changed it.  Did you change it because you didn't want to copy too many words verbatim, or because the second one reads as better to you?  It's not a trick question: both impulses are good and ought to be taken further.  You feel less bad copying a smaller number of words, so keep going with that: keep going until the first six words are no longer identical, at least.  In terms of reads better: experienced writers know that anything can be be made to read better if you put more time and work into it.  A main task of a writer is to come up with language which is (i) original and (ii) optimized for the subject matter, and in really effective writing these two goals are confluent and mutually beneficial, not antithetical.

What piece of writing is really so good that it needs to be repeated as is from one situation to another?  (That's not a completely rhetorical question, and there are a few positive answers, but they are few.) Since you are writing about new ideas and new work, you should (the vast majority of the time) find that new words are more appropriate than old ones.

In the case at hand: I don't find "Wise men have had the brilliant, yet...." to be rhetorical gold or anything close to it.  If I am honest, to me it sounds like the kind of hackneyed academic writing that young students sometimes use earnestly and older students and veteran academics either mock or use ironically.  (And a tip: that the brilliant and wise are men is going to be noticed in a negative way by some.)  I suggest that you practice slinging your own phrases: soon enough you'll be able to do as good and I hope much better than this.  (I thought about showing you half a dozen similar phrases to indicate it's no big thing, but I decided not to because I don't know the intellectual content, and choosing language divorced from content is part of what I'm criticizing.)

Good luck.  For further reading about what it's like to encounter many short passages of your writing coopted with minor changes, I recommend this piece.  (And to gain some respect for the complexity of these issues and remember not to be too critical of others, I recommend this piece.)


What steps could universities take to reduce Ph.D. drop-outs?

One difficulty is that it's far from clear what the ideal dropout rate should be.  Probably not zero, for two reasons:

Even the best students sometimes find that their interests change over time, in ways nobody could have predicted.  Dropping out may become a quite sensible choice, in which case it's harmful for the university to discourage it.
It's reasonable for a university to give someone a chance even if it's not certain that they will succeed.  The only way to get a really low drop-out rate is to admit just the applicants that are obviously destined for success.  The top few schools can get away with this, but if everyone tried it, then many talented candidates would be shut out from graduate school.

So some attrition is OK, and some is bad but may be a necessary consequence of policies that are on the whole good.  The question then becomes how you distinguish these kinds from needless and damaging attrition, and then how you minimize that kind.

Advisors play a key role here, because some are much better than others at being supportive or motivational.  However, at least in mathematics, most advisors don't supervise very many students, so the numbers often aren't large enough to see patterns clearly.

I'm sure people have studied this problem, and perhaps identified best practices for addressing it.  However, in my experience any studies or solutions are not especially influential (at least in the few math departments I've been in).  Most discussions are at the stage of trying to figure out whether there is a real problem and if so why, rather than what to do about it.


Should I ask for a recommendation letter even if I have not applied for any programs yet

Definitely, you should tell her that you would like to further your training. And since your former tutor know you well, she is one of the capable person to write this letter.

Meanwhile, she doesn't have to write it now and then - if you manifest the possibility of asking her in a near future for such a letter and she agree, this will still stand in a year or so.

It is hard to write a good and relevant letter in advance without knowing on which desk it will land on - so better make precision when you know more details, such as the institution, concentration, which possible supervisor, with hyperlinks to relevant pages in case she want more context.


Disorganized and overworked professor causing disappoinment and headache

I don't think there's anything wrong with voicing your concerns, but if you're going to you need to find a way to do it constructively while sticking to the facts.  "Much disappointment and headache" might be entirely correct, but this is more of an emotional comment.

Also: are there other students you can get to join you in voicing this concern?  Maybe you could all approach the problem together.


Can I refuse a stipend during a PhD program?

Yes. The university will generally be happy to work with you to make sure your tuition is covered and call the money whatever they need to. As you are saving the department money, you may also ask the department to provide some additional travel or research funds instead of the stipend.


How should I deal with incorrect information given to me by a TA

Yes, tell the professor about it. You shouldn't make a huge deal out of it, but send a brief, neutral e-mail saying that you were given wrong information in the office hours, that you got the impression the student was distracted and not really listening to what you said, and maybe ask how you can ensure that you do not waste time on red herrings next time.

If it's a one-off, and the student just had a bad day or a pressing deadline, it shouldn't have a big impact, but if other students also report similar problems the prof may watch the TA's performance a bit more closely, and may even decide to hire a different TA next year.

End-of-semester evaluations are also a good place to note this kind of experience. In my university the TAs even get their own evaluation form.


The definitive place to check is the IMS's Copyright Transfer Agreement, which conclusively says:

  However, the author(s) reserve the following:

  All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.
  The rights to use all or part of this work (with appropriate reference to the journal and article) in future works of
  their own, such as lectures, press releases, reviews, textbooks, or reprint books.
  The right to place the final version of this article (exactly as published in the journal) on their own homepage or in
  a public digital repository, provided there is a link to the official journal site.
  The right to provide a copy of the final peer‐reviewed manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for publication, for
  public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication.

So the IMS follows the green open access model (which is confirmed by Sherpa/ROMEO).


accepted, rejected, or requests for changes in special issue

"Returned to authors with requests for changes" is a "revise" decision. That means the journal wants the authors to make certain changes (e.g., gather more data) before making a decision.

After a revise decision, my experience is that acceptance is the most likely final result. Certainly a paper that's returned to the authors for revision is not going to be desk rejected anymore. However, it's not a guarantee - you still have to convince the editors & reviewers to accept your paper.


Work History / Professional Experience Section of US Grad School Application - Listing Research Internships

List them anywhere reasonable rather than not listing them at all. Probably you can give short descriptions so that there is no misunderstanding.

But let the reader judge the significance rather than assuming that they aren't worth listing. Err on the "say more" side rather than "say less".

And, if you can send a Statement of Purpose, mention there how those things support the sort of thing you want to do.


GRE Math Subject test for admission to statistics grad programs?

I would say that a good score on the Math GRE subject test is always a good signal. That being said, test scores in general have relatively little importance in PhD admissions -- they can disqualify you, but barring that, won't do much to get you in the door. Its something to optimize only after you have optimized the other, more important parts of your application. In your case, it might be helpful to alleviate any concerns someone might have about your math background.

By the way, you might want to check out CMU's PhD program in Machine Learning: http://www.ml.cmu.edu/ -- none of those pesky systems course requirements!


Is there any risk in applying for a different graduate program, while already doing a PhD?

In most cases it would be foolish to hide it from your advisor. But I don't know them or their personality. Some people would react very badly and others would be very supportive, with every possibility in between. For a vindictive person, you need to be extra cautious. But those folks are fairly rare.

One issue you should consider is whether you are leaving others with problems to clean up after you go. If there is none of that, then people are more willing to be supportive since it is easier. But you may have control over when you go and the state in which you leave any joint research.

The reason it is foolish is not just that the person might try to torpedo your career (possible - unlikely), but that they may have options for you that you haven't considered. Those options might involve X or Y or a melding. But they've been around longer than you and may have a much better idea about what is possible.

But this is a sit down face to face sort of conversation. I wouldn't express it in terms of like and dislike, however, but that your recent studies are pushing you toward one thing rather than the other and you want to continue those explorations.

Perhaps, knowing the situation, the advisor can make room for it to happen. If not, you can, perhaps, leave with good mutual feelings.


Capitalization conventions for departments, schools, etc

Yes, the capital letters apply to the words in the department name, even in running text.

The reason is because the whole department/faculty name contains all of those words. The department names are examples of proper names.


Why is ASU asking for my wife's high school transcripts when she is already in college?

The latest degree matters

She's joining a new institution from scratch. If she hasn't graduated anything else, the new college is admitting a high school graduate, and they want to see these transcripts to verify that she is a high school graduate. They have no reason to assume that some other organization did the verification in the way they require. They may have some process to transfer (partial) credits for courses completed in the previous college, but that happens after she's been admitted.


Ethical considerations in publishing raw data

If you're in the US, make sure the data set complies to HIPAA. Double check to make sure you don't have any information that would allow identification.

Another one measure that HIPAA may not touch on is the rarity of the medical outcome(s) in your data set. Participants in a flu data set are a lot harder to identify that participants in, say, an anthrax poisoning data set. You'd need to check on the definition of what constitutes a rare outcome.

Ultimately, you should seek advices and support from these following agencies: 1) your own institutional review board (IRB), 2) the funding agency that supports your work, and 3) the original owner of the medical records who allowed you to extract the retrospective data. If all these three are okay, it's very likely to be fine. If anything hits the fan, showing evidence that they had granted you support and you have done your due diligence in safeguarding the privacy of the data would do you a lot of good on legal ground.

Additionally, even for reproducibility, you don't necessarily have to make the data set available to everyone. With some work on your side you can set up a data user agreement mechanism, so that at least you can have some track records on who borrowed the data and for what reason. If you explain to the journal that any of the three agencies above prohibits free access, the editor will usually understand and agree with the data user agreement routine.


A place to host static HTML+JavaScript that can be referenced from a paper?

GitHub Pages web hosting really is perfect for your needs, but you might also want to consider FigShare. You'll get a DOI, which makes it easy for people to cite your HTML application. You could zip up your application using only local references so your app will be downloadable and usable as long as HTML 4/5 browsers exist. Until March 2015, content on FigShare was shared through an international alliance of libraries (CLOCKSS), but alas no longer.


There is a wide range of choices in managerial education, in general, and in leadership education, in particular. Most universities' business schools offer various executive education programs, which range from continuous education / professional development programs, such as (hereafter, I am using Harvard University just as an example for some types of programs) these smaler scale programs, to comprehensive executive leadership programs. Executive leadership programs can be general as well as industry-oriented, such this higher education-focused or this healthcare-focused. Other leadership education options include more lightweight alternatives, such as relevant MOOCs with certificates (either single courses, or thematic tracks), university certificate programs (such as this one at MIT) and relevant educational programs by think tanks (like ones by Aspen Institute), non-profits (like ones by Center for Creative Leadership) and similar organizations.


Is it more difficult to publish a paper that demands reviewers with knowledge from many different areas of mathematics?

No, in my opinion as a (midcareer verging on senior) mathematician, there is no such thing as "too many new ideas to be published at once".  This is a curious reaction.

Whenever a student asks a "My advisor said....[something strange]" question here (or elsewhere), I have to wonder how deeply to engage in the possibility that the student somehow misunderstood the advisor.  Unfortunately misunderstandings between students and advisors are amazingly common...even when both parties are "good people" in every sense of the word.  More than a decade after graduating, I still remember spending several weeks of hard work on certain things my advisor asked me to do.  When at last I would go back explaining how hopeless it seemed, it most often turned out that there was some miscommunication: I didn't work on the problem that he had intended, or I hadn't read the right paper. [I remember wading through Katz's Rigid Local Systems because of a suggestion made by my postdoctoral supervisor.  Being a postdoc I was more savvy than a PhD student, so I probably spent at most a week before I went back to say "Really?  This is relevant to what I'm doing??" only to learn that, no, that was not the book of Katz he was talking about.  Still, I'd like to have that week back...]

I would encourage you to consider the comment "the draft is good, albeit difficult to understand".  I'm guessing that is meant to be independent information from the remark that your paper contains "too many new ideas".  Some key questions:

Was the draft prohibitively difficult for your advisor to understand?  People [students, advisors, referees...] say that writing is hard to understand in two very different circumstances: they may literally be criticizing the writing style.  But it is also quite likely that they are trying to say -- in a way which saves face for them and for you, but is in fact rather unhelpful because of that -- that they gave up before they could tell whether your arguments were correct, and they would only be willing to put more time into a better-written draft.  You deserve to know whether your advisor vouches for your work.

Related:

Does your advisor have the expertise in the disparate areas you are pulling together?  If not, he is really not the right person to be asking about this.  People sometimes seem to think (or more likely, to hope) that if they have a paper on "number theory" then I will understand it, and that if the paper references some work or lecture notes of mine then I will really understand it.  No way.  I often receive papers to referee which are about several things at once, one of which is part of my expertise but one or more isn't.  I like to learn new things, so I'll stretch to a certain point, but beyond that I just decline to referee the paper on the grounds that I'm not qualified.  If I can, I direct the editor to someone who is qualified; if I can't, I apologize for not doing that, but in no case do I intimate that no one is qualified to referee the paper.  How could I know that?!?

The idea that your paper is simply too ambitious is really a poor one.  At most it means it is too ambitious for your local mathematical community, and if you hear that as a reaction to your work which is otherwise said to be "good", it's a sign that you need to find a larger pond.

  I am convinced that people will find the result noteworthy and interesting, but I also agree that the combination demands (basic) knowledge from many different mathematical areas.

Then you should find people who feel that the result is noteworthy and interesting, ideally those who understand all of it, but even those who understand some of it and can be supportive could be helpful.  If you think your paper is correct and reasonably (even if not perfectly) well-written, why not submit it to the arxiv?  If your paper draws together several different things, then try showing it -- via emails, for instance -- to people wom you know to be experts in at least one of those things.  They can tell you whether they are qualified to understand the entire paper, and if not they can (perhaps) tell you who is.

  It is a disturbing but possibly realistic perspective that researchers keep the same old soup at low temperature on the cooker. But isn't that too pessimistic? There are so many mini results published, why should I cut down on at least trying?

Yes, that is too pessimistic.  If you've done something valuable and technically difficult, it will be publishable.  The level of technical difficulty may make the reviewing process more lengthy (it should; you are aware that you don't want rubber stamp reviews of your math papers, right?).  On the other hand, in mathematics "technical difficulty" can be a selling point: if you have done something that is broadly valuable but that few people (or no one but you) would have had the acumen to pull off, then you have done something very impressive and valuable indeed.

Good luck.


Trying to finish a paper with a professor, but also needing to let them know I switched advisors

Having been in a similar situation before, I can say this: Prof. X may not want to finish a paper with you if you're changing advisors, and Prof. Z may not want you to continue spending time on unrelated research.  Does Prof. Z even know of your intentions?  You should make sure Z actually wants to be your advisor first.  Does Prof. X know you've already been working with Z?  He will probably feel betrayed, and there's nothing you can do to avoid that.  You will have to have in-person conversations with both professors, maybe even both at the same time, if the two are on friendly terms.  (If they aren't on friendly terms, then things will get more complicated, and you may need a mediator.)

In any case, I would not explain the situation via e-mail, but I would e-mail to schedule an appointment and say that you need to discuss something important.  This will allow Prof. X to mentally prepare and also ensure that everyone has set aside time to focus on the issue.  I would spend some time writing out what you want to say, maybe even bring the notes with you, but also anticipate that you may need to have multiple conversations.  If Prof. X is notoriously belligerent, see if you can arrange for a mediator to be present.  Finally, try to think of what you really want out the interaction-- working on a project with someone you've just told you don't want to work with can be quite miserable for both parties, and it may be better to cut your losses and move on.


Does saying ''I don't know" often decrease my authority as teaching assistant?

Is it a true phenomenon that the respect on TA decreases with an increased frequency of I don't know replies?

Certainly not in the sense of "you have 5 'I don't know' per semester, and then you lose the student's respect. It really depends on what questions you do answer, how you answer them, and what kind of questions you are unable to answer.

If you normally provide good, instructive answers to questions with the occasional "I don't know" mixed in, no reasonable person will lose respect for you - especially if you commit to finding the answer to the questions you are unable to answer, and then follow through.

That said, it depends on what the questions you aren't able to answer are. If those are questions that could in a very similar scope also be on the exam, not knowing the answer (and not being able to derive it in reasonable time) will indeed not reflect well on you. If that is the case, preparing better for teaching the course (or teaching courses closer to your field of research) is really the only way forward. Otherwise, the students have all rights to be annoyed - what could they learn from a teacher who doesn't sufficiently master the course themselves?

  I worked as a TA for several courses. Some courses fall into the domain in which my research also happens. But some other courses are not at all familiar to me.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but that's really not the student's problem. The students should have an expectation that their teacher is qualified to teach the course, whether it's in their area of research or not. You should not expect leniency from the students because you are teaching a course outside of your field of research.


Should a undergraduate rely on PhD students to publish papers or do it individually?

One alternate strategy that could help is to see about trying to present a poster of your work at a conference. Even if that doesn't have quite the same prestige as a paper in a journal or an accepted paper at a conference (if you're in CS), it still is a sign of doing significant amounts of research. An especially good sign would be if you could win a "best student poster" or "best student talk"-type award.

However, the important thing for you will be to be able to discuss what you have done with authority in your statement of purpose to graduate schools, and to get a good letter of recommendation from your advisor that clearly outlines your contributions to your project. Having a publication is nice, but it's not an essential component for graduate school admissions.


Why do formal research papers keep statements that should be interpreted informally?

In the two examples you give, I don't agree the statements need to be "interpreted informally". Rather I would say that the meaning is clear within the context of the problem. For example, suppose you have a function f(a,b,c,d) or an expectation E_{a~p, b~q}[ f(a, b)]. Often authors will just write f or E[f] respectively. There is no mistake, it's just the notation is being left out. It's basically the same thing in the examples you point out. "our generative model learned pdata" is just a shorthand for "we learn a model f(z) which maps a latent space z to an output S so that we can approximate drawing samples from pdata by drawing a sample z". And that's not unclear or "informal", because the latter is just a definition of what generative model means in that context.
Specific problems can have their own language or jargon, and it can be confusing to read papers without knowing it. Part of becoming an expert in a specific problem is learning how people think about that problem.


What to fill in the following gap in a journal's publication system: "The author was supported by ..."

This question asks what the author's funding is - in the case of PhD students, where the funding for your stipend/research is coming from. If your advisor has a grant that is covering your work, then the agency that issued the funding is the one you acknowledge here. If you have a scholarship, then the agency that issued the scholarship is the one you acknowledge. If you are self-funded, then you can leave it blank, or name your university.
In any case, if you are unsure, ask your advisor.


Why do some arXiv preprints have increased line spacing?

I think the real underlying cause is just what Anonymous Mathematician said, that having a double-spaced version of a paper is more convenient for going through and making notes on a printed copy. But it's not just a phenomenon of the dark ages; many people still do this today during the revision process when a paper is being prepared for submission.

In fact, at least in physics (my field), the tradition of double-spacing is perpetuated by the fact that at least one of the major journal publishers' LaTeX class defaults to a preprint mode which sets the line spacing to double. It is possible to change this to single line spacing by passing a class option for the appropriate journal (pra, prb, prl, etc.), but many authors forget to do this - and somewhat understandably, I think, because their job is to do research, not to be proficient with LaTeX. I would imagine that a similar situation might arise with LaTeX classes used by other publishers and in other fields.

It's worth noting that arXiv recommends not submitting in double-spaced mode. But probably very few submitters have the patience to read through the instructions in their entirety.


Can I cross reference in a masters application?

They would normally be read together so it isn't really necessary. Some redundancy might be good if you want to emphasize certain things. But it would be normal to have your materials in a folder that is reviewed by members of a committee. If electronic versions are used, they would most likely be kept together also. But your cover letter might provide some emphasis on the things you think are most important.

Many places also ask for a Statement of Purpose (SOP), in which you can write about your goals and how your background puts you in place to achieve them. You can also provide the needed emphasis in such a document.


Is it okay to ask the professor to let another student continue my Master's thesis topic next year?

In the thesis there is usually a section called "future directions" or "recommendations" in which the candidate can lay out what can be done to improve or scale up the deliveries. Projects being developed in succession by different students are common, at least in my field (biomedical.)

As for whether you will get full credit, the question at its current state cannot really be answered because too many details are missing. For instance, has this likelihood of non-completion been on the advisor's radar? Or are you just dropping the bomb one month before the due date? Who has been causing the delay? Were any barriers or difficulties you faced raised and discussed? How incomplete is the project? All these can go into the consideration of your final grade, and that can of course include a potential "F."

I'd suggest, given the time limit, stop trying to get guessed answers on this forum. Instead, immediately schedule a meeting with your supervisor and make sure both are on the same understanding. Upon discussing with the advisor, come up with a list of tasks that need to be finish to make the Master thesis a reasonably stand-alone work, and complete it. Be realistic and don't be a yes-man (like what you did at the beginning); if the list grows too big, say so and trim it down together. Diligently follow up weekly and deliver the project.

Of course, if the project is grossly behind or substandard, you may want to prepare for an extension or walk away with a fail grade. The results of this discussion will vary depending how professional you have been behaving in this duration and perhaps many other factors. I wish you good luck and feel free to come back and update us by revising your question.


What to wear on one's shoulders to interviews? (bags, backpacks, etc.)

I have seen them in all in faculty job talks in our department for the last few years. I have seen messenger bags, backpacks and briefcases; some of them have been made of expensive leather and looked really classy/professional and I have even seen them made of cheap, fraying materials.

Either way, it does not matter - except maybe in incredibly conservative departments. We hired one of the folks who had a pretty cheap looking backpack. The fact that he/she had multiple publications in the top journals and conferences in their area probably mattered more. They were all wearing suits though.


How to teach from someone else's material?

In addition to the slides, use an accompanying textbook to prepare the lecture. This will give you additional context material to fill the lectures, as well as small exercises you can go through at the end of each session.


Do tenure reviews in U.S. universities usually consider the number of PhD students that a professor successfully graduates?

How many graduate students a professor helps through the program can have a number of impacts on tenure - including some I'll likely miss. Off the top of my head:

As a former student, I have been asked to write a letter on behalf of a mentor of mine. The more students one helps launch off into bright, shiny, productive careers, the more of these letters should be positive and strong.
PhD students are heavily correlated with research productivity. One person can only be so productive - having a thriving lab with graduate students passing through it can help boost publications, productivity, etc. all of which may very well help one's tenure portfolio.
To address "like Sean Carroll, say that research is far more important than teaching" - your actual, direct supervised graduate students really don't fall under "teaching" in many cases, and are much closer to either the research or service end of things.

Keep in mind that, with the tenure clock of many universities, a junior professor may very reasonably not have graduated any students from their lab by the time they come up for tenure. But being a good mentor and building a pool of capable graduate students can help one's tenure application in a number of ways even if the committee doesn't look at it as a solitary number.


"Pushing" a search committee for an answer?

No, it’s not too aggressive. A very common thing to do in your situation is to inform university A of your deadline with university B (and to mention to them that you prefer university A).


Could I ask a recommendation letter from a professor who left the university?

If the faculty is retiring to emeritus status then they can still write on letterhead. Many emeritus still maintain an active research profile or use the time to write, but in any case they might be willing to write for you. Many enjoy keeping one foot in the teaching/advising world.

There's nothing to be lost by asking.

And from the perspective of people on admissions committees, a strong letter from an emeritus faculty who compares this student against their thirty or forty years of other students can be very persuasive.


Acceptance to online publication – Why is everybody I know faster than average?

From personal experience, I can say that while the usual time from acceptance to online publication may be quite short (for a good journal), there are occasionally situations where the process takes a lot longer.  This probably pushes the mean time interval up quite a bit.

Over the last five years, I have published a couple dozen papers, and for most of them, the time lag between their acceptance and their appearance online was just two or three weeks.  However, for three of those papers, the time was quite a bit longer--a matter of months instead.

The reasons for this varied.  In one case, the copy editor raised some questions about my wording, and the paper passed back and forth between me and the journal several times before both sides were satisfied with the way the terminology was used.  For the second paper, the proof contained a serious error in one of the equations, which took three more rounds of proofing to get corrected.  (Every time I explained what needed to be changed, they messed up something else; it was frustrating.)  In each of these cases, it would take a couple weeks for the editorial staff to make the changes, generate a new proof, and send it to me.  When you need to go through four proofs, that can stretch the process to two months.

I don't know why the third paper took three or four times as long as usual; it just did.  Presumably there was some difficulty at the editorial office, but I never pressed them to find out what it was.

I try very hard to submit very carefully composed and edited manuscripts, and I encountered a few slow-moving manuscripts.  I know there are a fair number of people whose manuscripts routinely need quite a bit more editing work than mine.  Mostly, I think this is because the authors are not native English speakers.  However, whatever the reason, there are going to be a nontrivial number of papers that need to be sent back and forth between the authors and the editorial office multiple times.  These give the distribution of time delays a long tail and probably stretch the mean waiting time out significantly.


What is the best way to start learning a new course?

There is no best way to learn a new course, some people better learn by attending classes and some other better learn by reading textbooks and reviewing lecture-notes and pamphlets. I know a person from my bachelors degree who did not used to come to classes. He just used to photocopy the lecture notes and read them before the exams. On the other hand, I used to always attend the classes and did not miss even one minute of them.

In order to learning a new subject, these come to my mind; but I think you should examine each and choose the best way which suits your own learning habits.

Attend some physical classes. Take notes and do the assignments. However, if you are not registering for the course, talk to the lecturer before the class.
Register for open course-wares and do online learning.
Search for the best textbooks in that course and try to read them.
Ask a friend who can help you in that course to teach you one or two hours a week. One of my friends asked his friend to teach him an engineering software two to three hours a week and now he can easily work with that software.
Group study with friend(s) who are learning that course, try to solve each other problems. This may also help you better stick to the course. People sometimes get bored when they self-study a topic.

However, depending on the level of the course you may need to choose wisely. If you are aiming to learn a post-graduate course, you may also need to read some papers and discuss your problems with a professor specializing in that branch of science, while some of the under-graduate courses do not always require to talk to a professor. You can ask your questions from a teaching-assistant, a friend with high marks in that course or even discuss with a friend who is also learning that course, or even ask your questions in a related online question and answer website or forum.


What is the difference between SCI and SCIE?

Thomson Reuters customer support explanation on SCI and SCIE:.

  The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a sub-set of the Science Citation
  Index Expanded (SCIE), containing journals that rank competitively
  among the most highly-cited core journals in their category or
  categories. The Science Citation Index Expanded is essentially the web
  version of what used to be a database available only on
  CDRom/Diskette.

  When selecting the journals for the Science Citation Index we choose
  the top journals from each subject category and supplement this with
  top regional journals from each category to give broad geographic and
  multidisciplinary coverage. The evaluation of and acceptance of a
  journal for the Science Citation Index Expanded or the Science
  Citation Index is essentially the same with one major difference.

  This difference is in the application of citation analysis to the
  journal. While every science journal in our database is covered in the
  Science Citation Index Expanded and only those journals of relatively
  significantly higher citation impact are selected for the Science
  Citation Index. In other words, Science Citation Index covers only the
  most highly cited, highest impact journals in each category. This is
  because of the constraints of the CDROM and print media there is no
  difference in the selection process for Science Citation Index and
  Science Citation Index Expanded journals.


Severe regrets because I lied in my PhD application

I appreciate the question.

I think we can all agree that you should not have lied on your graduate application.  It is to your credit that you recognize this.  That said, as a frequent thesis advisor and the recent head of Graduate Studies in my department, I feel that the main victim of this lie is...you.  If a student of mine told me they had done that, I would thank them for telling me, confirm that they should not have done it, make sure they understand that they must never falsify any academic documents again...and then get on with business.

Cutting the funding of a successful student for this kind of indiscretion that occurred before their arrival is, for me, just not a reasonable thing to do.  It is an interesting thought experiment to wonder what percentage of the graduate students in my department had an undergraduate indiscretion as bad or worse than this.  Rough guess: somewhere between one third and one half?  It is all but impossible to know and also very subjective.

You have to deal with your bad behavior in the past.  An unfortunate fact of the matter is that it is often not possible or not optimal to directly fix past bad behavior.  That can be an unsettling thought -- for me too, by the way.  Based on the sleepless nights you describe, I am really glad that you are talking to a therapist about this and figuring out what you can do indirectly to move on with your life.

Here's an idea: you say you are doing very well in the program.  That's great.  Is there some optional service task you could take on in the program (or the department or the school or the profession)?  I think that could be beneficial, both in reality and in your own mind.  That way, when you think about the bad thing you did two years ago, you can also think "Yeah, I feel bad about that, but I feel good about X that I am doing now."  By the way, if you do it, you certainly should put it in your CV, but if (and only if) it seems helpful for you to be a bit modest/understated about it, you could pitch it that way.

Good luck.


If the two papers are already written and submitted at the same time, I don't see why not. You are right about the upsides: making information easier to find for the reader. This is one of the purposes of citations! The only small addition I would make is that you should submit a copy of B along with A (and the other way around), so the reviewers can evaluate the need for this citation (as they do with “regular” citations).

And to end on a practical note: this will probably no inflate your citation count anyway. You submit your two papers at a time, then let's say A is accepted before B. So A is published with a reference to “B: F. Poloni, submitted for publication”, which won't be counted in citation databases. Then when B comes out, it will feature a proper citation to A (either in full, or through DOI if A does not yet have full citation information), and this citation will be included in databases.


Why is there less funding or scholarship opportunity for business students compared to other background students?

It may be useful to take a slightly larger perspective, rather than comparing just business vs. STEM.  While there is a great degree of variation around the world and from program to program, most higher-level degree funding can be clustered into three general categories:

Doctoral degrees in STEM fields are generally funded by universities or external agencies.
Terminal "professional" degrees, including MBA, MD, JD, DDS, etc. frequently expect students to be responsible for their own funding, often going deeply into debt to do so.
Doctoral degrees in humanities and liberal arts fields are in-between, where sometimes students are supported or partially supported and other times they are not.

There's a great deal of variation, of course.  For example, I believe that the education of medical doctors is supported by some nations (though I lack a reference at the moment).  Likewise, Masters degrees are sometimes considered a "professional degree" that students are expected to fund, while other times they are lumped in with STEM doctoral degrees and funded by the university or other sources.

So, why should this be the case?  It seems to me that a lot of this is simply independently developing markets:

STEM students are typically expected to contribute significantly to the investigation of science and engineering as part of their training, and since these contributions can be very valuable in those markets, it makes sense for external funding agencies to include students in their funding.
Professional degrees are often coupled with very high post-graduation salaries, while the training period is much more one-way, with the students spending most of their time learning rather than making novel (and readily fundable) contributions.
Humanities and liberal arts are also quite important societally, but they are not currently associated with markets flush with capital and an easy set of incentives to pour money into schools either during the program (as with STEM) or afterward (as with professional degrees).  As such, they have generally developed much more ad hoc and patchwork approaches to funding degrees.


Is it normal to start your master's study without an advisor?

Well this is more like an advice rather than an answer:
In the end all of it depends on the funding you might receive. If the advisors are sure to be available with the funding next semester, I would say you don't need to hurry to find a new research area. I assume you are interested and made some preparations for your current field. It would be reckless to throw away the work you have done so far.
However if the funding is not so sure for the next semester, I would say you go with the one that supplies you funding. In the end, you can always turn back to your old questions. Researcher is very much like a qualified worker, you are paid not only for the results you've obtained, but mostly you have the capacity to treat and obtain the result or rather they pay you because it is you who has the capacity to treat and obtain the result, so one should not take research subjects at a personal level, at least not too much.
However I have no idea how US works, so you are on your own concerning the feasiblity of my advice.


Request for additional documents for faculty position

They indicated that they would request reference letters for semi-finalists.

They have not requested your recommendation letters (yet).

Therefore, you are not a semi-finalist (yet).


Submitting to a journal that requires a French abstract as a non-French-speaker: how important is the French abstract?

I would not use Google Translate for this. I recently moved to France and I needed to do this a few times, and when I did a Google Translate (even a 'nice' one*) it still sounded bad to the native French people around.  In that particular experience, a French person editing my 3 page document took about 1.5 hours. GT leaves much to be desired. Even when things are technically correct, it will be obviously non-French, which can have a bad effect on the initial reception of the document.

One would think this isn't relevant to the scientific content, but in France, things like this are considered to be culturally important (which is why an English language journal requires a French abstract - PhD theses have the same requirement). I think your paper would have a better reception with a linguistically correct abstract, both from the people considering the submission and the people eventually reading and citing it.

There are services online which offer translations for a small sum of money. I'm not sure if I can link to some without it being considered spam, but they're easy to find. So based on my experience, this is what I recommend. They charge per-word so an abstract should be fairly inexpensive.

Like the commenter guifa suggested, speaking with your foreign language department would be another way to accomplish this without having to pay a translator.

*If you HAVE to use Google Translate (which I don't recommend), I would translate the result back into English to make sure that words haven't been misinterpreted. I would also check with a good online French-English dictionary. My chosen one is Linguee. This is the most effective if you write your sentences very simplistically and concisely.


It is not uncommon for working papers to be uploaded to academic websites prior to, or during, peer review.  The only possible impediments I can see to this would be if the agreed terms of review of the journal you have submitted to prevent you from doing this (i.e., publishing the draft during review) or if the terms of the institute's website prevent this.  I doubt that either is the case, but if you're not sure, check the terms.


University learning over online learning

It’s the "unknown unknowns" that are covered on campus.
Other people and casual discussions with classmates can highlight gaps in your knowledge that you didn’t even realise you had, or help you avoid mistakes you didn’t realise were possible. Even just listening to the tutor answer questions from others can help a lot. Tutors are not infallible even in terms of course content, and sometimes a simple question can point to a syllabus area that should be covered more in depth.

Posting in online forums in the knowledge that your rookie mistakes could be immortalised forever means that people can be slightly more reserved about posting a questionable question (or even a slightly questionable answer that may well get full marks in an exam, but the answerer is just a little unsure) and some distance learning course forums can quickly become ghost towns of hopelessly dated information.


Is it possible to submit to Nature Toolbox?

"Toolbox" is not the name of a journal but of a section of Nature itself. As far as I know, articles published there are comments about existing software. It is  not possible to submit a "toolbox" article from Nature's manuscript tracking system, which most likely means that "toolbox" articles are invite-only.


Does a publication in a predatory journal negatively impact admissions decisions?

Beall's List sometimes overshoots, though it's a good starting point.

I wouldn't say publication there will automatically hurt your admission chances, as especially if you're very junior I'd actually assume you had been naive. What it likely won't do is help all that much - predatory or not, it's doubtful it's a particularly well regarded journal in the field.

I'd also be careful how I presented it. In your cover letter, if you mention your work being published in "such notable publications as the International Journal of Obviously a Scam..." then it's likely I'll convert my impression of you from naive to oblivious. And while I've never seen this done with a predatory journal, I've definitely seen some people tout papers in pretty low-ranked journals as if they were at the top of the field, and that's always a bad sign.

It's not a death sentence, but you should be aware of what that paper is, and isn't. And I'd be prepared to talk about your experience, and how they did provide useful feedback, etc. Journals can be sincerely trying to get out of the predatory pool (or sliding into it...).


Remunerated consulting while being a PhD student

One way or the other, you will have to disclose the activity to your university. I can't think of any obvious reason why your university would not allow you to do consulting work on the side. But in any case, talking to your adviser about it would be the correct first step -- she may be able to tell you what her expectations are if you are paid as a graduate assistant at the same time, but also what your university requires of you in terms of paperwork.


School's Admissions office ignoring me after accepting admission offer

There should be faculty members in the department you are to be enrolled in who are responsible for graduate student admissions and advising. These people should be able to tell you what's going on with respect to your case because, unlike undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions decisions in the US are made with the consultation of faculty members and not simply by a "central" graduate admissions office, which usually just acts as a clearinghouse for the applications.


Requesting a change to conference lodging before accommodations have been verified?

The best way is just to be direct, though you may need to reveal a bit about the reasons. Explain the situation much as you have here. I think most conferences would try to accommodate you, but it might not work out in every situation, due to numbers and money.

But do this immediately, so that it doesn't require reassignment of rooms, etc.

Alternatively, if you are willing to pay for your own accommodations and feel that is worth it for preserving your privacy, you can just decline the offer and make your own reservation. It might be best to work with the conference, however, as they may have access to special rates for attendees.

Universities in the US are not, in general, allowed to discriminate against people for medical conditions, so I wouldn't be overly concerned about revealing that you have a medical issue, leaving out details as you see fit.


How to ask my former PhD supervisor to stay away from me and do not contact my prospective new PhD supervisor?

It’s superbly clear: You are being manipulated by a person who possibly has wasted years of your life. At this point, everything they do must be presumed malicious and intentional. Don’t take any other explanations, that’ll be gaslighting. You have to treat your former advisor like a public enemy #1, and his every action must be from now on interpreted as being on a vendetta against you. Look at the last few years. Has that person ever done anything that actually helped you achieve your goals? Don’t think of positive things they said: have they actually been helpful, in the truest sense of the word? Has their helpfulness been of the genuine kind that helps you make progress in the project, or it was only of a kind to put your mind at ease and dismiss the previous horrible things that person has done? My guess: it’s solid NO, they never helped in the last couple of years, and you’re clearly dealing with a manipulator who has no qualms about anything they did so far.
Don’t ever believe any excuses they may offer to recast their abhorrent behavior in a good light. Remember how you felt through this whole ordeal and what a mess it was because of that person. There is no excuse for their behavior. None whatsoever. They are a lost cause in every sense of the word.
Some of the answers to your other related questions seemed to have been slightly equivocal or giving the whole matter some benefit of the doubt. Having had the dubious pleasure of dealing with people like the one you describe early in my life, all your recollections are stereotypical and there's no doubt in my mind that you have been taken advantage of and have been subject of gross mistreatment. The person you speak of is playing a game that takes cards from the same decks that many other such people use. The game they play is so typical and so highly stylized that it may as well be called chess. You see it once and you can't unsee it, pretty much.


How to determine similarity score of new manuscript against own yet-to-publish manuscripts?

First suggestion: Never copy-paste material from earlier works, always write everything from scratch.

This prevents you from moving critical passages from one paper to the other. It is of course still possible to end up with a similar or even identical sentence by accident, particularly if you describe a method or something similar. If you end up using the same method for several papers it is also possible to simply reference your original description in subsequent papers. The Ithenticate white paper mentioned by you provides good advice. Yuo can slso visit the COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics) web site and search for self-plagiarism.

Second suggestion: Use the softwares such as iThenticate,  turnitin or the like depending what you are looking for. But, I would not blindly just look at percentages of overlap but focus on where the overlaps occur. If it is in the methods section describing a series of steps ina  process it is clearly not as critical as if it is in the discussion or conclusions. If you find overlap and you can identify what it is, then go to my first suggestion and critically review if you need to say it again.


Awaiting AE Recommendation to Awaiting AE Assignment

Odds are this means the AE changed. This could be because the original AE declined the assignment, resigned from the editorial board, is too busy to make a decision, and so on.

See also this question: Manuscript status changed from “Reviews completed” to “Editor assigned”


How to make up for lack of publications in CV?

As of writing this, I don’t have any publications in journals or conferences. I submitted one as the second author in January to an international conference, and am involved in three other projects.

I cannot speak for admissions committees, but this looks really strong. You have already submitted a paper, and you are involved in not just one but four research projects. As such, you will want to make sure to highlight this at the very top of your CV.

To highlight it, I would not include a "Publications" section, but include a "Papers", and put in submission or draft for as many papers as that applies. (This is a common structure for academic CVs, even for mid-level PhD students.) I would also include a separate section for "Research Experience" or "Research Projects" and list everything you have been involved in.

If you are confident about naming research areas, including research interests at the top of your CV is also a plus. Morgan Rogers' comment is correct that this should be very brief, only bulleted keywords (e.g. "Geometric Deep Learning"). In my area of CS this is perfectly normal (although definitely not expected, particularly for someone who is only applying to a PhD, and not yet a student).

This related question is about if you have no research experience. Fortunately, having significant research experience but no publications puts you in a far better position.


How usual/feasible is it for European universities to accept PhD candidates right after their bachelor's degree? (computer science field)

In contrast to Stephen McMahon's answer, which holds absolutely true for the UK, the situation in most of continental Europe is the opposite.
On the continent, it would be very unusual to start a PhD directly after one's BSc, hence the suggestion to look for "precedent or a way for the Master's requirement to be bypassed" at your Unis of interest. This is in direct contrast with the UK, where this is not even a requirement.
(Source: PhD from France, professional network from all over the EU, followed by a postdoc and a permanent position in the UK.)
As a side-note, PhD programmes in the UK often offer different levels of funding for home and international students (it used to be home+EU, but, alas, Brexit) -- or worded alternatively, some/most PhD programmes in the UK are only fully funded for British students. In my anecdotal experience, the international students that do apply to a very limited number of available fully-funded positions tend to be finishing an MSc while applying (or already hold one), despite it not being a requirement. And given a choice between an applicant with an MSc and an applicant with a BSc only, the one with an MSc typically has more to offer simply because they have had more time to demonstrate their skills. (However, your specific situation of 6 publications at the time of application + 2 submitted is definitely "a lot to offer" from your side, and on par with MSc applicants.)


When being asked, what's the most harmless way to address my past record of leaving Ph.D. program in a different field?

Based on the information you provided in the question, I think you should focus on reason (b). You should probably avoid using words like "abuse" or "confrontation", at least in the beginning of the conversation, as they come off as really strong and thus tend to motivate people to question deeper. State that you have had problems with the previous environment (including the adviser and the department) and that it was in the mutual best interest that you continued your career somewhere else. Avoid blaming anyone. If the conversational partner seeks to question further, reveal details to what extent you deem best, but again it is good practice to avoid bad-mouthing your former environment. Stay as objective as possible.

Like you said, most people don't care that much. For those that do care, you can't really stop them from taking it negatively (much as you can't stop anyone from taking anything about you negatively), but you can stay true to yourself, by being honest and objective without bad-mouthing your previous adviser, department, etc.


What is the etiquette about the length of a visit when giving departmental seminars?

Think of this as an opportunity, rather than an obligation.

Find people in the department who are doing interesting work and try to organise a short meeting with them. Volunteer to hang around after your presentation to talk to PhD students (and ensure that your presentation has some appeal to keep people around). Ideally, try to have a fairly full schedule to maximise the benefits gained from the opportunity, though avoid having every minute planned so that you can have spontaneous extended discussions with people, should the opportunity arise.

Planning ahead is probably key, as not everyone will be able to accept an unannounced visitor for a lengthy discussion.


Should I speak to my supervisor about changing my undergrad project topic?

By the way, I am also a number theorist.

In my recent answer to another question I described the fickleness of undergraduates in a way which I hope comes across as largely sympathetic.  The point of being an undergraduate is to explore the academic terrain a bit, flitting from topic to topic.  If you're not a bit flighty you'll have trouble flitting properly, which is more dangerous: you don't want to spend years working on something and discover at the end that you don't like it at all (you want to spend much less time).

However, my answer concerned research, and your project doesn't sound like a research project.  It sounds rather like a reading project, or in other words a  (largely) independent learning experience.  (For those who don't know, "solving polynomials by radicals" is an important topic in mathematics which received a definitive solution in the first half of the 19th century.)  For a reading project, you do want to exert some care in choosing something that will be worth the reading.

So I think you should definitely talk to the lecturer right away.  He gave you a topic because you didn't have something in mind, now you have something in mind, so it's time to go back.  However you should not be surprised to receive an explanation of why solving polynomials by radicals makes a better reading project than the Collatz Conjecture.  In the former case, there is an absolutely central question in number theory and algebra, it has a great answer, and all the steps leading up to that answer are also highly central and important.  In the latter case there is a rather isolated, curious open problem.  It's elementary, innocuous and catchy, which combine to create the psychological impression that it can't be that hard...but it is that hard.  In particular I am struck by the statement

  I know that as a third year student I definitely do not possess the capabilities of making any sort of impact on the conjecture[.]

To that I reply:

  I know that as someone with a PhD from Harvard who has successfully solved some open problems in number theory that I probably do not possess the capabilities of making any sort of impact on the conjecture.

The point being that nobody does, so far as I know.  If you think you want to tilt at windmills, it's a good time to check in again on what the assignment was.  (This is not to say that you should stop thinking about the Collatz Problem altogether.  Rather, if you like it, think about it in your spare time.)

I will end with a story.  I taught an advanced undergraduate number theory course twice: see here.  Each time the course included a final project.  I gave a lot of suggestions for these final projects, and so far as I can remember most students did follow up on one of my suggestions.  Certainly that is true with the two best projects, which both led to other (novel!) work by those students later on.  The first time I taught the course, a student told me that he wanted to write about what ancient Greeks knew and believed about perfect numbers.  I told him honestly that I knew almost nothing about that and therefore couldn't be confident that there was much to say.  He replied enthusiastically that there were many things: did I know for instance that the Greeks thought that there were no odd perfect numbers, that there were infinitely many even perfect numbers, and that the final digits in this infinite sequence always alternated between 6 and 8?  Well, no, so I let him write on that topic.  When I read his paper, I found...well, I have already told you everything I remember on the subject, but it turned out that I had made the wrong decision.  Some topics are more fruitful than others.


Is success due to hard work sustainable in academic research?

I can't say whether 10-12 hours per day is right for you, but caution you to consider your health. If it suffers, then everything will suffer.

But "intelligence" alone is overrated. The path to Intelligence, actually, runs through Hard Work.

I once got the results of an IQ test (I hope they don't do this any more). The printed results said that I was a bit above average, but not outstanding. They recommended that I set my goals at community college rather than university as I'd be more likely to succeed with more limited goals.

About fifteen years later I earned my PhD in mathematics. So much for prediction.

More about me. When I was young I was pretty smart but was disengaged from school. My life was elsewhere. I saw no point whatever in school. It was in the second or third year of secondary school that I had what I considered my first positive educational experience. But then, I started to work. And I worked hard.

But, you need to use the hard work to seek insight into what you are studying. The work, itself, isn't enough. But the insight is very unlikely to come to most people without the hard work.

Again, though, don't neglect the wider picture. Get enough sleep. Get enough exercise. Seek feedback on what you do from those who know more. Find a mentor (or three). Ask a lot of questions. Take a lot of notes.

And don't try to work past the point of frustration. The work will be very inefficient. Take a break for a bit. Then come back to it.


Use of external resources as teaching aids

Giving an extra resource from another properly referenced and acknowledged source gives an explanation with a different flavour - I do this and so do my colleagues - do all students use or appreciate - no but some do, so it's worth it. Best of luck you have a good attitude.


Standard style when citing different authors from the same group

This is most likely a field-culture thing, but I find it very odd that you would treat the three papers as anything but independent pieces of work. If you want to indicate that the three papers are part of a series, you could always say something like

  a series of papers [1,2,3] presented blah blah

On the one hand, you want to give the "group leader" prominence, and on the other hand you clearly recognize the potential unfairness. I can imagine some of my students being rightly upset if their dissertation work was referred to as "work from the lab of Prof. Venkat".

I realize that many lab-driven disciplines are top-down in this way, but since there's a perfectly reasonable way to cite the work, I'd avoid highlighting the "lab leader" any more than merely by their presence on the author list.


Reviewers asked me to make my conclusion more "analytical" - how?

Look at other related articles, particularly those in the journal you submitted the article to.  This will give you some idea of the appropriate length and content of a conclusions section.

It is difficult to give you specific advice without knowing more about your topic and results.  However, when I write the conclusion to an article I generally try to explain several specific things.  First, I summarize the major results of the article.  If any of the results resolve significant standing questions in the field, I point this out specifically, and reiterate why these answers are important.  Second, I explain what further research needs to be done in this area, with specific emphasis on how the current paper affects our expectations for what will be useful to study in the future.  Third, if there is a specific avenue of future research that I intend to follow up, I mention it.


Proving that the PhD work was done prior to someone else's patent

You are right to be worried about a patent in the same field as your thesis research.

You do have some protection in the form of having "prior publication" that shows your work predates the thesis. But this is not necessarily sufficient to protect your future work.

I would get into immediate contact with your thesis advisor, as well as the legal department of your university. They are trained in handling such issues, and can advise you as how best to proceed so as to protect yourself.

Note that the goal of talking to the legal department is not to file a lawsuit. The goal is to understand what are your rights as a researcher working in an area with an existing patent, and how you can show that you are avoiding infringement.


What should I do with a bad dissertation from a good school?

A good dissertation is a done dissertation. Just get it submitted.

As another person commented, what you do for your postdoc does not have to be directly related to your dissertation. Having done a dissertation just shows that you are capable of research, writing, and going through the process of peer review. I'm sure many people never read the dissertations of the postdocs they hire.


What to do when a referee asks me to do something impossible/unreasonable?

I believe the key is that you can include the information in your paper about this direction being "impossible", and improve it significantly by doing so.

Rather than rejecting the suggestion outright, add a discussion to your paper of that future direction and some notes on its difficulty (i.e., although we show in this paper that 10+10=20 through novel use of the podal digits, the corollary of 20-10=10 cannot currently be proven empirically due to limitations of the primary technique of positive incremental dactylonomy, and the lack of willing test subjects for the secondary approach).

Although it might seem obvious to you why that improvement is "impossible", your reviewers may read your paper even more carefully than your broader audience. If something was unclear (or at least, non-obvious) to this reviewer, you should expect that at least some non-negligible proportion of your broader readership will come to the same conclusion. I think you improve your paper substantially if you can explain this concisely.

Even better, if you can suggest some approach that is possible but currently difficult to implement or outside the scope of your current paper, your work could be the priority reference for that approach.


On working as a freelance copy-editor in graduate school

Who says you're any good at it? Why would a colleague pay you for such a service when many lab-mates or other colleagues would do so for free or a promise to return the favor later? Who says anyone local to your area would pay you for such a service? Freelance implies not working for an existing service, so are you prepared to deal with the necessary tax implications of being self-employed (in the US or your country)?

I wouldn't expect this to appear on a CV, and I would find it strange if I read a CV with it this experience listed unless the candidate worked for a professional editing service (where it might be a plus for them).


Will the admission committee actually read a student's paper mentioned in resume?

While it's a single N experience from my graduate school application process:

  Does the admission committee even bother to go through the paper to
  assess the work quality? (Sometimes, you can have a rough quality
  assessment by looking at which journal/conference the paper is
  accepted by)

Yes. Several interviews I had mentioned content within the paper, at at least one of them had a good 10 or 15 minute discussion about the research that didn't start with the phrase "So, tell me what your paper was about..."

  If the answer is positive, is it a good idea for the applicant to
  upload the papers to arXiv and provide the committee with the links so
  that the committee can read the papers as they wish?

Yes. If your field is arXiv friendly, put it there. If your field isn't particularly arXiv friendly (like mine) and your paper is in press, consider providing the PDF as a supplement to your admissions packet.


The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition:

  orig. U.S. A business or enterprise that is in the process of starting up, or that has just been established; a startup company, venture, etc.

[So, as I read it, their definition contains an etymology.]

They have earlier examples of the adjective, but for the noun, they have examples of "start up" from 1970 and "start-up" from 1986, but "startup" only from 2001.


Changing PhD Programs? What to put in my application? (UK-based)

It looks like your question is a typical X-Y problem: you are frustrated with the uncertainty and lack of direction from your current supervisor (problem X), you want to solve this by applying to another PhD program, but you don't know how to present your current situation in the application (problem Y).

So let's take a step back: the best scenario for you is probably to solve problem X in your current institution.
Here is what you can do to solve the problem with your current supervisor:

If there is any experienced academic around you that you trust, talk to them about your best course of action. Advice from a local person who knows the ins and outs of the department is often very useful.
Ask for a meeting with the local ombudsman or your director of studies. At this stage you don't need to tell your supervisor about this meeting and you can ask to talk to this person in confidence. Explain your issue with the supervisor to them and see what they have to say; in this kind of case various options can be considered:

A meeting with the supervisor and this person, where different options for the direction of your PhD are discussed clearly and openly, and you get to express your opinion about them.
Adding a co-supervisor more compatible with the kind of research you want to do and/or more available: this can be a good compromise if your supervisor is not interested in the topic you want to work on.
A change of supervisor: if things really don't work out between you and this supervisor, it's usually possible to switch. This can be a bit more complicated, but it's still much better than quitting.

My advice is to think about re-applying somewhere else only if none of these solutions are satisfying or possible in your institution.


Can too many submitted manuscript hamper your candidacy for getting a position?

It's pretty hard to imagine that it would be a problem. More is generally better. And the time to publication for a submission can be long. It seems better that you keep working and submitting rather than waiting for one to complete the process.

It shows you are active. Always a good thing.


How much help should one expect from their PhD advisor to get a job (academic or industry)?

I think it's reasonable to expect a PhD advisor to make introductions but not to place you into jobs.
They should help introduce you to people at conferences, both directly 1 to 1 or by supporting you in getting opportunities to present.
They should introduce you to visiting professors when they come to tour your space/give a talk to your department.
They should involve you in collaborations, to expose you to more ongoing research as well as researchers.
When it's time to apply for a job, you should make the phone call (or often an email). The introductions you've already had let you start the conversation with something like:

Hi, I'm Professor Maxwell's student, we met at the Demons Conference last year. I'm graduating this year and looking for post doc positions...

For industry jobs, I think it depends on your lab and your advisor. For some labs, your advisor has industry as well as academic contacts, because you collaborate with industry or work in a field where industry researchers are found at the same conferences as academics; in that case, all of the above still applies. For others, I would expect you would need to do more outside networking on your own, and I would look more to the rest of your institution for the same sort of networking support, through job fairs and such.
In some locations and cultures, yes, maybe a phone call is all you need, but in others people would be offended by that approach. The phone call that is more important to get you a job, though, goes the other way: it's when the future employer calls your advisor after hearing from you, and asks them what they think of you.


Why are there not fewer, better funded PhDs? (In the UK)

Universities themselves fund very few students. My faculty (which has 7 departments I can think of off the top of my head, and probably over 250 PhD supervisors) funds 2 students a year. These are used as strategic investments, either in a particular area the faculty wants to expand in, or more often as part of the start up package for a new academic.

So in answer "why not fewer, better funded PhDs", the answer is that any fewer would effectively be none.

In STEM subjects, a large number of PhDs are funded by external funding bodies, such as the government funded research councils. For example my department get 4 or 5 students a year from a Biology and Biotechnology Reserach Council (BBSRC) Doctoral Training Program (DTP). Importantly, government funded PhD studentships are only open to European (soon to be only British) citizens. Then there are CASE studentships that are financed jointly by government and industry. In both these cases the university has no say in how well resourced the studentship is; but they do earn the tuition fees that are paid by these outside agencies.

After our DTP and CASE studentships the most common way for a student to be financed is by a foreign government. These studentships generally are very well resourced because the university can more or less ask for as much as it likes. However payment of the student's stipend is down to that forigen government.

Finally if the student REALLY wants to do a PhD (so they can have a career that requires it one supposes), the university doesn't really care where the money comes from, as long as they get their £18k a year, they are happy and will tell supervisors to supervise them. Depending on the institution and the rank of the supervisor, various levels of compulsion might be applied to encouraging the supervisors to supervise a fee paying student. Supervisors are also often happy to take foreign students because the research funds they bring can see the rest of the a research group through a tough patch.


Criteria for a Pure Math teaching job at a university

In the US it is possible to get a tenure track position in math fresh out of a PhD program. Having the doctorate implies that you have done some significant research and have at least one publishable work. But most doctoral students in math here also work as TAs along the way, so they have at least some experience working with students. Some are permitted to teach low level courses with only minimal supervision. So, that is the minimum. Your grades were pretty good also, if you complete a doctorate.

But in most cases a job being offered will have many applicants, meaning that the competition can be quite strong. Thus, if you are better on any or all of the scales you suggest then you have a better chance to actually get the job.

But personality also matters, which is why applicants are interviewed before hiring. It isn't considered to be just a paperwork process or a spreadsheet algorithm.

If you are a student in a doctoral program and want a teaching position in the future, find a way to TA, and, if possible, teach one or two courses in the department.

But it will still be the letters of recommendation you get, about both teaching and research, that will make or break your chances. Do a good job and get recognized for it.


Can a Ph.D. student visit another lab for a week to learn a specific skill/topic? (inside EU)

Hosting another researcher is not a lot of trouble, assuming the lab doesn't require any high biosafety credentials. The host needs to provide access, consumables, and some space. The bulk of the paperwork would be done by the host, as they know what they need.

The usual procedure for PhD students is for your professor to talk with them, but you seem to be an established researcher, so if you know them you may ask them yourself. Remember that for them, their biggest commitment is the time to actually train you, so you have to somehow make it worth their while. You could offer an exchange or a collaboration, for example.

If the procedure is of sufficiently wide interest, you may convince them to organise a school and train several people at the same time, for a fee (in computational subjects, where we don't have to pay for reagents, that is usually a few hundred euros per week, depending on their independent funding).

  (I am willing to commit to travel and accommodation expenses from my own budget).

Try not to. Your institution is about to gain a very useful new knowledge, they should definitely pay for it. Also, you could probably get course credits, if you need them for your PhD.


Is there such a thing as a "general semester"?

In the U.S., it is common to start at a university as an "undeclared major". This gives students an opportunity to take courses in a variety of areas to figure out what interests them. Typically, after a year they must choose a major.


Advisor recommended reuse excerpt of master's dissertation in Ph.D. Thesis

I would treat a long excerpt of your own material acceptable provided that you also cite it, listing carefully that it is an excerpt and pointing to the original source. I'm assuming that you hold copyright on the early work, not having yielded it to another publisher.

Don't confuse the two issues, permission to create a derived work, and proper citation. The permission is obvious if you hold copyright and by citation you avoid any claim of self plagiarism.

Note that the main purpose of avoiding self plagiarism is to let readers find the original source of material and, thus, learn its complete context. By citing, you make this possible.


Is it possible/convenient to reply to the conference PCs regarding the meta-review result of a paper?

I assume that the committee has also seen the reviews and hasn't objected to them. At least a subset of the committee has likely looked. Presumably they agree with the decision.

You can communicate with them and ask for a new review, of course, but I think you are not likely to get it. They will most likely want to follow the established procedures which, as you say, don't anticipate a rebuttal. Conferences also have time constraints and the submission/review schedule feeds in to other things that also have time constraints. They are also pretty likely to trust their reviewers. My experience with annual conferences is that the set of reviewers is fairly stable and committees also overlap from year to year.

On the other hand, I also doubt that they would withdraw the acceptance as a poster as long as you don't come across as abusive or insulting.


Using the names of the teachers in Personal Statement?

There is no reason of ethics or custom to prevent you from using the names of professors in your personal statement.  Remember, however, that the personal statement needs to be about you, not about your professors, and choose accordingly whether to talk about a particular professor.

Thus, for example:

If you are talking about a research experience that you had as an undergraduate, then the name of the professor that you worked with is quite germane, and likely to be one of your references in any case.
If you are talking about a class that inspired you, then the class and the professor are not particularly interesting for the statement: instead what is interesting is what that inspiration has caused you to do.