A co-author is

  An author who collaborates with another to write something.

There is nothing in the definition that states that each author must have written literally half of the book. Obviously, if there are more than two co-authors (perhaps more common for articles, your question seems to indicate that you realize this), they cannot all have written exactly half of the book, and it is rather unlikely that each will have written exactly one-third or one-fourth or...

In your situation, if the original/first author offers you co-authorship, accepting is a judgment call on your part. You have authored many books; is this one worthy of being added to your list? On the other hand, if you are not offered co-authorship, but will be acknowledged otherwise for your contribution, it is probably best to accept this with good grace. Next time--assuming that you might collaborate again--be sure to clarify potential authorship roles before beginning the actual work.


Why don't more academics write textbooks?

As in the other comments and answer: it's a lot of trouble, doesn't generate money, and doesn't generate status, either. In fact, it often generates anti-status, for various reasons: because of the other features, many academics (I'm in mathematics) would never consider writing any sort of book at all... and many of these people seem to subliminally want to rationalize this as a positive virtue by denigrating anyone who does write a book (especially a textbook). This is a fairly typical mechanism: declare the desired state a virtue... I've had "colleagues" say to me, quite snarkily, upon hearing that I was working on a book, "Oh, you must have a lot of time with nothing to do!" Sigh...

It is also true that there is pressure from publishers to make new textbooks as similar as possible to old textbooks... which perpetuates certain features that one might decide are not so good. That is, understandably because publishers want to sell books, a new textbook "has to" resemble existing ones enough to compete in the market for those books.

Another disincentive, of a different sort, is the point that nowadays with an internet, one needn't have pseudo-perfected a body of material before putting it on-line, because it can be corrected, tweaked, etc., indefinitely. In contrast, a physical book's immutability creates pressure for a degree of perfection that is (relatively) very expensive (if only in time and energy), due to severely diminishing marginal returns. The very linearity of a book creates similar somewhat-fake problems... And physical books are not searchable! It's crazy! :)

So, I personally have written some texbooks, didn't make much money... Nowadays, I mostly just put textbook-like material on-line, thus without the constraints of old-timey publication. This similarly generates no status-points at all, and no money. :)


No proper reply from professor after acceptance

I think the problem is not with the content of the email itself, but rather with the fact that the professor is busy -> doesn't respond to emails consistently. Therefore, you should somehow try to attract his attention/the attention of others if he is unavailable. Possible options include:

Having a clear email subject (e.g. a reply to the thread where you discussed your acceptance; mentioning that your request is related to the visa application, etc.)
Trying to call/email the department to establish ties with them. They may be able to assist you with the process & in some cases even write the letter for you.
Trying to reach other people in the lab. They can tell you whether the professor is away and whether there is a better way to reach him. Some of the other lab members may be international as well and, therefore, can provide you with additional information regarding the visa & your life post arrival.

Finally, it is likely that the professor is currently conferencing/vacationing. If none of the above helps, your best bet might be waiting and emailing again toward the end of the summer. It's no fun but delaying the start of your internship is better than not having one at all. In all of your communications, be polite and patient. That's the key to getting someone to help you. Good luck!


Pros and cons of teaching as a PhD student for non-academic future

I think the comments on your question already give a quite clear answer: Yes! Most industries really like someone that can communicate complex concepts clearly, either to management or to their team. Teaching a course is one of the best ways to learn this.

Personal note: I once had an interview for a relevant, part-time job, next to my Master's. The job I had at the time was as a rowing instructor, with poeple having very different skill levels and ranging in age from 20 to 80. Throughout the interview, we kept coming back to things I learned there, regarding communication, conflict solving, keeping a team together, that kind of stuff. Teaching a class will give you a similar experience in my opinion and will be a very valuable skill for any employer.


How can I politely reply and educate students with unreasonable requests?

Let's assume your teaching practices are the best possible.  Students want you to change your teaching practices.  You should respond by explaining to students why your practices are effective (do this even if they don't ask).

Examples:

  additional exam papers with full solutions (there are already three
  past exam papers with solutions available).

Studying the three past exams will help you learn what you need to learn from this class.  Additional past exams will not provide additional help.  If you have extra time, I suggest you ...

  a list of the exact topics that will be examined in each of the exam
  exercises (this is, if the exam contains 5 questions, then I should
  provide the corresponding 5 topics).

All the topics listed on the course syllabus are important things for you to know.  Therefore, any of them might be on the exam and you should study all of them.  If it was not important enough to be on the exam, then I did not teach it.

If these types of responses are not true, then I suggest changing your teaching until they are true.


Does a conference talk in an invited session count as an invited talk?

Yes, you can list this as an invited talk.  Even though the first invitation was not to you, the second invitation most certainly was.

Here is another way of thinking about it that may make it clear: imagine that rather than inviting your professor, the organizer has simply asked your professor: "Who do you think would be good to invite to my session?" and your professor suggests you.  This would clearly be an invitation (albeit one where you benefit from your professional network, which often happens).  The only difference between this situation and yours is that the suggestion was preceded by a failed invitation of your professor.


What is the performance expectation for promotion to full professor (from tenured associate) in the US versus in the UK and Australia?

Getting promoted to full professor seems to be a much bigger deal in the UK and Australia than in the US. Historically at least, many academics in the UK and Australia went their entire career without being promoted to full, whereas my impression is that's not the case in the US. The full professor promotion decision is fraught in the UK and Australia, and in that way is more like the tenure decision in the US.

There seems to be a stronger expectation of leadership at the university and in one's field and possibly a stronger expectation of high-quality research productivity in the UK and Australia, but I'm not sure of this.

Hoping for better answers..


If co-instructors gave different syllabi with different grading schemes, is this generally considered a valid reason to challenge grade?

The majority of the question's text concerns minutiae about syllabi and percentages that are unlikely to be of interest to anyone except the OP.  The question would be significantly improved by eliding / summarizing this information and concentrating on the core question:

  What happens when multiple, conflicting syllabi are given out for the same course?  Does the student have a legitimate grievance when one syllabus is being followed but not the other, at the expense of his grade?

I think these are reasonable questions for our site.

My answer to the first question is: yikes.  Three different instructors for the same course, three different syllabi, and one of the instructors (the chair!) does not even know about both of the other syllabi?  What a mess.  In general having courses taught by more than one faculty member makes things harder and necessitates much more explicit, advanced planning.  This course does not sound well-planned.  As soon as you get talk about which syllabus is more "official" than the others, things are not going well.  I don't think there is a standard, easy answer to this question, and I don't see any coherent answer which does not admit mistakes on the part of the faculty.  On the other hand I wonder why this issue did not come up earlier in the course: on the first day of class every student was in possession of two contradictory syllabi and no one noticed?  I find that curious and am not sure what to make of it.

My answer to the second question is: yes, I think so.  If you show up to some higher administrative official with two syllabi in hand and say that you want to be held to the standard of the syllabus you were given first, you have a good shot at getting some traction on this.  However I would encourage you to try to resolve the matter as non-combatively as possible: if you are a graduate student in the program, getting the chair chewed out by (say) her dean is likely to have some effect on your course grade, but it may have other, less pleasant effects down the line.  I would begin by doing what you have already done: clearly pointing out the discrepancy between the two syllabi and the significant effect it may/will have on your course grade.  You should indicate that you proceeded in the course with an understanding based on the first syllabus that you received and that you would like this to be taken into account in the course grade.  Give them a chance to do this for you before you escalate the situation.

Finally, the business about the 75 belonging to two grade ranges: in my opinion you look petty by bringing that up at all (look at the reaction your question has received).  The purpose of the grading system being spelled out in advance is for students to be sure they are treated fairly and to be able to have some rough means of predicting what kind of performance will lead to what kind of grade.  There is nothing that you or any student would have done differently if 75 belongs to one grade range rather than the other.  I agree with other commenters who said that the time you spent complaining about that would be better spent learning the material and improving your performance in the course.  Mixing legitimate, serious grading concerns with "grade-grubbing" is not a good strategy.


What are the best question to ask a committee panel after a PhD interview?

It is not mandatory to ask questions. Generally they offer you the opportunity to ask questions in case you are not sure or confused about anything or any process related to application/lab/university.

When I had given PhD application interview almost all times interviewer asked me if I have any question. I didn't ask questions for most of the time. However few times I do asked question specially when position they were offering had partial financial support from supervisor. That case I asked about chances of getting rest of financial support. They were quite helpful and actually suggested me to check for RA positions in other related departments. In another case, I asked professor about possibility of collaborative work because I was interested in some interdisciplinary work. He was very impressed by question as it showed that I had already focused area of interest.

I also remember few of my friends have asked questions like, "Are there many flowering plants around campus because I am allergic to pollen-grains?" , "Can I get accommodation on campus if a dependent is accompanying me? ", "You were working on XX problem before are you still working on that?" etc.

You should ask questions depending on university you are applying and professors interviewing you. Do some basic research on their background from university web page. Don't ask cliche questions and don't ask for the sake of asking.


How can a Poli Sci undergrad with a CS minor improve their chances for a CS masters program?

In my experience, those who come from non-CS undegraduates to CS grad studies are often missing some key things, and having those things will definitely help you succeed:

Know graphs back and forth. Make sure you're comfortable with the main terminology (edge, path, degree, connected-component, bfs, dfs, cycle, etc.) and the main operations on them. They are literally everywhere in CS. Other discrete math will help (especially sets and relations), but graphs really are key.
Make sure you're comfortable with induction. A discrete math class might help with this, but even if you don't know number theory or combinatorics or relations, induction pops up everywhere in CS, and knowing it will help.
Make sure you've taken a Systems class. Concurrency, threading, interrupts, caching, memory management, etc. These are hard concepts to wrap your head around, and they can pop up in many places. Knowing these could save you weeks of debugging slow or incorrect parallel code, and in this day and age you're probably going to have to do something in parallel.
Make sure you know basic software engineering. I've seen plenty of people who can write correct code, but it is terrible to read. Learn about functions, classes, modules, etc. Learn to document your code. Learn to separate your code into functions and modules, so that you can share it and maintain it.
Knowing a bunch of languages isn't the most important thing, but I'd make sure you know the basics of at least two languages from different programming paradigms. For me, the main paradigms are Typed Imperative (C, C++, Java, Go, C#), Untyped Imperative (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP), Typed Functional (Haskell, ML, Elm, F#), Untyped Functional (LISP, Scheme, Racket, Clojure, Elixr), and Logic (Prolog, Datalog, Mercury, miniKanren). Basically, you want to avoid going into grad studies thinking there's only one way to program. Once you've got two significantly different languages, picking up more shouldn't be that hard.

More "practically oriented" classes are tempting, because they seem, well, practical. They have fun hands-on projects with flashy results. But knowing the fundamentals will make it possible for you to teach yourself things in graduate studies, and once you're into grad studies, you will be teaching yourself new things every single day.


What does "area of physics or chemistry" mean in a graduate application?

It sounds like you should write about what you want specifically want to study. Anybody can write a page or two about a general branch of either discipline—but that wouldn't help an admissions committee decide if they wanted to hire you or not. A page or two (or some other length, if listed in the question) about your particular research interests would be much more valuable to a committee.


Which recommender should I go for getting a LOR for graduate school admission?

In general, if you are applying for a research degree, then you are better off getting letters of recommendation from people who can comment on your ability as a researcher. Even if the person is a well-known expert in the field, that won't do them a whole lot of good if they can't comment on your abilities in the field.

Your department head has neither observed your work in classes nor supervised research for you. How much detail she can provide on your capabilities is therefore greatly in doubt. You have taken classes and performed research with the lecturer. Therefore, your lecturer can evaluate you more thoroughly and provide evidence supporting those claims.

So, unless you have some additional absolutely compelling reason to obtain the letter from the department head, I would go with the instructor who actually knows your work.


Recommendation letters for REU from grad student

I am the project director for an NSF-funded REU program, so I will offer my thoughts on how the faculty reading applications for my program would respond.

Overall, we will not take letters from graduate students very seriously when considering students for admission.  The basic problem is that few graduate students have the perspective to judge an undergraduate's potential to do research.  When I look back to my own time in graduate school, I know that I would not have done a particularly good job evaluating undergraduates' relevant skills.

While a letter from a graduate student would be essentially worthless when a student is applying to graduate school, an REU program is a more relaxed and lower stakes admission process.  So getting a letter from a graduate student would not necessarily doom an application.  If I received such a letter, I would write back promptly to the applicant asking for another letter from a faculty member.  If we did not receive a replacement letter from a professor, we would not rule the application out automatically, but it would have to be very strong otherwise to make the cut (and students who are very strong applicants would often have little trouble getting a good faculty letter to begin with).

Other programs may be more willing to accept at least one letter from a graduate student, so if you feel that you have adequately warned the student about the risks in having you as a recommender, you may want to go ahead and write the letter.  However, you should definitely look at the admission requirements for the specific REU programs; if they specifically ask for faculty letters, I would suggest that you decline to write.


Does it make sense to appeal the reject decision made by the journal editor?

You're starting at the wrong end. If four or more reviewers plus two editors have found that your paper has "nothing new", but you think that "our findings contribute to the field", then you haven't made your point well enough in the paper.
The most pragmatic approach to dealing with rejections is to assume that the failure lies with your writing and not ignorant reviewers and editors: If someone doesn't see your point, then you haven't made your point well enough. Any appeal will not change that you haven't written your paper well enough.
So: go back to the drawing board. Read through your introduction and try to understand whether, from the perspective of a reader, you've made it clear enough where the current knowledge has deficits, why we should care about these deficits, and how your paper addresses these deficits. If you make these points clearly and easy to find/understand for a reader, and your papers will get accepted. If you make it difficult for readers to understand the point of the paper, you will get rejections.


Finish it because they are scanning the transcript for red flags and you can't have a complicated story every time you interview. You cannot escape that transcript. Think about that at night when doing homework.


Project may be benefitting a professor's personal company

Assuming the professor's intentions are indeed as presumed, I think this is a problem for two reasons:

The students did not consent to being used as workforce.
Regardless of the extent of their contribution to the final product, the forced use of any uncompensated workforce means somebody who is qualified to get hired and do the job  will not be getting hired, removing jobs from the market.

From a legal point of view, the professor may have every right to do what he is doing. If not, that is a problem on its own, and has been addressed in @Spark's answer. Otherwise, all the secrecy surrounding the matter was not necessary, and had he been more transparent, I highly doubt that any of the students would refuse to do the assignment.
For reasons of my own, this reminds me of the consent crisis surrounding pelvic exams performed by medical trainees on women under anesthesia. Perhaps since decades, it was considered ok for medical students and trainees to do such pelvic examinations. However, when the recipients found out about it, they felt exploited. Same here. There is a very fine line here: most women actually tend do provide consent to such practices if discussed prior to the procedure, but when found out about it afterwards, most find it shocking. The professor could have been more transparent, which would have had the additional benefit of helping the students feel not violated.
As an example supporting my latter point: in the United States, most universities typically have policies to limit the voluntary presence and participation of visiting scholars from other countries in research activities. This is because there are plenty of talented individuals from other countries who are ready to pay out of pocket to come to the US to progress their careers. It is easy for a primary investigator to run their lab relying on this freely acquired talent and preserve their grant money for other things. However, this prevents everybody (US citizens and foreigners alike) from actually getting paid research positions in labs. Policies as such aim to prevent this from happening and is for the benefit of everyone.
As far as you are concerned, some of you who graduate from your class may be potential employees for the professor in question, and if he keeps getting things done with free talent like yourselves, well, he will be needing you less. Future employment may be a very valid concern to approach your professors with.


What to mention as funding source as a graduate student funded by the school?

You should ask your advisor.  They will be able to tell you if your funding comes from a grant, and if so, they can give you the details you need to report (e.g. oftentimes a grant ID number is required).
If indeed your funding is coming from a research grant, then it may very well be important to disclose this.  Not only for the journal, but it may also be required under the terms of the grant, and failing to do so may in principle jeopardize your advisor's funding.
In general, the obligation to acknowledge grant funding extends to everyone who receives support from the grant, not just the PI or "primary recipient".  Ideally your advisor would have told you about this when you first started to receive funding from the grant, but this often gets overlooked.


How to welcome new PhD students/postdocs to the group during lockdown?

Here are some things the grad students in my department did to keep connected:

We have a slack group with lots of channels. Some are dedicated to posting memes/talking about random things

We have occasional game nights on Zoom where we play games like Contact and other games that can be played over Zoom.

We sent emails specifically to the new grad students (even though there were only two of them) to check up on them, invite them to our slack group etc. One of the two did start participating quite frequently in our Slack conversations so that was successful.

Also, depending on how careful you need to be with Covid, I think you really can get coffee together. If you're a grad student, and you are new to the city, it's going to be really really lonely staying in your apartment possibly alone and never meeting anyone. Getting coffee or takeout and hanging out outside while socially distanced with one or two people every once in a while is probably a relatively low-risk activity and unless you're particularly vulnerable, I would say it's probably healthier than having no contact with anyone whatsoever.

Along those lines you can also ride bikes, play tennis, or go running together. These things are pretty low-risk depending on where you live. Where I live, there are public outdoor tennis courts that are not very crowded so you don't need to be close to anyone. Exercise has helped me cope with isolation a lot and really improves my productivity.


Explanation needed for university program titles (MScDiplomaCertificate)

I am not sure it is consistent across all departments, but my UK Psychology department offers an MSc/Diploma in Psychology that can result in an MSc, a diploma, or a certificate. The course is designed to allow students who currently have a degree that does not meet the requirements for accreditation by the British Psychology Society, to get an accredited degree in one year of study. Many BSc degrees in Psychology are not accredited by the BPS since they lack, or don't require students to take or pass, a critical component (e.g., modules on statistics or biological aspects of Psychology).

Even though all students take the same modules, due to differences in the requirements between the university and BPS, the final degree a student gets depends on how well they did. The course offers both undergraduate and graduate modules. If you pass everything, you get an MSc. If you pass enough credits, you may qualify for a certificate from the university, but not meet the BPS requirements depending on which combination of modules you failed.


Pre-print service like arXiv but with private option, so I can correct my mistakes without publicly advertising my mistakes?

Basically, if I understand you correctly, you want proof of priority without publishing.
Well, this problem is well known from middle-ages and renaissance where people wanted to be able to prove they have the earliest solution without revealing what it is (so that if someone finds it, they can prove they were there first).
They often used anagrams, today you probably would use some private/public key combination for this (I am not a crypto expert, you would have to read up on this).
However, to be honest, this will look weird. The current position in science is: if you have done it, publish it and expose it to criticism, and you may gain priority. If you wish to monetize it, you can create a patent that is public, but protects your rights (in theory), or keep it a trade secret and make money out of it.
As for a website that supports timestamps for unrevealed papers, I am not aware of any, but of course if there were, you need to make sure you trust the maintainers. Furthermore, if you had one and if somebody publishes a completed paper somewhere else before your paper goes live, this will not help you. The fact that you had worked provably, say, for multiple years on the topic will at best prevent plagiarism charges when you end up publishing. But this, if it occurs, could be proven otherwise, e.g. lab diary, emails, etc. It will not make you the "first to publish". Don't forget, there are quite a few cases where people who had publications were superseded by later, but more visible publications. So, even open publications may be vulnerable to "post-scooping".
So, your question needs to be what one would need such a service for? I therefore doubt that people would set up such a system with obviously limited utility. Of course, this is not a statement that there isn't.
I understand that this does not precisely answer your question, but I hope I was able to put things in context and why your question may not have a satisfactory answer.


One more year left before I apply to math graduate school. Any advice to obtain good recommendation letters?

I'm a mathematician who has been on a graduate admissions committee (albeit just for a masters program) and have written recommendation letters also. To answer your questions:

Yes, letters from professors may be weighted more heavily than postdocs, but the difference will be tiny; this won't likely matter to everyone looking at things. The biggest differences will likely be twofold: first, people on the relevant committees are more likely to actually know a professor than a postdoc, and if they do, that will generally be a positive. Second, if a professor says "This is the best student I've ever had" or something similar, that will mean more from a professor than a postdoc who hasn't taught as much. That said, a good letter from a postdoc will matter more than a mediocre letter from a professor.
One class is enough, two or more is better. If you only have had one class, make sure to stop by their office hours, ask good questions, and generally excel in their class.
Yes, and if anything, a single reading course may be better than a single regular course since they'll have more one-on-one interaction.


First day as an independent study student

I think you're wasting too much time psychoanalyzing your professor. If the semester has already started and he has not reached out, it's fine to e-mail your professor to set up a meeting.

I will advise hold on to the problem set answers for now. In the meeting, you can definitely mention the prep work you have done and you're enthusiastic about this opportunity. Focus on setting up a study plan, including the preferred frequency and forms of meeting, deliverables, and evaluation criteria, etc.


Is there a term|phrase for a grading assessment that counts the best m of n?

I often see this expressed as "lowest x grades dropped," where x is n minus m.


Not an expert on this, but my understanding of the two are:

ESCI aka. Emerging Sources Citation Index is a "lower-ranked" index. Journals listed here are being considered for the more prestigious indices SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI (note this doesn't include SCI, which is the most prestigious index). In other words, ESCI is a "feeder" index to the SCIE/SSCI/AHCI, which in turn feed into SCI. If you search the ESCI, you'll find that the most prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters aren't actually indexed here.

Scopus is fundamentally different and is built more on inclusiveness than quality. If you look at the inclusion criteria, Scopus mostly demands regular publication, peer review, diversity in authors & editors, and online availability. It does require that the journal's articles also be cited by other journals in Scopus, but not more than that. Scopus has many, many more journals than ESCI.

So which is good? Hard to say, and depends on what you mean by 'good'. Good journals will be in Scopus, but being in Scopus doesn't mean a journal is good. Being in ESCI is a different matter, since the really good journals won't be in it, but the really bad ones won't be in it either. It's your judgment call to make.


Can I submit my manuscript to a second journal without receiving withdrawal confirmation from the first journal?

This is actually a really interesting question as I don't think there's a black and white answer to this. Ethically, a "reasonable" attempt must be made to confirm withdrawal of the manuscript. People will draw the line at different points.

I would argue that one attempt at contact is not sufficient to be considered reasonable. If possible, I would contact the editor by phone as well as email. Check to see if there's a withdrawal protocol through your online account or if there are any additional contact details of committee members.

I would only feel comfortable submitting elsewhere if I had made multiple attempts to contact the journal over a period of 4-6 weeks. But that is just my opinion. I'm interested to see what others think...


How do I tell my supervisor his idea is incorrect?

The safest approach is always to make it a question about you rather than about them. "I'm confused. You said... but I had previously read/been told/seen ... instead. The two seem to conflict; can you help me understand what I'm missing, or what that other reference was missing?"

They may be able to show that there isn't actually a conflict. They may be be able to show that you misunderstood something, or that the other reference was outdated, incomplete, doesn't apply in this situation, is an alternative theory that they disagree with because.., ... Or they may say "oops, you're right."

By not accusing them, you avoid embarrassing yourself if they were right, give them space to correct themselves gracefully if they were wrong, and maximize your own opportunities to learn.


My university blocks leaking/whistleblowing emails related to an internal investigation

This is quite an interesting question.  I may be wrong on this, but I do not think blocking those emails would constitute a breach of "academic freedom".  Academic freedom usually protects the freedom of inquiry and publication for academics in relation to their academic work, but it would not ordinarily extend to give them any special right of inquiry and receipt of information with respect to their employment conditions and the administration of their employment (beyond the normal expectations of workers in other fields).  From your description, the emails relate to the employment treatment of academics, rather than a subject of academic research/investigation, and so it would be likely that the university would have the same rights as any other employer in respect of these emails.  While it may be unseemly for the university to block communications to its staff that criticise the administration of their employment, it is unlikely that this would constitute a breach of the principles of academic freedom.

One simple solution that strikes me as obvious in this case would be for any interested recipients of these emails to reply to the sender and supply their personal email address, so that future correspondence can be sent to them at an email account that is not controlled by the university.  If the goal of the sender is simply to alert relevant employees of alleged misconduct by the university, then that can be accomplished by sending the email to their personal email accounts.


How to narrow down a field of study when you enjoy and perform well in every subject?

Performing well in every subject is simply impossible past the high school level.  Conversely, I would argue that a strong high school student in a US-style system should be able to perform acceptably in every subject (excepting effects of disabilities), since studies in high school are typically designed to give the sort of general grounding that will be required in most professional careers (critical thinking, analysis of written ideas, clear exposition of your own thoughts, creative expression, foundational mathematical and scientific knowledge).

Beyond high school, one might still have the potential to be good at any particular thing.  It is just that this is the time when one begins to study specialities more deeply, and there are simply too many of them to be an expert in all of them.  This happens in a fractal manner at each level: in undergraduate, you can be excellent at whole major, but cannot study all the majors; in graduate school, you can be excellent at a sub-discipline, but cannot study all sub-disciplines; as you establish a career as an academic, it is important to identify a small scope of contributions within the disciplines you work where you can contribute uniquely well.

These realities also imply an answer to your dilemma.  You don't have to pick the "right" academic focus, you just have to pick one that you will enjoy.  And you can even afford to be wrong a couple of times, as long as you figure it out and shift to something that suits you better.  Moreover, it's possible to do this at every level (though it's harder to make large shifts the deeper you go), undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and even beyond.

In short, you can think of academic areas like the Tim Minchin love song says: "If I didn't have you, someone else would do."


Questions to speaker per Smartphone in University lectures

This free guide - the Event App Bible - lists lots of conference/event apps. I believe there are a mixture of free and paid-for systems included. You should look at the "Audience Response Systems" to id apps that offer this type of functionality, and cross reference that against the pricing table. Hopefully you can find something that works for you. (The guide comes from the Event Manager Blog and was updated recently (2015))


Best way to show relevant experience when applying for a loosely related Masters?

All the usual advice about writing effective CVs and cover letters applies here. Additional advice:

Emphasize the positive and don't explain any negatives, since I really don't see any negatives in your story.
I suggest you take a couple of computer science courses before you apply, in order to (a) get your feet wet, (b) demonstrate your ability to be successful in a graduate CS program, and (c) garner at least one LOR in the target field. You can audit if money is an issue.

I recommend taking one course per semester if you are working full time. Choose a challenging but doable course that you're truly interested in.


How should one interpret a requirement that a proposal in pure math be "jargon-free?"

I think that the key idea here is that they want to know why you are doing what you are doing more than what you are doing.

Let's say you're diligently working towards establishing an isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity.  That's all well and good, but:

There are lots of properties in the world.  Why is isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity an interesting property to try to establish?
Is there a higher-level strategy to your approach than "just do lots of math until the problem is solved"?
Why is the approach that you are taking a good one?
If you establish this property, what are the consequences, and what comes next?

A really good and clearly written proposal should be able to have its logic grasped by pretty much any scientist, whether or not they are capable of judging its originality, plausibility, and significance in detail.


As an applicant to a PhD program, you want to demonstrate that you have been involved in projects that have lead to publishable results. It is common in my field (let's call it neuroscience today), for junior researchers to list in prep manuscripts. As to what constitutes an in prep manuscript, you should list anything that has a large enoguh scope that you can confidentially discuss the research methods, results, analysis, conclusions and implications. If you can do that, it doesn't matter if you have anything written (although if you are that far along, you should be writing it up).


How to get in situ anonymous global evaluation from students about the works of their peers

You should think this through carefully so that no one can game the system. This could easily just reward popular students. Many nice students will not want to grade people down (making the grades basically meaningless), while a few hyper-competitive students might give everyone else zeros thinking that it raises their own grade.

Scarcity of votes could force people to make thoughtful votes.
I've heard when you ask people to grade themselves and their groupmates, you can get truer evaluations by giving them a set of points to split. E.g., 3 people in group means divide 30 points among you. Instead of the usual, "Oh, everyone gets 100%!" students are often more realistic if boosting one person's score without merit takes away from another person's score. (In any case, you might not want to bind yourself to using the students' scoring directly for grades, but rather using it to inform your decision.)

You could apply this "scarcity of votes" in a couple of ways.

Come up with, say, 3 rubric categories (content, oral presentation, visual presentation). After each presentation, ask people to vote (hands or clickers or some web poll app) on which category the team did best. Two teams that were great overall or horrible overall may the same score as each other, but each gets feedback about which part is most productive to spend time improving (the rubric category they got the fewest votes on).
Have all the voting at the end of the session. Write each group's title on the board (or project it) and give each person 3 sticky notes place on the board next to the titles, to vote for their 3 favorites.

If voting happens after each presentation, I'll also note there will be strong ordering effects from non-trained evaluators. If all the topics are similar, the early ones will have high scores and the later ones will have low scores. If it's a harder task than expected, then people will be kinder to later presenters. These effects may still be present if you save the voting until the end, but perhaps not as strongly. (Possibly you'll get recency effects, that people will remember the most recent good presentation and vote for that.


M1 vs M2 in France: In the French system, which one is designed for those interested in Academia, M1 or M2?

There are different kinds of masters in France. But this is not what the M1/M2 distinction is about. M1 and M2 literally mean "first year of master" and "second year of master". They are not degrees, they are years, like "sophomore" or "senior" in the US. The master's degree is the combination of these two years. You cannot apply for M2 if you have not completed the equivalent of M1. What qualifies may depend on the university, but US undergrad certainly does not, as it would be the equivalent of a license degree (L3, third year of license - see how it works?), even if you did it in four years.

The different kinds of masters that exist are teaching, professional, and research. If you want to work in academia, you probably need a PhD, and to apply for a PhD in France, they usually ask for the equivalent of a research master's degree. A professional master prepares you to work right after getting the degree, while a teaching master prepares you to be professor in middle/high school.

So research M2 is the one you need to do. It will involve taking classes but also an "internship" during which you will have to write a "memoir", kind of like a mini PhD thesis. In most fields, the teaching and research master's degrees are the same in the first year and split  in the second year. Thus if you only have undergrad education, then all you can apply to is a common M1 year in the field you want, and next year you will be able to apply for a research M2 year.

Perhaps to drive the point home: you typically need to complete the M2 to apply to a PhD. But you need to complete the M1 to apply to the M2. So the question cannot be "which is the one for academia". It would be like asking whether 11th grade or 12th grade is the one you need to complete to enter a college. You need to do both.


Does the acceptance rate of a conference influence its reputation or rank?

CORE, one of the major ranking systems for computer science, takes the acceptance rate into account: (Source)

  Characteristics of A* Conferences include that:

  [...]

  They have acceptance rates that are typically 20% or less, with many more "acceptable"
  papers submitted than can be accommodated in the conference program.


Is it important who submits the paper to the journal?

It doesn't really matter who submits it, since it's just an administrative procedure.

What matters is that the authors and co-authors are properly listed in both the manuscript and the submission system.

In every submission system I ever used, you have to define who is the main author and who are the co-authors, and there's usually an option to register their contact/email address so they can receive updates on the status of the procedure.


My professor and chair of the department traced back a supposedly anonymus course evaluation to me. How to proceed?

Most probably nothing negative will come out of it.

And there is also the chance that they want your opinion, independent of the evaluation (i.e., they did not necessarily guess that it is YOU who wrote these comments but given the fact that you talked to the chair about these issues, then the chair wants to discuss these with you.)

True, it shouldn't have happened the way it happened (to make you think that the evaluations are eponymous or that they have guessed the writer behind these comments and want to talk to you about that)  but most probably the chair and professor would like to discuss the issues for potential improvement. Just politely explain all these issues and make some suggestions on how they could be resolved and it should be fine.


Is the personification of concepts or terms accepted in academic writing?

I cannot comment on your specific example, because I do not know what it is supposed to communicate.

As with almost any writing device, I think personification is acceptable if:

it conveys some idea better or more concisely than alternatives,
the target audience can be expected to understand it,
there is no loss of precision when it is needed.

Now, the audience of academic writing consists to a considerable extent of non-native speakers, and precision is often paramount. Therefore, the above conditions constrain the use of personifications much stronger than for other types of writing.

Still, there are many cases where a personification is appropriate, for example when you already rigorously defined some concept and now want to explain it by other means. Many such personifications have found their way into scientific terminology or everyday language to the extent that we probably would not even perceive them as personifications anymore. For example, consider the usage of inherit in biology, computer science, and many other contexts. Also, I have used five personifications in this answer so far (mostly unintentionally).

Example 1

This is from my own academic writing and slightly shortened to reduce context dependence:

  These incompatible results show that the model suffers from an inconsistency.

This is a personification:
A scientific model cannot suffer.
If I had been forbidden to use personifications, I would have written something like this instead:

  These incompatible results show that the model is inconsistent, which is a considerable problem.

Since I consider this rather clunky, I do not expect anybody to misunderstand my use of suffer, and this is not a matter of definition, I opted for the personification here.
(Now, to some of you “which is a considerable problem” may redundant here, but the paper’s target audience it is not, as evidenced by some of the feedback.)

Example 2

Again from my own writing and slightly modified:

  SymEngine is aspiring to replace the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

SymEngine is a software package; it cannot aspire.
Without personification I would have written something like:

  SymEngine is developed with the goal that it replaces the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

I consider it as likely that somebody stumbles over this more complex sentence structure as over my use of aspire.
For everybody else, the alternative does not add anything.
Again this is a high-level description where precision is not of the essence.


Do you have to have a PhD to be a "research scientist"?

Titles depend on institution. In industry, you can be a "research scientist" with no particular degree. In a university, a "research scientist" may be a catch-all term for scientific employees, or it may be a parallel track with similar prestige to a professorship (with similarly high standards). I do not know what MIT's system is.

Your job responsibilities will depend on your boss (advisor) far more than your title. If your advisor is on board with you continuing your current research, then great; this will be true regardless of your title. If they are doing you a favor allowing you to remain employed while you apply for PhD programs, then they may expect you to do "lab tech" type work.

It's certainly a good idea to discuss your title, responsibilities and goals with your advisor before accepting the position. But I wouldn't be too concerned about the title. If this were a permanent position for you, I might agree that "lab tech" would be an unfortunate title, and might have unfortunate implications about your ability to participate in original research (especially since you would have to consider your position if your supervisor moves on). But since this is just a temporary stop-gap until grad school, I would focus this conversation on your responsibilities and goals.


Can I submit a paper to a call for paper and a call for workshops for the same conference?

Well, since papers are generally for finished work, and workshops are for improving work in progress, it might be looked at as an odd situation. If you submit a paper for what you have done already and a workshop proposal that is related, but, perhaps, an extension to the other then it would be more natural.

So, in the exact form you suggest, I'd recommend not, but a variation might work out for you. A workshop is also valuable in that it would put you in contact with other researches with similar interests.


Ph.D. admission with funding from current employer

Two things came to my mind:

Self-Finance and End Results: First thing first, broadcasting to a department that you have the money and you need a PhD position might not be a good idea. This is because just spending the money does not give you the PhD at the end. You need a good supervisor and research group to do the research. Throwing money at situation works in business, and might work in academia in other situations (e.g., buying equipment); however for your own PhD I would suggest to carefully pick and choose. You might spend the money and not getting the results at the end.
Guidance from supervisor: Your target is to do a PhD (with a one supervisor or two) with your company's funding. There are some issues here, for example, who is actually doing your implementation work (e.g., your coding if you are in a computing field) if you have a team behind you? I would suggest to find an academic first, and talk to him/her about this situation. Also, this way you don't go under the university's pressure and some non academic management to throw money at the research, because this will be hopefully sorted and guided by your supervisor(s).


Negative press coverage about universities will reduce enrollment.  Disruptions to high schools will reduce traditional-age enrollment.  People who are laid off from jobs will be more likely to enroll.

The main action we can take is to communicate to prospective students that we encourage them to enroll as soon as practical.  Students may believe education is not available to them.  Informing them will reduce the severity of enrollment declines.


How can I prove that the head of the lab did not have contribution to my work?

Sorry, I don't think you can do much at this point. These things should be negotiated before any resources are shared. Nothing is free, and different people may expect different forms of gratification- reciprocation, acknowledgement, authorship. You are entitled to having your opinions about this, and the correct time to voice them is at the beginning of the labwork/collaboration.

It is possible that your advisor has a prior understanding with this lab that you are not aware of. If this is not so, share your misgivings with your advisor and seek to learn his/her reasons for conceding authorship. With that knowledge, you can avoid such a situation next time.

This time, 'unblock' by giving credit.


How can a commentary be published before the commentary it’s commenting on?

Assuming your "commentary" was not publicly available (e.g., as preprint on your homepage or some server), and assuming that you submitted it to the journal under an assumption of confidentiality (in the first place), a reasonable editor and/or referee would certainly not publish commentary on a thing they had under confidential review... IF "commentary" means something at all conforming to the usual rules-of-the-game with "papers", which I can't quite tell from the sketchy details you've given.

That is, in the world (academic mathematics) in which I operate, if in the course of refereeing papers submitted to traditional journals I learn something interesting/useful, or disagree with various aspects, my main channel of response is (anonymously) back to the authors through the editor, requesting or recommending a revision. It would be highly inappropriate for me to write and make-public, whether on a web site or any other venue, a paper either extending or contradicting or critiquing that paper prior to its official public appearance.

If anything like that has happened, then it does seem well outside the bounds of propriety, yes.


Must a master's thesis fall within one's advisor's area of expertise?

Whether an advisor will agree to supervise a master's thesis outside of their area of expertise depends on the advisor.  It may also vary between fields or universities, but I believe the personal variance will be much higher, so the best way to find out is to ask a potential advisor.

As for whether it's a good idea, I see three issues.

You will not receive expert advice in your chosen area.  Of course, there's a trade-off here: would you rather study what you love best without expert advice, or get better advising on another topic?
You may receive actively bad advice.  To avoid this difficulty, it's important for you to read extensively and to choose an advisor who is open minded and flexible.
Your advisor may not write an enthusiastic letter of recommendation for you.  Sometimes an advisor will let a student choose to do whatever they want, but when the advisor recommends the student, it becomes clear that the advisor is uninterested in the student's work and unimpressed by it.  I've seen this cause trouble for several people, so I strongly recommend trying to find an advisor who is actually enthusiastic about your topic (even if it's not what they work on).

In your specific case, choosing to study second language acquisition in a language nobody on the faculty speaks sounds like only a mild concern (assuming you speak it fluently or have access to excellent informants), since I imagine much of the advising would be about research methodology or language acquisition theories, rather than language-specific issues.  However, I don't know enough about this area to say for sure.


How to best address authorship issues with PI?

Your supervisor's conduct is blatantly unethical.  The current relationship is harming your career.  You need to find a new job.


What are the trade-offs of working in the office versus elsewhere (as a professor)?

I think it's important to set boundaries with students, with colleagues, and with yourself about when and where you're available for meetings.  It's also important to find environments that most effectively support different types of work, and give yourself permission to use them.

Like you, when I'm in my office, I expect to be interrupted; so when I'm working at my desk, I can only productively work on tasks that survive interruption.  Put bluntly, the office is where I have meetings; if I need to think, I find a whiteboard in an empty conference room; if I need to write, I go to a coffee shop.  (Suresh is correct; I am in a coffee shop right now.)  As Daniel says, all three places allow for productive work, but of very different types.  Even in the computer science building, for small meetings where I don't want to be interrupted, I prefer to go to the other person's office.  And because my undergraduate office hours are occasionally very popular (especially right before exams), I don't hold them in my actual office, but in a larger room down the hall with couches and whiteboards.

You express two points of concern, which I'll exaggerate:

My students won't like me if I'm not available on their schedule.  I agree with DQdlM and Nate.  Spread out your office hours to fit as many students' schedules as possible, be in your office (or "office") for every minute of office hours even if nobody shows up, and be willing to offer occasional off-schedule meetings.  It might help to announce in your syllabus times that you're willing to schedule sporadic meetings.  ("I'm also available for occasional meetings Tuesday or Thursday afternoons; send me email to set up an appointment!")  Consider moving (not adding) your office hours if student demand doesn't match your announced schedule.  But then stick to your guns.  Yes, some students will be unhappy, but that's inevitable; don't take it personally.  Your availability outside regular office hours will not be the most significant bit in your student evaluations.
My colleagues won't like me if they don't see me in my office.  I agree with DQdlM and Suresh here.  Yes, it's important to be visible and active citizen of your department; that's not the same thing as being constantly on call.  The amount of time you spend at your desk will not be the most significant bit in your tenure evaluation.  The danger is not that nobody sees you in your office, but that nobody knows what you're doing.  Give regular talks to your colleagues and their PhD students showing off the results of your out-of-office effort.  Go to faculty meetings, and occasionally offer an opinion.  (Careful, that gun is loaded.)  Attend seminars, especially for faculty candidates, and ask questions.  If there is a regular departmental social event ("Tea" in many math departments), be there.  And so on.

Finally, I strongly encourage you to raise these concerns with your department chair or your senior faculty mentors.  (You do have a senior faculty mentor, don't you?  If not, find one!)  They can help you navigate your department culture far better than Some Guy On The Intertubes.


Whats the average salary (inclusively) in china? How expensive it is for a single postdoctoral life?

I was a postdoc in China for the latest two years. Mainly at the south of China but have also spent several month in Beijing with CAS. I was hired with a salary promise of annual 180000 rmb which wasn't paid correctly. So actually my first piece of advice is, take salary promises with two grains of salt, and perhaps consider just going elsewhere.

Now, answering your questions directly. I have been told that a Chinese postdoc gets around 9-10k rmb per month in Beijing, and I was offered another postdoc for annual 240k rmb (some special offer for foreigners I refused). This is probably the range you will find. Housing costs in Beijing are extremely expensive (at least 2.5k per month, above 4k if you want to be comfortable) however ordinary life costs are not bad. If you're not provided a place to live, don't accept anything below annual 150k rmb. Make sure you're provided decent healthcare coverage, because that'd also very expensive and unfriendly to foreigners.

Finally, you say this is your 3rd postdoc. Meaning you're probably hoping to get a permanent job soon, and possibly heard promises of a fixed position "in case things go well". Don't fall for that, this is usually bait. From asking several colleagues, they were all promised "something else" when in reality it's all about them distributing around authorships and impact factors until they get fed up.

A tip: Chinese academia generally likes US citizenships and top-prestigious journal authorships. If you don't have any of such to show, don't expect the best treatment.

My main advice remains, consider going elsewhere. Hong Kong is already better if you're into Asia, perhaps Taiwan.

Best of luck.


Worth to fight examination office for English transcript of records?

How important is it to have a fully translated ToR for B.Sc. for applying internationally?

For most English-speaking universities, it is essential to have translations to English.

  Is it important enough to make the examination office not like me anymore?

In my opinion, it is fine to ask them to follow university regulations, even if they do not like it.  So, yes.


Is it okay to focus the PhD Research Proposal in more than one topic?

The function of the research proposal depends widely on the nature of the admissions process. If you are being directly hired by and supported by a professor's research group, then the proposal should be directed to the interests of the particular group.

On the other hand, if the department handles admissions and assigns students to groups later on, then you do not need to focus your interests too narrowly. The big question is this: are your interests in the "hot" areas, or other areas within the department? If you're applying in the "hot" area, then you need to be more specific (since there's more competition); if you're doing less popular topics, then you can afford to be less specific.


How can I remove myself from a project I'm unable to complete?

I suggest that you just tell your supervisor and the other researcher that you are finding it difficult to give the other project adequate time and effort given your main and more important tasks.

It is fair to say that you underestimated the effort involved, but then, others probably did the same. Treat it as a problem to be solved.

You don't need to actually remove yourself or make a demand, but just state the facts as they are and ask for advice. Perhaps the advice will be that you drop it or otherwise refuse your effort on it.

But you also don't need to accept conditions that are unreasonable, so make sure the conversation ends in some consensus. Then, you only need to "upset" people as a last resort.


Removing paper conflicts after double-blind review process

Many, but not all, DBR conferences I am involved with do in fact remove blinding and conflicts at some point in the process, usually either shortly before or directly after final decisions have been made. The two downsides I see with this are as follows:

PC members get to see all review results, including the results of friends and students, a short time before they are sent to the authors. In practice this leads to the (small) advantage for well-connected authors that they know about the fate of their paper a few days ahead of others.
There may be cases where conflicts are declared not because two authors are friends or colleagues, but because of severe professional disagreements. In that case giving the conflicting PC member insight into the submitted paper, reviews, and review result at any point in time is a very large no-no.

At the end of the day, it is your decision as a chair how you want to implement DBR - there isn't a fixed set of rules that are given from a higher entity. However, please be transparent with your rules, optimally ahead of time. If you have not announced that conflicts would be lifted at some point in the process, I would personally avoid changing your mind mid-process.


Is the ETH Zurich part of the University of Zurich?

Some quotes from Wikipedia:

ETH is a federal institute (i.e., under direct administration by the Swiss government), whereas the University of Zürich is a cantonal institution. […] In the beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zürich.
[…]
Events of the neighboring University of Zürich are well-attended by ETH students and vice versa.
[…]
The amicable rivalry between ETH and the neighbouring University of Zürich has been cultivated since 1951 […]


Salary of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowships

If I am understanding the "Work Programme 2014–2015" of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions correct, then the amount of the living allowance is 37,320 Euro for early-stage researchers and 55,800 Euro for experienced researchers. This sum is multiplied by a "country correction coefficient" (see the very end of the Work Programme).


Will reviewers see acknowledgements in double blind peer review?

There is no reason that you need to put anything into the acknowledgements section until it is accepted and you are preparing the camera-ready version.  It is perhaps the only portion of a paper's text that can't really be affected by peer review (unless you do something remarkably unusual).  Furthermore, some acknowledgements must always be left our in order to maintain double-blind review: for example, funding should be acknowledged in the final document, but grant information breaks blinding.

Thus, I would recommend that you treat acknowledgements just like you treat author information: blank it for blind review, and add it in for the camera-ready after acceptance.


How to show extreme gratitude in an email?

Politeness never hurts. "Thank you for your very detailed and positive information" could be one option or something along those lines. I am sure most people providing this type of response do not expect much in return (not that they do not deserve it). But as with many other instances, keeping the thanks short and concise is necessary, do not overwork it because that just seems suspicious. Remember that the person is doing their work (well) and should be praised for just that.

If the school to which you are applying is large then it is not very likely you will be remembered and so the response will have little significance other than to show appreciation. In a smaller school, however, your politeness may be noticed and can help you build good relations with administration for the future so politeness never hurts.


How much am I allowed to edit my ESL friend's Master's Thesis?

It sounds like you're doing all the right things regarding helping without actually writing for your friend. I would explain to your friend, and ask them to meet with their adviser, either with or without you, to discuss how much/what type of help is appropriate. With the adviser included in the process, and some boundaries identified, it will be clear that plagiarism is not taking place. That being said, this is a huge time committment on your part. It might help you and your friend for them to work with a writing coach. Your school probably has a writing center or ESL center that can help with this.


Can I create anonymous repositories for double-blind peer review via GitHub organizations?

The fact that you created the repository is visible under your account's activity, so anyone following your account can see it in their feed. This can also be seen later by viewing your activity by subscribing to your RSS Feed.
However, generally this should be a concern for anonymizing for peer review, since the requirements are usually much lower — authors can often be identified by preprints and similar means anyway if someone really wants to find out, and reviewers are expected not to go looking for this information.
But if you have a GitHub account with a lot of followers or want to prevent anyone from checking if your account created the repository, then your proposed method is not sufficient.


Is it OK to contact someone who is on my suggested reviewers list to discuss something unrelated?

The world of academia is small enough so that you'll likely get to know most (or all!) reviewers for your work. You can't be expected to stop communicating with your colleagues, just because one of them could be reviewing one of your papers right now.

So yes, go and discuss.


Referring to author with their full personal name or by their abbreviated author name?

It is customary to refer authors by their last names when citing them within an academic article. It would also be better to include their initials too along with their last name.

I don't think the usage of short names such as bare initials would be encouraged within an academic article. IMO, it would be better to avoid this practice in papers.


Does labor law apply to graduate students?

Graduate students fall into a gray area with respect to American labor law, because they are a bit of a hybrid between students and employees. At least for the first year or two, they are usually mostly taking classes, and doing some research, but the balance shifts more toward research in later years.

As for the number of hours worked:

  Research ideas don't wait until you punch in in the morning.

The expected workload completely depends on the culture of the lab. I knew of groups in my old department where there really were no "expected schedules," and other groups where the expectation was about 80 hours per week!

That said, graduate students in my department worked a wide variety of different schedules. Some were night owls, who showed up around 10 or 11 at night, and stayed until 8 in the morning. Others were punctually showing up around 9 am and sticking around to 5 or 5:30 in the evening—and everything else imaginable.

Personally, there were days when I worked from 8:00 to 6:00 or so; other days around deadlines I might work until midnight; still other days I'd take a half-day or so.


Is it okay to use somebody else’s methodology in my own paper (with proper citations) or is this plagiarism?

Yes, it's okay to reuse other people's methodology to address an original research question.  It is not okay to copy the methods section of their publication.  You must write your own, in addition to citing them.


Paper status "Accept with Shepherd". What does it really mean?

Your paper will be shepherded. The conference organizers will assign a contact person called shepherd to your paper, who guides you through a sequence of revisions (for further information, see the question mentioned by @darijgrinberg, and this question).

The "accept with..." decision signals you that they really want your paper at the workshop, stronger than in the case of a major revision. But similar to a minor revision, there's still a possibility that your paper will be rejected, if you don't work cooperatively with the shepherd.


Sponsored H1B vs. green card self-petition: What's the quickest?

US immigration processes are a chancy and fast-moving target, as well as being subject to arbitrary interference from the political system.  I have been peripherally involved with an "extraordinary ability" application before, and my understanding from that process is that it's awesome if you can get it, but highly unpredictable.  I would thus strongly recommend against counting on EBI-1A.

On the other hand, H-1B also has its downsides: the number of available H-1B visas is capped through a highly complex formula.  You also can end up "hostage" to a poor employment situation because you go immediately out of status if you quit or are fired.  You also count as a non-US person, subject to export controls and potential limitations on the types of work that you can do---with some companies this is no constraint, with others it severely limits your career.

Instead, the first thing I would recommend is to get a trustworthy immigration lawyer involved to help you through the process.  See if it's possible to do a "belt and suspenders" approach where you simultaneously aim for the extraordinary ability green-card (since getting a green-card gives you more personal and professional flexibility) and the H-1B route with the company for backup.  Even with the company taking charge of an H-1B, it's good to have a US lawyer advocating for you also, because if a random low-level clerical mistake at the company may be "Oops, too bad!" for them but a wrenching restructuring of your life plans for you.


Why isn't implementing scientific libraries in software considered equivalent to a publication?

Software is a research product has value and is seen as valuable, but you as a researcher need to ensure that you extract the value out of it. Extracting value out of any research product requires doing some kind of formal write up and distributing the ideas among the relevant audience. For software, this is many times in the form of a software publication. Many traditional scientific computing journals take a software paper and these papers can do quite well in terms of citations. For example, Shampine's "The MATLAB ODE Suite" is one of the most read and cited articles in SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing.

Taking that paper as a reference, notice that it identifies the problem it's solving, explains how it had to modify the algorithms to achieve its goals, and the kind of results it can achieve. This then gives a citable resource and many of the people who use the paper will then cite this source. Software tends to be under cited, but since it can get so widely used you will find that successful software has some of the most cited publications. Another classic journal like this is ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (ACM TOMS). More recent software journals are the Journal of Open Research Software and SoftwareX.

In a slightly different direction, the Journal for Open Source Software reduces the importance of the paper by making the software and its documentation part of the peer review. As an example, Optim.jl has a JOSS paper which you can see is much shorter than traditional academic papers, but at least summarizes the value of the software in a citable form.

When applying for jobs, you'll notice that people naturally assign a different value to software papers. While it is definitely changing, some professors I know take hardline stance that software is just implementation and doesn't extend knowledge and will value it less than other papers (which is why these exact points should be refuted in a publication about said software). In contrast, some individuals care more about impact or citations, and so a widely used software will have a very large effect on them. Generally in my experience, the value of software seems to be increasing over time, with senior professors more likely to take the former stance and newer professors more likely to take the latter.

But my advice would be to just do whatever you think has a high impact to the research community. If it does have a big impact, people will notice, and sometimes just being noticed is what you need.


How to measure achievement in a field where large collaborations are normal?

Years ago, I was on the college executive committee when we had to decide whether a certain experimental physicist should be promoted (to tenure, if I remember correctly). Her papers were of the sort you describe, huge collaborations that gave us no information about the extent and quality of her contribution to the project. But that information was provided, in considerable detail, by the letters from external reviewers. (Here "external" means outside our university.  In cases like this, the college waives its usual rule that so-and-so many letters must come from people who are not among the candidate's co-authors, because essentially everyone who has real information about the candidate's contribution is a co-author.)


What counts as a "project" when a potential employer asks a graduate about recent projects they have completed?

Speaking as somebody on the other side of that table, what industry is generally looking for is evidence that you can actually put the knowledge that you've acquired to use.  The sorts of skills that industry are looking for include the abilities to:

prioritize in order to achieve a larger goal, rather than getting bogged down in subproblems along the way.
work well with others as part of a team
follow through a complex piece of work to completion, rather than giving up after the "interesting bits" are complete
understand how your work fits into a larger whole and goals beyond "I was told this was what we were supposed to do"
synthesize together multiple different types of skills
estimate task difficulty, set a schedule, and manage unexpected problems as they arise
ability to understand the needs of the people who will put your work to use (sometimes jargonized as "customer focus")
determine when you need new knowledge or skills and take appropriate self-motivated steps to acquire these

All of these things are important ingredients in somebody who will be a good contributor to a larger organization, especially an R&D organization where you can't afford to be micromanaging a bunch of poor performers.  Somebody who is strong in these abilities but lacks particular technical skills is often much preferable to somebody who has the technical skills but lacks the bigger picture "meta-skills."  That's because technical skills are a rapidly moving target, and a motivated self-starter can generally acquire new technical skills much more easily than a technically skilled person can become a motivated self-starter.

Research projects are often good places to find this, as are large personal hobby projects.  If you don't have any of these, class projects are a reasonable fall-back, though they will often be viewed with more skepticism, since they tend to be small in scope, have no "customers," and are often somewhat "spoon-fed."


No interesting research topics available - should I quit and pay back my stipend?

Please keep in mind that to quit I would have to pay back the semester’s fees and probably any stipend I have received during the semester which could add up to 35,000 USD...

"Probably" the stipend? The "probably" makes me nervous -- I think you should start by quantifying exactly how much you would be on the hook for. It could be more than that, or maybe you misunderstand and this would be zero.

  what would you do if you were in my place?

Impossible to answer, partially because I do not know what your "Plan B" is. You need to develop two detailed plans -- one for staying and one for leaving. Only then can you make a good decision.

I would also consider whether you have any professors you trust to discuss this with -- they may be able to help you find a third option.

  I would like to...know if quitting could possibly affect my job prospects and opportunities

Of course not having a degree is worse than having a degree. Paying 35K USD and still not having a degree seems awful. Starting something and not being successful also doesn't look great. But again, the question is: what is the alternative? If you can transfer to a better program, or get an awesome job, then perhaps it is worth it. For sure you don't want to acquire more debt and then not finish.


Is it ethical/ correct to cite a confidential document/ paper (under NDA)?

If the information you want to disclose is contained in a document that is covered under a non-disclosure agreement with the industry partner, you will need to get their written permission to disclose the content that you're referencing at the very least. If I were reviewing your article, and this reference were key, and the company had never published this document, I would be inclined to make negative comments in my review about the lack of publication of a key reference which might lead to the rejection of your article. You might have to work hard to convince your industry partner to either publish the information from the confidential document in a separate, smaller format, or to publish the confidential document in its entirety in order to get your article published.

Either way, if you rely on NDA materials, you still have to cite them. It'll be best for your publication chances if the company discloses this information itself before you try to publish. Otherwise, even submitting your work to a journal or conference will require permission from the company since submission will count as disclosure.


Is it acceptable to round up my GPA on my resume?

No.

Just report the GPA as it is listed on your report / certificate.


This example, from my PhD institution, seems to be pretty typical.  As you can see it's quite basic.  I don't think there's really a need to include much more information than this.  The only thing I might add is a short abstract.


What is the difference between literary review and abstract

An abstract is the summary of the work you have writen. While the literature review is a summary of other literature, which you would connect together, and might derive a conclusion from


What are "getcited.org" and "getcited.com" for?

From the wikipedia page:

GetCITED is a website database that lists publication and citation information on academic articles whose information is entered by members. It aims to include not only journal articles but also book chapters and other publications, both peer-reviewed and non-reviewed. The objective is to make this information publicly available, as such information is presently held in restricted databases. It indexes over 3,000,000 publications from over 300,000 authors.

However, on the actual getcited.org webpage, we see the copyright dates 2000-2006, which makes me think the page has not been maintained in 5 or 6 years.  So basically, it seems to be a dead website, that is still available mainly because domain registration is so cheap.


What if the lead author disagrees with the coauthors on manuscript content and target journals?

It seems to me that choosing where to submit is within the responsabilities of the first author. Even though the acceptance of the co-authors is encouraged and desired in order to maintain a healthy relation, I think the last word is his.

I also think that there's a lack of empathy in this matter. Co-authors should be asking themselves how would they feel in the author's position. How would they feel if they had an idea, developed methods, analysis and drafts and kept being undermined by the rest of the team?

For closure, keep in mind that a work is best if published, regardless of place. Spending all the effort taken because of such disagreement seems petty and dull to me. It is better to let it go and focus on the next project.


Letter or recommendation of supervisor who gave you a bad project

To be honest, if you intend to have this person write a letter of recommendation for you, I don't see any alternative but to talk to them about where you stand and how supportive they can be in a letter.
I doubt that anyone who wasn't a complete jerk would object to such a discussion. And having the discussion would give you valuable information about what you can expect. If they put you off or object to the question, then I'd suggest looking elsewhere for letters.
If the prof gave you an infeasible project (too easy or too hard) then they share in the outcome, though going back if it proves too easy is a good plan, though too late, now, to implement. My doctoral dissertation could have had a hundred proved theorems had I not warned my advisor that it was all trivial and signified nothing. It would have been nothing but "junk food" without substance.
Research is tricky since you are initially looking into the unknown void. For undergraduates it is especially tricky because of the time limitations on such things. The same may be true at the masters level if the degree is time limited. Some open questions in mathematics have remained so for a hundred years.


How to make clear tasks for students about resolving paradoxes?

Let your students debunk a wrong argument

Present a specific faulty argument based on intuition. Then let your students find the flaw in it. This way you relieve your students from the burden to divine what you consider intuitive. They also have a more specific task that cannot be solved by just deriving the correct result.

For example a task for the birthday paradox could be:

  Bob argues:

    A random person has a different birthday from me with a probability of 364/365 (ignoring leap years, seasonal variations, etc.). Hence, if I am in a group with n−1 other people, the probability that all of them have a different birthday is (364/365)n−1. This probability is first smaller than 0.5 for n = 254.

  Find the flaw in Bob’s argument.


Group reviewing a manuscript sent our for review. Ethical?

Grey area, leaning towards unethical. Confidentiality is an important value in the peer review process, and the usual understanding of confidentiality is that the paper will be distributed to the minimum number of people required to perform the reviews. Therefore, your case, where a group of people replaces a single person, can be seen as a violation of confidentiality.


You should do both. Namely, send an email to the editor, explain the error and how you fixed it, and attach a revised version, and ask them how they would like to proceed. They might

Send the revised version to the referees
formally "reject" the incorrect version and consider the new version a resubmission
reject the incorrect version and the corrected version.

In any event, you must contact them.


Page references for "far away" figures, equations, tables, etc

If the distance between the figure and the paragraph that mentions it is only about one page, such an aid would be overkill, but for longer distances, I would perceive it as useful.

If the distance is very long, you might even consider repeating the same figure, or some excerpt of it, near the paragraph where you refer to it.


I'd say it is a common practice, and I have both been given reference suggestions in blind reviews and given reference suggestions in my own reviews. If you are concerned about a reviewer trying to promote his/her own papers by the suggestions, I'll just say that if the recommendations are apt (i.e., if you read the suggested papers and they do appear to be legitimate references), then it makes sense to cite the papers regardless of whether there is a seemingly disingenuous motive by the reviewer. Even if you don't specifically use the prior work, it makes sense to mention them in your "Related Work" section. If you don't cite the suggested papers, provide a legitimate reason in your rebuttal.

Indeed, if a reviewer is chosen well, he or she should be an expert in the topic of the paper, and most likely does have apt references under his or her name.


How to design and structure a technical/programming Thesis

You almost certainly should shift the focus - just a little. Do not despair, it's more of seeing everything from a different angle.

Writing a thesis about a piece of software you've created while working on the thesis is at any rate dangerous.  As interesting as it might be (as a study in software engineering, maybe), it looks a little bit like researching a synthetic subject.  Most certainly, no one else will publish "about your software"...

The time-honored approach is to present a hypothesis.  Maybe it's about how some problem can be solved at all/faster than known before/much more elegant.  To achieve a fair and faithful presentation, you will have to write a little about the approach of your predecessors in the field.

Now enter your software.  For the written thesis, it's just a tool to examine your hypothesis.  Writing about some major design decisions should be in order, as long as they are strongly connected to the possibility of testing your hypothesis.

After presenting your newly forged tool, you can delve into test results, and present if they actually support or weaken your initial hypothesis (if there are any surprising results, be sure to mention them, even/especially if they seem to challenge your hypothesis - anything that "will warrant further examination" is good news in research).

This way, you will have created a thesis on a more general subject (using your software as a research tool), and there's your contribution to science, too. Others can check your results, try out and compare their own approaches and so on.  That's why your thesis should be about the problem and your proposed solution and it's properties, not about the tools you've created during that process.


How do you convey your idea when you can't convey your idea?

I'm also not great at presenting. One method I've found useful is to present to and get feedback from people who have around the same level of knowledge as your intended audience (i.e. people who are not too heavily involved in your project, but are in your research field). This means they will be able to tell you which parts you need to explain in more detail.

Also, look at other people's presentations to see what's the standard level of technical detail in your field - I've seen presentations where the focus should be on the scientific analysis and results, but instead too much time is spent on the minutia of how the analysis was performed.


How should I properly cite an author with a variously credited name?

I think the appropriate thing to do is to cite each paper with the spelling that the author chose for that paper. In some way, this is no different than when someone publishes first under their maiden name and then under their married name. Or the other way around. Or when they legally change their name for whatever good or poor reason. Let the author of the paper choose what name they want to use, and use that in the reference.

The reasoning for this is that ultimately, a reference is not meant to educate a reader about the subtler points of identifying the author and their history with family names. The point of a reference is to identify a paper, and the paper has after all been published by the author using one and only one spelling of their name, whatever it may have been the day the paper was written/accepted/published.


What to do when a manuscript is still under review after 14 months? withdraw?

I was an ejournal senior editor for four years. Although few of them are really professionally acceptable, there are numerous confounding factors that can cause a break between an editor and authors. These include unanticipatable reviewer declines, lingering sponsoring institution policy changes including threatened journal cancellations, journal management system breakdowns, and of course, gross editor mismanagement.  A submitting author should hold a journal to a published timeline (including any extensions the editor requests and the author formally accepts) and withdraw their manuscript quickly for resubmission elsewhere if that timeline or negotiated extensions) isn't being met. This withdrawal should be written (electronically is fine) with copies to the Journal editor AND the Department Head of the sponsoring department/institution. An acknowledgement from either is to be welcomed but not necessary to terminate the relationship and allow the author to move on. When resubmitting elsewhere, an author may be requested to submit evidence of previous submission termination. I only made this request once (out of 300 manuscript submissions) and it was willingly supplied.


How do admissions committees handle a missing “extra” letter of recommendation?

If the required number of letters have been received, then most likely the candidate’s application will be reviewed normally, with no penalty attached for not having the fourth letter. If a required letter was missing, then things get a little dicier, depending on whether there are too many applications and if it’s a rolling or fixed admissions cycle.


Physics dissertation: Do I give a reference every time I mention a certain piece of work?

Yes indeed. For several reasons:

people might not read your work sequentially, from page 1 to the end;
people might forget that there was already a citation somewhere;
people don't want to recall all previous citations;
the context is different and people don't assume that the reference is the same.


It seems to not be a coincidence. A glance at the Oxford English Dictionary shows that "one-in-seven leave" probably started at Harvard, but did not come with the name sabbatical.  If it makes you feel better, the rule was that this was the highest frequency allowed, and not all leave requests were expected to be granted if there were too many in one department at the same time.
Soon after Harvard 1880 policy, Wellesley in 1886 adopted a one- in-seven policy that called the year off a sabbatical year.
The name almost certainly is an allusion to Toric law relating to leaving land fallow one year in seven.  See Exodus 23:11 or look up Shmita.
The connection between revitalizing farm land and revitalizing the scholarly mind has been made clear by many.  Bertrand Russell wrote "Every university teacher ought to have a sabbatical year (one in every seven) to be spent in foreign universities or in otherwise acquiring knowledge of what is being done abroad."  (On Education, especially in early childhood, 1926, by Bertrand Russell.)
The stricture of always going to Europe is not to be found in the US these days.  In modern times, I have heard of explicit rules that you have to physically go to another university. Of course that was in Antecovidian times.
In summary, the name refers to a one in seven cycle.  Just as a semester is not exactly half a year, the exact meaning of one in seven is subject to interpretation.


Could a manuscript be under review even if the AE was not assigned?

I tend to disagree with @Allure.  I have been an EIC, and I'm an associate editor of several IEEE and ACM journals.  The manuscript was submitted only 3 weeks ago.  It is possible that the EIC just hasn't gotten to it yet, or is having trouble finding the right associate editor to handle it.  I think the system will say "under review" as long as it has been submitted and not yet accepted or rejected.

It is possible that the EIC is trying to decide whether to assign the paper or reject it immediately, but I think that's not the conclusion I'd jump to.

OP should simply be patient.


Is it possible for project grants to cover family visa fees?

I think this would depend on the circumstances and there is going to be a difference between people currently inside and outside the UK. For example, the MRC, and probably other research councils, considers relocation costs as allowable. For someone currently outside the UK, visa fees for an entire family might be allowed as relocation costs, although they will probably be too large. For someone currently inside the UK, I think it would be difficult to claim visa fees are relocation costs.

When I came over to the UK as a lecturer, I was funded by an NIHR grant. I believe the grant, although it could have been a departmental account, paid for the visa fees for my family. The money paid for the visa fees was considered income, although not pensionable, and therefore taxed. The grant also covered the additional tax liability associated with the visa fees. When my visa expired and I needed to renew, the department basically laughed at me when I asked them to cover my visa renewal fees.

As payment of the visa fees are considered income, it is unclear how They could be costed into a grant. It is possible that overhead from a grant or a discretionary account could be used to pay the fees. My experience suggests that departments are not happy to allow a PI to use discretionary funds to pay themselves. I might be allowed to pay for visa fees for my staff, but I have never tried.

It is also probably worth noting that finding someone able to sponsor non-EU employees, especially at the post-doc level, is becoming increasingly difficult.


How to confront new office mate regarding personal hygiene?

After some clarifications via comments above:

There is surely an office with a name something like "Student Services" that would be the front end for many issues involving conflicts/issues between students or conflicts/issues between students and faculty. It is not possible to guess the name of the corresponding office at your university, so some experimentation or asking around is necessary. You should definitely consult with them about what actions on your part would be approved or disapproved.

There surely is an HR office at your university (assuming it's in the U.S.), which has some oversight powers/responsibilities for any paid personnel. Probably most grad students have not had any interactions with that office, but it surely exists, and does some back-end checking of hiring and such.

Many years ago, as director of graduate studies in mathematics at a U.S. "R1" university, I found myself the recipient of complaints from office-mates about the hygiene of a grad student. Having been already sensitized to the volatility of such issues, I wrote a somewhat vague, but pointed, message to all grad students in the math dept about "expectations" for hygiene, given their TA duties. Naturally, most were confused as to why I was writing this at all, but the "broadcast" aspect did avoid confrontation with individuals. Also, there was certainly the aspect that there was a job getting done for pay, and interference, accidental or not, was not ok. If the person had not been paid by our department, I would have been much more inhibited about strongly-recommending hygiene modifications, just given the way things seem to work here.


How to mention an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in text in APA style

Received an answer at the APA style blog:

Regular number formatting applies when an amendment is mentioned as part of a sentence: spell out for the first through ninth amendments and use numerals thereafter
(e.g., “the fourth amendment,” “the 12th amendment”).

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/06/how-to-cite-the-us-constitution-in-apa-style.html


What does it mean for a paper to be "under review"

When you submit a paper to a journal (conferences are a bit different), it first goes to an editor who has some familiarity with the subject area, but may not be an academic. He or she will make an initial determination of suitability and (possibly) quality. If the paper is deemed worthy of examination it next goes to a few reviewers who are experts in the field, usual academics and volunteers.

Your paper is being reviewed at the moment by this group, who probably don't meet together. They may or may not have your name listed as author.

When a reviewer completes review he/she writes a report back to the editor. When the editor gets all the reviews back a decision is made (accept, reject, accept with revision, more review,...).

Usually the author is kept informed, but there are often delays in the system as people are busy and not dedicated totally to this one paper to the exclusion of all else. Reviews can take a long time if people are busy with other things. They don't usually have hard deadlines.

The author will normally get a copy of the reviews, but not the names of the reviewers. The author is usually expected to write a new version taking the comments of the reviewers in to account. Then the paper goes back to the editor who may decide to publish it or start the process over again with more reviews.

For conferences the process is similar except that the reviewers may be the conference program committee who do meet as a group for acceptance/rejection. Here the process is time constrained by the date scheduled for the conference itself. The committee may also be limited in the number of papers it is allowed to accept to keep the cost of the conference and the resulting proceedings reasonable.