Co-authors/PIs in a grant are misrepresenting their CVs. Any suggested actions?

I think you should bring this up. The motivation to bring this up is, that a tampered CV will most likely be detected by the referees or the agency and if so, this may most likely affect the chances for getting the grant negatively. Since the overall goal is to get the grant, you should bring this up.

So, you could approach your supervisor and note that you are not sure if the CVs are clear enough about these grants and that it currently looks a though these CIs won these grants personally which seems implausible to you. If your supervisor agrees, you (or they) can simple ask the respective CIs to clarify if these grant were actually awarded to them or their institution and, if applicable, be more clear in their CVs.

Including grants where you have been only one CI of many and that have been awarded to an institution in CVs is common, but I advise to be precise  here. Something like

  Grant XYZ from agency B, 1.000.000$ (contribution of Prof A: subproject 300.000$ and design of general strategy)

could be appropriate.


What does "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" mean within the context of a ScholarOne submission system?

With a typical ScholarOne configuration, "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" means that it is actually out with (at least some) reviewers, while "Under Review" would instead mean the previous stage, where it is being considered by the handling editor(s) and might still be rejected without review.

After the review scores come back, a manuscript then returns to the handling editor for a recommendation, and thence up to the chief editor(s) for a decision.


Basically it is an infographic/data visualization which includes a graphic summary of your results, can be a chart, a graph an image etc. One must be able to view it and be exposed to the main results/conclusions.


How to progress as PhD student with nonchalant supervisor

Ideally you need to find someone else who can unofficially supervise you. While such a hands-off style of supervision can benefit a student in the long run (by essentially forcing you to work independently and follow up your own ideas), it's not great when you run into the typical day-to-day problems of research. In this situation, as you have realised, you need someone who you can reliably talk ideas and problems through with on a regular basis.

Rather than contacting other academics, are there any postdocs in your department who you could talk to? Or even perhaps a postdoc from another university who you've met at a workshop or conference? They would be the best sort of person to try and start collaborating with. Postdocs generally have more time for research and if they're keen to stay in academia would probably welcome the opportunity to help supervise a student. The relationship doesn't have to be formal in any way -- you can just start by sending an email. Be clear and upfront with why you are contacting them specifically, so it's obvious you're not just pinging off emails to everyone you can think of in a scatter-gun approach. Ask if they have time for a video meeting, although bear in mind that at the moment, everyone is over-saturated with calls and telecons.

The best way to then move from conversation to collaboration would be to have a concrete idea or question to answer, and preliminary results if possible. This way, the potential collaborator can see you're committed to the project and have an idea of where it's going. Make it clear that you'd like them to be involved in the paper that you're planning to write (or, if you have notes or a preliminary draft, share that too). As things progress, you can then ask for the detailed feedback that you're not currently getting from your official supervisor.

I speak directly from my own personal experience: my supervisor, like yours, is very busy, although we do fortunately have regular meetings. However, for technical matters on which he is not an expert, I have a postdoc collaborator who I can talk to and ask for help.


After my PhD how much salary should I expect as a professor of computer science?

For the United State, see http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/ for salary survey data in computer science.  Of course, as Suresh points out there's enormous variation.  The median salary for a tenure-track assistant professor in computer science at a US research university is about $90k, but some make quite a bit less.


Should references in foreign language be translated to make popular audience get familiar with how academia works?

Figure out what the younger portion of your target audience is, and find out how comfortable they'll be with the various languages your references and quotes are in.  For example, my guess would be that your typical younger readers would be age 12?  And that you are writing in German?  I imagine your interested 12yo readers will be okay with most article titles given in English, so those translations could be given in footnotes.  The reader who doesn't need the translation could just keep reading and not bother with the footnote.  My guess is that all the French would need to be translated.

The general answer is, you need to know your audience.  Give some talks in schools to get to know them better.


Should I retire early from my tenured job?

If this was me, I would ponder on this question for one year, then make a final decision. Perhaps taking a sabbatical could help you know what you want. I knew of a colleague who took a one year unpaid leave to ride the country on her motorcycle. She returned for a year, decided that she really just wanted to retire, and retired officially at the end of that school year.

  So, would I be crazy to walk away from a tenured job if I don't need it financially?

No. If this is only about finances, there is no reason to keep a tenured position. The whole purpose of tenure is to provide stability in one's career. If you have obtained that stability via other means, I see no purpose in staying in the position out of some sort of perverse respect for tenure itself. I actually think that the issue of tenured professors not retiring when they should is causing a log jam at my former institution.

  I don't enjoy stuff like playing department politics.

Would your retirement lead to department politics? If your department chair is planning on you being around for yet a long while, I would give him or her plenty of advanced notice of your plans. If you abruptly left your position, it could cause some politics to arise. It also could lead to difficulty in the future if you do decide to return to academia.

  I made some investments a while ago that turned out well, and they generate enough passive income to support my (modest) lifestyle on their own.

I'm not privy to your finances of course, but it seems that you may be banking on these investments supporting you for 40+ years. That's a long time, I'm not going to lie. Projecting returns on investments 40 years hence is next to impossible. This depends significantly on how risk adverse you are. It also depends a lot on if you have a spouse, kids, pets, a house, a car, health issues, etc.

  I also worry that it would be impossible to go back to academia if for some reason I wanted to in the future.

This will first depend quite a bit on what your field is (history versus computer science). If you even spent a few years out of computer science, you could be passed by. History (or the like) is probably not so severe in this regard. If it would require any sort of "work" to stay current in your field, then what's the point of being retired? One other question that you would need to examine is, if the time came, what level of academia you wish to re-enter. Getting back into teaching by joining the staff of a junior college would be much easier than jumping into a tenured position at an R1 research university.


Should non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty be permitted to vote on tenure-track hires?

While on the job market this last year, I talked with top departments that gave all their full time non-visiting members of the faculty a vote in tenure-track faculty hires. So there is definitely precedent.

Personally, I'm not thrilled by the shift at many universities to having a larger proportion of the active faculty be non-TT. But when this means that the responsibilities of non-TT jobs are similar, it is only reasonable that the rights should be similar too.

Benefits of doing so include all things that come from a work environment that is perceived as more democratic and where all faculty get a vote in determining the future directions of the department. The drawbacks are much less clear to me.


Professor doesn't tell TAs what should be on exams until the day of the exam

Tell him you'd like it if either a) he gave you the problems at least  one day before the exam or b) he gave you permission to decide what would be on the exam (within reason, of course)


How to handle reviewer who is unhappy their recommendation wasn't followed?

In general, any self-respecting journal would not allow a paper to get published if one of the reviewers has significant concerns about its scientific validity, assuming that reviewer’s competence is not in question.
In the situation you are describing, the journal would have to completely re-examine the decision to accept the paper. This would likely mean appointing a new editor to oversee it and sending it out to additional reviewers, and maybe holding an investigation into the earlier decision-making that led to the decision to accept the paper. If the decision turned out to be erroneous, the journal would issue a retraction.
Of course, if the journal really had those kinds of high standards and leve of integrity that I’m imagining would lead it to act in such a way, this unusual situation would almost certainly not have arisen in the first place. So I think asking “what should the journal do” is a bit moot, since a good journal would not need this sort of advice to begin with, and a bad/predatory journal would not be likely to heed it even if it were offered.


Should I say/write the n-word in a quote?

I'd suggest being faithful to the original. If you are quoting, you should provide the passage verbatim as it is in your source material.


Can I leave PhD after two years to join a company?

Can you quit a PhD? sure.
Can you stay in the US and take a job? probably not.
Unless you got into the US because of a family member or similar, your visa/status in the US is almost certainly tied to your PhD position. Unless your new employer is willing and able to sponsor you for a visa, quitting your PhD will likely mean having to leave the US.


Should I cite my own research demonstration paper?

You should always cite your own previous work on a subject just the same as if it were written by someone else. Failure to do so is Self Plagiarism, which is a real thing, oddly enough.

However, you can also, as you suggest go in to more detail on the algorithm if it will help support the new work.

The general rule is that when something has been published, using it should have a citation.

The reason for the rule is that the original paper may include context that a reader in the future may want to see but can't find without the citation.


If a postdoc is interested to apply for a future professorship in his/her current institution. What should she/he do in the postdoc research period?

I could write a book about this, as I'm sure many faculty members could! My answer involves two major points: political reconnaissance and becoming intellectually self-assured.

First, I suggest you make some good acquaintances in the faculty beyond your PI and get an honest opinion on what it might take to be able to join it. The comments to your question about duplication are potentially valid, IMO, but the degree to which it matters or the precise interpretation is going to depend on the personalities involved, the political climate in your institution, and the tenure/promotion manual of the department/college/university.

Of course, you just can't show up to the bar one evening and ask people point-blank after a couple of drinks :) You need to genuinely show interest in the direction and health of the department over an extended period of time, and possibly get more involved in departmental decision making, administration, or teaching. Diplomacy and politicking is key here.

Even if you don't get to formally ask some questions, thinking about them can help you detect subtle signs of their answers in the communications between faculty. E.g., Is there a prevailing mood that your PI's research area is popular among the faculty? Is it an area that the department even wants to expand? Do they even expect to be hiring anyone in the next 2-3 years? Is your PI going to be your champion and partner (you'll probably need that!) or is he/she going to perceive your presence as a colleague to be a source of departmental competition for lab space, students, money, attention, etc. I've known some PIs manipulate and exploit their post-docs so that they essentially become trapped in their position as essentially cheap technical labor (your experience with the PIs work is very valuable to them). There is usually a lot more going on privately that will affect the eventual decision to hire anyone new. Use the chance to reconnoiter and make alliances to your advantage while you are this close to the action. It may become clear that it will be much better for you to make a clean break, and you might get a stronger recommendation from your PI as a result.

Second, you have to plan early with your PI to show off your contributions above and beyond what the PI has done in establishing this particular line of research. If, between that and chats with other friends or colleagues, you can't figure out what you are or will be doing in the very near future that distinguishes your creative input and future personal direction as independent, then you won't be successful in communicating that in your writing or presentation to hirers.

IMO, your PhD study was supposed to be the time where you figured out a line of independent thought that you take forward during post-doc work. You should be dedicating time to develop those ideas into plans for projects over the next decade or more. You should use that to (diplomatically and respectfully) push your own agenda: you must stake out your space in your work and your perception in your community. Anything less and you are frankly setting yourself up for being labeled (fairly or unfairly) as not "faculty material". Gossip works the same in academia as it does in any walk of life, don't be fooled by the intellectualism.

If your PI is dominating your direction of work then get some side projects going of your own (even secretly), but discuss with your PI how to get more involved in the planning before it's too late! You won't last a minute in faculty-level academia without being assertive and developing healthy skills of persuasion. Fakers will be called out quickly, so get ready to defend your plans.

In any case, don't get your hopes up for staying on at the same institution. An academic career path is already extremely tough to succeed in without restricting your future options like this. I know first-hand how it is hard to imagine leaving a place you know and like but there are usually other good opportunities out there that you'll need to better appreciate. Stay brave and open-minded.


How can I deal with these feelings?

It certainly helps to put things into perspective. In the large scheme of things, 5 years are not much. In these times, it's not uncommon that people make radical career shifts in their 30s or 40s, starting from zero at a much later point in time than you do now.

Also, how should I discuss the wasted time in a job interview?

It's unlikely that this will be addressed, since employees generally care more about "what you bring to the company" than about your personal biography. If they do address it, you're in a comfortable position because you changed your study field. You can explain that you reoriented yourself towards the new study field because it better matched your interests, preferences, and strengths (and recognizing that took some time for significant consideration).
Don't mention the partying and avoid a "wasted time" mindset. A better mindset is that this earlier study period was valuable because it allowed you to recognize what you're good at.


Is the professor's reputation taken into consideration by the admissions committee when they read her/his recommendation letter

While the idea of basing any important decisions on ratemyprofessor reviews is laughable, the answer to the spirit of your question is yes. If someone's writing a letter about your research, their reputation as a researcher matters a great deal. How am I supposed to judge someone's research potential if I have none myself?

As for teaching recommendations, in my field (math) this depends on what kind of position you're applying for. Having a teaching letter from someone in a teaching-oriented role (like a calculus coordinator or, if you're lucky, the Director of Undergraduate Studies) is always nice, but this matters a lot more when applying for teaching positions. In fact, I've heard that teaching letters from research superstars (or people who aren't specifically known for caring about teaching) don't get you very far at small liberal arts colleges.


The first thing you need to do in order to address this issue is to understand why you are falling asleep.  Since you say that you do not have difficulty focusing elsewhere, it seems likely that there is something specific about the lecture environment that is triggering your sleep.  The approach to fixing it depends on the cause.

Two likely possibilities:

If you are extremely fatigued in general, then any significant chunk of time where you are entirely passive, like in a lecture, is likely to result in you falling asleep.  I had this experience as an undergraduate.  The only real cure is to start sleeping more at night.  Remember, you are not in a sprint, but running a marathon, and you need to pace yourself at a sustainable level.
Packed lecture halls often have dim lights and/or higher CO2 content in the room (due to how densely packed people are), both of which are sleep-inducing for many people.  If this is the case, for you, a good way to counteract it is to move your body and get your blood flowing.  There are many exercises that can be done while seated, which will not generally be disruptive if you do them toward the back of a classroom.  In some larger lecture halls, it may also be possible to actually stand in the back, behind the seats.


This depends heavily on the funding source. For all UK funded postdocs the pay will be set on the national scale - current rates without London weighting are up-to-date, but I'm not sure if the comments about the London weighting are correct.

For research council funded postdocs I would expect the salary range to be fixed somewhere between spine point 27 and 40, with the initial upper limit more likely around spine point 34. This is close to the numbers you quote. I would not expect much flexibility unless they can find additional funds to supplement the (fixed) funding from the grant.

On the salary increase in post: there would typically be a 1 (one!) spine point increment after the second year. I'd be very surprised if a substantial increase along the lines you're wanting could be negotiated, let alone after the first year.

If the funding is not pure research council then there may be more flexibility.

As someone who's been on both sides: I have fielded salary questions, particularly from overseas candidates, and (done sensitively) I don't think it will be held against you. The above is more a warning that the constraints of RCUK funding may make it impossible to get a solution that's acceptable to you.


What are the potential consequences of responding in kind to a rude lecturer?

No, we cannot answer the question without evaluating your behavior first. Your behavior was, simply said, stupid. Let's go item by item:

1) Are you enrolled in the distance-learning program? If not, then lecturer perhaps has the right to request that you attend all of his classes, unless there are valid and provable reasons (e.g. medical). In that case, scheduling conflicts mean that either you drop your part time job or you drop the course. I, as a lecturer, am extremely annoyed when someone presents part time job as a reason not to attend class, since the government in my country pays about 5000 EUR a year for his education. Being "free" for the students it does not mean that nobody pays, taxpayers do.

2) On your comment that the lecturer has his position only because no one else is familiar with the subject he teaches. Well, this is perhaps the reason why they tolerate him, and you should acknowledge this: the school thinks that this subject is important part of the curriculum and perhaps the lecturers familiar with the subject are difficult to find. This is one more reason not to annoy him, because he is clearly valuable to the school, although you may think otherwise.

3) Your comment was rude, because of the items 1) and 2) (especially due to 1). Perhaps everything you were asking him was clearly explained during the lectures you were not present at. Lecturers in higher educations have relatively large freedom of modifying and adapting their course as they see fit, even beyond the "official" requirements that are set on the web page. It would be perfectly normal if the university in general requires students to be present at the lectures, but the individual lecturers are less strict -- but then suddenly, due to low attendance, at a start of the next year, decide to enforce the rules.

Now on to your answer. What can happen in this case? Any lecturer has the freedom to ask you anything related to his course during the exam. Yes, he may ask you questions from the lectures you have been absent from, and then give you bad grade if you struggle with them. It is very rare that lecturers would go for any kind of the administrative action against the student, because their freedoms in lecturing and exams allow them to pursue more efficient means of retaliation, if they want to.

So you could only hope that he is 1) forgetful and will not remember the incident or 2) he is above the average professional and will examine you without prejudice even if he remember the way how you treated him.

And please note, it is very difficult to claim a prejudice and report him to administration - he has the right to ask you the questions from the lectures you missed - some will even argue that it is understandable to check whether you master the matter that you did not hear during the lectures, and assume that you know the rest.


Is there examples of mathematicians who had to lose years

Vladimir Berkovich, as he writes "I finished studying in 1976 and got a Ph.D. a year later. Getting an academic position would be too much luck, and the best thing I could hope for was the job of a computer programmer at a factory of agricultural machines... As a result, I practically stopped doing mathematics." The context here being the he was Jewish in the Soviet Union and made trouble for him. He did not really start working on non-archimedean analytic geometry until 1985 and then did not really return to academia until 1987 when he was able to emigrate to Isreal.

The quote is from his introduction to: "p-Adic Geometry: Lectures from the 2007 Arizona Winter School" published by the AMS.


How to count non-self citations of articles?

The Scopus tool ("h-graph") allows one to turn self-citations on or off for a given scholar if you have access (my institution provides access to the full tool after linking them with Elsevier).
https://www.scopus.com/freelookup/form/author.uri
Note that the total citation count will differ from Google Scholar, even if the profiles are aligned as to which publications count.


Research advice needed: How to make a move from web development to PhD research?

Here are a few suggestions (not necessarily in this order):

Read up on the latest research in your area(s) of expertise and interest.
Narrow the research interests down to a few and make contact with the academics involved - make contact with them, asking good questions about their research.
Contact the admissions offices of your selected universities, explain the situation truthfully - put an emphasis on the experience you have gained through your employment, which is now an area of expertise, despite your masters going in many directions.
In your readings, you should be able to find an area that is in need of more research, where something new can be contributed.

Remember, your situation is different than it was when you completed your Masters, you have several years of specialised work experience behind you now.

Good luck.


Etiquette for attribution when applying concepts in industry

You don't need to do anything. Academic journals are published for the betterment of mankind. If you acquired said articles legally, then you are entitled to use their contents within your corporation as you see fit as long as you do not directly copy and distribute text or software code that is under copyright without a license. If you reimplement an algorithm described in a paper, you are fine. The only problem may come if you try to implement something covered under a patent (like the RSA patent), but these kinds of things are not typically published in journals these days.

There are more reasons that academic publish than encouraging more published work. When I publish, I hope that my ideas are used by any and all to fulfill their own goals. When I want specific kinds of returns on my work, I will choose other avenues of dissemination than publishing in conferences and journals.

There's no ethical issue here, in my opinion.


Crediting Authors who are not Cited in an Article but have influenced it using Chicago Author-Date System in the Humanities

This question hinges on the relevancy of citing this additional source. Whether or not it is appropriate to cite the work depends on the scope of its influence on your work.
For example, if you use a methodology or structure in your paper that is unique to a certain work, you should cite this. As per Chicago guidelines, you would cite the author and year without a specific page number (unless relevant sections are distinct).
However, if you write a humanities paper on new age magic because you were inspired by Harry Potter, this is not appropriate. Even if you otherwise would not have conducted your research without having read Harry Potter, it is completely irrelevant to the paper.
It is tempting to recount the path you take researching a subject when you are writing about it, however this is rarely relevant to your thesis. Cite work when credit is due, otherwise leave it out or use a formal acknowledgement.


How to handle a colleague who hasn't pulled their weight

When students come to me with problems like these, I very rarely just take the side of the active student against the "lazy" one.

If you work in a group, you're both responsible when the dynamic doesn't work. And keeping the group dynamic healthy is something every student should learn. I know how difficult it is, I've been both the lazy student and the active one.

It may feel to you like there's nothing you possibly could've done. But that's never true. You started the project by immediately splitting the work load, and reducing the level of necessary communication to a bare minimum. He took the easy half, because he was busy. When his work started to lag behind, you began to write specifications for him.

All this combined probably sapped his motivation. Every step along the way took the challenge out of his part, while he still had those thousands of lines of code to get through. Meanwhile you felt like you were doing more than your share, but you were getting things done, and things that you designed, problems you solved.

In a healthy project, you communicate and you meet often. You don't divide the workload to minimize communication, you use your shared expertise and you design together. That way, you both stay motivated, because you both feel like it's still your project.

What you're doing now is focusing on everything that he could be doing differently. That may be the fair option (cause you're doing all the work), but it's not a productive option, cause that's not a dimension you control. You should be asking yourself what you could've done differently. It may feel unfair, but it's something you can actually implement, so you'll feel a lot less powerless.

Anyway, that's a lesson for the next project. For this one, I'd say remain detached. It's not your responsibility to make sure John learns something, and you'll get the same grade either way. Talk to him, tell him you're unhappy with the way the project's gone and ask if you could've done anything differently to get him more motivated. Let him know you don't expect to be working with him on future project and you're better off as friends than as collaborators.

Just make sure you don't get angry with him. Anger might've been productive halfway down the project, but you're too late now.


Do tenure-track search committees using mathjobs.org receive revisions to job applications after the initial submission date?

It's relatively easy to download a set of applications from mathjobs.org as a huge .pdf file.  In our last search, the committee members looked at the applications in that way rather than looking at them online.  Thus in our first round of evaluations we would have missed any updates that were submitted after the deadline.  For candidates that made it to the phone interview stage, we did keep track of updates to the application, but in most cases the applicant sent us an email saying "...  Also, my paper XXXX was just accepted for publication in YYYY..."

Thus I wouldn't count on any update to your mathjobs application that comes after the deadline being seen by the search committee.  If you do update the appliction, you should probably send an email to the search committee chair.


Can conference papers use the original words in published papers?

I think you can. Some sentences will inevitably be the same in multiple papers. This is, in my eyes, not necessarily plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking "someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own". What you are doing here is taking somebody else's words that describe work or ideas and passing them off as your own.
That said, in a case like this there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't just change the sentence to avoid any perception of plagiarism. For example:

Past methods have exposed a new type of hardware vulnerability to covert timing channels [REFs]. Using 'my method' we investigated such vulnerabilities and present them in this work.


Authorised agent for joint authors in publication agreement

They're taking the word of the person who signs, that they're allowed to speak for everyone.

Or, in some contexts, the person is authorized by their own institution. For instance, a VP of a company signing for all employees who were authors,


Can i use the same Method Section for two different papers?

Copying entire sections verbatim between two papers is generally considered self-plagiarism and/or dual-publication. It's frowned upon academically, and may trigger additional unwanted review by plagiarism-detection software.

However, some disciplines- particularly those in the medical sciences- have come to accept that duplication of text between Methods sections of different papers such as in your situation is inevitable. Check with your adviser to be sure this is OK in your discipline (and potentially the editors of the journals you are submitting to), but copying the core of the methods section should not be objectionable.

Note that there are some good practices to follow when doing so. At a minimum you should provide a citation in the methods section to each companion paper explaining that this survey had multiple objectives when it was designed. You should also be able to provide some text describing why the described methodology is suitable for addressing the central question of this particular paper, and why the results from each of the companion papers don't affect the results of this particular paper.

Please note that duplication of text across other sections, especially results and data sections, is always considered a major academic offense.


Should I ask to be moved up in the authorship list?

More important than who "wrote" the paper is whose research and ideas it is based on. Who is responsible for the "intellectual content" of the work. But I agree that 6th is pretty low. Some fields are fanatical about author order. But you can ask. Ask, at least, for an explanation of the author order. Maybe it is rational, maybe not.
But for an undergraduate, any paper is a good thing and being associated with established researchers in print is especially good. So, even if it isn't exactly "fair", it is still something that you can point to in the future. Not everyone has such a thing to help them get to the next level.
Sometimes, not very rational, an author will be "high up" in the list for no better reason than they need a particular boost at the moment to get a job or similar.


Why are tuition fees for PhD students so high in the USA, despite not taking any class?

I think it is essentially a scam. There are essentially 3 types of students (1) self funded, (2) departmentally funded, (3) externally funded. For departmentally funded students the tuition fees are essentially meaningless and just represent money being shifted around internally. Self funded students can be really hurt by large tuition fees, but departments can offset these fees by partial departmental funding (again just internally transferring money around). The scam comes when students are funded externally and the external funder is required to pay the full fee (and potentially even indirect costs on the tuition fees). Things get messy when the funding has a cap on tuition fees. For example the NIH NRSA pays 60% of the tuition up to $16,000 plus a $4,200 "institutional" allowance. Most departments I am aware of offer a tuition subsidy to individuals who get an NRSA.

It is worth noting that high fees not only puts PIs at expensive universities at a disadvantage (okay to be fair, it reduces their advantage) in that their research is more expensive than someone at a cheaper university, but it also puts them in an ethical dilemma. When tuition fees make hiring a PhD student more expensive than a post doc, it is hard for a PI to justify hiring a PhD student.


Can anyone use the JEL classification system?

I asked the AEA helpdesk. This is the answer I got:

'Any work related to economics can be classified according to the JEL
taxonomy.   The list in that sentence is not intended to be an
exhaustive enumeration of where JEL Classifications are allowed to be used.'

Therefore it's perfectly fine to use the JEL classification in a master thesis, as long as the work is related to economics.


post doc research and problem with its progress

Your question is very general and hard to answer. The answer also depends crucially on the kind of post you are applying for. Basically, some postdoc posts are created to support the research proposed by an applicant (i.e. you are a PI on their own project), but many posts are created to support an existing project (you professor is PI and you are Research Assistant/Fellow).

When you are a PI, you can propose any research project that interests you. However, remember to use SMART objectives. If you propose several disconnected research directions, think how realistic is to achieve them in a timeline of your post. Consult more experienced colleagues if needed.
When you are a RF on an existing project, make sure your application relates and reflects the topic and aims of this project. Check PI's bibliography and the information available about this project.

If you do not think you can make any progress for the chosen topic during the post, it is unlikely you will get any funding for it.


We need more researchers in rheumatology.

EDIT: In the comments, you asked what skills you'd need to attract the attention of a potential supervisor when applying for a research elective in your upper years (prior to graduation).

Research electives for medical students are offered to those meeting a specific grade criterion. You must be able to meet that to even qualify. No amount of "passion" will give you this chance. Once you're in that pool of candidates, then it's largely a turkey shoot. In my university, the electives coordinator hands out a list of topics available in labs and units and students choose three projects in descending order of preference. Then, a matching process handles the details. The student receives an assignment and off they go. In some cases, students approach a potential supervisor about six months prior and expresses a desire to take the elective under his or her supervision. Then, a small bespoke project is crafted. This takes time, but often results in a more meaningful experience (not to mention a more lasting relationship between the student and the supervisor).

I generally assume that medical students undertaking research electives in my unit are devoid of research skills and we train them from the ground up. If you came to us stating, say, that you had skills in the measurement of nuchal translucency on ultrasound, we would still ask you to train under us, but expect that your pick-up of those skills would be faster than usual. There is no shame in stating that you don't know how or what to do. That's the point of the elective.

What base skills do we expect? (1) Good communication skills, both oral and written. I don't want to correct your grammar on the poster or teach you how to speak clearly before an audience. (2) Good literature search skills, as you'll be reading up on a lot of previous work. (3) Solid understanding of the foundational aspects of the research topic. If you're working on the management of asbestosis, I expect that you know the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory system as well as basic pathology of inflammation, etc. (4) Being able to work in teams. You'll likely be the most junior member of the team and I don't want you disrupting some of the more complex research projects under way.

Over the long therm, I've found these skills relevant to my own career:

Learn how to be a good clinician. Then, maintain a clinical load. Continuing to care for patients allows you to stay grounded not in what you do but WHY you do it. You can get lost in a Western blot and miss the adverse impact that achy joints have on a grandmother of five. I work in public health, but still see breast cancer patients. It's one thing to understand the effect that a drug has on millions of women. It's quite another to explain to a woman that her 13-year-old daughter does not need a mammogram just because Angelina Jolie was concerned about breast cancer.
Learn how to be a good teacher. Then, maintain a teaching load. You need to help train the new generation, much like the older generation trained you.
Learn how to network and collaborate. Good clinical research is rigorous. Great clinical research is collaborative.
Every so often, spend some time away from the lab and immerse yourself in a refugee camp or a medical mission. The lab is good for the brain; the immersion is good for the soul.

Good luck to you.

PS.

  I believe I have sufficiently detailed knowledge of the medical content to work in the field.

Spoken like a true second year medical student.


How does authorship work in large collaborations?

How is it determined whether someone has had a signifficant contribution to yield authorship?

Very large collaboration are common in physics. I guess it started with collider physics experiments, and then it became common elsewhere (see LIGO). The general rule in very large (hundreds to thousands of authors) collaborations is that everybody who passes a minimum threshold of contribution to the experiment is an author.

More specifically, an author is typically somebody working in an institution who pays money/puts work into the building/running the experiment. He/she has to have served at least a number of months up to a year helping build or operate some of the experimental equipment before becoming an author. Some collaborations make this threshold a one-off, others a yearly commitment.
Interestingly, building the necessary hardware is seen as a natural qualification for becoming an author, while building the software infrastructure does not always count as a qualification for becoming an author.

Exceptions can be made on a paper-by-paper base when somebody who is not a typical collaborator but has contributed significantly to a paper is added to the author list of that paper only.  This is the typical case for theoretician who would like to use the experiment's data to prove/disprove a specific scenario.

Junior collaborators become senior enough to join the author list, less junior collaborators leave the collaboration, new institututions join the collaboration bringing in new collaborators. As a result, no two papers from the same collaboration in principle have to have the same number of authors; tracking the list of authors becomes another task to add to the long-list of large collaboration administrative jobs.

How are authors listed?

Given the impressive collaborators list length (ATLAS and CMS papers at CERN list approximately 2000 people each) then the simplest choice is to list all authors alphabetically. Such a large number of collaborators publish typically  of the order of 100 papers per year. It is thus natural to expect that no author will ever read all the papers produced by her/his collaboration. Realistically, in such instances the average authors read 15-30% of papers he/she signs as author.

How does one determine the major contributor?

There is typically no difference between a null/negligible contributor, a significant contributor, and a major contributor in the author list. The only exception to my knowledge of the author lists "rules" above is for the Belle collaboration. In Belle papers, the main authors are listed first, with the others following in alphabetical order. If a reader would like to contact a Belle paper authors, he/she can write them directly. In all other instances, a reader would write to some committee that might eventually redirect him/her to the actual authors.

How is the paper drafted?

The main authors of the result draft the paper; this is typically a team of 3 to 7 people, although much larger teams are possible for very important papers. The paper is then heavily scrutinized by an internally assigned committee, then handed over to another committee, then handed over to the another committee; in some instances handed over a fourth committee. The typical time it takes to work on the paper is thus in the hundreds of days - typically as long or longer than producing the result itself. However, scientists typically start working on some other projects while waiting for the committees feedback.

Does everyone in the collaboration approve the paper?

Not literally everyone. After the committees work, the general rule is the "opt-in". However, just as any author is allowed to comment on a paper before it gets released, any author can decide to opt-out of being an author for that paper (although it happens only in exceptional and heavily controversial instances).


Look for published papers in your field and do it like they do. Different fields have different conventions, try to follow what is common in your area. Your advisor should also be able to tell you what is usually done in your field.


How often are results faked in computer science papers?

Nobody knows. Unless someone tries to reproduce the results and cannot, there's not ever even going to be a challenge to the results. Direct reproduction in CS and similar fields is generally done in papers that extend older results or propose a new method. To my knowledge, we do not see a lot of retractions based on these kinds of studies, so I'd say the rate of faking is low.

Retraction Watch's CS section has about 15 articles in it, but most of them appear to be about retractions for plagiarism not for faking results.


Google scholar changes my profile into non English language, how to fix this?

Visit your GS profile, and go to settings section, where you will be able to handle Languages. Direct link is: here


Quitting after 5 years - miserable and depressed

"I work 10-6 pm everyday and I know that's not a lot in the PhD world, but I feel like I am not productive beyond that."
This is a particularly important insight.
When I had successfully defended my prospectus and was officially "all but dissertation" (with the privilege of working on my own self-selected and self-directed topic, with input from my committee) I discovered pretty quickly that for this research—about which I was both intellectually and emotionally passionate—I had about 4 to 5 hours of productive work to give to my dissertation each day. Moreover, simply sitting at my office desk not being productive did not actually measure up as "productivity".
So I adjusted my expectations to 4 to 5 hours of productive work, and gave myself license for other pursuits for the other hours of my day. Some of these other pursuits were academic: that software I wanted to write; the syllabi for those courses that I wished I could have taken, but they didn't exist, so I wanted to teach them some day; reading to learn new theories, methods, and substantive research; taking courses and attending intensive workshops. All of these "extra" activities have parlayed directly into my subsequent academic work and hires.
Some of the other pursuits were not academic: I walked in the park, went to museums, engaged in art, sport and activism, maintained interpersonal relationships. All of these extra "extra" activities have indirectly parlayed into my subsequent academic work by supporting my mental and physical health, and my development into a well-rounded individual who brings a good deal of experience to the classroom, to the research team, and to my work-fellows. These activities have also sometimes parlayed directly into subsequent academic work through the development of what would become collaborative relationships, introductions to professional networks, and by planting the seeds of research or pedagogical substance.
The idea that you must be a soulless drudge in the academy is certainly a perspective that has its exponents. Academic and activist David Graeber has an interesting perspective on labor time that I think is apt here (and I think it is important that we not forget that we are also labor):

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the great divisions between anarcho- syndicalist unions, and socialist unions, was that the latter were always asking for higher wages, and the anarchists were asking for less hours. That’s why the anarchists were so entangled in struggles for the eight-hour day. It’s as if the socialists were essentially buying into the notion that work is a virtue, and consumerism is good, but it should all be managed democratically, while the anarchists were saying, no, the whole deal—that we work more and more for more and more stuff—is rotten from the get-go.
—Frank, T. (2014). David Graeber: “Spotlight on the financial sector did make apparent just how bizarrely skewed our economy is in terms of who gets rewarded”: David Graeber explains why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid. Salon.com, Sunday, June 1st.

To situate my response: my doctorate, completed in 6 years (about median for my cohort) was from Harvard, I readily obtained a post doc, and just as readily obtained a tenure-track faculty appointment in which my "extra" activities alluded to above have contributed in recognized ways to my evaluation and tenure process.
So this answer is not telling you to leave or to stay. Neither is it telling you how to proceed should you stay. But it is attempting to give you license to both value your academic and researcher self as part of a richer and more whole human being, and to reject value systems that tell you otherwise.


YES.

There are lots of reasons to and no reasons not to (unless you're under some kind of strange space/ink constraint).

Here is an important and underappreciated reason why:

Most of the people who make the kind's of R packages, in fact the people who made R itself, are other academics. Meaning: They didn't get paid specifically for the time they spent making lme4, ggplot2, stargazer etc. Software development is very unappreciated in academia. Imagine spending a lot of time writing and maintaining a package that is used by thousands of people in your field and then being asked by a tenure/promotion committee why you didn't write more papers or do more experiments. It's very difficult to get someone who isn't a user (or even a software-minded person) to properly appreciate the time and skill involved in making good software.

The only way to convince university systems and leaders that the work you spent writing that software is to show them in a way they understand, that means citations. They're not going to care about your StackExchange reputation or how much juice you've got on github, they need something Scopus can compute and they can itemize and count.

Much of the workings of academia is based on beans. Much of the effort at universities is dedicated to counting and managing those beans. How many students are in your program, how many grants are awarded, how many Ph.D. defend, and how many papers are published and cited are all very important beans which decide who gets resources. It would be sad indeed if someone who wrote a useful R package didn't get the credit they're due and thus be allowed to make more wonderful tools. Imagine if Hadley hadn't started working for R-Studio, he might be standing in front of some committee someday asking him why he spent so much time writing "software" instead of "papers," or trying to explain why he can't take on a third course this semester because the dept chair doesn't understand that writing software is something that actually takes real time.

Also consider this:
Most scientific papers are cited fewer than 10x, if ever. A reasonably useful R package is likely to impact many more people than any "real" publication, but that person get's no credit if you don't cite it.


How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format?

Fairness is a difficult question to answer. You need to ask fair to who: the publisher, the author, or the students. Publishers provide a number of services (e.g., editing, typesetting, printing, and marketing). It is fair for them to get paid for their efforts. Obviously it is fair for authors to get paid for writing. It is also fair to expect students to pay for high quality learning materials.

The question then becomes what is a fair price to charge students and how much of that should go to the publisher. The fees charged by many publishers depend on the number of copies sold since they have some fixed costs that they need to recoup and some costs that scale with the number of copies sold. If you think the service being offered by the publisher is unfair, you can always self-publish and do the editing and marketing yourself.

As for the selling price, this really depends on the quality of the book relative to other similar books. That said, in my opinion selling your book to students in your class is unethical since the students are already paying for the teaching material indirectly through tuition and fees. I don't think of it as being different from selling lecture slides, notes, and exam keys and in the limit if you just want to make money from your students you could just sell grades.


Applying from a different country: can the application be dismissed because of interview expenses?

In short, the answer is that yes, a search committee (or the administrators who would have to pay for the travel) could decide not to invite someone to an interview or invite them without agreeing to pay their travel expenses.  I don't believe that there's any legal requirement under US law to reimburse applicants for travelling to an interview, and I've seen some institutions (mostly community colleges) refuse to pay any travel expenses.  A more common thing is to reimburse only for travel expenses within the US (so you'd be responsible for paying your own way to New York or LA.)    What will happen in any particular case depends on the practices of an individual institution.

If you are planning a trip to the US for some other reason, you might mention in your cover letter that you'll be in the US and could do an interview as part of that trip.


Can I mention the completion of online courses as professional qualifications when applying to university?

If the courses are relevant to your proposed research area, then yes. I did (after consulting with SE experts), was accepted.


How to email the heads of a department asking about whether they accept applications from undergraduates from a different discipline?

There is nothing wrong with sending an email, but it should not be sent to the chair or head of the department. Instead, the relevant contact person is either:

the chair of the admissions committee, or
the head of the graduate studies program

Either of these officials in the department should be able to provide you with the requisite information. Sending it to the chair of the department is a waste of everybody's time.


This can be for many reasons, and certainly one of them is that everything is slow because of summer vacations.

Another explanation is that the Editor cannot find qualified reviewers to evaluate your manuscript, or s/he found reviewers but they did not accept the request yet (again, possibly because of summer vacations).

I suggest to send a gentle mail to the editor (preferably using the editorial manager platform) to say that in case the delay is caused because they are unable to find experts, you will be happy to provide a list of those (be sure that you indeed have few in mind). Thank her/him for considering your paper for potential publication and wait. Do not forget to add in the loop your co-authors.

You do not need to wait more, 65 days seems a lot.


If a PhD student is working slowly on a project, is it bad form to give the project to another student?

"Being replaced" is not a good reason to quit.  Quit if you cannot perform your responsibilities.  Otherwise try to perform them.


Using others' dissertation theme and layout

Within reason, the general structure and format of a research document is not really something that can be protected by copyright and is not really subject to copyright. You shouldn't run into plagiarism issues, either.

However, if you very closely mimic the organization and layout of a thesis, you should at the very least acknowledge the source to which you are indebted for the structure of your thesis with a citation.


Would a professor be angry if I neglect to take classes within the research I'm working in as an undergraduate?

The professor can certainly be angry with your decision to go against his recommendation; however, this is far more likely to happen if you do it without explaining him several things:

your intention of not taking the courses he recommends
your motivation to take the other courses instead
and most importantly, your motivation and expectations from working in his lab

You certainly don't have to follow his advice and try to explore as many options as you want as an undergraduate, but I would give your professor an explanation BEFORE and a chance to make his points one more time. If the professor is actually "great" and professional, he would totally listen to you and understand your decision – nothing to be mad about.

Sometimes, professors treat some of their undergrad assistants similar to the grad ones. That is usually a good sign – you seem professional and valuable enough. However, this comes at a cost of them unintentionally assuming you want to continue working in their lab forever. With you clearly explaining your reasons, motivations, and aspirations, you have a chance to be as professional as you can be and maintaining the best possible relationships.


There are two separate issues here, which must be dealt with individually:

From a perspective of copyright law, you must make sure that you can obtain the right to reproduce the table at all.
From a perspective of scientific ethics, quoting a table is exactly like quoting a passage of text or quoting a figure. You simply need to make absolutely certain that it is clear that the table is being reproduced from somebody else's publication, and why it is more useful to the reader to reproduce the table rather than to provide a shorter summary of its contents (e.g., if you will be discussing elements of the table in detail).

I would recommend stating that the table is a reproduction in two different places:

In the caption of the table itself (e.g., "Classes of frobozinator, reproduced from [Cite]")
In the text where you first refer to the table (e.g., "Let us now turn to a more detailed discussion of frobozinators, as guided by the taxonomy developed in [cite].  For ease of reference, the table of classes from [cite] is reproduced in Table 5.")


Question 1: When job ads on mathjobs say something like "screening of applications will begin on November 1", do they really mean it, or do they mean something like "screening of applications will begin on mid December, but we want you to submit your application early"?

It depends on the department.  It is however well known that many faculty members drag their feet with recommendation letters, and this happens more or less independently of the quality of the applicant.  So in my experience it is common to allow a grace period of a couple of weeks to allow the letters to trickle in.

  Question 2: What would you do in my situation (assuming that the relevant letter writer is currently abroad and I have no other way to contact him)? Should I contact the relevant search committees and ask them to check that reference letter a bit later, once it gets updated?

Frankly I think you're too worried about the entire situation.  You did some exciting new work: great.  All but one of the letters will describe this exciting new work.  The other letter may not.  So when people read the letters they will see that your exciting new work is so new that one of your writers is a little out of the loop.  I see no big problem here.  If one of the letters is more negative than the others, that drags your application down.  If one of the letters is less informative than the others...frankly, that usually happens and is really much of the reason why you get multiple letters.

  Question 3: If a letter of recommendation is updated on mathjobs past the submission of an application, which version of the letters is available to the search committee? What should I do in order to make sure that they read the updated version?

Hmm.  I believe what happens is that if the file has not been read by anyone, the letter updates without recording the change.  If it has been read, then both versions of the letter appear.  But I am not completely sure about this.

In summary: you solved some well-known open problems in your field. That's the dream.  You say that this will probably turn your application from "good" to "outstanding."  Well, I agree.  Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy your postdoc.


Post Doc application form in France asks for very personal details, is it normal?

No, it is not "normal". According to the French labor code:

Les informations demandées, sous quelque forme que ce soit, au candidat à un emploi ne peuvent avoir comme finalité que d'apprécier sa capacité à occuper l'emploi proposé ou ses aptitudes professionnelles.
Ces informations doivent présenter un lien direct et nécessaire avec l'emploi proposé ou avec l'évaluation des aptitudes professionnelles.

Translated by myself:

The only purpose of any question asked, under any form, to a candidate for a job must be to evaluate their ability to perform their work duties or to evaluate their professional aptitude.
These questions must have a direct and necessary link with the offered job or with the evaluation of professional aptitude.

It is straight up illegal to ask these question (and it has been since at least 2008). You shouldn't answer them, and provide them a link to the labor code (and perhaps offer to call the labor inspectors to clarify the situation) if they get upset. Your age, your marital status, your possible children have no bearing on your ability to perform your duties as a postdoc (there are some exceptions, postdoc is certainly not one of them).
Now, is it "normal" in the sense that it is the norm? Employment law is unfortunately not the best-respected law around here...


Is it harmful to list too specific research interest in personal statement?

I am not sure if a statement would be harmful, it will be a question of how well you appear to know the field. You are right in that you have not nearly read enough. It would be better to simply state that you are interested in such and such a field without going into depth, after all being interested is hardly a problem. If you try to get into arguing for why a field is interesting without having a good grasp of the field, you run into the likely situation that instead of primarily showing your interest, you simply expose your lack of knowledge. No-one would expect an undergraduate to have deeper knowledge about a specific research topic but if you try to argue for some field based on very sketchy knowledge, you may come across as naive. I therefore think it is better to simply state fields that you are interested in without going into specifics. If you manage to read up on a field (which would take, likely significant, time) so that you have a perspective, then such a statement would be a definite positive. Coming across as having good general skill (knowledge and abilities) is still the most important aspect.


Generalization of results obtained from a paper that may be "false"

What should I do [when a published result contains a mistake]? should I try to find another proof for the theorem and write it in a paper?

You cannot use their result as-is, because it is incorrect. If their result is sufficiently interesting, then you could perhaps publish a paper that corrects their result, otherwise, you could include a correction in your paper before using the corrected result.

  In the paper B, I will use theorems similar to those of Article A, but by weakening the assumptions assumed in A. Do you think there is any chance that this can be considered plagiarism?

No.

You should make it clear that the theorems introduced in Article A are incorrect, and you should clearly motivate the introduction of your similar theorems that correct the originals.

This isn't plagiarism.

The OP clarified their plagiarism concerns as follows:

  my proofs will be similar to those used in paper A, except that I weakened the hypotheses.

Before stating your proof, you could explain "The following proof builds upon a proof by Original Authors [Theorem X, Paper A]," you could go further and explain "novel aspects appear in the first, third and fourth paragraphs" or "novel aspects will be highlighted in the proof" (with suitable highlighting in the proof, e.g., "this aspect is new," possibly parenthesised).


How to deal with a professor that continuously dismisses student questions?

It may be time to become more assertive in this person's class.

If he immediately answers with, just a minute, we're going to cover that, then you can speak up 5 minutes before class ends, or at the beginning of the following class, for example: "Excuse me, Prof. So-and-So, you mentioned you were going to be covering Topic B.  Since we didn't get to that today/last time, could you please start with that leftover question from last time?
If he immediately answers with, that's what we just covered, follow up immediately, for example, "Could you please clarify how the material you just covered answers my specific question? ... I'm sorry, sir, I don't see how that was relevant to my question."
If he spends a couple sentences briefly explaining why your question doesn't apply / doesn't work, then you can try something like this: "You feel I asked a stupid question.  Nevertheless, I asked because I would honestly like an answer.  Can you help me formulate the question in an acceptable format?"

Meeting one on one with certain professors sometimes gets one nowhere, unfortunately.  Still, you could try visiting office hours to find out more about what he's like.


Publishing a review in a peer-reviewed Wiki vs a traditional journal?

Scholarpedia has adapted many of the processes of a peer-reviewed journal.  However, it is still a kind of encyclopedia and not a research journal at all.  Note that I'm not making any kind of judgment or evaluation in the previous sentence: the main page of the site reads

  Welcome to Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia,
  where knowledge is curated by communities of experts.

So you seem to be asking: "Should I publish my paper in an encyclopedia rather than a research journal?"  I think that's a kind of strange question: have you really written something which lies ambiguously between a research paper and an encyclopedia article?

The above is not a rhetorical question: please let us know!

It is also possible that I have fixated too much on "scholarpedia" and it is not the type wiki publication that you really intended.  If so, please let us know.  It would be helpful to give at least one specific example of the kind of "peer-reviewed wiki" you have in mind as a plausible alternative to a research journal.

Added: @MHH has helpfully clarified that the OP is probably talking about a review paper, or what in my field would be called a "survey paper".  (The word "review" was also used at least twice in a different sense in the OP's question, and that was enough to confuse me.)  I must begin by admitting that review/survey papers are rare in my field (mathematics), and that they would be written by PhD students is almost unprecedented.  So I am almost at the point of wanting to delete my answer for lack of understanding and relevant expertise.

However, let me first try this:
it seems to me that a review paper should be published in a research journal if it contains original research: i.e., some kind of synthesis, analysis, new perspectives, helpful simplifications, and so forth are being added.  Of course "original research" is exactly what is not wanted in an encyclopedia article, although I don't see why this would necessarily be the case for all peer-reviewed wikis.  So going more from general academic common sense than specific insight (i.e., caveat emptor), I would say that this should be the deciding factor between publishing a survey paper in a research journal or in a wiki.  Let me further say that most or all of the advantages cited by publication in a wiki can be achieved by publishing in certain kinds of research journals: "free of charge publication, open access for all" certainly.  Many electronic journals do not advertise hard "character limits", but of course there must be some kind of upper bound must exist, right?  No one wants a 5000 page survey of the literature.


Can public political criticism of my alma mater result in my BA being revoked 35 years later?

I've been working in Academia for the past ten years. The only cases of degree revocation that I am aware of were due to severe cases of academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud, or large-scale cheating. The rationale is that gross academic misconduct invalidates the achievement the degree should certify.
Revocations on grounds of expression of (political) disagreement with the issuing institution are unheard of in rule-of-law democracies. I've never heard of such a case, although it would certainly have become very well-known.


Advisor promises letter of recommendation, but hasn't produced letter

I wouldn't say that you haven't been able to get a job due to 1 letter not being written.  What about teachers? What about any internships?  Is there anyone in the field that you know who can write you a letter of recommendation that has seen your work?  Also for the record, letters of recommendation are becoming less popular due to the fact that usually they are written by people who will write it from a biased point of view and not objectively if it is for employment.

I always maintained a close relationship with all teachers so that, if one fell through or they were unable to, I had other teachers to go to.  In terms of not burning the bridges, I think it would be best to be direct, without being offensive (as in being combative). Also it is possible that people are simply not comfortable with writing one but don't want to say no.

I would say something to the effect of:

We have a good working relationship.  Something I greatly value and I respect your opinion.  I understand for the last year, I have been asking for a letter of recommendation.  I also understand that people are busy and writing one of these could take some time.  I was wondering if you feel comfortable writing this for me?  My opinion of you won't change if you actually decline to do so but if you can please let me know so I can see about getting it from other sources.  There are a few jobs coming up that I would like to apply for and would greatly appreciate it if you can provide the letter or let me know if I should ask someone else.

you know? something that shows you value them and won't be offended, but also calls them to let you know honestly.  Gut says, if they have been putting it off for a year, there is a good chance that they actually DON'T want to write it but don't know how to say no.  The above paragraph gives them a door to kindly decline without hurting you and you don't burn any bridges.  One thing I would avoid though is state how you lost out on jobs due to it.  You don't want to create a negative aspect and it won't help him choose to write one or be more honest.

Some people simply don't write these letters.  My programming professor that I had for 5 of my classes told me that he wouldn't write a letter.  This was a bit shocking because he was someone that spoke very highly of me and allowed me to visit his other classes to help him with struggling students ( I was also the head tutor of the campus so I was able to legally TA anyways).  He stated though that he didn't want to write these letters because they are hard for him to write.  They put A LOT of stress on the writer to say the right words.  If they say something wrong, they could end up being the reason you don't get the job.  A lot of people don't want that kind of burden and will decline writing them.  Many teachers want to see you get the job on your own merit and not based on someone else's words.

EDIT: OP has modified the question to reflect post doc.  Though the thoughts about getting him to be able to comfortably state his honest opinion on whether he really will or not still should apply.


Transferring PhD programs after leaving a PhD due to medical issues

In the public and private R1 universities that I have been in, we do not accept transfers for doctoral students. If you're previously pursued a Master's or taken some graduate courses in the field as part of a doctorate at another institution, you can petition the department / graduate school for a partial waiver of some of the requirements after you've been accepted and matriculated into the doctoral program.

For example, you might be able to petition out of some of the breadth or depth core course requirements; or request that your years-in-residency be reduced.

Note that because many programs run students in cohort-years, there may be good reasons why you may elect to run the standard pattern even if you've had a waiver of some requirements.


How to decide whether to write a "methods paper" or a "results paper"?

Why not both?

I'm not in your field (and methods versus results papers in my field break on different lines than the ones you describe), but in my field the methods papers can be among the most influential and cited works, but iff they are sufficiently unique and sufficiently generalizable.

If you have a method that fits those categories, and also have data that speaks to a particular result, and there is a tendency to split them in your field, there is nothing wrong with making it into two unique papers.

As an additional caveat: as a student, you should have an academic advisor who is well-positioned to give you advice on things like this. Please consult them before taking too much advice from the Academia.SE folk. We try our best, but we are not your advisor.


Ways to manage something like a 'work-life balance'?

Disclaimer 1: I know the two worlds : academia and the outside world ;) I worked in public and private universities, and in a consulting firm.

Disclaimer 2: I can only speak about life for people involved in theoretical areas, I know that science involving living things / big experiments has real constraints.

I heard a lot of people in academia complaining about the conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives (me included, because I'm grumpy). But we have to face it, most of the time there is nothing to complain about it.

"I have a deadline today at midnight" : I do that all the time, but the calls for papers are out several months before the deadlines, so the problem here is planning, not the nature of the work.
"I have to finish this grant application before midnight" : hum, grant applications and conferences deadlines seems to be of the same kind.
"It's 3 AM, I just got that email that needs an answer" : I don't think this email is that urgent. An BTW, if something is really urgent, phone still exists for that matter.
"Someone (supervisor, head of the team, dean, etc.) wants me to work more/at night/etc." : Slavery has been abolished. If you have good results, the thing is that in academia you are master of your schedule.
"I cannot stop thinking about that problem" : yep, here this is true, we bring our work everywhere. If a researcher cannot live with that aspect of the work (which can be quite stressful), then he should probably consider finding an other job.

My point is that working in academia is working in one of the most flexible field.
This is where there is a big difference with the "outside world".
This flexibility is the problem: many people have difficulty dealing with it, and thus are giving themselves very strong constraints, so strong that they cannot handle them.


Academics in China - promoted via connections

I am a postdoc in China, and have been here since almost 2 years. I am looking forwards to leaving mainly because I cannot cope with their cultural ways at work, e.g. how the local academia works. The supervisor mentioned in this question does speak the truth about gift authorships in Chinese science, thus firstly let me acknowledge his sincere contribution and advice. As another answer states clearly, ultimately such decision lies in the hands of the true first author and his/her advisor. However there is the conflict of standards over international ethics and clan-specific ethics.
Typically what happens is exactly this: a young researcher gets stuck in a moral dilemma with collaborators and is advised to either abide or walk out. The problem is, too often morally questionable standards are not announced before a project starts and abusers rely on the lateness of the dilemma to push for a win-win situation. Adding to the problem, Mainland Chinese people are culturally prone to speak through contextualised subtle insinuations, leaving a lot of margin for belated misunderstanding when dealing with other cultures.

Surely by this point a decision was already taken on this specific conflict, but I will leave here the main advice to others in potentially similar situation. Gift authorship from my experience seems widespread in Chinese academia. Engaging in scientific collaboration with Mainland China academics is therefore prone to lead to conflicts over ICMJE and similar guidelines on authorships and other aspects. This is not to say gift authorship doesn't take place elsewhere as well, however the local approach tends to be more straightforward and intense than elsewhere (i.e. absolute zero intellectual contribution; numerous added names; openly offended if denied).
As I believe supporting parasitic academics rapidly leads to bad quality science and somewhat kills the original meaning in the career for most people involved, I refrain from providing gift authorships as best as possible while always reciting the international guidelines. I hereby recommend other serious colleagues to do and preach the same, even if some conflict ensues.


How much do letters of recommendation help in a statistics PhD program application?

I have no direct experience with statistics programs, but I know of no reason to think they differ from math programs in this respect.  Assuming that's the case, letters of recommendation are absolutely critical, at least in U.S. universities.  I agree with the person who told you they practically are your application, and I'm mystified by how someone could tell you they make no difference.  (I wonder whether it's someone who has never served on an admissions committee or was educated in a very different system.)

It's true that just about everyone gets what might appear to be good letters.  The issue isn't whether they say bad things about you, but rather how strong they are and how compelling a case they make.  I've certainly seen many cases of letters written by the same person that differ enormously in their effect, even though they are all nominally positive.

The third piece of advice you received in no way contradicts the second.  It's not enough for a letter just to include flattering comments about you.  It needs to make a compelling case for why you will be successful in statistics, written by someone who knows exactly what it takes to succeed in this field, has seen other strong students to whom you can be compared, and has a reputation to protect that will keep them from exaggerating or trying to manipulate the admissions committee.  A senior statistician is the best case, but a junior statistician or a mathematician may also be able to do a fine job.  A letter from a chemist will not be helpful, and a letter from a professor of literature, no matter how enthusiastic it is, will hurt your case (by demonstrating that you have no idea how the application process works or that you couldn't find anyone more relevant who thinks highly of you).

Exactly what is required depends on where you are applying.  At the top departments, you need letters that make a very strong case indeed.  Even outstanding students will be rejected, and you need letters that set you apart from the others.  At much lower ranked departments, it might be possible to make a favorable impression based largely on grades and test scores, but even then you'll still need good enough letters.  (The bar will just be lower.)


Correctly licensing someone else's photo for publication in open-access journal

Buy the work under a contract that gives you exclusive license or copyright transfer under which you can sub-license or transfer to the journal publisher.


Supervisor partially putting themselves as first author even though I've done most of the work and written most of the paper

I would apply Hanlon's Razor here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

This sort of mistake is easy to make when filling out journal forms: there is a lot of information to keep straight.  In particular, the UI is not always designed so as to make it clear how author order will be interpreted (some forms might always want the corresponding author entered first, even if they will not be the first author).  So it's not too hard to believe that someone could innocently mess it up twice.

It would also be an ineffective way for your supervisor to try to "steal" first authorship.  For most journals, if the paper is accepted, every author will eventually be asked to sign a consent form agreeing to publication, and in particular, agreeing to the author ordering.  You'd eventually find out and make a fuss.

But it would be fine to ask your supervisor to contact the editor and request the change, "just so that we don't forget later," or, as Azor Ahai suggests, to do it yourself.  After all, your supervisor has agreed, in writing, that you are meant to be the first author.

  Addition: I think perhaps the author list inputted in the online fields may be used for citations but the paper itself will have me as first author. So perhaps my supervisor wants their name to be that cited?

No, it doesn't work like that.  The journal is going to want one and only one author ordering, to be used both on the paper itself and for all metadata and citations.  They should always match.  If there is a discrepancy between the manuscript and the online fields, the journal will insist that the authors resolve it before publication.


How to write a Cover Letter for applying to a PhD program in the USA

Cover letter is an integral part of your application. You may look at this and this.
You could find numerous articles by simple Google search explaining Do's and Don'ts when writing a cover letter such as the above links.

  Who should I contact to know if my profile is strong?

If you are an eligible candidate according to the eligibility criteria put forward by the graduate school (usually published in the respective website), then you may contact NO ONE.
I am in Physics, now doing a PhD in France and a successful candidate in terms of International PhD admissions. I am strongly opposed to the idea of asking if your profile is good or not to a second person. It gets worse if you are going to ask this to your potential supervisor. In my opinion, it's something that you should feel withing yourself. Why do you care about Mr. X's opinions about the strength of your profile? Furthermore, if you are really motivated to work with Mr. Y then even if Mr. X tells you your profile is not strong enough, why don't you give it a try? Y will then decide if you are fit or not. I think this is a better approach than asking Y if you are strong enough to work with him.


Can a faculty in a different college in the same university be influential on my tenure review?

If your department chair (or chair of your tenure committee) is going to be asking external academics for input in your tenure review (this is not uncommon!) then you might want to tell them this:

"This person asked me to cook meals for her 6 times in a row for 2 months, along with other things that I found to be unreasonable, therefore I distanced myself from her, which apparently she did not like, based on at least one incident that seems to have been inflicted on me recently with her pulling the strings".

If your university has a "faculty association" or "union" representing its faculty members, you may want to seek their assistance in delivering this message to your department chair or chair of tenure committee, so that you do not have to do it directly.


Why do some US universities have "Electrical Engineering" and "Computer Engineering" vs. "Electrical Engineering and Computer Science" departments?

It's usually politics or prestige.

Back in the days when the computer science discipline was heating up (mid to late 1990s), there was a big discussion on where to put computer science. Traditionally, it was a science, but at that time the economic outlook for high-tech (which included electrical engineering and computer engineering) was really, really hot, and it was fashionable to have a department that encompassed "everything high tech". Thus, there was a big push to move computer science to the Faculty of Engineering. This was augmented at the time by the birth of "software engineering" programs and by a number of papers discussing programming and software development as more "engineering design" than "science".

Fast-forward twenty years or so, and you have what we have now, where programs that are related to "high-tech" are roughly grouped together.

As stated already, the disciplines are different. I won't repeat @TinActon's words since he's summarized them well. However, they operated under the same high-tech umbrella for a while.

Really, you don't choose the department - you choose a program, but it's more likely that there's synergistic (industrial) collaboration in a department that has EE, CE, and CS together, as the industries that hire in EE, CE, and CS tend to overlap a lot. However, that's not to say that there isn't cross-disciplinary opportunities for CS and the other science fields either. Biology and chemistry and physics all have a very high dependence on equipment and techniques developed in the EE/CE/CS side, and similarly EE/CE/CS benefit from the work being done in the sciences side.


When applying to grad school, how can I address having failed a core course before retaking it?

You can address this in your statement of purpose.

If you failed an intro-level course during your freshman year (e.g., intro to physics), no one is likely to care; straight As in all the core classes prove that you know your stuff. You can mention this in your statement of purpose, but I would do so only as an aside -- maybe even humorously.

If this course was a junior-level course (e.g., quantum), then this is a bit more serious. You should definitely devote ~3 sentences in your statement of purpose explaining what happened. It is a bit strange that you would get straight As in all the other courses and an F in a separate course, so they'll be glad to see a reasonable explanation.

My concern is that they may assume the anomalous F was due to cheating -- so I would definitely give an explanation that they can buy, rather than letting them make their own conclusions..


Is it possible to obtain a bachelor's degree by passing some test to prove equivalent knowledge rather than attending a university?

In general, no, it is not possible to get a bachelor's degree from an accredited university in the US purely through examinations.

It is possible to get course credits that can partially satisfy graduation requirements through tests such as those administered as part of the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs. However, these normally tend to be restricted to satisfying general education requirements, rather than the in-depth major requirements.


Standing/sitting practices of an instructor

Does it effect teaching success in any way?

Effective teaching engages with students.  If there are many students, you cannot engage with all of them effectively from one place.  For example, I walk to the part of the room where students are not paying attention; then they start paying attention.  I do not recommend either standing still or sitting still; sitting in a moving wheelchair would work fine, though.  That's not quite what you asked for, but it works.

Is this rule implemented in the institutes of many countries?

I've never heard of it.  I think this rule would be illegal in countries that protect workers with disabilities.


How do I "briefly but clearly comment my choice of research area(s) of interest"?

You should call them and ask about the distinction - it would be a far better answer as opposed to third party information on the forum. That’s honestly the best way you can resolve the confusion.


What should I reply to professor so that he will be convinced to provide me fund for international internship?

If you need funding support, just say so. You don't need to go into a lot of detail about why. It is probably more important to make sure that you have convinced them to want you as a student.

"I would find it difficult to travel to UK without financial support."


Found errors in draft of researcher's book. Is it acceptable to ask for a review of my statement of purpose if I contact him regarding the errors?

Unless this is someone you know already, I'd say that you probably shouldn't ask. He's not offering unsolicited advice to all comers. You can either give him your feedback on his book or not, but I wouldn't tie the two things together.


When writing about something done in another paper, should I write referring to the study itself or to the author?

Referring to the authors of a paper (or group of papers) using the pronoun 'they' can certainly be done, but as always the journal's style guide will decide what you can do in a given paper. Just to drive home the point that it can be done, here are examples from two famous review articles published in Reviews of Modern Physics (arguably one of the most prestigious publication venues in physics). Both articles were written by native English speakers - one from USA and one from England - who both later were awarded the Nobel prize.

N. F. Mott's Metal-Insulator Transition (1968)

  The theoretical description given by Adler and others at Harvard is reviewed by Adler [15] at this conference. They point out that a lattice distortion occurs at the transition point,...

Kenneth G. Wilson's The renormalization group: Critical phenomena and the Kondo problem (1975)

  Schotte and Schotte (1971) have calculated the susceptibility χ(T) by Monte Carlo methods for the Coulomb analog. The violation of universality means that the value of TK they they calculate is unreliable because...

Referring to a given paper as 'it' also seems fair, but if you refer to "Click et al. (2018)" (i.e. a list of names) as 'it', well, it doesn't quite sit right. Still, a non-native speaker would probably get a pass on that one. Now, it gets worse if you refer to Click's previous single-author paper "Click (2016)" as 'it', however. I think most people would read that as a reference to the person Click, and a dehumanizing one at that. I think you should either avoid this usage altogether, or establish more clearly that it is the paper you're referring to. It probably is better to rewrite the sentence using a noun to make it more clear.

Actually, this is one of the big risks that comes with using pronouns: it might not be clear what they're referring to, even though it seemed so obvious to the author. In your first example, most readers will probably assume that 'they' refers to the authors. For a slightly more ambiguous sentence, however, they might think that 'they' refers to "x and y". In your second example, does 'it' refer to the paper "Click et al. (2018)", the "linear regression analysis", or the "analysis of the relationship"? Personally, I'd assume you meant the third option.


likelihood of Master's application being rejected due to obsolete GRE and IELTS scores

GRE/IELTS scores are far from the most important part of your application. The faculty reviewing your application are likely to overlook this if the rest of your application is strong.
However, the problem is that the applications may be filtered by computers or administrators before they reach the faculty (e.g., to remove incomplete applications) and they tend to be less forgiving.

A particular concern for you is that your scores will need to be verified at some point before you can register as a student. This requires you to get ETS to send the scores directly to the university. However, as far as I know, ETS will not send expired scores. Thus you will not be able to verify the expired scores and you will not be able register.

As annoying as these tests are, I suggest you re-take them to avoid the possibility of missing out on grad school for a silly reason like this. If you really cannot re-take the tests, you should try your luck, but I suggest that you make it clear on your application that the scores are expired. The worst thing would be for the university to think you have misled them.


Any advice about having children during grad school, from the perspective of (a) female grad students and (b) students without stay-at-home partners?

What you end up doing is going to be very specific to your individual circumstances, but I can give you my two cents about how my wife and I handled this situation.  Currently, I'm a 4th year PhD student and my wife is 2 years into a MS degree with the aim to get a PhD.  We both hope to stay in academia.  We have two kids, ages 4 and 6 mo.

Our first kid came before either of us were in grad school, and our second came a year later than we had planned. Our decision was to have kids earlier rather than later because grad school is more flexible in terms of schedules than real jobs.  This really helpful when my wife was practically bed-ridden for a couple months of her first trimester with our second kid.

We didn't want to stick our kids in daycare full time, and we have no family around to help, so we came up with a switch-off schedule.  My wife works from 4am-noon (and some hours on weekends) and then we switch off and I work noon-6pm.  Then I work at night from home after she goes to sleep (early).  Our 4 year old does go to pre-school a few hours a week and the baby naps, so I can put in a few more hours during the day this way.  Of course, schedules like this depend on our advisors being okay with our hours, and for our work (me CS, her biochemistry), it works out. Depending on where you are and at what point (and structure) of your MD-PhDs, you might be able to do this.

One consideration is that by the time both of us are on the job market for tenure-track positions, both kids will be school age, which allows us to both work normal business hours.  Also, by the time I'm into a post-doc, our baby should be sleeping through the night.  Until that happens, caring for children is very draining and it does affect my productivity in research.

As far as I know, my wife did not experience any overt discrimination against her for being pregnant.  Her supervisor was generally supportive and understanding even when she couldn't work because she was too sick.  However, as with many medical conditions (e.g. disability, known mental health issues), you're sure to encounter at least unconscious bias for being pregnant.


Page limit for IEEE JBHI (including reference or not)

From the editor office,

Is the 8-page limit with or without the references and biography section?
The page limit includes the references. The biography section is not required.
Is it possible to include supplementary materials in the paper? If yes, will it be considered in the page limit?
It is possible. However supplementary material is added at the end of your manuscript (after the references section) and is included in the page limit.


License to tie to an extended version of an accepted paper while submitting to ArXiv?

Let me expand my comment, since I think it was misinterpreted. Suppose you produce some work and license it with a permissive license. In the future, you can relicense that work with an even more permissive one, but not a more restrictive one. People can rely on the earlier permissive license for that work, but only for that work.

However, if you produce a new work, you can license that however you wish, or not at all. You can even put "Copyright - all rights reserved" on the new work. But that doesn't change the license to the old one. Anyone relying on only the older work can rely on its original license. But if someone wants to use the new work somehow, they have to abide by its license (or lack thereof). Of course the two works would need to be sufficiently different for this to have any real meaning.

For example you could publish a textbook under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA, say) and then a second edition with all rights reserved. The first edition still has its permissive license. Only the material in the second has the restrictive license.

Note that I am not a lawyer. But the basic idea is that you can't "lock up" IP once you make it available, but you can make it more available if you like.

And, in general, a work that isn't specifically licensed is considered in many (most?) places to be copyrighted. But laws do differ.

So, your best option is to be explicit about the new work's license.

An example, sparked by a now deleted comment:

UC Berekely created a version of UNIX, the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) with its own permissive license. Apple built OS X (macOS) on top of BSD and used many of its elements. But macOS does not have a permissive license, but a restrictive one (or none - all rights reserved - proprietary software). But Apple didn't "lock up" BSD and anyone can still depend on that original license for their own work. But the copyright holders of BSD cannot, now, put more restrictions on their own license that would, now, invalidate OS X. They could, however, make it even more permissive.