Backing out of a verbal postdoctoral job agreement with my PhD advisor

TLDR: Many of your questions depend on details of the field and your personal relationship with both professors involved. The best you can do is handle this like any other professional opportunity by putting yourself in your advisor's position and thinking of ways to turn things positive for all parties. Assuming reasonable people on both sides, clear and honest communication on your end has a good chance of producing a satisfactory outcome. Your idea in questions 5 should imho only be done when the 6 months are clearly communicated as transition period to train your successor.
The answers to your questions depend strongly on details of your involvement in the lab in which you did your PhD and the relationship between your advisor and the other professor. A few (but by no means all) things to consider are:

Do ongoing projects depend on you (e.g. because you're the only one
who knows how to handle lab equipment, simulation code you wrote or
similar)?
Are you currently supervising undergrads in their research?
Does funding for the lab depend on you personally working there (e.g. if you acquired grants that go whereever you go)?
Do your advisor and the other professor get along professionally or would you be 'switching allegiances'? The fact that they both served on your defence committe suggests to me that they would get along, but this may depend strongly on field and country / academic culture. If they get along, maybe they can cooperate via you and publish a few papers together.
How much trouble did your advisor go to in order to secure funding for you?

Answering these and similar questions are a means of determining, how badly your walking back on your promise would set your advisor back. Once you have established this, you have a much better perspective of the gravity of the situation and may find means of making it less hard on your advisor (or realize that it is not that big a deal after all - in many cases, I've been very cautions and even nervous about situations like this just to get responses like "That offer sounds great, how about a 6 month transition period to hand over ongoing projects, then go for it!").
There are also several upsides for your advisor: Switching positions after your PhD might be generally expected (depending on field), and is generally benefitial to your careers as you will be exposed to different ideas and a whole new network of possible collaborators. Having students that rank high in academia is always good for the advisor. Also a more in-depth cooperation with the other professor might benefit all parties.
For the moral perspective: What's being done to postdocs contract-wise in academia would be unthinkable for most other employees almost everywhere. Strings of 1 year contract, having to acquire own funding, you're expected to be mobile on a global scale, relatively little money given the value of your work force in the industry etc. That it would in my opinion be unreasonable to condemn your for having accepted the only job offer you had on hand at that time. However, I cannot tell whether your advisor is aware of this. Many are not or deem it beneath them to think in such frivolous terms as quality of life of worker's rights, because "we're scientists", and they're part right. Since a career in science is always somewhat of a gamble (unless you get a Nobel prize out of your PhD), it takes a lot of idealism to stick with it in the long term.
As for your suggestion to stay 6 months and then move on: I would only recommend that if these 6 months are clearly communicated as a transition period (to hand over ongoing projects, train the next person on equipment and code etc). If you do not tell your advisor that you will move on after 6 months, you've technically held your promise to sign the postdoc contract but violated the spirit of your promise anyways, which may just create more harsh feelings.
At any rate, feel good about your job perspectives (since at least two independent parties are trying to secure your services) and congratulations on your newly acquired title.


Can RUI grants be transferred to research universities?

Sometimes the funding can be moved. Specifically, both university need to approve the transfer.  The official program details note:

  (i) Policy. When a PI/PD plans to leave an organization during the course of a grant, the organization has the prerogative to nominate a substitute PI/PD or request that the grant be terminated and closed out. In those cases where the PI/PD's original and new organizations agree, NSF will facilitate a transfer of the grant and the assignment of remaining unobligated funds to the PI/PD's new organization. This should normally be done with a tripartite agreement (involving NSF, the PI/PD’s original organization and new organization), or by a subaward arrangement between the PI/PD's original and new organizations, subject to NSF's consent. (See Chapter VII.B.3)

There are other details on the NSF webpage as well. I would encourage you to read that page if you have an RUI grant and this situation applies to you.


Can I have external people proof-read texts from teammates in a group project?

I assume that your teammate posted the draft to a place where only your team could access it. In that case, yes, you have acted wrongly.

Generally, you'd be expected to keep all research or project results from others at the level of confidentiality at which you obtained them. That means you have to get consent from the authors before sharing with anybody who didn't have access to this content before. That applies to project reports as well as later in your career to preliminary research results, manuscript drafts, or funding proposals.


Applying for a different PhD, should I say I am already in one?

When applying for a job, be honest. Just assume that people will find out eventually, because most of the time they will. Say you got accepted, and your new advisor happens to talk to your old advisor on a conference. Now (s)he has the impression that you were dishonest. That is bad.


Reasonable to exclude a specific professor from a thesis defense for personal reasons?

This is something to talk over with your advisor. It is a reasonable request, but it might not be possible to go along with it. But if your advisor knows the whole story they can advise you on how to proceed, or even, if necessary, assure that the other person isn't included.
But, assuming that your advisor is present at the defense, perhaps one of the examiners, then they can intervene if there is anything improper going on.
If the advisor isn't present, it is a bigger problem, and you need to work harder to achieve the other person's attendance. Sadly, there may not be any options, given the field and the available people.
But, you need an advocate in setting it up and preferably at the defense as well.


How can I overcome feelings of unworthiness after finding mistakes in my research?

I'm going to suggest you attack this on three fronts:

1) As you progress as a researcher, I think you will come to realize that minor errors in published research are actually quite common. I define minor errors as those that don't affect the conclusions of the paper. See this question/answers: How common is it for submitted papers to have minor errors?

2) Understand that corruption is actually about intent and secrecy. High profile cases of corruption and ruined careers only generally happen when the researcher or the study is famous and the problem involves purposefully lying. You can easily avoid this type of situation by putting a corrected version of the paper on your website. See this question/answers: How does an Erratum on one's own paper affect one's career as a researcher?

3) Get a handle on how you think about problems like this, which are relatively common in the life you have chosen. I would suggest that there is a long way between "reasonably cautious"/"feeling embarrassed" and "extreme anxiety"/"failed my life goals and my moral values"/"bad person that does not belong in academia." I am going to strongly suggest seeking out your university counseling services, if available. See my answer to this (only somewhat related) question: How do I know that I have truly lost interest in research and should drop out of a top CS PhD program?  Or similar: How to deal with fear of failure as a PhD student?


Can academic teaching and quality research go hand-in-hand?

Sure, this is exactly what is expected of tenure track faculty at research intensive universities in the US. It is a lot easier when you have a little teaching experience and a little research experience before diving into the "deep" end, but there is no reason teaching and research cannot go together. In the US a PhD student might be expect to teach a single class in both the fall and spring semesters while a tenure track faculty might be expected to teach 3 classes each semester.


Do I need to explain my reasoning when choosing between two offers

No.  You do not need to explain your decision.

Assuming it's actually true, it would be appropriate to tell the department you're turning down that their offer was attractive, and that it was a difficult decision, and that the choice came down to non-academic factors that were out of their control.  But even this is more than you need to tell them.


In a class with both graduate and undergraduate students, is it normal for a single grading curve to be applied for both groups?

In the past, I've graded the pool together, and have also graded grads and undergrads separately. Ultimately this is a decision made by the instructor, who probably spelt this out in their syllabus before the class started.


What are the most frequently cited textbooks in the physics literature?

The answer you might be looking for lies in this recent Nature News article on the most cited scholarly works of all time.

Specifically, for evidence supported by real data I'd look at the Google Scholar top 100 spreadsheet file

In this, you'll find Google Scholar citation data for physics-related books like:

Principles of optics: electromagnetic theory of propagation, interference and diffraction of light (1959) with 49132 citations
Classical electrodynamics (1962) with 36945 citations
Physics of semiconductor devices (1981) with 33789 citations

It depends what you define as a 'textbook' though, I suppose...


Can UK university require you email from @ac.uk, not OutLOOK?

I am afraid that your question is based on a wrong premise, which I will try to correct.

Most (if not all) universities in the UK give their students and staff an email address in zone .ac.uk.
Most universities in the UK provide their email via outlook services. Outlook is a product/service offered by an international company which has physical servers in many countries, including UK, which make them GDPR-compliant. They can even install a server on University premises if required.
University staff are discouraged to reply to student emails coming from external addresses. The reason is GDPR or pre-GDPR data protection measures: there is no simple way to check whether an email from john.doe@obscure.server.com really comes from John Doe. That's why staff will usually only respond to university email addresses, which can be verified by University IT.
You can configure an email client (e.g. Outlook) on your computer to work with a university email address and it will be as friendly as your personal email.


Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD?

Byrnes (2007) found that for tenured faculty in top departments of psychology in the US there was a correlation between the publication rate during the first 7 years following a PhD and the number of publications during the PhD.

  individuals in the bottom quartile published an average of 1.03 predoctoral articles, those in the middle 50% and top 25% published 2.00 and 3.03 predoctoral articles, respectively

Note that the quartiles refer tot he number of articles published during the 7 years following the awarding of the PhD and not the number of predoctoral articles.

This study obviously includes only a small subset of all Psychologists (those who have gotten tenure at top Psychology departments), but may provide a hook into relevant literature.


On Submitting to the Journal of Applied Mathematics Letters

(I'm expanding my comment into an answer.)

First of all, I think this journal is asking for too much. Asking for eight recommended reviewers is unusual in itself (I have heard of journals requiring 3-5 names, but in my field it's usually not mandatory), yet this journal is doing just that and making a lot of additional hard-to-meet demands. For example, in a narrow field it's going to be near impossible to find eight researchers that are both knowledgeable in said area, and who haven't had any professional relationship with you or your coauthors...

When used well, the practice of suggesting reviewers can help expand the reviewer pool, or clarify to editors what their reviewers are knowledgeable about. When used this way, however, it seems more like a weird test, or maybe a bad sign that the editors don't have any contacts themselves. But hey, I guess if you want to submit your work there, better play ball.

  I fail to see (1) how this process can allow for expedient publishing

In theory: The journal has a limited pool of people who have refereed for them in the past, and they might be mostly booked already, so the journal starts asking authors to suggest more potential reviewers. In the best case scenario the author suggests n new, great names and they can ask 1-3 of them to review the paper. The more possible referees, the higher the chance that some of them can write a quick report, which provides the expedient publishing you're after. However, the big downside is that if editors trust the suggested names too much, the peer review process gets ripe for abuse. I think that's what they're trying to address somewhat with the additional requirements.

  (2) how to gather said referees

Usually I have a take a more "free form" approach to this, but here's a potential algorithm:

Normally there will be a couple of people you just know would be interested, and be good reviewers. Start writing their names down in a list.
Go over the bibliography (mostly for the current paper, but possibly similar older ones) and pick out people you think could provide a constructive and in-depth critique. Write their names down in the same list.
Check the references highlighted in step 2 again, and ask yourself if you could include a coauthor of the person noticed in step 2. (This mostly is a way to select more early-career academics rather than the more obvious names of the leaders in the field. )
Think outside the box of the current paper. Do you know of any other people who have studied similar problems, or applied the same methods elsewhere? Who wrote books and papers you learned from, but didn't use directly in this work? If they seem suitable, write their names down too.
Next, go over the list, and try to come up with a motivation for each name. Remove names if they don't satisfy whatever requirements you might have. Also, in steps 1-4 you might have added authors that collaborate closely with each other. Try to reduce that if possible.
Ask your advisor, coauthors, mentors, ... for advice.
Repeat as necessary.

Now, my impression is that mathematics papers usually have shorter bibliographies than physics papers, and that there are fewer coauthored papers, so... good luck I suppose.


In a math talk, is it better to display the number of slides left?

Halmos advises that in preparing a talk you should have a block of material that you can omit if you are running short of time.  But if the slides show number of pages left, you cannot do that invisibly.  For example: in an hour lecture, if you are 5 minutes from the end of the hour, but your numbering shows you are only halfway through your slides, the audience will be getting restless.


Keywords in a paper: to include or not to include?

Here's one reason to include them:

In some fields, like biology, naming convention are lacking. You might use a specific word for a process, while other groups use another. By stating this other word in your keywords, researchers using that word will find your article/conference.


What to do with a result too small to be publishable, but interesting nonetheless?

You can think of publishing it as a short communication, many journals accept this kind of contribution (they can be designated in different ways, depending on the journal). As I recall, the shortest article ever published was of about 3 lines [1] ;-)

[1] F. Lenz, "The Ratio of Proton and Electron Masses", Phys. Rev. 82, 554, 1951.


Authorship when PhD project given to new post-doc?

First things first: I fully agree with Buffy and whoever else that this sounds like a very dodgy situation. A supervisor reassigning work and then 'not wanting to discuss authorship at this stage' takes an enormous amount of agency away from you as a PhD student. That has to be demotivating and frustrating. You could indeed look into transferring to another supervisor.

If you want to stay with this group, the project sounds like a co-first authorship to me. If you've done 3/4 of the project already, that seems fair even if the postdoc will optimise some of your results. Since taking it up with your supervisor wasn't really fruitful, talk to the postdoc and make sure they see this project as a shared first publication as well. After that, stay involved by discussing results, , asking what you can do to help, helping with troubleshooting etc. Make sure you know what stage the project is at and especially when writing starts, help with that. Obviously if you can improve on results, that's a bonus, but just staying involved should come a long way.


Is a professor allowed to ask me what grade I got in a previous class?

In the US, federal student privacy laws (FERPA) dictate that schools restrict access to student educational records, so that only those with a "legitimate educational interest" can access them. Most universities interpret this such that the student's academic advisor can automatically see their full transcripts in the student record system, but not every professor of every class the student takes.

However, just because access is not automatic, does not mean that it is not allowed. If a professor has a "legitimate educational interest" in a student record, then they may request access to that record. (For example, from the student's academic advisor.) "Legitimate educational interest" will be defined in the school's Student Records Policy and in their annual FERPA disclosure. For example:

  A school official has a legitimate educational interest if the official requires the information for the purpose of fulfilling his official duties, including but not limited to:

  performing a task that is specified in his or her position description or contract agreement;
  performing a task related to a student’s education;
  performing a task related to the discipline of a student;
  providing a service or benefit relating to the student or student’s family, such as health care, counseling, job placement or financial aid;
  maintaining the safety and security of the campus; or
  participating in or conducting studies, evaluations, or assessments of educational programs.

Finally, as the student, you are permitted to disclose your student record to anyone you want. Someone with no educational interest in your record - e.g. your parent - could ask you questions about your educational records, and you would be free to disclose that information or not.


How can a master student get research opportunities?

Find the hallway where your department's faculty have their offices.

Knock on the first door.

When the professor answers, say "Hi, I'm [name].  I'm a master's student, and I'm interested in doing research.  Do you have some time to talk?"

Repeat for the remaining doors.

(It also helps to have some idea what kind of research you want to do, and to do some background reading on the professors' research before you talk to them.  We like it when students say "I read your paper on X, and I have a few questions.")


Potential disadvantages of a math postdoc in Europe vs US

I'm aware of a few potential issues applying for academic jobs in the US after a European (or non-North American) postdoc. These won't necessarily come up in any given job, but they're the problems I've heard of people having. (Specifically, I know of different people who've had each of these problems individually.)

Many American schools are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have adequate teaching experience, and especially at least some experience teaching service courses (courses to non-majors), since that's such a large part of the job in the US. European postdocs often have less or different teaching requirements.

Many schools can't afford to fly people in from Europe to interview for position, and will therefore officially or unofficially discount applications from someone in Europe.

There's still some variation in how people write recommendation letters, so a European writer is more likely to write a letter which comes across as negative to Americans.  (More specifically, in the US, almost any negative comment in a recommendation letter, even a very mild one, is taken as a hint that the problem is much worse than is being said. In Europe, I'm told it's more common to include mild critique of an applicant in an overall positive letter.)


Could you get a doctorate based solely on a thesis written in your free time?

Just write your paper, as long as the writing does not distract you from your undergrad studies. If the paper has merit, you may be able to present it at a colloquium of your university, at a workshop, or even at a conference. If you put some more work into it and are lucky, you might eventually be able to publish it in a journal. Certainly, your paper will open up more questions than it answers. Now you have a research trajectory that you can follow up and that may lead to a PhD thesis, based on but surely not limited to your first paper.

In other words: There is no reason why you should not start to work on your PhD topic already as an undergraduate, but it seems to me that you underestimate the time and work it takes to finish the PhD. And since PhDs require a lot of work, there are PhD programs, which facilitate the process and in which most PhDs are actually produced. In that sense, writing your PhD outside of the designated framework is a bit like digging a well with a spoon. It can be done, but it is not too efficient. On top of that (as others have said already), at many institutions, the written thesis is only one requirement among others to be awarded a title.


Acknowledging the discussion with someone in the paper but excluding this person as a reviewer: how to do this?

First of all, I assume that you do not mean "colleague" in the narrow sense of someone at your institution?  That would make a (nearly?) universally inappropriate choice of reviewer, right?

Regarding your question: I must admit that I don't have much direct experience with "suggested excluded reviewers".  I am almost never asked that question on papers I submit; I think I might have done so once: when I did it, the idea was to help out the editors by pointing to someone that they might have thought had a lot of directly relevant expertise but that I knew would not actually be so interested in reviewing the work in question.  The point is that I interpreted this as a (ever so slightly pathetic, I might add: I think this occurred at, by far, the lowest quality journal I have ever submitted to) request from the editors for me to help them out in finding a good person for the job, not excluding potential reviewers for "conflict of interest" reasons.

Because of this I am not totally clear on what constitutes a "conflict of interest" for a reviewer: in doing any referee work one volunteers to give one's professional opinion.  I don't have any "academic enemies", but moreover I once recommended for rejection a paper by one of my closest friends: and it was a very good paper; I just thought that it was not good enough for the journal to which it was submitted.  (Because I knew the person I also felt that he could get a better publication by working on it a little longer, and in fact that is what happened: about a year later he published a magnificent paper in a higher quality journal.)  Oh, back to you: is it clear that your colleague would actually be an inappropriate referee for the paper?  Were his opinions about doing the alternate method actually fully professional opinions, or is that just his more personal reaction to the paper, reading it in terms of his own interests?  Moreover, does his alternate perspective really lack validity in some sense?  If so, then wouldn't a good editor not choose him anyway?

To summarize the above: it is not clear to me that "X already read my paper, and he didn't like it so much" is a sufficient reason to exclude X as a potential referee.  You wonder what the language of exclusion should be, and I agree: you'll have to work a little harder to paint this as a conflict of interest: I'm not seeing that.

But okay, now a direct answer: well, they asked you if there's anyone you'd like to exclude, so it's really up to them to evaluate the reasons.  If you don't want this person to review your paper I would say so using exactly the reasons you've told us: then it is up to the editors to decide whether to grant your request.

Let me give one other piece of advice which may seem a little shady at first but which I claim is mostly practical:

  Consider not acknowledging your colleague in the first version of the paper you submit, knowing that you will put this acknowledgment back in the published version.

Concerning this, let me first say that you cannot do it if his contributions were beyond a certain point: it would then simply be academic dishonesty.  But many acknowledgments are subjective largesse: you have not just won an Academy Award, so you don't thank every single person that helped you.

Anyway, the reason why I recommend this if it is possible is to short-circuit the dopey editorial practice -- which I have seen happen several times -- that the editors send a paper to a certain reviewer because she is explicitly acknowledged.  What a frustratingly lazy practice this is.

The editors who ask the author's opinion on referees tend (in my direct experience) to be lazy types, who just might choose someone in the acknowledgments...and might do so thinking they are doing you a favor!  So the idea of delaying the acknowledgment to forestall a bad editorial choice seems ethically defensible to me.  Finally, if the editors are asking for the author's opinion perhaps they will also ask you for especially plausible referees?  If so you should think hard and suggest really good choices: i.e., the most qualified people, not necessarily the ones who would like your paper the best.

Added: After airing out my advice to unacknowledge your former collaborator X, I am having trouble standing by it.  Based on what you say there is a good chance that X actually would be the referee, and if he can then see that your paper has been modified according to his advice but that you have not mentioned him, then it is possible that he might be personally hurt by it and that this might come out in the referee report.  I think the "unacknowledgment" suggested above is only feasible if the version of the paper you're submitting does not bear any mark of X's helpful suggestions.  As I said, whether X is an appropriate referee for your paper really is up to the editors to decide.  You can help them out by giving them all the appropriate information.  Doing much more than that could be ethically problematic...

Added: Upon further reflection I can only clearly remember the practice of being asked to referee a paper in which I was acknowledged happening once.  I'm sorry for the inaccuracy.  However that one time was from a leading journal, and I made sure to ask whether the editor was aware that I had been acknowledged in the paper, and he was.


Pros and cons of publishing in a mega journal?

In my opinion there are almost no disadvantages here compared to similar well received and indexed journals.

The usual argument would be that people who read this journal aren't from this field, so it might not be as interesting to them and people within that field might rather read the specialized journals and might miss it so you get less exposure.

I think this might have been true several years ago or even more some 30+ years ago. However, today there are so many publications every week, even within specialized subfields, that it's basically impossible to read all the journals relevant to your field or even just the biggest ones. Most people I know (including leading researchers) have given up on reading certain journals. What people do instead is creating alerts for certain subjects and frequently share intersting new articles which means as long as the journal falls into the index they use they will find it anyways.


Consequences of university losing its accreditation on admission for further graduate education?

"If I look for a job in the future i would be applying mostly on my degree’s strength and grades and with references from former teachers."

I think that approach is completely incorrect. You need to focus much more on the fact that you have 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur. Employers will want to know what you've accomplished in 10 years. They will want to know why you decided to "go it alone". The will want to know if you are "gutsy" enough to work for them in a challenging capacity.

When they ask you where your degree is from, tell them, but you don't have to volunteer that the institution is winking out of existence. If they find out on their own, demonstrate to them that you're fully aware of the situation and the reasons for the institution's troubles. Be knowledgeable and non-defeatist. They'll respect that. You're not to blame for the school's fall. You're not the one who went bankrupt.

In the meantime, make sure you get any paperwork from the school that you need. Be proactive about this...not defeatist. This isn't your fault. And for God's sake, don't delve into a pity-party with any potential employer about how you went to a "lower tier" school because you wanted to "stand out". That's completely ridiculous. Trust me. Don't go that route.


can a poster paper and poster presentation have different title?

The best person to answer is perhaps the meeting organizer.

From someone in biomedical field, I'd recommend against it. If some people read the conference abstracts and decided to see your poster, they would just end up confused. In worse cases they may feel bait and switch, or sloppiness.

Could you use a two-tier title like this?

  Node simulator: Analytics platform for p2p system

  Application on behavior measurement


How to cost a researcher for a funding application?

Your institution/the institution that will host the project almost certainly has a grants office for the department/school faculty. You absolutely need to be in contact to do this costing as the institution almost certainly has policies and systems to deal with this that you MUST use if the institution is to sign off on your application.

You don't say which country you are talking about, so let me answer for the UK.

There are two ways to add the costs of a person to a grant application in the UK:

Types of cost

Directly Allocated Costs and Directly Incurred Costs.

DI costs are the easiest to explain. A DI cost is when the university has to spend money it would not otherwise have spent. So - buying equipment for the study, or travel costs etc.

DA costs are where the university allocates a fraction of a resource it already pays for to the new project. So, for example, if a professor spends 10% of there time on the grant, then 10% of the prof's salary is "Allocated" to the grant. Universities like DA costs because they attract overheads, where as DI costs don't. Of course, this counts against you because it makes your grant more expensive to the funders.

So, when you cost up a person on a grant, you need to decide DA or DI. Generally, if you are allocating a part of the time of someone already employed by the university, it will be a DA cost. If you are hiring someone new, then it is a DI cost (there are exceptions to this, but in general).

For people that are already employed by the university, the university will have on its systems a "day rate" for that person. I.e. how much the university charges to have that person allocated to a project for a day. You then multiply this by the number of days a person will spend on the project.

For new people, the university will often have a set number of salary points at which they can be appointed, with an associated pre-calculated cost.

Our university has a costing tool that does all these calculations for you (and indeed, its use is mandatory, as it ensures that you have added all the correct extras, overheads, etc).

Costing a fraction of a person

Funders generally want to know how much time a person will spend on a project. It is common to express this as either % FTE (Full Time equivalent) or hours. So one day a week would be 20% FTE, or about 340 hour a year.

If you are employing someone the university already employs, then this is easy. You say "The university will allocate 20% of Jane  Doe's time to the project."

If you are going the DI route, then this is harder, because they reviewer might well say

"You want someone who has all these super advanced skills, but you will only employ them for 20% of there time for 18 months? Where on earth are you going to find someone who will agree to that?".

The alternative is you can name someone, even if they are not already employed. So you might say "We request salary and costs for 340 hours for a Dr. Chaudhuri to be employed as a research assistant, who will perform the vital roles of x, y and z".

My experience is that the more advanced the skills you want, the more skeptical reviewers will be of small FTEs, but that naming someone can go quite a long way to offsetting that. So 50% of an unnammed pre-doctoral technician is probably fine, but 20% of an unknown advanced software engineer is not, how ever 50% of the proven software engineer Dr. Alverez is probably okay.


Do textbook publishers really offer ethically questionable inducements to professors to adopt or retain their book?

There is some hard evidence that textbook publishers do occasionally offer inducements to professors for adopting their texts. The abstract of this paper in the Journal of Marketing Education reports that

  With respect to publisher incentives, 32 respondents reported that they had been offered and 18 reportedly received an inducement from a publisher related to textbook adoption...

Ricki Lewis, author of Freebies and Other Inducements found that "monetary enticement to adopt a book, although not rampant, does happen, and not just in economics. In science, these extras are encountered in large introductory biology and chemistry courses--but less so in physics and geology classes, which tend to attract fewer students."


I was in a pretty similar situation, so I can sympathize. Although, personally I found it less critical for me to have these interactions. Don't get me wrong - it was not easy to work this way, but I saw it as an opportunity/challenge to develop my independence as a researcher.

However, I was able to get some ideas and interactions in the following ways:

Presenting my work at various forums - any size, from group/lab meetings to seminars and conferences.
By establishing a collaboration/semi-collaboration with relevant people at a different institution.
In terms of ideas - sometimes just reading a lot of literature helped (but this can be field-dependent).
By interacting with the "mathematically unskilled" people at my lab - might sound surprising, but sometimes you just need someone to interact with and ask basic questions even if they are not knowledgeable.

Personally I also found that I don't need these interactions to be very frequent, sometimes it is enough to interact, get a seed of an idea, and then go work on it for a month on my own.

Good luck, for me it worked out very well in the end and I can say I developed significantly as a scientist, and both sides benefited.

One more piece of advice - while you are dealing with the math, don't forget to keep in close contact with the experimentalists so you don't drift away trying to solve some problem which is not relevant.


Should I include my research interests in my CV? How?

In my opinion this is a very bad idea. If I would get such a CV I would wonder why it's in there and thoughts are:

There are no real achievements so this was put in
The author thinks reading papers is an achievement or at least something special
The author read only a few papers (and if you are interested in a topic this list should have several pages)

All those points doesn't make you look very good. I wouldn't reply to that, and to be honest, think it's a bad joke.


How to acknowledge an "anonymous" referee who identified themselves

I agree with @Boris Bukh's comment: as a general rule, feel free to acknowledge whom you want...but if there is any real worry that your acknowledgment could be received unfavorably, ask the acknowledgee first.

I think yours is a "nondegenerate case" of that above principle.  In particular, by choosing your language carefully, you can acknowledge the non-anonymous referee without disclosing that they were a referee.  E.g. you could write "I would like to thank A. Professor for XX.  I would also like to thank the referees for YY."  As long as XX does not equal YY, you are not being dishonest or misleading; you are just choosing not to reveal certain information.  (If XX equals YY, it's not so clear why you need to acknowledge A. Professor by name.)  If you decide to do this, sending the proposed acknowledging text to A. Professor for their approval might be a good idea.


How long and detailed should be the rejection comment when reviewing and rejecting a paper?

Short answer: I think it is very disrespectful (or not good) to reject a paper by writing one single paragraph. If a reviewer thinks that there are obvious flaws that cannot be described clearly, then the reviewer shall simply not review the paper.

The reviewer may have not understood the paper well: Personally, many times I get a first negative impression of a paper. I try then to write a summary of the paper. Then I realize that "Oh the author meant this !" or "Oh, this actually works !" -- this usually lead me to realize at the end that the paper is good.

The authors spent a lot of time writing the paper (they are looking for constructive comments most of the time): From another point of view, put yourself in the authors shoes. They have spent a lot of time (obviously) writing the paper. They are smart people (otherwise, they would have not reached this level to write a paper). Then obviously, there is something to get from them.  If the reviewer thinks that this is not enough, then strong comments should be written. In any case, a reviewer should spend a relatively long period of time in each page of the paper.

The reviewer may not have treated the problem from all perspectives:
Note also that - in some cases - the reviewer may have experienced the problem from one single perspective, whereas the paper attacks the problem from a different perspective. Treating a problem with a different perspective is the best way to solve the problem IMHO. It only enriches the literature.


Signaling Interest for Job at Low Ranked University

I've been involved in many faculty searches over the years, and my institution and department probably meet your definition of "lower ranked."  In the searches that I've been involved in, we simply don't skip over a candidate because they're "overqualified."  Rather, we try to attract the best candidates and hope that candidates who aren't really interested in our position or who find a more attractive position will drop out of the search as early as possible.

Given the nature of the job market today, it's inevitable that many well qualified applicants who will ultimately end up at some more prestigious institution will have applied for our position.  Even the most well qualified candidates need to hedge their bets by applying for dozens of jobs.  I don't blame them for applying to our position as long as there is a reasonable chance that they would accept an offer from us.

We invite the best qualified candidates to phone interview.  During the phone interviews we do our best to make clear what the job would be like (research expectations, teaching loads, salary, benefits, location, etc.)  If a candidate is truly not interested in our position that lack of interest may be apparent during the phone interview.  Some candidates get screened out for showing such a lack of interest.   Sometimes applicants figure out during the interview (or shortly thereafter) that they're no longer interested in the job and ask to withdraw from the search.  We invite the candidates who did best in the screening interviews for full on-campus interviews.

After the on-campus interviews we're typically left with two or three candidates that we like, and then we start making offers.  It's not uncommon for our first or second choice to turn down an offer, but in practice we end up with what we consider a good candidate who is willing to take the job.

In the worst case we could always close the tenure track search, hire a visitor for the year and try again the next year.  That hasn't been necessary in my department in the last 22 years.

If you're particularly interested in a position because of some family issue, then you can make that reason clear in your cover letter.  In my experience, these personal reasons for applying for a job seldom end up being the factor that makes a candidate decide to accept an offer.  From my point of view as a search committee member, I try to avoid using such factors in making my decisions.


Special museum visiting hours for academics?

Generally no, there is no time set aside for academics only in nearly all museums. Academics are members of the public like anyone else and are invited in when the museums are open. With advanced notice, researchers may be allowed to view some items in the museum collection that are not on display (depending on a lot of factors), but for items on display you are expected to access the galleries like anyone else.

All that said, many academics who work seriously on museum material and move in museum circles often are invited to visit museums at non-opening times (e.g. On a Monday when the building is closed to the public but staff are working). Usually if you are let in at this time it is for a clear purpose, such as working with or visiting a curator, and you aren't left to wander about on your own as that's a huge security risk. I've been in many museums before opening, after closing, or on closed days, for various reasons (projects, personal tours given by friends who work there, filming, etc). "Because the public is noisy" has not been one of those reasons. I do my gallery observation work during regular opening hours with everyone else.

For the Louvre, go on their weekday late night opening. There are surprisingly few people there at that time and the lighting is magical.


Nobody would fault you for pursuing any promising job offer, even if two are at the same place. (If they're petty enough to be upset with you for this then you wouldn't want to work there anyway.) If you've already rescinded the application they're not going to be upset with you for that either. These are regular problems faced by departments doing job searches.

Some institutions might have an internal arbitration process that would have to happen if both departments want to make an offer. This is to avoid a situation where you try to use offers from both departments as leverage for better compensation or a startup package.


How can Springer and Wiley put a 12 month embargo on posting post-review revisions to the arXiv and similar?

The copyright agreement does not require that you leave your mistakes uncorrected, it simply requires you to make corrections in a particular way. The simplest method, if you discover mistakes in the published version, is to distribute some note of correction that specifically addresses your original error, which can be done without violating the copyright agreement. The copyright agreement may allow you to post post-review versions of the paper, since the agreement may contain a clause that "Prior versions of the Contribution published on non-commercial pre-print servers like ArXiv/CoRR and HAL can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with Author’s accepted version". There is always a clause where the author warranties that the work has not been previously published (which includes online distribution via ArXiv), and this is why they need to expressly say that you are also permitted to post the submitted version.

There are two notions of "enforceability" relevant to your agreement with the publisher. The stronger one involves litigation, where the publisher sues you for damages (when you breach a contract). You should hire a Swiss lawyer to get advice on whether Springer is likely to prevail in court. The other notion is "having negative consequences". A simple negative consequence would be that Springer refuses to publish any more of your work, if you flagrantly violate the terms of the agreement. Whether or not your breach involves copyright violation depends on whether or not you give them a license to publish, versus transfer copyright. (In interpreting the Lecture Notes in CS agreement, you would want to consult the Swiss attorney for a precise interpretation of granting and assigning the exclusive, sole right to copy).

Your comment about the review process is tangential, and suggests that you are unaware of review protocol, You ask "Why one should review for free for a journal that won't let the author share the results of your review with the community in as timely a fashion as possible". Reviews are not only anonymous, but also privileged communication between the reviewer and the editor (often -- though not always -- shared verbatim with the author). So you should not distribute reviewer comments, unless that is expressly permitted by the journal.


On answering a question that no one has asked

Well, this is the core of research: You ask questions due to your knowledge and expertise that others probably cannot ask. And then you publish your results. There is no general need to justify the question as long as your question makes sense. It will be sufficient if you describe how you arrived at that question. You certainly have read some literature for that, so you will also cite some sources.

And reviewers will be happy with it if your methods are fine, your results are plausible etc.


How do I appropriately penalize late projects?

Here are some ideas of how I try to handle this sort of things. Maybe they will help, maybe you already are aware of these points.

As students, they aspire to become professionals, and you want them to. So, to a reasonable extent, treat them as professionals. In real life, finishing a project late triggers penalties, which can range from small to catastrophic (“the missed deadline? come back next year”). The rules are usually announced in advance, so they know how important each task is, and can weigh their own priorities.

It is not common, but for long projects, I have once used the rule of “late projects will simply receive the failing grade of incomplete”. Needless to say, noöne was late.
Also, as in any professional setting, there is always room for negotiation (as you did). If they realize they will be late, they should come and make an well-argumented pitch, and asking for a specific extension.
Not reporting on your progress is the worse possible action. I mean, simply skipping the deadline and coming two days later asking for clemency will not fly. In fact, I wouldn't consider listening to anyone who has not at least come forward on the deadline to indicate they are late, and try to work out a solution.

Of course, there always are special cases: hospital, tornado, the usual… :)

I'll highlight another method for evaluating student projects, which I find very interesting but have not had time to put in practice yet (but my wife did). In that approach, you set the project deadline so as to leave the students ample time, and you allow them to hand you their reports at any time before the deadline, for you to review. And you state that after the deadline, they will fail (if they have not given you anything yet), or be graded on the last version of their project you saw.

Then, obviously, grade fairly strictly… because their work will usually be very good, since you already reviewed it once or twice (for most groups). This has been found (don't have the reference right now, I will ask) to improve acquisition of knowledge over the usual method.


Nobody except the editor in charge of the paper can possibly know. We can all -- and you can -- speculate what the editor may have been doing, but none of us will actually know. If you must know what is going on, write to the editor. If you are only curious but do not need to know, then practice patience and wait for the outcome.


Do German universities internally track the scientific output of single work groups/professors and with which internal/external goals?

I would ask your professor, other professors, or people you know in the administration. Presumably, they know how these evaluations are done in your University.

My experience, in a research institute in Germany, is that faculty is evaluated on both output and grants obtained. Similarly, the institute as a whole is evaluated on these points. Typically, professors try to publish as high as possible here, with much less regard for number of papers published. This is reflected in tenure decisions.


Allow me to strongly disagree with eykanal's answer.  There is no universal standard.  You must ask your advisor in advance what her coauthorship policy is.

In theoretical computer science (and mathematics), it is generally considered unethical to list someone as a co-author who has not made a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the paper.  In particular, merely funding the research is not considered an intellectual contribution.  Adding a supervisor's name to a paper to which they have not directly, intellectually contributed is lying.

In practice, writing a good grant proposal requires at least as much intellectual novelty as writing a good paper.  Most of the good ideas that PIs pour into their proposals also appear in papers; as long as those ideas constitute novel intellectual contributions, the PI merits co-authorship.  But that only works once per idea; once an idea has been published, it's no longer novel, by definition.

To be specific and personal:

I am not a coauthor on all of my PhD students' papers.  (Of course, I still report my students' independent work back to NSF as outcomes on whatever grants supported them.  So I still get credit from NSF for having the foresight to fund the student.)  The same is true of all the other theoretical computer science faculty in my department.
My PhD advisor is a co-author on only one of the papers I published as a PhD student.
My PhD advisor doesn't have a single co-authored paper with his advisor.


Writing a letter of recommendation for a promising but very new student

As suggested by @academic in a comment, I think this is a case where you should decline to write the recommendation (and do so as quickly as possible so that they can find someone else) and suggest they ask someone with whom they've had more interaction.
I think it may end up normal for students during the pandemic to rely on recommendations from instructors they have had less interaction with due to the obstacles of online learning, but here you're talking about someone for whom you can't even refer to their performance on a single assignment.
If you wrote a letter that was honest, really the best you can do is to write what you've said here: this student meets expectations for an attentive student in the limited interactions before the first course assignment is due. I can't imagine that letter filling any positive role besides checking a box towards "x/N letters submitted". If acceptance for the internship is competitive then the letters written for this student will be compared to letters written for other students, and a non-robust letter like yours will probably compare unfavorably.
Additionally, as a PhD student you might also suggest to the person asking you for a recommendation that they get letters from professors rather than graduate students. It's possible that the distinction isn't as important for this internship, but generally references from professors are preferred. When I was a graduate TA I would occasionally co-write a letter with a professor in charge of the course I was teaching: the letter would come from the professor, but I'd add my own paragraph that the professor would incorporate into their letter. I don't suggest you use that for this situation (and it doesn't make sense if you are the instructor of record rather than a TA), but something to keep in mind for future requests.


What criteria to use when evaluating an invitation to be an editor from a legitimate publisher?

I'd be wary of requests to join the editorial board of a journal that you must ask these questions. In many (legit) cases, one is asked to join the editorial board after having established a relationship with the journal. Two of my colleagues, after having been asked, remarked 'well, I'm already reviewing for them 3 times a month so why not make it official?'  If you haven't reviewed for, or published in that journal, it may not be worth your while.


How often do Ivy League universities advertise positions at the Associate Professor level?

In my experience it is quite common for universities at all levels to advertise positions in this way so that they can hire someone at the associate professor level if there is a strong candidate with appropriate experience.  I've been involved in many searches that were advertised in this way.  In my experience most of these positions end up getting filled at the assistant professor level anyway.


Does the NSF award grants to foreign researchers not affiliated with US instutitions?

From the FAQs:

  NSF rarely provides support to foreign organizations. NSF, however, will
  consider proposals for cooperative projects involving U.S. and foreign organizations, provided support is requested only for the U.S. portion of the
  collaborative effort. For further information, contact the Office of International Science and Engineering. (Reference GPG Chapter I.E.6.)

Individual funding opportunities list specific eligibility requirements. These generally say something like "The PI must hold an appointment at an eligible US institution."

There is an office of the NSF specifically devoted to encouraging international collaboration, and there are often specific funding opportunities earmarked for collaboration with a particular country. You'll find examples of many such opportunities on the linked page.

Having said that, it's not impossible for NSF money to trickle down to foreign researchers. For example, I am at a US institution and I participate in a project supported by the NSF, in which our budget includes a subcontract arrangement involving researchers in Australia. As far as the NSF is concerned, this money is paid to a US institution (mine), but we are allowed to use some of it to pay our foreign colleagues as subcontractors. (The details of this arrangement were of course specified up front in our proposal.) Specific grants may have different requirements with respect to subcontracting to foreign institutions.


How to find connections to go abroad as a visisting PhD student?

As a PhD student I did exactly that, contacting professors for exchange about two years ago, and that worked very well for me. (I ended up visiting a top UK university and the collaboration was, and still is, very productive.) My supervisor was involved in discussing the places I wanted to go, but I handled all contact. Some advice:

Study the professor's webpage (if they have one) to see if it says anything about collaborations. If it says on their webpage that they have no time, don't contact them.
Send the professor an email, give them a week or two to answer, then follow up with a second reminder-email if there is no reply.
Important things to do/mention:

Make sure the email is very short, but that it still describes precisely what you want to collaborate on. Professors are chronically short on time.
If you have a travel grant etc. that will fund your stay, it's important to say so. (They're much more likely to accept you if they don't have to spend any money. But I think most universities will waive term fees if you ask them.)
Add a sentence about your accomplishments so far, so they have some
impression that having you visit is going to be a net gain for them. Mention any papers you've co-authored, if you add a link make sure it's short (DOI, arXiv etc).
Try to keep the email self-contained, but linking to any papers, your CV or research webpage "for more information about me" is OK.
Also add a sentence describing how you think your proposed topic fits
with what they are doing, so they know you've actually checked out their group and read some of their papers etc.

In my experience, most people reply positively to such an email, so first send emails to the two or three places you want to visit the most. If none of those are successful, send to the next few places on your list. YMMV though.


It is okay to reuse or “recycle” symbols - I sometimes joke that this is actually good practice since it is “environmentally friendly” and saves mental overhead. However, you must make sure that you do not use the same symbol to denote two different quantities within the same proof or calculation. That is a mistake and invites potential confusion or misunderstanding, even if in some cases the reader can perform disambiguation of the symbol based on context and figure out the correct interpretation.
A way to think about this is that each notation has a scope: it is created, used, and then discarded, often within the space of a single proof or even a couple of paragraphs. Some notations are local and live for a short time; others are global and retain the same meaning throughout the paper or thesis. Overlapping notations are fine if the scopes of the notations do not overlap. This is analogous to the use of variable names in a computer program. (Or to use a physics metaphor, notations can overlap in alphabet space, but not in spacetime - their world lines should not intersect...)
Finally, a list of notations should only contain notations that exist for a significant length of time (say for a whole chapter of the thesis), not “temporary” or ad hoc notations that are used in a short argument. That’s what matters, not whether the quantity represented by the notation is integer-valued. The main consideration is whether the notation is used long enough that a reader might encounter it far from where it is defined and have difficulty figuring out its definition.
It is also a good idea for the notation table to include columns to specify the page number where each notation is defined and which chapters or sections it is used for, to make lookup easier.


You need more than an idea to get published in a journal.
A research journal contains articles written about research which has produced new knowledge. If you haven’t done the research yet, you probably shouldn’t try writing a research paper.
Instead, you’d be looking at writing a research proposal, detailing the research problem and the gap in existing knowledge and why it’s important, the specific research question you’re intending to research and how it will help address the research problem by filling in a part of the gap in existing knowledge, and the specific methodology you’re planning to use for your research, along with the resources you expect you’ll need.
At this stage of your career, you would then likely send this proposal to various faculties at universities that have academics working on related fields as a part of applying for a PhD program.


Why they do not send my work to referees while they are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance?

They do not send your manuscript to reviewers because they consider that the chance of it being accepted (with revisions) is very small, so that it's not worth reviewers' time.

Their phrasing is just a polite way of saying that the manuscript you have submitted is either clearly out of scope, or clearly not good enough. Maybe you are aiming for a too prestigious journal, or maybe your work is not novel enough. It is also possible that your actual work is very good, but that your description of your work is poor, so that the editors concluded erroneously that it doesn't show much advancement. It is not possible to conclude in general what the true reason is.

If you have no experience in submitting manuscripts to scientific journals, and you have no cooperation with somebody who does, getting a manuscript published is quite difficult. If you don't already, I would suggest you strike up a cooperation with someone who has experience in publishing scientific articles. They could advise where to publish and how to formulate conclusions.

Edit: Also read Benoït Kloeckners excellent remark below: indeed it is your advantage if you know quickly that your paper won't be published, rather than only after a time-consuming peer-review.


Since you started studying computer science, has anyone spent significant time teaching you how to write? Of your whole time learning, what proportion was spent learning computer science, and what proportion spent learning writing skills?

If your answers to these questions are what I expect them to be, then you need to put time into learning to write. It is a skill, not a gift. It can be taught, and it can be learnt. (I should know. I spent five years studying pure mathematics at undergraduate and postgraduate level without ever writing more than about three consecutive words. When I first attempted to enter my chosen profession, which required a written examination, I failed.) I subsequently put a lot of effort into learning how to write. People in my profession, which is very much based on use of words, tell me that my writing is very good.

For me, the career enhancing book was Barbara Minto's "The Pyramid Principle" that makes the case that clarity of thought leads to clarity of thinking. The logical approach she takes appealed to me as a mathematician, and maybe that might appeal to you as a computer scientist. But there are lots of books.

I suggest it is not helpful to comfort yourself with such thoughts as 'good theoreticians are never good writers, and vice versa'. If you are bright enough to be good at computer science then you are bright enough to learn how to be a competent writer.


Whether it is possible or not can depend on all sorts of things. The only people that can answer that truly are the people that offered you the position. You should ask them.

This is not an unreasonable thing to ask, and I can't imagine starting a month or so later would be much of a problem for a PhD (but again the only people that can tell you that are...). Negotiation of the starting date is a normal part of the hiring process.


Balancing location with school/department for PhD study

I chose to do my Ph.D. in a major American city eight hours away by train from my rural hometown. My adviser is great. I have started to hate the city and pine for the wilderness every day. Yet I know a bad adviser elsewhere could make my life perhaps even more miserable, and might even make me hate my work. Somehow, you should try to balance your need for nature, learning other languages, etc. with the benefits of the institution and advising. I can't say there's any solution to this dilemma. Maybe just try to get through the five years and be sure to choose a better location after graduation.


Are colored in-text citations against APA6?

I think this is answered in the APA style blog

  In short, since there's no rule governing the use of hyperlinks, take your audience and delivery method into account when deciding whether URLs should become active hyperlinks in your paper.

The blog deals with the traditional underlined blue text used by MS Word for hyperlinks. It suggests the formatting can be distracting, especially when printed on a black and white printer, and therefore advises against using formatted hyperlinks for documents that will be printed. The blog, however, does not rule out the possibility of formatted hyperlinks in documents to be printed and seems to endorse formatted hyperlinks for documents that will be read electronically.


How do I correctly abbreviate compounded first name for academic publications?

The most important thing is consistency. Choose now, and write the exact same name on all future publications.
A few things to consider:

This is the name that everyone, except the people that know you personally, will use. So make sure you are not going to regret it.
It is better to choose a name that identifies you as well as possible. If your first and last names are very common, it may be beneficial to add the second part of your given name, or your middle name, so that people are sure who wrote the paper just by looking at the name. If your name is already uncommon, this is a less pressing concern.
Many people, especially in North America as I have found, are completely unfamiliar with the idea of compound names. Somehow, even generally open-minded people are reluctant (I do not use this word light, if I wanted to write "surprised" or "unfamiliar" that's what I would have written!) to accept that a name might not fit their traditional "GivenName MiddleName Surname" mental framework and will try to fit your name into their expectations, not the other way around, even after you have explained it to them. It is really frustrating and invalidating, but be prepared.
Computer systems are also a beast to be prepared to fight. The big international ones are almost always written with North American expectations in mind.
If you decide to use both parts of your given name, I strongly recommend joining the two with a dash, even if that is not culturally appropriate for you and/or does not match your ID card. This makes things a lot easier as it is clearer that these two parts are linked and cannot be taken apart. My surname is from a language where dashes do not even exist, and until I decided to use a dash I had to face incomprehension, even from people to whom I had carefully explained what's what.

For your particular case, if you are willing to be called "FirstName M[iddleNameInitial]. LastName", that sounds perfectly fine. Dropping the second part of your compound given name is fine if you are okay being called with just the first part, in emails or daily conversations. There is no requirements, legal or otherwise, that your legal name must match the name on your publications.


My mentor got laid off from a private research lab. Is there anything I can do to help him find a new job?

Your mentor most likely has his own list of references and if it comes to the point where he needs to have references from his grad students, then he is doing a very poor job of taking care of himself.

Offer to assist him in any way you can. If he needs a pair of extra hands to complete a side project that will get him hired where he wants to be hired, volunteer to be that extra pair of hands. Who knows, you might learn more from that experience.

Offer to be his eyes and ears for positions on your campus and have him say in the cover letter that he is applying on your recommendation.

If you want to offer help someone, talk to them and discuss what their need for help is and in what ways you can help meet that need. While you are assisting, leave them the lead in taking care of themselves. It is more economical of your time and energy and leads to a better outcome to help in the ways that you can help than to obsess about helping in ways that you can't - you are not in a position to give recommendations, so don't bang your head against the wall about giving one. Go for something doable instead.


Do you think it's possible to pay off student debt during a PhD?

Possible, but very difficult.
A typical annual stipend for a US PhD student in the $20k-$30k range. If you allocate $10k of that stipend each year to paying off debt, the leftover income will put you near the federal threshold for poverty-level income for a single individual (~$13k). If you take into account that the cost of living is usually quite a bit higher in large cities, you would usually have to live a very meager existence for several years in order to pay off $40k worth of debt on only a PhD stipend. It's not outright impossible, but you'd need to be extremely motivated, diligent, and willing to live in poverty (or at least poverty-adjacent) to accomplish such a thing. Of course, this becomes easier if you enjoy a larger-than-average stipend. Pooling expenses in a shared living situation can also make things easier, as the poverty threshold for a larger household is not a simple multiple of the individual's threshold.
I would expect this level of saving/debt payoff to be very atypical among PhD students who live off their stipend alone.


I have to assume that you have done the required research and are now just at the writing stage.

This could be a lot of things. But one piece of advice is to not try to write it from the first word to the last. Work from an outline. Fill in the outline in such a way that it seems like a blurry picture becoming clearer and clearer.

In other words, if you have some idea about methodology, work on that section for a bit. If there is something about the conclusion that comes to you, write that down. Go through whatever notes you have made and add ideas to appropriate sections as you go.

Another technique is to use index cards effectively. Carry them around with you and add new cards or modify old ones as ideas come to you throughout the day. Index cards can be better than a notebook, since they can easily be rearranged and even discarded. As you mine the notes you have, write index cards for the ideas there. Rearrange as necessary.

Ultimately a deck of index cards could, in some sense, represent the entire work.

This isn't the only possible way to attack it, but a piecemeal approach might be able to help you avoid some forms of writer's block, such as being overwhelmed whenever you sit down.

Of course, this method will require heavy editing for continuity as you get closer to the end.

There is a more extreme method that was once mentioned to me by an English professor in an intensive writing course. He had a lot of contacts who were writers of various kinds. He mentioned one person whose method was to "make one page of progress" every day. The person would work until the current manuscript, including revisions, was one page longer than the day before. This results in a short story every three weeks or a novel every year. But, I suspect that it takes a certain sort of personality, somewhat obsessive, to manage that. And one page of progress is not the same as one page of writing. And it was creative writing he was speaking of, not scientific writing.


How helpful is a Latin honors designation (cum laude, magna cum laude) for admission to PhD programs?

The honor designations carry essentially no weight. The additional honor program requirements, however, could carry substantial weight. If for example, one of the extra requirements was an independent research project, this would be very valuable for graduate school admissions. If the requirement was the completion of a university breadth requirement (e.g., basket weaving), then it has no extra value for admissions.


Is it OK to review a paper which builds on my work?

You were probably chosen to be reviewer because it is built on your work and therefore have intensive background knowledge on this topic. As long as you have not worked and do not intend to work on something really similar during the review process you do not have a conflict of interest.

You should of course try to be objective. Giving a rejection does not have to discourage the authors if you give constructive feedback and make it clear that you find their direction promising.

If you feel like you might not be able to be unbiased you can talk to the editor about it.


How to say no to more work as a PhD student so I can graduate

I think your most realistic option is to have an honest discussion with your advisor about your goals and expectations.

Tell them that you’d like to graduate by 20xx, and you think your work on A B C was fulfilling and interesting. You feel like you can really build a narrative around these projects that would culminate in a good thesis within the timeframe set above. Given your goal, you feel like starting a new project at this time will be detrimental to your progress.

Ideally your advisor would totally see it your way and you’ll graduate into the sunset. Realistically: advisors tend to be overzealous at times and can exert a lot of pressure over their students. A reasonable advisor would leave the choice to you; a clever one will make you believe that it’s a really good idea to start this new project (you don’t have enough material now, your CV will be amazing with the new project accomplished...). So a lot of this depends on the dynamics you have with your advisor.

I would not go over their head unless you’re willing and able to switch advisors. Its hard to get back to a good working relationship after something like that.

I will try to establish my own independence and capacity to successfully graduate with a plan (by 20yy I plan to submit these results, draft by Jan 20zz and so on).

Good luck!


How to cite Nature's "Supplementary Information" papers?

Supplementary information is always part of a paper. Just cite that paper as you would normally do. If you want to specifically mention in your text that you are referring to supplementary information you can just call it by its title, something like "(Supplementary Figure 2)".


Is there a proper format to cite open source software?

Every journal or venue may have its own recommendations, so check their style guides. However, I have never seen an article that has separate reference sections for software and articles. Just put them in one section together.


Is it possible to know about the research quality of a professor from the number of citations of his/her papers in Google Scholar?

This would vary by field, of course. But there is more to selecting a good advisor than just their output, even the recognized quality of that output. In fact, having a superstar as an advisor can be a mixed blessing/curse. They may be so focused on their own research and career that they give you little direction in your own. If you are especially self motivated and can find and develop your own research this is less of an issue than if you are like most students, needing guidance in finding problems and developing solutions.

But the citation count of a person gives some, but not the final, measure of their quality as a researcher, not necessarily as an advisor. If you want an even better measure (IMO) get the citation count of the students that they have advised. Even just the number of "produced" students and where they wound up in their careers is a good, but not perfect, measure. It is more likely to be useful for a senior professor than a junior one, of course.

If you are already at the institution, student scuttlebutt is actually a pretty good indicator of an advisors "quality" as an advisor, if not as a scholar.


Looking for a postdoc: How to approach professors in a conference

Your current work shows what you managed to accomplish so far - which is a first estimate on how you might perform in the future. Therefore, talking about your current work is not bad.

If the interesting people are visiting your poster, everything is easy: Just ask them how they like your work and tell them you are looking for a postdoc position. Either they catch the ball or they don't ;-). If they are interested, just ask whatever you are interested in, or, if they are short in time, ask them when you could talk (perferably at the conference). Maybe you can meet for lunch / dinner / at the conference social event, coffee break, ... depending on the social interaction options at the conference (don't ask for dinner / lunch if it is not part of the official conference program).

If they don't come to your poster: Try to use the social interaction options mentioned above to approach those professors. Tell them why you would like to talk to them (why this group, what are your itnerests, ...). Invite them to visit your poster so you can show them what you did so far.


Is it appropriate to say "hi" to a professor in email?

In this type of situation I always take the lead from the person I am writing to if they are more senior than me. This means that I start off the conversation using "Dear Professor X Y" and only switch to using "Hi X" once they do.

I use the same rule of thumb for working out when to switch from using titles and surnames to first names. In most email communications I find this is normally after only one or two emails.

In other words, formality and respect are nice, but so is being friendly and saying hi.

Note: academic cultures do vary, and I am basing this on my experiences in the UK and EU. My impression is that in the USA there is a greater social distance between students and academics and therefore more formality is expected.


APA Citation Followed by in-text reference to figure

Assuming the figure is not directly related to the citation, I would be looking to rewrite the sentence to separate the citation and the figure reference. It seems unusual that you would be introducing what is typically your own work (i.e., a figure) and citing a reference at exactly the same point. For example, you could write something like :

Figure 1 presents the results of ... based on data from Li et al (1994, 1997)

Of course, the way to do this will depend on the details of your content, but I'd generally seek to separate the two elements.
Alternatively, if the the figure is from the citation and you are reproducing it, you could do something like this:

(see Figure 1 taken from Li et al, 1994, 1997)

Or a variant:

(see Figure 1 based on data from Li et al, 1994, 1997)


PhD student lost fellowship 1 week before school starts, what should I do?

I wish to know whether there is any standard procedure for this kind of situation

You already have the right answer.  Talk to your advisor.

PhD students should never pay tuition.


Is it okay to copy paste some part of my Bachelor's thesis literature review for my own Master's thesis?

Obviously you should check the regulations at the institution that you are attending to see exactly what they say about this matter.

With that said...

Submission of a thesis often includes signing a declaration that the material contained within the thesis has not previously been submitted for consideration for another degree (or words to that effect).

By doing what you suggest, copying and pasting a sizeable chunk of a previous thesis, you would be violating this declaration.


How many hours on an average do academics in business and technology spend consulting for businesses?

I would say the mean over all of academia is very low, almost zero. I would even go so far as to say that the median amount of time is zero. However, this includes all professors from all fields. It is not impossible for a Professor of German Romantic Poetry to find businesses that need their expertise but I would image them few and far between.

There is also the issue of contractual obligations. My current professorial contract states that during the academic year I cannot work for another institution as more than a "part time job" but during the breaks I could work for someone else full time. While this does not give concrete limits it is presumed here to be about 10 hours per week as a general maximum.

More applied professors I have met were officially funded by outside corporations so their research counted double as both consulting work and as their normal work load. So for them even during the academic year it could be over 40 hours per week.

So what I mean to say is that to get a useful answer you should probably be more specific about which fields you are interested in.


Formally asking a univerity for contact information of PhD

I assume that he has not a profile in that university, as you're asking this question. In a typical university's view, if a person among the staff were supposed to be contacted by people out side, its contact information would be announced, clearly, in the website. If not, it is not so reasonable to expect something unusual, is which not, completely, regular in university's policies.

If the software is a business product and you have paid for it, you have right to expect any defined kind of support for the package, officially (of course, if your target software version is not obsolete). In this case, you better contact ,directly, to the support division of the corresponding third party, instead of the lead or any of its developers.

If the target package is a part of a open source project, the case would need a different approach. Most of the open source softwares have been introduced, firstly, in a paper, is which expected to be referenced by the people using that software. The main leaders and supporters of the software are, actually, the authors of such reference papers. Even in the case of changing their affiliations (and consequently their contact address), you can find the paper's webpage in the responsible publishing journal and find the updated affiliations (is which a common fashion at least in my field, robotics)

After finding the new address, you can contact the person, safely. But, you better know that the fellows, involved in open source development, are not responsible to answer questions about the utilization of the software, but shall appreciate any reports corresponding to potential bugs or correspondences for collaboration in the development. The users are supposed to resolve their application-based issues by either searching in the forums or reading the tutorials. All in all, you might be lucky enough to catch some clues from this contact, at least.

Good luck


What you say here is a lot of what you need to include, but what I'm missing is something about the end goal. What do you hope to learn in doing this research? How will it advance the field to know the answers, whether they are positive or negative? If you keep that goal in mind, the details of the attack can change and still make progress.
Focus a bit less on the actions and a bit more on the expected knowledge. Not that the actions are unimportant, of course.


Is there evidence of effects of votes of no confidence on enrollment?

My answer is opinion unsupported by evidence, but I think it's right. {grin}

If your student population is drawn primarily from the local area, then the publicity might dissuade a few potential students from applying.  If the student population is drawn from a wide area (nationally or international) then most potential students will never know about the vote of no confidence, no matter how it turns out.


Is it plausible to change my major from pure math to applied sciences when applying for graduate school?

How possible is it for me to change my major when applying for graduate school? What kind of school can I hope to get into (preferably in North America or Europe)?

This isn't all that uncommon. In the CS Msc programme at my university (Leiden) for example, we get a lot of people coming in from Statistics. The emerging field of Data Science has caused Statistics and CS to become much more closely related fields.

Exact requirements will probably vary by university, but at least in the EU the system is set up to make it possible for people to combine pieces of education from multiple universities. A BSc in mathematics together with some catch-up CS classes will probably get you in the door in a CS master.

That's not the of the story though. Individual courses often have their own requirements; a masters' course on advanced data mining might require prior basic data mining knowledge. But that doesn't mean you have to have taken the data mining class offered at that university. Our CS master attracts a lot of students from other universities. The requirement just means that if you don't know anything about data mining yet, you're going to get thrown into the deep end.

Since these requirements are mostly "you should already have a foundation in", not "you must strictly have this particular class", you could also fill in those blanks with online courses or reading relevant handbooks.

  Is it true that other departments welcome pure math students, as is said by the professor mentioned above? Would an admission officer focus more on my advantages or disadvantages?

What the admissions officer focuses on will differ from institution to institution. However, you should not be too discouraged by lists for formal requirements. People move from all kinds of places to all kinds of places, so partial matches are extremely common. Often you should be able to come to an agreement along the lines of "You already match ABC, but you need to pick up XYZ as well before you can enter".

Me for example, I wanted to switch from History to CS. For CS I needed a particular flavor of high school math as an entry requirement, but the remedial course they usually used was already fully booked. I found a remedial course at a different university and proposed that one, and they accepted that.

So approach the advantage/disadvantage discussion as a discussion where you look for a mutually acceptable solution. Be imaginative and constructive.

Right now, about halfway in the current academic year, is actually a good time to do this. If you can come to an agreement with regards to requirements, there is still a whole semester to take some remedial courses in a university or an online course that the admissions officer considers acceptable.

  What other fields can you suggest?

As a CS student I'm a bit biased of course, but if you want to apply math, I'd definitely consider a  CS Master. Machine learning and data science tends to be a significant part of that, and a strong math background is quite useful there.

Apart from the hip neural network side of things (which is much more about matrices than you'd expect), I would also recommend optimization/decision support as an area of study. This has a big mathematical component to it, which "native" CS students aren't always as strong in. In the field of natural computing in particular, there are a lot of people doing projects based on interesting proof of concepts, but lacking theoretical/mathematical analyis. That's something that a math background could help you with.


In general, a CV is not a place for innovation: your choices for what to put on it should be most heavily motivated by whatever is expected and most common in your field and especially among your peers.  If you are thinking of doing anything "nonstandard" on a CV you should get a few opinions on it, and in particular show it to your advisor.

Is it common in your field to list your entire thesis committee?  I have looked at thousands (no, really) of CV's in my field (mathematics) and I have never seen this.  In fact it is about 50-50 whether people even list their thesis advisor on their CV (I had to check just now to see that I do not).  I should say that the name of your thesis advisor is considered to be important information that would be provided elsewhere in a job application; it is part of the standard "AMS coversheet" that most job applicants in mathematics fill out.  Moreover, there is a wonderful website called the Mathematics Genealogy Project where you can sate yourself to your heart's content with information about professional lineages.  If you (a reader) are a recent math PhD, I would highly recommend that you add yourself to this page: you can be added by other people and if you wait long enough you will probably be added by someone else, but still it seems better not to chance it.

In the webpages I've seen where people include the name of their thesis advisor, they typically include just the name.  Unless your advisor is at a different institution from you (unusual but not unheard of; it is not so rare to see this at Harvard/MIT for instance), you do not need to list institutional affiliation.  Moreover, anyone who wants to look up information about your advisor can certainly do so.  I don't see why you need to include their academic rank on your CV; and by the way, if you got your PhD ten years ago, do you include their rank at the time or their current rank?

I don't really care about the thesis committee of even a recent PhD.  In my field, being on the thesis committee doesn't necessarily mean very much at all, and the people who are on the committee in an important or meaningful way are likely to be writing recommendation letters anyway.  I certainly don't care whether someone's thesis committee member is an associate professor or a full professor.  To be honest, a listing of the academic ranks of all the thesis committee members on a CV would make a somewhat negative impression on me: such a person would seem pretentious and without an understanding of what is actually important.


Company wants copy of unpublished work. Should I give it?

From the ethics course we had to take during the first semester of grad school: it depends.

If your research contains anything that is waiting to be patented, then you can't pass it on to a potential employer.

If your research was funded by industry, then you can't pass on unpublished work without the permission of whoever funded it (you could get sued).

If it is part of a larger project that your advisor is working on, then you shouldn't pass it on without their permission (you probably won't face legal action, but your advisor could be very upset with you).

As Nate pointed out in the comments, if you have coauthors for any of this material, you need to check with them before passing on anything.

If it was funded by anyone who made you sign confidentiality agreements, then you can't pass it on without permission (I know people who receive funding from the NSA for cryptography work, or the DoD to work on certain engineering projects who had to sign such papers).

If your chapters contain medical or otherwise personal data collected, make sure it has been anonymised to whatever standards there are in your field (HIPAA etc).

If none of these apply, then you can probably pass it on without problems. I would still check with my advisor if I were you though, just to make sure.


In statement of purpose, good to mention about learning from some professor's lecture notes and books?

You do not want to convey the message, "I am applying to your school because I think Professor X is great."  Everybody knows Professor X is great.  That's why they hired her.

The question is, why should they want you?

A message you do want to convey is, "I am applying to your school because my research goals are well-aligned with existing interests in the department."  If you can incorporate Professor X's notes and books into that story, great.  Otherwise, leave them out of it.


make sense of index terms in dl.acm.org website

Similar to what is done at other professional societies that publish journals, the ACM has a classification system for submitted papers. Authors classify their own submissions. The system is hierarchical to provide a bit of granularity.
Potential readers use the assigned tags to find articles relevant to their own interests, and the editors use them to assign area editors and reviewers.
The tags used on this site are a bit similar in terms of finding questions related to a readers interest.


What is a good ratio of "What I want to research" vs. "My experience that shows I can research" in a Statement of purpose?

A Statement of Purpose isn't a money-back contract stating exactly what you're going to do.  It's okay if you end up doing something different from what you imagine and write about in your admission essay.

Background information about yourself should be included as needed, so the reader can understand your account of what has been especially meaningful to you so far, and your personal motivation to go to the next level with your studies.  You don't need to write a complete catalog of everything you've done.  But do include relevant bits so that your essay hangs together as a projective story.

The admission essay is a place where you can show some inspiration.


Unable to complete journal paper by deadline, is this a problem?

I will focus on the journal, as your plans and relationship with your advisor really need to be worked out between you and them, and follow much the same lines.

Withdrawing from submitting an anticipated journal paper is not the end of the world.  Yes, people will think less of you than if you submitted it, but it is better than either writing a bad paper or dragging the process out indefinitely.  Sometimes bad stuff happens, sometimes plans change, and journal editors will not be shocked or startled.  Moreover, they will likely be happier to have a clear "no" than an open unresolved question.

To handle this as best you can, you just need to make sure that you communicate your change of plans clearly, e.g., emailing something along the lines of:

  Due to a chance in circumstances, I will be unable to submit this paper in a timely fashion.  My apologies and thank you for your patience.

No further explanations or excuses are needed, just a clear statement that you aren't going to write the paper after all.


Am I allowed to publish reviews submitted for courses in open-access journals?

I cannot see anything in general that could prevent you from submitting a report written in a course to a journal. There are of course several issues you need to be aware of. First, did you do the entire work yourself from coming up with the idea through researching the topic and writing? You need to look if someone else's "intellectual property" is involved. Second, you do not state under what circumstances your report was written. Submitting a manuscript to a journal involves meeting certain standards so under what I would consider normal circumstances, course reports would not be in shape for publication. One obvious reason for this is that reviews typically involves reading and summarizing/synthesizing a very large number of papers, work that cannot fit into the short time span of a course. So, in general, I doubt the scenario you describe would work without significant extra work. I have no doubts the core of a useful paper can be achieved within a course format but from there to publication is a different story. So without additional details, it is difficult to assess the likely success but the principle stands, yes it is acceptable and legal as long as the work adheres to general publication ethics.


Are page references required when citing the same quote multiple times?

The guiding principle for citation is always clarity and unambiguity of communication. Thus, for example, if you have a direct reference nearby, no citation is needed:

  From the above quote, we see the phrase "like bananas for monkeys" is a clear reference to Shakespeare.

but if there is an intervening gap or other citations, then you should cite it as originally.  In the particular case for this question, where the entire essay is focused on a single fairly short piece of text, it seems that the reference is likely to continue to be quite clear, as long as the prose continues to make the link clear, as in my example, and thus no explicit repeated citations would likely be necessary.


Life sciences publishers that support/encourage collaborative manuscript review?

Most of the European Geosciences Union (EGU)/Copernicus journals do something sort of like this - they've been doing it for some years and it mostly works out well. The journals are fairly reputable in their fields and from what I can see authors seem to like them.

EGU describe them as "two-stage journals with public peer-review and interactive public discussions".

Unhelpfully for you, though, these are all geosciences. (List)

The process is:

article submitted
posted as discussion paper after initial approval by an editor
reviews & responses posted publicly, with third parties able to post uninvited reviews

The system still works on individual not collective reviews, but the fact that they're public potentially allows them to build on issues raised by each other, and I can't see an obvious reason they wouldn't accept a review contributed by a group.


How many referees is too many for a journal or conference paper submission?

I fully agree that 12 referees is too many. 2 to max 4 referees is fine. More referees will indeed leave the authors with conflicting comments, and does not contribute to the quality of the review.


The students listed on faculty sites, did a thesis or possibly independent study?

I have only seen one professor who does list students who completed an independent study with him on his website.

However, it appears that he has a very specific goal in doing so. By looking at his website (and previously talking to him) it seems like he is trying to portray his strong motivation to instill students with real world skills by giving them projects similar to what they might work on in industry since a common critique of Computer Science programs is that they don't get students ready for industry jobs.

Other than that, I would say the norm is to only list students that you advise but there isn't a hard rule.