How is a part time research job (from a University) perceived in the academic job market?

Well, it's much better to have a part-time research position than no research position---or more accurately, it's much better to be doing some research than no research.

I assume from your question you are either looking for a tenure-track/permanent faculty position at a research school or a research-oriented postdoc.  If you want me to assess your chance of success, I can't accurately do that without knowing a lot about your situation---in most areas I know of, the job market isn't great now, but certainly some fields/geographic regions/types of positions are less competitive than others.

Basically, for a research-oriented position, you want to convince the people in charge of hiring that you're going to do great research and contribute a lot to the research group you're trying to be a part of.  Generally this is easier the more research you've done.

However, if the amount and quality of research you've done is impressive for someone doing other work part-time, that will probably taken into account--which is maybe what you were really asking about.  For instance, if two candidates have comparable research and one had a heaving teaching load at the time and one had a light load, the one with the higher teaching load looks more impressive.

But if your research output is considerably
less than the competition, it's harder but not impossible to be viewed as a top candidate.  Here outstanding references can help make up for this.  Also, this is probably not a much of an issue if you are looking for postdoc positions.


Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school?

I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school.  I agree with others: Industry experience per se is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study.  (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.)

But it depends on what you do while you're in industry.  Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw "wattage", intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, real results.  Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission.  If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much.

My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one.


Politely ask a professor about my application status

I think that's too formal, you want to use a more informal communications channel such as email and just say "just wanted to ask if you know the status of my application" period.   That gives him the option of gracefully declining to answer.  You do not know what internal politics are going on in the program and what they are going to do with your application and there's really no way of forcing them to do anything.  All you really need to do is confirm that they got it.  Hopefully you are also aware that you should be looking at other programs and not setting your heart on just this one.

The other benefit of using an informal approach is that you can repeat it without appearing to be obnoxious.  Send him an email now, then keep doing it every couple weeks.  Sending a big old formal letter is kind of demanding a formal decision and response and puts them on the spot, and if you keep sending such letters then you come across as rigid and demanding.  Whereas an informal one-liner email isn't going to be perceived as demanding (it might be perceived as begging, but that's OK)


Double or single quotation marks non-obvious citation in citation?

The rule you are referring is probably a convoluted way of saying that:

In general you should use single quotation marks.
When the text you are quoting contains quotation markes, you should turn them into double quotation marks – no matter what they were before. (This is probably unless when the quotation marks appear in a quotation in the text you are quoting, in which case things get ugly.)

So, suppose the book you want to quote is one of the following:

  Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.
  Prof. Smith said ‘Hello’ to the students.

Then your quotation you should quote it as follows:

  The book mentions: ‘Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.’

Or (though I would advise against using such a construction at all):

  The book quotes the Professor: ‘“Hello”’

If the text you are quoting does not clarify whether something is a quote or not, this is not your problem (except that it may render it unreliable as a source of information). However, you might want to mention in general that you are quoting from a book which states that it has edited the quotes within in it.


How to get academic reference for grad school admission if I didn't interact with professors in my online bachelor's degree?

First of all, what I'm about to say may vary depending on the field. I'm in mathematics.

The role of the recommendation letters is for someone who can be seen as an authority to tell the admissions committee how well you will do in academia. Someone from outside academia is unlikely to be able to tell them that. You need at least one recommendation letter from someone with experience in academia. Part of the work you do in undergrad, once you realise that you want to go to grad school, is build relationships with professors who could potentially write recommendation letters. A letter from your supervisor at work will tell an admissions committee nothing about how well you will do in academia, unfortunately. You need someone who can say, based on personal experience with grad students, that you will be successful.

Unfortunately for you, it sounds like none of your professors know enough about you to write a good recommendation letter. However, an application (at least in math) without any academic reference would be very unlikely to succeed. I would say that you should pick a professor from a class where you did well, and there was considerable coursework that the professor can base his recommendation on, and email that professor and ask for a recommendation. It won't be an excellent letter, since they don't know you personally, and they may refuse to recommend someone they don't know personally, but you should try. The recommendations are one of the most important parts of a grad school application, and by not getting to know any of your professors well enough that they can write you a recommendation letter you've put yourself at a huge disadvantage.


The question is still very localized, but as somebody with Ph.D. in Statistics and MSc in Economics, working in industry after an unsuccessful start in academia, I would suggest taking the courses in the discipline you will be aiming at. I am not sure as to who is going to hire for Big Data Analytics; I rate statisticians as unlikely to do that (except probably for Carnegie Mellon and Stanford), and I am nearly certain that economists won't (they won't hire an Applied Math Ph.D. no matter how good you are), so business schools are your best shot -- some of them may hire people with wildly different backgrounds; UPenn has a Stat department housed in the business school, although that's a legacy issue rather than something deeply profound; Chicago has a small but strong statistical group; you might be able to find statistical groups in other places, too. Thus you would want to take Management courses in the mean time. An average business school faculty won't tell expectation from the gradient, except for a tiny fraction of quantitative finance people doing high frequency financial econometrics. My feeling is that an average Big Data architecture computer scientist/engineer won't tell an expectation from a gradient, either. (The only I thing I know about it is that at least one of the limits has to be uniform :) ). I may be entirely wrong with my assumptions about business schools, and if you don't see any Math/Appl Math/Stat Ph.D.s hired in the past 10 years in the top 30 schools that you've looked at, you don't have any chance, either, and should just announce your intention to go to industry, take all the classes you can, and apply to Google asking for a $3e5 starting salary ;).

The biggest career suggestion I could give is to move to Bay Area; I don't really know how  to do Big Data if you are not there.


Got denied authorship on paper; neither university nor publisher feel responsible

You probably inclined to think that "there’s nothing anyone can do" is equivalent to "I do not want to do anything". I want to provide an alternative way of thinking. Think about it as "There’s nothing anyone can do constructively, i.e. to your benefit". One can do many things here, but will they be useful to you in some way? Punishing someone gives only a temporary satisfaction. A possible course of action along this line would be that an erratum is written to this article stating:

  We acknowledge J LecC for insightful comments to this paper.

But does it bring anything? Your publication list nor your h-index will not grow because of this... Therefore, cynically speaking, just be happy in your new lab.


Is it OK to turn down a postdoc offer (contract not signed yet) after getting a better postdoc offer

While it may be legally OK, if your field is a small one, there may be damage to reputation as word of you withdrawing from an informal acceptance propagates.


Poster about a published article (Poster session in physics conference)

I am not aware of any standard way to do this, coming from a physics background and having presented several posters. I would either include the paper in the references, or have a statement directly under the title along the lines of 'Results presented here published as [publication details]', as you suggested.


Location, life and applying for faculty positions

Best wishes to you. This is definitely a hard decision. I chose career over my personal life and I've spent the last five years in a small city which, to be honest, I don't find all that appealing. I believe it was the right decision (I love my work), but I'd be lying if I said I was completely sure.

I certainly know of academics who made the opposite decision, and I think they feel analogously: they may have some regrets, but suspect that they made the right call.

Ultimately, no one can make this decision for you. You might also keep in mind that there is middle ground between only New York and "absolutely everywhere". There are at least a dozen American cities with direct flights to London, most of which are quite big and cosmopolitan, all of which have research universities, and several of which are not far from New York. So you might consider compromising somewhat while still ruling out places where you definitely don't want to live.

Then again, you might not. Good luck to you in any case.


Since the other university is actually the subject of your study, then I think that the IRB of your current university is the better place to judge it. It avoids a conflict of interest within the other university.

Your former colleague at the other university probably shouldn't be a co-researcher, but could be integrated into the study in another way; say as a source of information. This lets them, also, avoid a conflict.

Proposing it to the Dean at that university may also be problematic. Your "want to help them fix the problem" will very possibly not be well received. You might get quite a lot of blowback.

If they recognize the problem on their own and come to you as a consultant, then it is a different story. Otherwise you will come across as an unwelcome outsider and a disgruntled alum.

I won't recommend against your study, but I think that you should keep it as independent of the other university's administration as possible.


What prevents people from manipulating data to write better papers?

Can I use what I described above to publish a paper without much hassle?

Yes, it's easy to write a fraudulent paper, and it's not hard to get it published if you are willing to publish in a journal with low standards.  (Some predatory publishers will publish literally anything if you are willing to pay them.)  You might even get it published somewhere respectable if you fake everything convincingly, by getting results that are good enough to be impressive without being so implausible that reviewers become suspicious.

  Is there something I am missing?

I'd bet that what you're missing is the role of reputation in academia.  If you don't maintain a good reputation, you'll be ignored and marginalized, with no ability to influence the field.  If your only goal is to produce a paper, then there's a lot of scope for mischief, but this generally won't lead to a successful research career.  If people are unable to build on your work, they'll become suspicious and your reputation will suffer.  (And if they aren't even interested in trying to build on your work, then by definition you aren't having an influential career.)

It's not impossible to succeed in academia by fraud, as demonstrated by the people who succeeded for some years before they were caught.  However, it's much harder than faking a single paper.


Are anonymous online surveys exempt from IRB?

At least at my institution and I suspect at most of them, the IRB tells you when your survey doesn't need full IRB review because it is legally exempt (often through an expedited process). You don't get to skip IRB entirely because you don't think it's needed (unless your institution says this is the case, or sends you in an alternate path to determine exemption, like some other not-really-an-IRB-committee).
You also might be saved if you can operate under some sort of blanket exemption from IRB for a category of work. For example, courses for students might have such a protocol that allows review to be skipped as long as it fits in certain parameters (basically they've already gotten acceptance for a range of studies that fit those parameters).
You'll have to contact your IRB, and likely beg them for forgiveness. It doesn't matter what we think at all. See also here and another useful Q&A that applies to your question.


Presenting the publications of a research group online

You could use BibBase.org. It's a free web service that I created with the aim to solve the problem you describe. I was originally motivated by the third point (easy to maintain). As input you can use a bibtex file, Zotero, or Mendeley, and unlike bib2html you don't need to rerun any program after making changes to your input. Visitors can resort by different criteria (author, year, keyword, number of downloads, type), get the bibtex source entry (even when not using bibtex as input), and subscribe to an RSS. Here is an example: http://www.isi.edu/integration/karma/#publication

(Disclaimer: I'm the creator of BibBase.)


Quitting a collaboration project without hurting collaborators

Just graciously explain yourself and be firm. They may not be happy but if you just won't go forward, they have to deal with it.

You can't always make everyone told happy.  Sometimes you just need to cut things off.

Don't belabor or debate.  Just be respectful, but firm.  And brief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABXtWqmArUU


Do academicians consider Challenges on Kaggle to be research-worthy?

One of the other uses I've noticed (besides publishing papers on a competition itself) is academics using a competition to demonstrate the application of a particular algorithm that they have developed and published.  See Steffen Rendle's libFM (Factorization Machines) winning the Grockit Challenge, and the winning team of academics in the Merck Molecular Activity Challenge with their use of deep learning.


Can I informally ask the special session organizers about the paper's decision?

Yes, you can certainly ask, but you may not get an answer, especially in the time frame you need. So, when you ask, say why you need the information.

But even if you don't get an answer, you can list the paper in your CV as "submitted, awaiting decision", so that you get some "credit" for it. But, since decisions about the postdoc won't be made for a while, anyway, you can probably update your cv when you learn more.


Weird volume and issue number for an IEEE publication

That is what they temporarily use for "Early online" papers that have not yet been assigned to an issue.


Is it feasible/acceptable for me to convey my concerns to staff regarding performance of classmates on coursework reports?

An undergraduate student is absolutely in no position to make any institutional changes in regards to the problems you've observed. In many cases, even the full professors have little ability to change the situation, due to departmental or administrative requirements for certain passing rates or median scores out of a class, etc. Possibly the faculty have seen this, and/or counseled concerned students about it, hundreds of times already.

You should take some amount of confidence that this is evidence you're ready for your next big step (which seems well-timed, in that your Master's starts next year). You know how to properly research, cite, support, and use LaTeX to write a paper; and you will doubtlessly be using those skills in your next position.

Frankly, the librarian was very much out of place to put the burden of responsibility for this on an undergraduate student. I call "foul" on that.


Sharing referee/AE report online to point out a grievous error in refereeing

For the sake of science [...], I intend to upload my paper, the referee report and the covering letter of the associate editor (all of whom are anonymous, BTW) on my website and on researchgate. Alongside this, I plan to upload an explanation explaining why the journal was mathematically wrong to reject my work.

Besides possibly being a copyright infringement and coming across as immature, this isn't really going to contribute anything to science.  Your paper is not going to attract a significant audience if it's only on your website and researchgate.  arXiv would be slightly better, but not much.

Your contribution to science is the paper itself, so the best way to handle this situation is to revise your paper to make it more clear, particularly to a reader who may have the same misconceptions as the reviewer did.  Then submit it to a different journal.

To be clear, I do not think it is a good idea to post an explicit rebuttal or criticism of the referee's report,  with or without the report itself, on your website or in any other public forum,.   It is unprofessional, and it will cause people to focus less on the content of your work and more on your negative reactions.  You can rebut their concerns indirectly within your paper itself ("it may appear that X, but in fact this is not true because Y"), but do not "call out" the referee or the journal.


Is it OK to have many graphs, tables, and images in a masters thesis?

In my opinion, it is perfectly fine if you want to put so many original pictures in your thesis and if you are writing a thesis in natural science, you can even put some pictures from other papers/books in your introduction chapter. Just try to imagine you are a thesis reader (a professor) with so many other things to do. They would like to read less text and see more comprehensive figures. Of course, making a figure comprehensive depends on the quality of your graphics as well as your caption text.

So here's what I suggest: anytime you want to put a figure in your text, ask yourself: how this figure is going to help my readers understand the main point? Is it conveying the main message? And how the captions will help to understand this message?

Remember, other people also have limited time and sometimes limited interest in what you did or even the task of evaluating the thesis, so it is up to you to make your material concisely so that they can understand about your intentions easily.


Does it matter if I present in a PhD interview a topic which is partially unrelated to the PhD one?

I was offered a job in a sub-discipline that I was not a specialist in.  Everyone knew this; I was quite truthful about the situation.  If this should happen, think carefully because much extra work will be expected on your part.  I take it as obvious that you should be and have been honest throughout all this.  However, you still must evaluate very carefully what to do if the job-offer is too far removed from your field-of-study.  From:  One who has been there.


Asking the other professor (as other paper's co-author) to cover the conference expenses

You are in a pinch.  Your advisor waited too long to tell you he couldn't pay your way, and now you can't apply for financial support through other means.  (Except there is still the possibility of the co-author.)

However, you are not comfortable asserting yourself with your advisor, and requesting that he sound out the co-author; and you feel you have good reason to feel that way.

So you had the idea of sounding out the co-author yourself, and are asking whether it would be a faux pas (i.e. if it would look bad for you to talk to her about the problem).

Well, it looks a bit brash.

If I assume all the premises as you laid them out -- here's the best I can come up with for you:

Speak with Ms. Dr. Co-author in person.  Explain:

  Mr. Dr. Advisor and I had a bit of a misunderstanding, and I just found out he doesn't have any funding for my trip to such-and-so.  I am concerned that it may be too close to the conference dates to apply for funding through such-and-so.  But I wanted to ask your advice.  It is a very awkward situation for me, since on my graduate stipend I just don't have the funds to finance a trip like this.  Do you think I should still apply?

If Ms. Dr. Co-author listens with her heart, she will get the message.

Listen carefully to her when she responds, so you can gauge whether she got your meaning, and to get a feel whether she might be annoyed, offended, shocked, or whatever, if you were to ask her more openly.

That's the best I can come up with.  Your system is somewhat over-constrained.


Dealing with a slow moving project as a professional researcher

First, I'm not from your area and I don't know how things usually work in medical labs. But I have participated in several research project in field of computer science. Some of these projects were just as you described, and even though the fields are different, I think the situation is the same.

My simple suggestion is to leave that lab for good. That might be a very bold decision, but unfortunately people like you (and me) have to take this bold decision for a brighter future.

You have mentioned that the lab environment is very good, you love your boss and your collegues. That is great! But that is not enough. Simply put, the things you have done goes in your CV. Not your good relationships with your boss and collegues. As a person who is at the beginning of their career, you should activate your potential before it is long lost.

I recently moved to another country from my hometown. And that was not an easy decision. Just like you, I had very good friendships, and perfect relationships with my supervisors. Thus, most of my relatives told me that these type of friendships are not to be found abroad, and I was gambling by leaving such a good environment.

They were right. I do not have very close friends in my workplace here. We do not usually go out for a few drinks occasionally as I did with my collegues back in my hometown.
However, I found two things way more precious in my new workplace.
Shared ambition and productivity.

I still do the job I love, I have good relationships in my new workplace, I have a great and friendly boss, and I actually work!

To sum up, every single research project I have participated was exactly as you described. Despite the good relationships and laughter, lack of productivity and drudgery work made me feel like I'm wasting my life there. I realized that I was not happy. I moved on. I'm happy. If you prefer being productive for the expense of slight decrease in the close relationships environment, realize that you are not happy. You should move on. You will be happy.

Also, if allowed, I suggest you also ask this question in Workplace.SE.


Obviously it depends on an institution's specific policies.

I expect in most cases, starting a program like this would start with the faculty in an existing department; probably a psychology department in this case.  The faculty would come up with a program they believe would be beneficial, and identify the resources they would need in order to offer it (additional course offerings, new faculty hiring to get the necessary expertise, new or reassigned faculty lines if necessary, lab resources, external grant funding, etc).  They would write syllabi for any new proposed courses, create a description of the program for the college's catalog, and specify the requirements for the degree (which courses are required, which electives could be taken by students, etc).  The department's faculty might need to vote on the proposal before submitting it for further review.

The proposal would then be reviewed by various groups and administrators within the university, who would weigh its academic suitability, impact on existing programs, probable demand, financial costs, tangible and intangible benefits to the institution and/or society, availability of resources, and so on. Usually the new program would need final approval by a dean and/or a provost.

There are many possible obstacles to creating a new program.  In your example, if a department doesn't currently have any faculty specializing in I-O psychology, they would have to hire them.  This might be done by replacing retiring faculty who have other specialties, but this can be politically touchy, as faculty groups in other subspecialties might feel that they are losing needed resources.  It can also be done by creating new faculty lines, but this is a major long-term financial commitment for the university, and such a proposal has to compete for resources with other departments who may be proposing new programs of their own.  It may be hard to justify the need to higher administration, particularly as the institution cannot necessarily be confident as to how many students will be attracted to the program (and to what extent this may simply "cannnibalize" demand from other programs within the institution).

So there is a very long road between recognizing that a program might be desirable, and actually having one.


List of open problems: pros and cons of making it public

Point to keep in mind:

Asking questions is easy.  Asking questions other people think is interesting is less easy (see some questions on this site).  Asking questions that lead to important results is hard.

Fundamental ideas come up over and over again, so even if they don't take off at first, they'll spread eventually.

Pros:

If some of the questions are indeed interesting, you could help people find good problems.  If you're lucky, you may get asked to collaborate, but I wouldn't count on it.

Such a list, may help get your name out there.  Maybe the questions are great and people think you're brilliant.

Cons:

The most obvious and serious con for you is that someone else solves what you're working on before you do, and a lot of your work becomes unpublishable, and you don't get a job you want.

Some of your questions are trivial/well known and people think you're stupid/ignorant.

Worst case scenario (exaggerated): everybody in the field finds your questions super-interesting and all work on the same question but nobody solves it for the rest of their life and the field dies.

Suggestions
Think very carefully about which of your ideas you want to share, with whom, and with what purpose.  I'm not going to advertise to the world what new idea I'm working on, or even a good one I have on the back burner, until I make serious progress or have compelling evidence.  Because (1) I don't like to compete with people, and (2) if nothing works out (most common) then it's likely either not a good idea or not the right time for this idea.  This doesn't mean I won't tell people, or ask other people related questions, I just don't post a pdf on the internet.  I tell some people I trust, and sometimes this leads to collaborations.  Occasional "further problems" to projects I've done, I mention in papers, but this is when either I don't want to do it myself or I deem it unlikely anyone else would solve it before me.
Also, at least for me, often it's years between first asking a question and answering it, but if I had advertised it, maybe someone else would've done it in the meantime robbing me of the satisfaction of answering it myself.
If you decide you are willing to share some of your ideas on the internet, and you think they may be of wide interest, rather than just posting a list, consider making a blog of some of your thoughts.  If you get readers, this could generate interest in things you like, which might make your work more popular.  At the same time, you can pose your questions in a very informal way, so they're not presented as if they're supposed to be a grand list of the most fundamental problems in the field.
Not everyone has the same philosophy as me, but I would consider being too open about your ideas somewhat risky at your stage.
Oh, and maybe ask your advisor first.


Ethical implications of withdrawing a paper during the rebuttal phase and submitting it somewhere else

One certainly can withdraw a paper after initial reviews and if the reviews indicate that the paper does not fit well with the conference topic-wise or has to be significantly improved/re-worked. In the latter case, the paper author should assess how much time is required to work on the paper and if it is possible to meet the deadlines (taking into account additional development, data collection/re-collection, work on the text and visualizations, literature review, etc.).

If the timeline does not seem viable, withdrawing and resubmitting to another conference is certainly the right call. In addition to the potential adaptation of the paper to the new submission, it would be very wise to use the feedback from the original reviewers to improve the paper.

I would certainly agree that in the case of withdrawal and resubmission, you would have used the reviewers' feedback and time in an intended way: to improve your work and make it better/more accessible to your reader/listener. However, there is a small catch: different entities (people, organizations) intend different things for the use of their resources, in this case, the pool of reviewers and their time.

In this case, I would say, the authors' good intentions matter the most.

If the author of the paper submitted it to a conference/journal primarily to get the feedback of the reviewers and get "free" advice knowing that the submission itself is doomed to fail — this is unethical in my opinion.

On the contrary, if a particular paper failed to go to a particular conference during peer review and its improved version ended up in another venue — this is great. Peer review and research win!

If this situation happens to the researcher consistent and too often, I would certainly agree that there is at least a hint of being a bit unethical, more from the point of being a bit lazy and wasteful of ones' peers' time.


Why did most US Universities switch to semesters

There are arguments in favor of both semesters and quarters, but these seem to be inconclusive. (In the U.S.:) In fact, in the 1960s and early 1970s, many places were on semesters... but there was a fad of switching to quarters, so many switched. Then, in the 1990s, there was a fad to switch (yes, "back") to semesters.

So it does not seem to be that it was eventually discovered that semesters are better. Nor that quarters are better. Plausibly semesters are easier to administer, since there're fewer registration events per year.
On the other hand, students seem to like the shorter "marches"...


Mendeley does it actually. I did not try properly before.

Then I had a problem with getting the authors correct. What you need to do is put them as follows

Last Name, First Names
Last Name, First Names

and so on.

After Edit-1:Another useful thing in Mendeley is that, you just have to select the authors from the pdf and Mendeley will give suggestions on the syntax based on existing authors in the current database. See the following image.


IEEE journal or conference total number of publications?

This addresses your journal of interest, specifically.

More generally, academic.research.microsoft.com can be used to find such information for other journals, as well as conferences.

Disclaimer: As user ff524 has pointed out in the comments of this answer, Microsoft Academic Search has stopped indexing/tracking "even a fraction of papers published since 2011", as reported by this article. I thank ff524 for pointing this out.


Where to locate authors’ names in sentences?

Version 2 seems stilted; 3 is an unnecessarily verbose use of the passive voice. The choice between 4 and 5 is really a matter of the journal's style guidelines rather than an active decision you will get to make as the author.

So the real choice here is between 1 or 4/5. The key thing to note is that you sentence draws attention to an actor and an action through your choice of subject and verb. (See Joseph Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace for a superb discussion of this and many related principles)

In 1, the actor is "Johnson" and the action is "argued".  In 4/5, the action is "This" and the action is "will not work". Thus if your intent is to draw attention to the fact that Johnson made this claim, as you would e.g. if discussing a history of ideas, version 1 might be preferred. If instead your intent is to draw attention to the claim itself, and the reference to Johnson is simply a matter of good scholarship, 4/5 will be preferred.


Is a letter of recommendation from an employer useful, when the company has shut down?

There are quite a few issues to be careful about when considering a recommendation letter from an employer. Some examples:

Make sure they understand the culture of academic recommendation letters. In industry, lots of the time recommendations are more-or-less a token statement that someone worked for you and didn't cause any issues. Academic recommendation letters are very different, so make sure they have an idea of what kind of letter to write.
What exactly is the background of your letter writer? This is a bigger issue with PhD (or research-based masters) recommendations, but if your recommender doesn't have the background or credentials to understand what it takes to become a successful researcher or academic, then it's unlikely that they will be able to speak intelligently about whether you have those traits.
How common are industry to graduate school moves in your field? In a field like mathematics or physics, my guess is that most candidates do not have significant work experience and any work experience is usually far removed from the subject material. In a field like that, the people evaluating your profile are more likely to discount an industry recommendation, especially if it comes from a non-PhD, non-researcher. On the other hand, fields like business or engineering have many more applicants from industry and are probably used to seeing those recommendation letters, so it is unlikely to put you at a significant disadvantage.
How well are your other bases covered and what are your alternatives? If you have recommendation letters that already focus on your undergraduate classes and research, then it may be more valuable to have a letter describing traits you exhibited in the workplace than another "he got an A in my class" letter.

In general, an employer's letter is never going to be as good as a great letter from an active researcher that you worked closely with. But most applicants don't have three of those on hand. Can a letter from an employer be useful? Definitely. Given the alternatives, is it the optimal decision for you? It's possible, but that depends on a lot of factors that you should probably spend some time thinking about.


As JeffE said in his comment, you will need to seek permission from the director of the research group - if permission is given, I would suggest to get their input as to how to develop the research into a paper, and even suggest having the director as a co-author.


Do active researchers in mathematics read a paper in detail?

The answer, of course, is that it varies with each reader and with the specific needs of each reader. For many people, a skim is sufficient for most papers. The question is "does this seem reasonable" and if so, there may be little need to go into the details.

This is especially true about proofs. If an overview of the proof suggests that the techniques are standard for the field, and the results don't seem to clash with what the reader knows, then it is unlikely that the reader will spend the time on every detail.

The exceptions, of course, are many. Students want to learn new proof techniques that they are relatively unfamiliar with. Surprising results require a close look. Long standing problems, when finally proven, also require a close look.

And, in many cases, the way something is proven is more important than the result itself. If a skim of a proof suggests that there is something new here, then experienced mathematicians will want to examine it in detail as well as look for gaps and errors.

But if you are a student, or otherwise feel the need for an answer to this question, then I'd suggest that you err on the side of completeness. Keep your skeptic hat on until you are satisfied.


Is tutoring (outside university) while doing PhD a good idea?

Of course, whether it is a good idea can only be known in hindsight. But many PhD students work as private tutors, so if it sounds interesting to you, you might as well try it.

Some things to consider:

It will probably take you some time to prepare for each lesson. And unless your students will come to your home or office, also account for travel time and expenses. Four hours of lessons per week may require significantly more than four hours of your time.
What will you do if your students are late to their lesson, or don't show up at all? What if they don't study for their lessons? What if they are late in paying you? What if they (or their parents) demand some different style of tutoring than you had planned? What if they demand that you just do their homework while they Facebook?
Consider the time it will take you to recruit students. Assume that they  will quit unexpectedly, requiring you  to find new students and lose income in the meantime. Do not count on your tutoring fees as steady income.
Ethical issues: if you are working as a teaching assistant or something similar, you cannot be a private tutor to students who are enrolled in your class. Check for other ethics or conflict of interest rules that your university may have. In particular, although your university office may seem like a convenient place to meet your private students, this may not be allowed.


Ph.D. in Geophysics while doing an online MS in CS

In general, the CS and machine learning community is more interested in what you build than in what diploma's you have. There won't be many companies where a masters degree is going to significantly compliment a phd with relevant practical experience. A masters degree could give you a more solid theoretical foundation and the possibility to work on some other (toy) project giving you more broad experience. However you can also get that using coursera and personal projects.

The real trade-off is: a more structured program versus a more self-made learning path. The degree program also 'forces' you to do the work, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.


Say a published paper has 4 authors. How many directly contributed to writing the paper?

This depends on the field and what is customary there. In mathematics you can assume (generally) that all contributed equally. In lab sciences it may not be the case. It is customary in some that the PI who created the lab is on all publications as a co-author but may not have contributed anything to the writing and possibly very little to the ideas. But the PI makes the work of the lab critters possible, so gets on every paper. In some such fields, it is also customary that some fairly low level technicians get on some papers, though didn't contribute to the writing, but they managed the experiments for the actual authors.

Ideally, papers in which people don't contribute "equally" (whatever that means) have a Contributions section to detail the contributions of each as well, possibly of some who weren't listed as co-authors.

The actual writer of the paper may be listed first or not. Sometimes the PI is listed first and sometimes last.

But be aware that intellectual work is hard to measure. Someone may have only spent a few moments thinking about the problem at hand, but provided the crux of the solution that was then written up by others. Flash of insight.

Someone who writes a lot in the field in question can probably answer questions about what is customary in that field. In CS we tend to list authors alphabetically and don't worry much about such things. But we also tend to list only people who actually contribute something meaningful.


How should I display my MPhys degree on my CV?

Should I split it in 2 sections where I state my first 3-year marks
  and then in a 4th year mark or just leave it as MPhys Physics and my
  total average till now?

This is not a good idea for two reasons: one, the MPhys is an integrated degree; you don't get BSc + MSc, so you shouldn't try to display it this way on your CV. Put your final classification and mark if you have them, or a predicted classification if you don't (i.e. predicted 1st, 2:1, 2:2 etc).

Secondly, most (if not all) of the institutions you apply to will ask for an official grade transcript provided by your university. This means that there is really no need to go into detail about individual marks on your CV, as they will all be displayed on the transcript.

  Also should I include all my experiments (which involved several
  sessions of labs and a long report)?

Probably not. Listing every experiment you did as an undergrad will make your CV very cumbersome. Also, every physics undergrad I know did several sessions of labs and wrote long reports. Including this will not make your CV stand out. Pick one important experiment or project that you did well on and talk about that in your personal statement, if it is one of the factors that has motivated you to apply for a PhD.

  Lastly, what would be the best option if I have no previous experience of a job?

If you don't have it, you can't write about it, but work experience in non-academic jobs is generally irrelevant for an academic CV anyway.

I'd advise you ask your personal tutor to read through your application materials, including your CV, before submitting. They will likely have some useful pointers, and it may help them too, if they are writing a reference for you.


From a formal point of view co-authorship should involve a certain definable contribution. The Vancouver Protocol makes the following definition (here in the form presented by the BMJ:

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND Final approval of the version to be published; AND Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

You state that your advisor did not contribute much to the research questions or methodology. I further do not know your background so I can only judge from your question and provide general comments on your question. Writing up your research from a thesis to a publishable manuscript is a skill which is normally learned through graduate school. I am therefore thinking that you may still need quite a bit of guidance to manage the transition of your thesis material to the manuscript format. If your advisor is willing to help you with this part and the scientific input required to do so then co-authorship may well be warranted. So the co-authorship question should be answered on the final product and the contributions that went into it, and not necessarily what went into just your thesis.


When to tell current employer that I want to quit and switch to a different PhD

I wonder if the choice is as stark as you think. It ought to be possible to begin a search for a new opportunity without advising anyone of your search. You can do this informally, of course, with other professors at other institutions, but also formally.

The time that it will be necessary to make your desires know can be fairly late, say when the new place requires letters of recommendation and letters from other sources won't do.

In some labs it is required to release employees at the first hint they might want to leave.

But if you can line something up that is pretty firm, subject to letters, you can finesse the decision even then. "I just got a fantastic opportunity and wish to follow it up", rather than "I've been looking for something else for a while now...".

But even if you make a commitment to leave, don't neglect your current work. Good work will make those letters better and easier to obtain.

But, you won't really know how employable you are until you start to look and see what feedback you get.

It might be necessary for you, in the short term, to let prospective supervisors know that your search is still confidential. I think most people would respect that if you give them a reason.


Is it a good idea to submit to a single-blind journal when I have no affiliation?

Well, you have the following options:

Write up and publish your article as an independent researcher. If your work is theoretical and mathematically provable then, there is a high chance that the lack of affiliation doesn't affect the way the editor approach your paper. However, if you are using a large volume of data and providing surprising results, then there is a high chance that your lack of credit (if I may assume it.) discourages the journal from publishing your work. The fact is that most of the journals cannot dig down and verify the reproducibility of large-scale analyses so their best bet is relying on the credential of institutes.
Approach a PI in a related field to review your work and see if he can provide some feedback/comments on that. You can revise your manuscript based on your mutual discussions and add some potential experiments up and then publish it together. You probably would save a huge amount of money as you can depend on their funding resources.


How do I tactfully tell my advisor (who's much busier than I am) that I'm too busy to do such-and-such?

I have had this discussion with my supervisors/advisors many times, all with positive outcomes.  This is what I do:

Be direct and to the point, it sounds like neither of you have time to dance around the issue.
Offer alternative ideas/timelines/strategies, I found that coming up with a solution is appreciated as in the long term, it is going to save time.
Be honest and truthful, state that you are overloaded - show how this is so, and either defer or decline the request.

Remember, your time and well being is just as valuable, and any good advisor already recognises that fact.


Which is more valued, first authorship articles or the number of articles produced?

As an experienced researcher, I think that this choice is a false dichotomy.

What I look for in a researcher's record is their ability to do meaningful and impactful work, and the strongest researchers in most fields I know of typically have a record that shows a mixture of first-author and Nth-author papers:

If you're capable of innovating and of doing the core work of a project, that should produce some first-author papers.
If your work is impactful and useful to others, that will result in collaborations, many of which will not have you as first author.

Complementarily, I would consider it a red flag to see either very few first-author papers (often indicating poor core research capabilities) or nearly all first-author papers (often indicating poor ability to work with others).

The further along a researcher is in their career, the more that I would typically expect the balance to shift from first-author papers to non-first-author papers, both as there is more time to build collaborations and as they start to supervise more junior researchers (student or otherwise).

To answer your specific question about a postdoctoral application, then, I would typically expect to see at least a few strong first-author papers and also some non-first-author collaborations.  At that stage of career, however, the number of significant papers is typically small enough that strong candidates can have all sorts of different mixtures.  In the end, at least for a researcher like myself, my judgement regarding a postdoc is less about the number of publications than what's in the publications and what you did for them.

Note: the general expectations expressed here may not apply to certain fields with very different publication expectations, such as pure mathematical theory or experimental high-energy particle physics


What to do when you spend several months working on an idea that fails in a masters thesis?

Step 1: Don't panic

I was in a similar situation halfway through my MSc. I was in a panic, sure that my academic career was in ruins. My supervisor calmed me down, reminded that a negative result was still a result, and and told me that a for a master's degree, it was not strictly required that I make a scientific contribution or have a publication. In the worst case, in my thesis I would present my negative results, explain why this technique didn't work, and suggest what could be done differently by future researchers. (Once I was relaxed enough to think clearly, I came up with new things to try, and everything worked out grand.)

I suggest you discuss the "worst case scenario" with your supervisor; you'll probably find out it's not as bad as you think. Remember that this is research: positive results are not guaranteed.

Step 2: Think about why this technique isn't working.

I'm sure you've learned something about why your technique isn't working. That should give you some ideas for what to try next. If you're out of ideas, sit a friend down and explain everything to them. The friend doesn't need to know anything about machine learning; they're just a sounding board. The naive questions they ask may give you ideas. Maybe you need a week off to recharge your batteries.

Step 3: Try something new.

Take those new ideas you got in step 2, and apply them. But now that you're more experienced, think about how you could find out more quickly if the idea is feasible, so you can change tack again if needed.


Harvard reference list for citing disjoint passages from the same text

How do I cite disjoint passages from the same text without implying that I have used everything between them?

In the reference list, write:

Kline, M. (1972). Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York:
Oxford University Press.

I.e., omit page numbers. In the main body, write (Kline, M. 1972, p. 50) and (Kline, M. 1972, p. 83), as you already have. In some disciplines, you can also write (Kline, M. 1972, p. 50) followed by (ibid, p. 50), when no other citations appear inbetween.


Are there journals that prevent authors from contacting reviewers?

The journal is asking that those submitting papers do not contact potential reviewers.  That is very different from not asking you to contact the actual reviewers, although there are norms to be followed in that situation.

I can imagine new authors thinking they need permission from the potential reviewers if it is fine to put them on the list.  After all, that is recommended before you put a name down on a resume as a reference to a job application.  Authors should just put down names of possible referees, without checking if they are available for the assignment.  That is the editors job if they decide to use a name from the author's list.

The study you cite refers to the second situation.  If you have an idea who was the referee on the paper, you can still interact with that person as if they were not the referee.  If you aggressively ask that person if they were the referee, you may regret that action. Recall that revenge is a dish best served cold. That person you angered  might referee another one of your papers in the future.

There is little need for a formal punishment mechanism at a journal, although some journals must surely have one.  Your editor today might be tomorrow the person who is allocating travel funds at an upcoming conference.  The person at the conference asking you to not go overtime today might tomorrow be on the hiring committee where one of your students is trying to get a postdoc.  I doubt you will find many instances of a formal censure.


First a remark: you don't seem to even consider postdoc positions, is this a choice? These are research positions of course, but this is by far the most common way for a recent PhD graduate to start an academic career, possibly applying for assistant professor positions later on if this is something that you consider doing.

As far as I know, what you are looking for is called (full-time) lecturer position in the British Isles academic system (I'm in Ireland myself). These positions are not very common but I've seen a few being advertised from time to time, that could depend on the institution. They are probably a bit competitive (though less than assistant professor jobs), so you might need to strengthen your teaching record first. For that the best way is to contact every department you know asking them if they have any short-term teaching needs paid by the hour that you could fill. In my experience it's quite common for CS departments to be under-staffed so there's a decent chance you'll find something.


Is it ethical to seek a PhD program if you suspect you may want only a Masters?

My background comes from Biology so I don't know the details of engineering graduate programs. However, a graduate student is a significant financial investment for the graduate program and advisor. For the student it is the time and emotional investment. Graduate programs that offer funding i.e. stipend and tuition waivers to PhD students do so because it will take the student 4-7 years of full-time+ work to complete their courses and dissertation work. They are typically expected to devote all of their time towards their degree and are discouraged from outside employment. Thus the stipend to cover living expenses.

A MS program is typically 2-3 years and varies in requirements from program to program, ranging from just coursework to coursework plus thesis.

The learning curve is steep for someone who has no previous research experience and the time and money that is spent getting the student up to a productive level is significant. In our program, PhD students typically advance to candidacy around the time that a MS student would be finishing the program. Before this time the PhD student and the MS student are working under comparable conditions. This is also the time that if a PhD student were to not be meeting minimum expectations then they would be denied candidacy and exit with a MS degree.

There is less pressure for a PhD student to begin a project that will result in their dissertation early on because they have more time. MS students must find an advisor immediately upon entering the program and thus begin generating something meaningful if they are to complete and defend a thesis. The body of work is much smaller than a PhD student and is typically just a demonstration of their advanced breadth of knowledge in the field.

Many advisors in my program view MS students as an extra pair of hands and receive less attention when it comes to mentoring. Their projects will often be small offshoots of a bigger project that a PhD student or post-doc is working on. You must understand that they are treated differently from the beginning not because of discrimination but because research projects take a long time to develop and often meaningful results do not come until a few years of work, which is too long for a MS student.

For you particular situation, I would say if you are unsure about which program is right for you I would say take some extra time to figure that out. Whether that means get a job in the area you are interested or something else. Just be sure if you sign up for a PhD that you really want to do it. It is a difficult and really trying path, not for the half-hearted. Even for those who are extremely passionate about their work will question their place there and consider quitting during the bad times. Going into a graduate program with a clear focus and interest (PhD or MS) will make things go much smoother. Do not expect to show up and someone tell you what to do, or you may spend 6 months to a year just floating along trying to find your way.

Now selfishly speaking you are right, you could enter the program as a PhD student and feel it out, but in my opinion I would discourage you from doing that. You will likely waste your time and take longer to get your MS than you would if you went in from the beginning knowing you wanted an MS. You also risk soiling relationships that you could otherwise depend on to help you later in your career. Who knows if the advisor you picked will be angry that you left the lab with a MS when they were expecting a full 5-7 years of work out of you. The people I know who quit their PhD program often quit because the tough times made them realize they liked the idea of having a PhD but didn't really understand what it was going to take to get one. Make sure you know exactly what to expect.

Lastly, whatever you decide, pick an advisor very carefully. Advisors like bosses all have a range a personalities. Some are jerks that will call you during dinner time or saturday afternoon asking to meet with you. Some you will consider filing a missing persons report because you haven't been able to get ahold of them in 2 months. Make sure whoever you end up working with goes well with you.


Is attempting to get published in undergraduate history journals worth it?

First of all, if you've already written an excellent paper of which you are proud of, then why not submit it to an undergraduate history publication? It certainly won't hurt your chances for graduate school admissions. In fact, I would say that it certainly demonstrates interest and willingness to engage in the academic community of your chosen field. This is something that graduate admissions look for and care about when they're evaluating your application.

Undergraduate publishing opportunities are quite plentiful, and many of them are becoming very well-recognized. In my opinion, I've found that the writing/research published in the best history journals are neck-to-neck with papers that could pass a graduate thesis defense.

I would encourage you to check out:
http://history.unc.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-journals/
with an emphasis on Yale's and Vanderbilt's undergraduate (which are one of the few journals open to undergrads from all universities rather than just serving their own university/college). (Full disclosure, I am an editor of the latter, see: http://vanderbilthistoricalreview.com)


Ph.D. mathematics application: Disclosing course textbooks

I am the Graduate Coordinator for a math department in which we ask graduate applicants to list their course textbooks.

I encourage you to follow the directions and list the textbooks that were used.  By and large, this is a good way for us to figure out the approximate level and content of courses like "algebra," "analysis" and "topology" with standard names but widely varying content.  A complex analysis course taught out of

  A First Course in Complex Analysis by Matthias Beck, Gerald Marchesi, Dennis Pixton, and Lucas Sabalka

is likely to be quite different from one taught out of

  Complex Analysis, Lars Ahlfors

If you feel that the chosen textbook was below the level of the course and you supplemented with a more advanced/rigorous textbook, you may as well list that textbook too, saying something like "I myself used..."

If the instructor has online lecture notes, definitely include a link to them: that gives a really good idea of what was covered.

Note to international readers: having standard textbooks for advanced undergraduate math classes is much more, um, standard in the United States than in many other parts of the world.  We certainly know that international students may come from less of a "textbook culture."  (This need not be a bad thing in itself, but it is one of several ways in which it can be harder to evaluate the profile of an international applicant than a domestic one.)


An awfully far worse way to start the relationship would be to not be able to start that relationship. Please do yourself a favor and bite the bullet, contact the relevant person right away and calmly explain your current lapse/fear -  then listen carefully to what they tell you. There is no standard or law on how to handle such a situation, the program is likely able to do pretty much whatever it wants. The sooner you find something out the more time you have to work with to try to work something out - or to at least be able to relax!

I'd go so far as to say that if someone outside your program tells you with any certainty whether or not such an offer will be rescinded or not, you really should ignore them utterly - talk with your program! Every University, department, and program is pretty unique unto itself in questions of graduate school admission.

This is just one of those things best handled directly with the responsible persons, as advice in this form is worth it's mass in gold. Good luck - deep breaths!


Is it possible to do two PhD's in the same field one after another?

I think there is only a small chance of this happening. Educational resources are limited in general and people like to spread the opportunities. Many people reading your application might wonder if you are just wasting everyone's time, including your own.

Some universities will consider you, but others will immediately reject you.

A post-doc somewhere after your degree might be a better option if you think you have a chance of landing a good one. It gives you a chance to prove yourself and to build your CV.

Or, plan to switch universities prior to finishing. Either early or at some logical point. In the US a logical point would be after the required coursework or after an MS. Probably it would be different in India.


Doing an individual PhD in Germany from abroad

This question is very difficult to answer in general as PhD programs and their rules are hardly standardized in Germany, every university can mostly do as they please.
In my research institute (STEM) PhD students are employed workforce and as such your contract cannot start before you present yourself to HR at least once in person. But this does not seem to be the case for you.
During these Covid days many rules have also changed or are temporarily not applied. In my experience, the administrations have become very relaxed, allowing many things that were not permitted before. For example, a friend of mine was able to receive the written assessment of his thesis by email, vowing to delete it again, while normally it is strictly required to read it in person, under supervision and the strict ban of any recording devices.
As such, in general, if your supervisor agrees to you staying in your country as long as Corona is around, there will probably be a way to make it happen.


Accepted into EPFL, might not get Visa in time, what am I signing myself up for?

I know of international students in my research lab (in Canada, not Switzerland) that crossed the US borders and came back immediately to renew student visas. In itself, this is not illegal.

However, I don't think that you would be allowed to study in your program without a student visa, because those are usually required by the university to receive insurance coverage (for instance, if you're working in a lab). You really should ask your program director for advice on this situation. I would expect them to be understanding and guide you.


Ethics of Accepting Unneeded Merit Based Scholarships

Congratulations! It's your decision, but I think the most commonly accepted point of view is that it's totally fine to keep the money. One thing you could do with it, or with part of it, is to give back to a need-based scholarship fund or to any other worthy cause.

Also, at least in the US, it is common for universities to solicit donations from alumni, so if you so choose you will have an opportunity to 'pay it forward' after you graduate.

Again, congratulations!


Insufficient novelty is definitely good enough reason to reject a paper - otherwise for example I can just repackage the proof of Pythagoras's theorem from the nearest mathematics textbook I can get my hands on, and publish that (I can publish that multiple times too).

To publish your results you need to convince the editor that the result actually matters. You write that they "significantly advance our understanding of certain mathematical objects". That's the key point you want to elaborate on. How exactly do they advance our understanding? Do they show that certain approaches to the open questions in the field are more likely / less likely to be successful? Do they lead to any partial results?

It's impossible to tell how other (not necessarily lesser) journals will react, since peer review is an inherently stochastic process, but if I'm the author I would look carefully at elaborating on the above questions before submitting it to another journal.


If I use non-government funds to pay for flight on non-U.S. carrier, can I then use government funds for other costs of that trip?

The text of the Federal Travel Regulations explicitly states:

  You are required by 49 U.S.C. 40118, commonly referred
  to as the “Fly America Act,” to use U.S. flag air carrier service for all air travel funded by the U.S. Government, except as provided in §§301-10.136 and 301-10.137 or when one of the following exceptions applies:

  [...]

  (g) When the costs of transportation are reimbursed in full by a third party, such as a foreign government, international agency, or other organization.

In this case, since you are not requesting federal funding for your air travel, you can use a non-foreign carrier. Clearly, foreign travel will most likely require lodging and per diem costs at non-US-owned venues—unless you happen to like staying at Holiday Inns and eating at McDonald's, Starbucks, or Pizza Hut. Moreover, the above portion of the regulations say that if improper air carriers are used, only the transportation costs are ruled unallowable. It does not talk about the per diem expenses for lodging, meals, and incidentals.


What might the editor do if my supervisor contacts a journal to claim authorship of a paper?

The short answer is that the editor will likely ask for more information from you and the adviser in response to a letter such as your adviser apparently plan to write. I doubt any action will be taken immediately and without some research if the editor is taking the task seriously.

As an editor, I would find this sort of case very difficult since I would (most likely) receive two conflicting pictures of the story. Editors have the power to take whatever action they find appropriate. Their decisions may of course be disputed and the story could go on. In a case that is relatively similar in parts (case link), an editor has turned to the Committee on Publication ethics to get support in a decision. Their case portfolio can also be of help to editors.

Obviously, following the linked case, an editor will try to have you and your adviser fix the problem yourself, it is after all primarily your problem. Hopefully the editor will come up with a plan for further actions, perhaps, as in the case, bring in a mediator and finally, if all fails, make a decision based on the existing facts that will be final. Some similar line of action seems appropriate and was also deemed appropriate by COPE. What route an editor will take may of course differ depending on the case but the aim will be to try to resolve what is right or wrong will be the aim and if all fails a suggestion on how the journal will proceed will follow.


I am (likely) being accused of cheating by my professor, what do I do?

First, don't assume that the concerns about one person are necessarily the same as concerns about another. It may just be coincidence.
Second, the history is what it is. If there is some "evidence" that you did something wrong you will just have to explain it as best you can and live with the consequences.
It may well be that the monitoring system gets a report of open windows/apps but can't distinguish what is visible to the user from what is not.
Explain your actions. I suggest honestly. If you didn't cheat, then insist on that and don't agree to "lesser penalties" if you admit to something you didn't do.

Also note that statements about what automated systems do or don't do can be checked experimentally and/or by contacting the vendor.


How do you decide whether or not to collaborate with an acquaintance?

It is good to be wary if you don't have much experience with the person and their basic ethical patterns. On the other hand, collaboration is a good thing generally if people contribute on an equitable (not necessarily equal) basis.

It depends on how much risk you are willing to take here and how important this particular project is to you. Once you agree, and the other person contributes anything, it will be difficult to back out. If success in this project seems vital to your future, I'd suggest not taking on much risk here. If it is "just another paper among others" then you can afford to take a chance.

But, I'd suggest that you work out the issue at the beginning of the project and not hope for the best. In particular: Will you be co-authors of the work? Who is the first/primary author of the resulting paper, assuming that is a consideration? Or, will one of you be the author and the other get appropriate acknowledgement? How much effort is each willing to put into the project. If it is a major effort for one party but just a minor (hobby) project for the other, then misunderstandings are possible. Are you willing to do the work yourself if the other party quits? Will you still be OK with co-authorship in that case?

Think about the worst case. Is that acceptable? But think about the most likely case, given what you do know about the other person.

Lots of questions on this site arise because participants didn't set up parameters and understandings at the start. The writers are mostly unhappy with the outcome and wonder how to recover. There are usually comments that indicate these things should have been worked out early and it is too late, at the end, for a happy outcome.

However, I think that most collaborations are more successful and can lead to long term productive relationships. Valuable, but with both upside and downside potential.


How To Cope With The Stigma of Quitting a Second PhD for a Third one?

First things first, if you have suicidal thought, then you need help. The fact that you tried one psychoanalyst, and that did not work for you, does not mean that the entire mental healthcare system is useless for you. Finding a therapist and a therapy that works for you can be long process of trial and error. Don't give up.

As to your question: You can't remove the past, all you can do is focus on making a better future.

If you want to reflect on your past experience to try to learn from it: I notice that you externalize the blame a lot. In the way you present your story there are three person: you are a top-student who wins prices, while the two others (the advisors) are narcissistic sociopaths or jealous and childish. That is probably not the whole story, and sticking to it will probably prevent you from learning from your experiences. However, now may not be the right time to process this. The only advise I can give you is: find a therapist that works for you and discuss this with her or him.

If you worry about how to present your story to others, then it is this black and white presentation that raises lots of red flags with me, not the fact that this is your third attempt.


Correct verb for professor "writing" student exams?

All that I really can say is what will not describe "creation of exams".
In some versions of English, "writing an exam" would mean "taking the exam" in other English. That is, being an examinee, rather than an examiner.
"Setting an exam" in some contexts is understood as "creating the exam", but seldom in the U.S.
It is not typical, but I'd think would be relatively clear in most versions of English, currently, to say "created exams" or "composed exams".
(Nevertheless, people looking at the CV would think, "hm, what? Of course. Why is this person mentioning this?")


How to submit a paper without being backed up by my employer

"Independent Scholar" or "Independent Researcher" is the way to go (as also mentioned by Arno in the comments).
According to LENS, the affiliation "Independent Scholar" seems to be slightly more prevalent than "Independent Researcher", with 3.085 versus 2.426 occurrences between 2015 and the end of Nov. 2020.
(Just for the record, the term "Independent Scientist" was used only 31 times in the same date range; and the earlier centuries' label "Gentleman Scientist" seems to be completely outdated by now.)
Here at Academia StackExchange, there is also an independent-researcher tag (here).


Can a private college disallow a club based on politics?

Of course!  For instance I'm pretty sure Bob Jones University does not have a LGBT club of any kind.  It might affect their ability to receive certain federal grants and other monies but other than that...


How can a prospective PhD student know beforehand which universities have the most reputable teams/supervisors?

Most active does not mean most impactful or most influential.  Reading papers on your own, you will have a hard time distinguishing good papers from mediocre work.  Your best bet is to get recommendations from people who already work in that field.  Ask professors at your own university for recommendations or opinions.

If you have a specific problem you are interested in working on, then it does make sense to search for papers on that problem and do your own reading.  But you will still want to get advice from one or more people at your own institution who work in that area (or close to it).


Which is preferable, to go to graduate school at same school as undergrad or to go to a lower-ranked school?

I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.

The word "generally" is commonly used in two rather different senses.  The first sense is "typically", "most often".  The second sense -- perhaps more common in mathematical and scientific writing -- is "always", or "in the largest possible scope which might be applied".  The quoted advice is valid if "generally" is construed in the former sense, not the latter.  To briefly explain: on the one hand, there are advantages to acquiring a diversity of experience.  "Great University X" will do its business in a way which is slightly different from "Great University Y".  Experiencing this is very valuable, because if you stay in academia you will probably be affiliated with several more universities, different from each of these.  If all of your student experience is at a single place, you will have subconsciously internalized the universality of your experience, and you'll be in for a rude awakening when you learn that what is obviously best to you is not the practice in your new environment.  Then too, by going to different great universities, you meet different great people (many of whom will know each other and will be in transit to/from other great universities), both students and faculty.  This is also very valuable.

On the other hand, there are situations where it is most advantageous to stay where you are.  For instance there are sometimes personal, family or financial considerations.  Even neglecting these, there are times that the university you attended as an undergraduate is truly the uniquely best option for you to continue your studies, or the best option among those available to you.  If you are an undergraduate at UCLA, if you want to study analysis, and if you did not get admitted to Berkeley, MIT, Chicago, Princeton or Stanford, then staying where you are sounds like an excellent (perhaps optimal) choice academically.  If you've already done successful research with a top faculty member at your current program and you truly want to continue that research most of all: yes, think seriously about staying right where you are.

The other answer says that graduate school rankings is "a little ridiculous".  While I don't really disagree, let me try to put a finer point on that: grad school rankings are ridiculous if you take them too seriously, and especially if you regard them as a strict linear ranking.  It does not matter that US News and World Report currently thinks that MIT is the best mathematics department in the US whereas in past years it used to think it was some combination of Harvard / Princeton / Berkeley.  It would be more honest and more helpful if they simply recorded that these departments and several others (Chicago, Stanford,...) are in the uppermost echelon of graduate programs in mathematics.  Asking whether Harvard is better than Stanford is ridiculous: it depends upon what you're studying.  (If you want to study analysis, don't go to Harvard unless you know you want to work with the one faculty member there who does that.)

Students should be thinking of departments in terms of echelons.  Within a given echelon, ranking is not helpful.  However, barring some truly exceptional circumstances you want to go to a program in the top echelon that accepts you.  As a corollary to this: if your undergraduate institution is in the top 10, and every other program you've gotten into isn't in the top 30, then yes, I think you should stay where you are, unless you have a very good reason to go to a lower-ranked department (best reason: there is a superstar there that has agreed to work with you).

Finally though I have to say that I find it slightly odd that the OP has apparently gone to a top department, been admitted as a student to that top department, but not at any other department of comparable quality.  That suggests to me that her application is not as strong as it could be, as those who know her in real life apparently value her more highly.


Choosing between PhD students or postdocs as a lecturer

It obviously depends dramatically on your discipline and what you want to do with those positions.

That being said, in most cases I would assume that the decision should either be to hire 2 students, or 1 student and 1 postdoc. Here are some advantages of hiring students in your case:

As a new faculty member, you need to develop a profile for your team. PhD students are often largely a blank slate with not many preconceived ideas for what they will be working on in the next years - it's much easier to steer a team of 2 students into a coherent direction than 2 postdocs, who pretty much by definition already have a research agenda.
Similarly, postdocs should and will develop their research direction independently of you, which should also include letting them work on their own projects and publishing their outcomes without you. Mentoring postdocs to be fully independent is great and very fulfilling once you yourself are fully established, but in the beginning you may want to use your scarce startup funds in a way that better maximises them for your own career progression.
PhD students will stay on longer. You have a better chance to develop them and publish extensively with them before they graduate. With a postdoc, it's easily possible that they are gone on to their own faculty position before you have really started to hit it off.
In many fields where some amount of manual labor is required, a team of 3 PhD holders but no students will be highly dysfunctional, with lots of talking heads and nobody doing the grunt work.
As you say, successfully mentoring PhD students will reflect positively on you in, or will even be required for, your promotion case. I don't think that having had postdocs usually really counts for anything in this regard.
You may simply not need a postdoc at this point. In my experience, postdocs are most productive in a large lab where the PI is stretched too thin to supervise all students effectively. This will not (yet) be the case for you.

Not all of those factors are true everywhere, but you should be able to decide for yourself what of the above is accurate for you. However, what I suggest avoiding is hiring postdocs in the hope that they will be some sort of pre-trained super-student, who will do as told with no real benefit to his own career. The few times I have seen young faculty take such a stance, it always ended with very little outcomes and a postdoc who quit after a short time.


Asking the Managing Editor for Manuscript Update

3 weeks is sufficiently long to ask for an update, especially if precedent indicates the manuscript is sent for review "immediately".

I can't tell from your description who to approach, but presumably either the managing editor or the associate editor would be OK.


How to have a system of referencing citations so that it is short and well-styled

Don't reinvent the wheel: There are existing systems that collect bibliographic data and then produce the appropriate citation in the text. Bibtex and Microsoft Endnote are the most widely used ones. How the citation in the text appears is controlled by "style files" that are often different between journals, but every journal has its own preferred style that you should use.


How to deal with errors in well established papers

The most important thing, I think, is that the core results stand.  This means that correcting the errors is not about substance (which might require a new corrective paper or a retraction, depending on the nature of the errors), but is instead about making the road to understanding easier for others who also read the paper.

Since you say the paper has been revised multiple times on arXiv, it seems there is a decent chance that the author may still be tracking on it and be willing to update and correct it.  I would thus start by writing to the author---it's entirely possible you're the first to notice the mistakes, simply because everybody else thought they saw the things that were supposed to be there (copyediting equations is hard).  If that doesn't produce a result within a few months, write to the journal and see if you can get the errata corrected in their version of the paper.

Beyond that, I think there is not currently a high incentive to put in further effort or to put material up on a third-party website, simply because I suspect that most people who look for the paper are unlikely to readily encounter such annotations.  Search engines are pretty useful, though (as this site readily attests), so there's no reason not to put the corrections online somewhere as an FYI to help others who might happen to search for "errors in Paper X."


Does improving systems count as “research experience” in grad application?

No. Research is working towards creating new knowledge (not just knowledge that you didn't have, knowledge that is genuinely new to experts in your field, too) that advances the state of the art in your field.

Programming/IT/engineering work is not research, unless it is undertaken to create new knowledge.

Examples:

Writing code to simulate a physical system, so as to answer questions about its behavior that have not been addressed yet, is part of doing research.
Writing code to implement a new kind of wireless communication system, so as to evaluate its performance, is part of doing research.
Writing code to help me organize my students' homework submissions is useful work, but it's not research.


You're probably overthinking this... The professor's response looks like a polite refusal. If I were you I wouldn't get my hopes up.

If you're really intent on answering I would just say something like "Thank you for your time, and good luck for your grant proposals." but I would get out of my head the idea that if I make a "good impression" I would have a chance of getting in the program. (If I really were you I'm not even sure I would answer, not out of spite of course, but simply because it would be an unnecessary email that would waste both my time and the professor's time... I doubt the professor would notice a lack a response. Though a "thank you" never hurt anyone.)


Since you already have feedback from your previous supervisor (who presumably knows the research in question much better since it was done with him) it's not critical to get feedback from your new advisor. But any feedback can be useful, especially if your new advisor is in the same area.

I would at least make your new advisor aware of the paper and ask if they want to read it, just so there won't be any surprises or perceptions that you are publishing "behind their back". Leave it up to them if they want to give you feedback or not.


How do you know your PhD work is strong work?
How to know if the main idea of PhD work is a good one?

It is strong work if it makes an impact. This could be in terms of highlighting new techniques that get widely adopted, by winning awards, by getting published or by setting up a startup and making millions. A lot of people define success in many different ways. How do you define it? If your metric is publishing in good venues - then I suppose that you can answer your own question.
Your ideas are as good as what you make of them, and as good as how others perceive them.

How to gain confidence in your PhD work?

You need to ask yourself why you're doing the PhD and have a realistic outlook. It is likely that without a good publication record you won't be able to land a strong academic position, but that's hardly the end of the world. There is massive demand out there for CS researchers in all sorts of positions.
What does your advisor say? Do they think your work is good and deserves publication in top venues, and it was just bad luck that plagued you? What do other figures of authority in the field think of your work?
As a general comment - you are getting the highest possible academic university qualification from a top school, in a highly competitive and popular field. And you feel inadequate? Say that last sentence out loud to yourself. You're anything but!
Good luck!


How can I gain professional experience for PhD application all by myself?

First option is going to be finding an actual job connected to astrophysics. A quick Google search brought me this job postings in Indian Institute of Astrophysics, located in Bangalore. While I cannot tell you if this institute is thriving (living in India, you possibly know that better than me), you could give it a try. Doing actual work as an engineer surely qualifies as a relevant professional experience when you apply for your PhD next time. Explore the job markets while you are still in your home country.
While you can be applying for a job in India, go on and send several more PhD applications to other institutions outside India. It never hurts to try, and you will possibly become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses in the process.
Next, there are online courses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) that you might take to reinforce your knowledge of the subject. People argue if online courses should go to your CV, but they are definitely worth taking for the sake of knowledge. Moreover, if you have had some bad grades in quantum physics in the past, a better grade in an online quantum physics course will be beneficial for your CV.
Inspired by these Quora answers: if you are thinking of a PhD studies outside India, pass the required examinations beforehand. For USA, this will likely be a Physics GRE test, and you should have that ready almost a year before your PhD program starts.
From the same Quora answer: taking part in a volunteer computation project (see a list of BOINC projects) may help you learn more about astronomy, how the actual research can be done, and (why not?) get to know some researchers outside of your country.


How to address new information (compared to the submitted application) during an interview?

I think you could prepare a couple of different scenarios and adopt the "news only" version or the one giving more details depending on the the live reaction of the committee.
It depends on time constrain, too.
Likely, if the news is indeed surprising, you can use the "in depth" material (physically as support or just being mentally prepared) for the question part that normally follows the candidate's presentation.


How to apply for a new PhD while being enrolled in one? What to provide as motivation letter, CV and references?

First, your situation isn't as rare as you might think. It is also moderately common to want to change programs, or at least advisors. Changing because you aren't getting the supervision that you want and need is also not that unusual.

It may be a bit less usual, however, if you want to change, but don't want to change "what you do" as well.

I would prepare an application package, including CV and SOP just as if you weren't already in a doctoral program. What have you done, what are your goals. Then, modify the package "just enough" so that the CV shows the current program, and the SOP indicates you are looking for a "more compatible" position that "better fits your needs". This should represent a small part of your application, not the major focus. In interviews it is enough to say that your advisor "isn't sufficiently helpful."

But I wouldn't hide the fact that you are already in a program or that you and your advisor aren't especially compatible. If it were later learned you might suffer for it. My general opinion is that you can and should be honest in all things - when possible.

You seem to be on a search for an advisor who can help you become successful. That is a worthy goal. Focus on that and don't think of the past as a failure, but just as a difficult situation.

And, before you choose another advisor, make sure that you get some information, somewhere, possible from him/her, about expectations on both sides. Sometimes other students are willing to share their perceptions, but you can also just explore it like any other thing with the person. If they aren't comfortable with this, they may not be the best choice.

But expect that any new advisor that otherwise meets your needs will want to steer you in a (slightly?) different direction. In your case it might be best to agree.


Database of funded US Department of Defense (DoD) component grant proposals with abstracts: Does it exist?

For most DoD contracts, there is no database or similar system that allows you to get any sort of abstract.  I know this because our research librarians, who track this sort of thing and are quite good at their jobs, have told me definitively that this is the case.

If you really want information about specific projects, you could file a FOIA request, using something like the USA Spending site referenced in Aleksandr Blekh's post.  Note, however, that the intricacies of DoD contracting mean that it may be rather difficult to actually tell which contracts are associated with which programs: for example, many DARPA contracts are actually not concluded by DARPA, but by other DoD organizations acting on their behalf.  FFRDCs and other sorts of special cases further complicate matters.


Generally, XYZ refers to the editor that handled the paper at the journal.


Post-doctoral research statement/project: current/future vs thematic

I would favour option 1.

You are trying to tell the story of your research career so far, and how your story could continue at the institution(s) to which you are applying. Looking at it in this way, you are casting your past and present research activities as "Background".

Your subsequent sections would be about specific projects - the "Future". In each section you can refer to your skill set, showing how this project is based on a firm foundation of skills developed during your Background years.

A reader will get a much clearer picture of you as a scientist - past and future - if you structure your application this way. It makes for easier reading, and you want your admissions committee to be happy.

Splitting up your "story" thematically - showing how parts of your background set you up for the project under consideration - makes it more difficult for a reader.


There are two ways that a PhD can have restricted access.

First, many people will pay to keep access to their thesis restricted so that they can try to publish it. The policies vary depending on the company the university uses to publish the theses. Usually, however, the time is 3 years or less.

Second, the government can classify the thesis in part or in whole. This happens when something discovered or revealed in the thesis is considered to be a matter of national security. Even though the information may not have originally been classified, and your friend may not even have access to classified material, in many countries—and certainly the U.S.—the government retains the right to restrict information through the classification process ex post of any information that it deems threatening to national security. The level of classification depends upon the level of threat, and your friend could be subject to legal repercussions from sharing that information with you.


How to balance reading the literature and just solving the problem your self?

There is a wonderful quotation by Frank Westheimer that accurately summarizes the relationship between work and reading:

  A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.

If you don't know what's in the literature, you can easily spend days, weeks, or even months reinventing the wheel. It's tempting to get your hands dirty, but it can be a very expensive proposition if you later find that somebody else has already done the same thing.


Why do reviewers need to be selected again for a revised paper?

I think that two explanations are possible:

(At least on of) the reviewers did not agree to review the paper again. This can happen, as a reviewer you are not obligated to review a revision.
The status on the webpage does not reflect the actual status the paper is in. E.g., the actual status might be 'paper lying on the editor's desk, collecting dust'.


PhD in machine learning in my life? I'm 37; graduating with BA in math (online degree) this summer

Rather than give a long answer to a long set of questions, let me propose a strategy for getting all your answers fairly quickly. Make an appointment to visit a quality university and a professor in machine learning. It might be a place you'd want to go, but it need not be. Ask him/her these questions and try to work out a plan that might lead you to success.

I'm going to guess that online-only education will be less valued than in-person education, but by how much, I can't say.

Yes, you can do quality research part time, but it takes a lot longer than when done full time - especially if you don't have collaborative relationships to aid you.

The other questions (and even these) should be explored face to face with someone who can answer follow up questions and help you devise a plan.

Note, too, that 37 is still pretty young. Ignore the age factor.


What is the English term for a Belgian non-university higher education institution?

Apparently this is the same kind of institution as the German "Fachhochschule", which is usually translated as "university of applied sciences". The Wikipedia article about "Hogeschool van Amsterdam" seems to confirm this: "The Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences (HvA), or Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences ..." See also their English website: http://www.amsterdamuas.com/

However, you might still need to explain this in more detail to those not familiar with the Dutch, Belgian or German education system.


Are professional association membership fees usually paid by one's institution?

As you've already seen from the comments, there is no single solution to this problem. The rules vary greatly from country to country, institution to institution, and even department to department. You will have to check with the specific rules for your funding agencies, department, and other "revenue sources" to determine precisely which sources of funding can be used to pay for these.

(For instance, in Germany, a professor's "discretionary budget" could definitely be used to pay for such things; in the US, this may or may not be the case.)


Could I ask my supervisor to help me coding an implementation of a scientific paper's algorithm

I'd like to add to Buffy's answer and some of the comments: It does happen that the difficulty is in the paper rather than the one sitting before it.
I've had a situation where our Master student couldn't figure out how to get an algorithm from a paper working. Neither could I. We decided that they should go on and use a different approach.
I later on met some industry people on a conference who cited the very same paper for one of their products and talked to them about the paper. Turned out, neither had they succeeded with that algorithm...
As Buffy says, yes, do ask your supervisor. They anyways need to know of your difficulties.