Should I revoke my recommendation request for a particular letter? Is this impolite?

No, it would not be very polite. However, I do not understand why would you cancel the request. You can just have the letter and not use it. You are not obliged to send every single reference letter to the institution you apply.

If you feel like you must cancel the request, you could tell the professor that the institution you are applying requires three letters and you already have them. Do not forget to apologize that it is your mistake that you did not carefully read the instructions.


Are there any funding sources available for OA/APC charges?

The real problem here is your university.
Let me just point out (although you may already know this, other might not), your supervisor was almost certainly not paying OA charges with their grant, as almost all UK funders prohibit it. UK funders give a block grant directly to the university library in order for them to pay OA charges. Different universities have different rules about what they will and won't fund, but generally an application to be funded has to be attached to a grant code, even if the money isn't coming out of a grant.
As for suggestions - I don't really have any. If you've tried your library, and you've tried your department, you sort of out of luck. In this situation, there are two possibilities:

Apply to the journal to have fees wavied on the basis of being unfunded. Its a long shot that is usually reserved for researchers from places with underfunded university systems.

Submit to a journal that doesn't charge OA/APC fees. Although this is unlikely to be an OA journal, at most journals you have the option of either pre-printing, or putting the final reviewer authorized manuscript (but not the formatted proof) on an archive server, either a personal one, a university one, or a discipline-wide one (e.g. PubMed Central).


How do I filter out bad students from tutoring?

Run an introductory test

You're looking for students that can manage their time and responsibilities. The only way to test that is by trial. Prepare a short questionnaire that would give you an impression of what the student knows. Send it to the student several days before your first meeting and ask to complete it before the meeting. Depending on how strict you want to be, do or do not remind the student about this test. If the student completes the test before the meeting, he's more likely to turn out a responsible adult. Apart from that, the test provides a starting point for your first meeting.

Note: in my culture, first meetings with tutors are usually unpaid and considered a trial period. It's easy to drop a student after a trial meeting if he didn't do the test and didn't seem hardworking during the meeting. If you already established a payment routine, it's harder to drop a student.

  It's a waste of my time and their money to have me repeat definitions to them an hour a week, week after week.

For a lateral approach to the problem, grad students who recently started tutoring sometimes only plan to tutor brilliant students, like themselves. Because of that, new tutors think that the job will be pleasant, thought-provoking and fascinating, so they set a lower hourly wage. However, an hour spent tutoring should be properly recompensed, even if it was dull to the tutor. I'll leave for you to judge if my experience applies to you, but don't hesitate to raise your hourly rate so that you don't feel like you're wasting your time.


"In the event of failure, the candidate will be asked to withdraw from the Graduate Program.", How is it different from being fired?

When you withdraw from the program, you can tell people later (in a job interview, social situation etc) that you “decided to withdraw from the program”.

If you are fired you will have the option of either lying (with possible bad consequences if the lie is found out) or telling people “I was fired”.

Which of those sounds better?


You will have to search inside it for which tactics affect time efficiency, but "Tools for Teaching" by Barbara Gross Davis is a great compendium of pedagogical techniques, with citations to the research which justifies them. The main focus is doing it better, not doing it faster, but an astute reader can for sure find useful tricks in there.


Is it ethical to reference a work accused of plagarism?

First, you need to decide if you find the plagiarism charges credible.  Assuming that you do (the material at the link you include certainly looks damning), then you certainly should not give any citation to the plagiarists.

But that still leaves a dilemma: if you can't read the language of the original work, can you honestly cite it?  To think about how to solve this, let's return to the principles of what a citation actually accomplishes:

A citation justifies an assertion in your work
A citation gives appropriate credit to the related and supporting intellectual work of others
A citation gives readers links to follow in learning more about the subject.

If this reference has been helpful to you, then the original author deserves citation on the basis of purpose #2.  That does not, however, support purpose #1 or #3 if neither you nor most of your readers can read the language.  The ideal solution would be if the original author has material with similar content, but written in English, which you can cite instead.  Switching citations like that still fulfills all the criteria.

What if there is no appropriate source in English by the original author?  If you can verify that the original work really does contain the parts that you find useful (e.g., via online translation or a friend who speaks the language), then cite the untranslated original, fulfilling purpose #1 and #2.  Then, since this is textbook-level background material, there should also exist some non-plagiarized English works that are appropriate background to cite: find them, and add them in as well, strengthening purpose #1 and fulfilling #3.


Do anyone related to scientific publishing has experience using EOI's as the identifier for the articles in a journal?

I'm Ed Pentz, Executive Director of Crossref. I don't know anything about EOI so can't comment on it. I did want to correct the information you've been provided. Crossref charges annual membership fees from US$275 to US$50,000 but many smaller members join via a Sponsoring Organization and pay much less - please contact a sponsor if there is one in your country. We charge US$1 per current journal article and US$0.15 for older content. Fees for preprints, books and grants are different - full information on membership and fees is available. We have over 13,000 members in 139 countries so are very inclusive. It's not just about the identifier - registering content with Crossref means it's discoverable along with over 114 million other content items. Feel free to email member@crossref.org with any questions.


If you plan on getting a PhD could you strictly take classes in your field to prove yourself and not get your bachelors?

There's no answer single to whether you can do this: every school sets its own policy, although the overwhelming majority will not allow you to apply for a PhD without a Bachelor's degree.

However, even if it is allowed, you should not do this!

A PhD involves a large amount of reading, writing, and self teaching. Taking a breadth of classes helps to hone your skills in these areas.
Real world papers are often interdisciplinary, so having a breadth of knowledge will be helpful in understanding (and writing!) these
If you have a degree and major in your subject, you will likely have enough knowledge to teach yourself things from the classes you didn't take.
Electives give you a good opportunity to take classes in things you enjoy but aren't related to your future career


Is a graduate pathway program likely to help for admission to a masters in another field? Is it better than MOOCs or an internship for this purpose?

My experience with interviewing/selecting candidates to enter a masters program (in social science, it may be different in computer science) is that the process can be highly variable, and candidates may be rejected for a range of reasons ranging from test scores, to a lack of experience, to not filling out admission paperwork properly, and, unfortunately, discrimination due to ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, etc.

Different programs have different mentalities toward admitting students, some programs might want you to apply two years in a row, because they decided that this is an indication that you are "more serious".

So... It might be safe to assume that your lack of background is the problem (particularly since you were rejected 11 times), however, the only way to know for sure is to ask the admission committees.

In my experience, graduate programs in the U.S. will NEVER tell you why you were rejected, because doing so places them at legal risk. However, they will respond if you ask them "What can I do to strengthen my application between now and the next admission cycle?".

With regard to how you can get experience - many faculty members I talk with don't consider MOOCs legitimate at this time. This may be different, depending on where you are applying. Personally, I would advise you to seek education at a brick and mortar institution, if you can afford to do so.

You mention prerequisites - in my experience this term generally refers to a course that is required to take another course. Thus, prerequisites are typically taken at the same university as a graduate program in which you are enrolled, as credits won't always transfer. What you are describing seems to be taking general coursework.

Unfortunantly, there is a hierarchy in higher education. In my experience it goes:

Research 1 Universities (ranked by the Carnage foundation)
Other universities
Community colleges
Online programs

With option one being the most prestigious and most expensive and option four being seen as the least prestigious, and also the least expensive.

In summary:
1. Ask the graduate programs what you can do to strengthen your application.
2. Engage in the behaviors that the programs tell you to.


Is having a personal blog that addresses controversial political topics possibly damaging to an academic career?

Let's start with this: as a professor you will be in a position of power over quite a few people. Part of the job of being a professor is to responsibly manage a number of employees and respectfully interact with students. If you really did (recently) practice hate speech, then that does legitimately disqualify you.

However, when this becomes an issue you will probably never hear about it. Think about that from the position of the hiring committee: They have a number of applicants, most will be somewhat suitable for the job, but one will be stronger on one point and another stronger on another. So there are so many ways in which you can justify any decision. So when you do write down the justification, you will choose the one that will give the least problems.


Is it ethical to send an unpublished draft preprint to a competitor by email to establish priority?

It seems to me that there is some amount of "having your cake and eating it too" in your question.

First of all, I think private mathematical correspondence, including sending preprints, should only be "friendly" (or "collaborative"); it should not be "unfriendly" (or "competitive").  If someone emails me a paper, I don't in general have an obligation to read it.  If you think I am about to prove something very soon and you send me something with the aim of taking away the independent nature of my proof, that seems quite unfriendly.  The correspondence doesn't advance the field in any way; it only seeks to advance you at my expense.  As others have said, if the natural state of affairs is that both you and I will arrive at proofs of the same result independently in roughly the same time frame -- great, we will both get the credit, and it will not be divided in half in any clear way.  I don't see why you need to perform machinations to try to prevent that.

Also, you are trying to establish priority in a rather strange way when there are two much more standard ways: submit to a journal and/or post on the arxiv.  Regarding this, you say:

  My paper on this is however not ready to be put on the arxiv, because there are natural questions related to this conjecture that need to be solved first (otherwise the paper will look incomplete).

But you also say:

  I now managed to prove the conjecture. I think it is an important result.

If the conjecture is important, then a proof of it should make for a very nice paper.  Most papers "look incomplete" in the sense that they leave something natural undone.  And most of us do not get to work out all the consequences of our results in the same paper as those results are first published.  Doing too much in one paper is risky for several reasons, one of which is that the longer you sit on a given result, the larger the chance that someone else will do it.  You seem to be trying to circumvent this natural tension with your private correspondence.  While not unethical per se, I don't expect it will be well received.

Given the situation and the concerns, I suggest that you do upload to the arxiv a short note that proves your conjecture and that does not have all the bells and whistles you would like to eventually have.  You say that it is two pages long, so that I would expect that the relevant mathematical community will be able to quickly ascertain whether it is a correct proof of the conjecture.  Because of this you don't have to submit right away or even submit the version of the paper you put on the arxiv.  You can take the time to make the additions that you want.  Of course, other members of the community can respond to your arxiv preprint and build on it as well.  That's what's fair, it seems to me.


Research Posters - Do you put home university logo when you did the research at another university?

I would put the logo of the funding agency (NSF, NASA, etc.) and the logo of the university where you are doing this research. If your home university isn't involved in any way, then you're probably fine excluding it.


When do you consider the writing of a theoretical framework to be complete?

Short version: Ask your advisor.

Long answer:

It's hard to answer that, as we neither know your field nor your university. Furthermore, a proposal is not a complete thesis, so there might be also differences because of that, there might even be regulations at your university that a proposal can only have some fixed number of pages.

As you are looking for advice, here is one:
Make a list of all the topics you deem relevant. Write down which paper you want to quote, write down who you want to mention, etc. Don't turn it into a full text yet, only put short headwords. Then, take your list and ask around at your university. A good starting point would be your (potential) advisor, as he should know both the regulations at the university and the field you are working on. If you don't have one yet, everyone with experience in this two points (other professors, PhD students, etc.) will do - you might even use this to look around for an advisor in this case.

As professors are often busy, your best chance should be to write a short mail describing your problem and asking for an appointment to discuss the list in person. Thus, your email won't land in a "to long, handle later" folder, you will already establish a personal contact, etc.


How should one choose a supervisor if they haven't yet narrowed down their research focus?

My advice will be similar to aeisimail's, and though I have not actually done exactly what I am suggesting, the main points are still based on personal experience.
(Also note that I come from the European setting (PhD in France currently) so the levels of education when you actually start looking for an adviser might differ, but I'll try to do my best to be general.)
In my opinion, there's three almost equally important parts to choosing what to do for PhD:

the subject (narrow field of focus, project you're taking on)
Even if you are not sure what exactly you want to do, if you don't see yourself getting at least a little bit excited about the subject, you will not be able to do it and enjoy it for the whole PhD duration. It also helps if you see the adviser being fascinated by what he does.

the adviser -- on both personal and professional level
Of course, you should read something about his previous works. Read some of his publications, something about ongoing projects. Ask around for information from other students. But also, if you have a chance, try and talk to the potential adviser, in person. Maybe some people can get a feel for an adviser from e-mail or other indirect communication, but for me, if I can hold an easy conversation with someone for 5-10 minutes, I'll probably be okay working with them.

the environment -- both for working and for living
If you can, try and get a feel for the research group and the lab you would potentially belong to. Depending on the type of person you are, you will prefer different environments. But, a friendly atmosphere is beneficial to everybody. Also, take a look at where you'll have to live (if you're moving for you PhD): a very extrovert person might suffer after moving to a small, quiet town. A big bustling town might overwhelm a shy and introvert person. Make sure you can be comfortable outside your PhD/job, because as much as you can't do a PhD if you don't love what you do, you won't be able to do it well if you don't like what your life is outside of that.

It might seem right now that you can survive with a good topic and adviser, in a bad environment, or some other way around, but think about it: those three things will be with you through the whole PhD. You can't do a PhD properly if you don't love what you do, who you do it with and where you are. All three of them are very important.

And some more specific advice that I collected over the years, which is probably not applicable in all the situations but is worth taking under consideration:

young advisers at the start of their career are more likely to pay more attention to their students. If you want to work with your adviser, it will probably be harder with somebody who's already made a name for themselves: you're more likely to end up just working under them.
the longer the people are in academia, the more they do administration instead of research. Know how to take advantage of what you have. If you end up with an adviser over his head in administration, keep research questions rare and to the point, when you need them. But know that these kind of people will be able to resolve some administrative problems for you that others might not be able to.
no matter what type of adviser you get, in the end it is your own PhD topic. The adviser does not hold the absolute truth, and does not have all the answers. He's good for directing you and helping you focus, sometimes discussing problems, but towards the end of your PhD, you are the one that will become the foremost expert on the topic. Prepare for that, so you don't end up disappointed the first time you see your adviser guessing and struggling around your problem just like you.
find what fascinated you about your own (potential) topic. Don't get all starry-eyed about what the output should be when looking for at a subject. If the output is all neat and useful and pretty, think about weather it has, for example, too much maths for you to be enjoying working on it. It's not just about what you are capable of doing, it's about what you enjoy doing.

Sorry for the short novel, I hope you find something that helps you.


Is it okay to publish less and teach more during your PhD? (CS USA)

There are lots of good teaching-focused jobs in academia, for example faculty positions at small liberal-arts colleges, and lecturer-type positions in larger departments.  It sounds like this kind of job would appeal to you more than a job whose primary focus was research.  That’s great!  Go and learn about those jobs, find people who have taken that career track and talk to them, and start doing what you need to make yourself an appealing candidate for those positions.  Part of that last point is teaching, but it’s not really about teaching more, it’s about doing things that make your CV appealing to SLACs.  You need to do some teaching, but it’s going to look better if you advise an REU student or run a directed reading program than if you just teach one more section of a class you already teach.  See if you can find teaching assignments that add to your CV, eg if you have the opportunity to be instructor-of-record instead of just a TA, do that.  Finally, even if you have teaching-centered career goals, you still need to graduate!  So don’t overstretch yourself teaching at the expense of getting a solid thesis done.  Research expectations are different at SLACs, but they definitely want you to be able to supervise undergraduate projects and they want you to have a PhD, so you can’t neglect that aspect of your program


Credit transfer from Masters to PhD in a different University

Some of them may transfer, it depends on the department. For example, my department transfers a blanket N credits for PhD students who come with a masters degree. That is, instead of evaluating each individual class on the masters transcript, they just apply N credits of transfer credit towards the PhD credit requirement. (I don't remember the value of N offhand.)

You will have to check the individual policy of each department you apply to.


Authorship and reputation for British/Australian academic systems

Academics in Australia are usually on temporary contracts or on continuing contracts. Levels, however, don't directly relate to job permanency in Australia. For example, it's possible for an experienced postdoc (temporary, employed on PI's grant) to be paid at level B (starting rate is typically level A; step 6) and it's also possible for an academic to be appointed at level B for a continuing position (similar to tenure track). Although some level Bs will be on continuing positions, it's also possible for an academic at level C to not have a continuing appointment (e.g. a Future Fellow whose dept. has not committed to support him/her after the fellowship runs out). Yet they are still at level C because that is the appropriate level for their career stage (i.e. IF they had a permanent position, they would be appointed at level C). Most of these people, however, can leverage such a fellowship into a continuing position and start their own lab. This is similar to starting a tenure track position in the USA.

I think it's best to think of levels as representing career stage not the type of job (i.e. the level does not determine whether an academic is on a temporary or permanent contract, especially at levels A/B). You don't rise through the levels from a temporary contract to a permanent position - you must separately apply for a continuing position. This is analogous to how postdocs must apply for tenure track positions in the USA.

With regards to authorship, I think this is very group dependent. Typically postdocs run their own research and get first author while also supervising honours/PhD students and getting a second/middle author paper for that work. The way you describe this in your question (postdocs getting middle author papers but few/no first author papers) does not fit with my experience in Australia but it might occur in some groups. You could, however, find groups like this anywhere in the world. This is something you need to discuss with your potential advisor.

Note: this post has been heavily edited from the initial version to address questions in the comments.


Master's Degree Curriculum and its Effects on Teaching Opportunities

...in hopes that I will be able to teach programming/development at the community college level (which requires a Master's Degree)

While this is technically true for many community colleges, it is also true that with a Master's degree vice a PhD, you will be less competitive for positions, as many PhDs also apply to community colleges.  A friend of mine from graduate school worked successfully as a programmer at Microsoft for 20 years, and when he started looking for teaching positions (with his Master's already) at community colleges, he was told that he would not be competitive for available positions.

A further caveat: because community colleges generally do not have research requirements for instructors, they tend to rely on teaching experience as much as a particular degree when hiring instructors.  I would suggest that you consider trying to get some computer science teaching experience as well (if you don't have any).  You might want to see if either of the two schools you mentioned will allow you to TA classes -- you may not be able to get paid, but you could do it for free for the experience.

You might also want to consider approaching the graduate school of education at BU (if you attend there) to see about education courses -- they have a number of teaching classes, and taking one of those would also bolster your resume.  You could also see about trying to get adjunct teaching positions at various community colleges -- teaching a one-off class may be possible, and you'd be able to leverage the experience.

Bottom line: unfortunately, there probably isn't a short path to being competitive for teaching positions at community colleges.  If you are going to go down the MS route, your best bet is to do as well as you can in a program, and to try to get some teaching experience under your belt.


How to write and publish a literature review

Let me share some insights, I hope it will be useful. I will break down my answer, based on your question's main dimensions, that is help, knowledge and motivation. Speaking about the first dimension, it is unclear to me what do you mean, so I will leave this aspect for you to clarify and for others to address.

In regard to knowledge, the best advice I can give is to get a decent book specifically on writing literature reviews (i.e., Hart, 2005) or, even, a good book on research methodology, which has comprehensive enough chapter on the topic (i.e., Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2004; Creswell, 2007, 2014; Davis & Parker, 1997). This is just to start. More importantly, IMHO, after you will read some theory on writing literature reviews or research manuscripts, is to start reading real literature reviews: either review/survey papers (for Computer Science, there are specialized journals that publish such papers, for example, ACM Computing Reviews and ACM Computing Surveys), or simply focused research papers on the topic of your interest (most of them will have a corresponding section, which is usually titled "Review of Literature", "Introduction", "Background", "State of the Art" or similarly).

Speaking about motivation for writing a literature review, that IMHO should come from your excitement about (interest in) a particular topic. If you won't have excitement or, at least, enough interest in a topic, I don't see how you can obtain motivation. It's that simple. Your other questions are rather broad, but I'm sure that you will be able to answer most of those questions after reading some foundational literature on research methodology, as I recommended above.

References

Booth, W., Colomb, G., & Williams J. (2004). The craft of research (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Creswell, J.W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Creswell, J.W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Davis, G. B., & Parker, C. A. (1997). Writing the doctoral dissertation: A systematic approach (2nd ed.). Hauppauge, NY: Barrons Educational Series.

Hart, C. (2005). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.


When a graduate student be a part of a research grant, does he get paid in addition to a university stipend?

In my experience, “guaranteed funding” means that (depending on field) you will be either working for a PI who has grant money to pay you or working as a TA (with the possible exception of your first year, where their may be general department support while you find an advisor). Because graduate stipends are typically on a pay scale, working on a grant can be expected to bring you up to the guaranteed level, but not put you above it.

To support the guarantee of funding, the university (or a unit within the university) may have a reserve fund with money that can be used to cover gaps in PI funding (which may come with TA obligations).


Is my advisor asking me to commit fraud?

You've earned the days as paid vacation, you don't have to work during them. The money it costs to pay you for those days is part of your compensation for the work you've already done and the stretches of time that you came to work instead of taking the day off.
If you do decide to take the time to work on finishing up some papers, that could be good for both your advisor and you. All your work is basically a waste of time if it never makes it into a paper. Maybe you're fine with that if you're all done with academia, but if you ever did want to return then any papers you can publish will be to your benefit. I think there's also a strong sense of personal accomplishment in publishing papers (why are you doing research if not to share it with the research community??), and as a post doc (or any other level of academia) your role is a bit different from a standard employee in that you're typically doing research not just as a job but as your personal work.
As far as "not being able to afford" to pay for those days, I think you can mostly ignore that statement, it's not connected to what you do next in any real way. However, it's probably not motivated by your advisor literally being that broke, but rather that they expected that the grant money they spent on your position would result in some output that they can use to get more money for future projects - that's how the academic funding cycle works. If they've paid you for a spot and you've failed to complete projects, that's in many ways wasted money for them. Maybe they can pick up your work where you left off but often there is a lot of cost of time and effort in starting from someone else's partial work.
I won't comment on legal issues according to any letter of the law, but it's extraordinarily unlikely that you would see any legal consequences for spending time off working to complete a project. It's also unlikely your advisor would see any consequences for making the request. It also doesn't seem that your advisor is seeking to cause you to lose out on any money but rather they're hoping that you see enough value in completing work to spend your earned vacation time working. Like I said in the start, you've already earned this time and don't need to work for it, but it's a bit different from trying to pull money out of your pockets.

@GoodDeeds in a comment pointed out that OP's advisor may be asking them to "quit early" and count the end of their work as vacation time. I was thinking more along the lines of OP determining their own end date but their advisor asking that they keep working to finish up projects. Also in a comment, OP indicates that they are willing to work to finish up the incomplete papers on their own time.
Based on those pieces of information, my advice would be to:
A) Assure the advisor that you are willing and intending to finish up these projects. I think that's their main concern, whatever conflicts there have been between you. Everything you've said in this post could be a completely honest, non-exploitative effort towards this goal. Maybe that's overly charitable towards them, but I think it's a good mindset to start from.
B) Come to agreement on an official end date, when your regular salary ends. You should be committed to work full time through this date, like you've been doing until now. This shouldn't have any relation to the vacation hours you are owed. Pretend they don't exist. After that date, you're committing to finishing the projects, but not to working any set hours. If your advisor wants this to be sooner, you can say that if you aren't an employee during those hours there are other things you'd like to do during that time.
C) If your advisor insists on involving the vacation hour pay, reiterate your commitment to finishing up the work. If it helps your advisor to think about it, those volunteer hours you plan to put in on these projects in your nights and weekends are effectively "working for those vacation hours", you're just not willing to have those be "full time" hours on a schedule, or to substitute for your normal work.
If they aren't okay with this arrangement, then they aren't being reasonable. You can hope they come around, but remember that you have some power here. Your advisor is going to want you to finish your projects. You have a new job and aren't compelled to work for them. So, if these papers are going to actually get out, the two of you have to work on mutually acceptable terms. Good luck!


Is January admission possible/common? MSc Statistics in Canada

I am enclosing the following link. If this is the course that you are looking into, it does have a fall and winter intake.

Many of the Canadian programs have two intakes - a Fall and a Winter, especially a thesis based Masters which can progress towards a Ph.D.


Open Access (OA) is not necessarily free for authors (but free for readers). OA concerns free access to the publication. Many OA journals charge for submitting a manuscript, see for example HESS which could be an OA journal for your paper. It is possible to publish without an affiliation with a university.

Along with OA has appeared a darker side, often referred to as predatory OA journals. So choosing a journal should under any circumstances be made with care. If you are uncertain, I suggest you contact a professional at your (former) university to get some advice.


Professor wants to change my thesis' interpretation in favor of his research. How to react?

It sounds like there may be potential arguments in favour of both interpretations. First pin down what they are - then you're in a better position to have a discussion with your professor. It may turn out that one of you is unambiguously right - and that's a good way of finding out. More likely, there are arguments for both interpretations, in which case you might be best off presenting both together with some critical analysis.

TL/DR: Follow the evidence. Without providing any evidence, neither of you is demonstrably right.


Does interdisciplinary research usually require reading/reviewing more literature?

Caveat: I am a current graduate student.

I have a very interdisciplinary committee. My home department is information science and my committee members are from electrical and computer engineering, communication and statistics.

My research stands at the intersection of social network analysis, privacy and surveillance studies and spatial statistics. I defended my dissertation proposal late last year and my literature review was ~50 pages with over 250 references drawn from 6 disparate areas.

Some of my other colleagues who work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) (itself a rather interdisciplinary field) have lit reviews around the 40 page mark.

I constantly feel that there is always more to read and really important classical literature on privacy (dating from the 1700s) that I should read but haven't read in depth.

Before, committing to a dissertation in this field, I used to work in theoretical statistics, specifically estimation theory. My readings were focused and significantly lesser in number than the juggernaut that my annotated bibliography has turned out to be.

Perhaps, more pertinent, TOREAD folder used to have 2-4 articles at any given time. Now, that is anything from 8-10 in addition to 1-2 books at any given time.

Therefore, in response to your specific question, Yes!, it feels like I have to read more now that I work in an interdisciplinary space to "cover" all the bases.


Will preparing for the mathematics GRE help me towards my goal of doing research in applied mathematics?

The mathematics subject GRE covers roughly the first half of the content that one would learn in a good undergraduate math program.  Much of it (calculus, linear algebra, differential equations) is material that an engineering student would likely be familiar with already.

I think that the only good reason to study for the GRE is if you need to take the GRE, i.e. if you want to apply to a school that requires it.  In that case, it is probably best to spend a limited amount of time studying in the few months or weeks before you take it.  Otherwise, I think your time would be better spent on more advanced topics.


Practiced in moderation, self-citation is natural, healthy, and ethical.
There are typical two reasons why excessive self-citation can become problematic:

It often indicates a person who is unaware of the related work being done by the rest of the community.
Self-citation can be abused to falsely inflate one's perceived importance and citation metrics.

A healthy line of research, however, will often produce a non-trivial fraction of self-citation in each paper because your old work is related to your new work.  In fact, it would be unethical to not self-cite when citation is appropriate.

A simple guiding principle for approaching the question is this: if somebody else besides you had written the paper, would you want to cite it?  If the answer is yes, then you should cite the paper.  There isn't even any particular reason you need to mention it to your supervisor, though it would probably be fun and enjoyable for you to mention in passing, "Hey, and it turns out this other paper I wrote was actually useful enough to cite!"

Now as to whether you can include your other paper as part of your thesis, this is a very different question.  The first question is: why would you want to do so, if a citation will suffice?  If you've done a Masters' Thesis worth of work excluding this other paper, there is no reason to need to include it.  If you haven't, then that is when you need to have a discussion with your supervisor, because the answer will depend on the policies and practices of your particular department.


Where should be original quotations be type-set in a translation?

Some style guides (Chicago, MLA, etc.) have rules for how to do this; if you know that you are required to follow some specific one of these, then the advice there will be authoritative. That said, there are still several different options for how the original quotation and the translation are presented: the choice is yours, and then the various manuals may give you "implementation details" about such vital matters as the placement of punctuation. (For example, the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has extensive guidance in 13.71-13.79, but stops short of presenting the One True Method of including dual-language material.) I'm afraid I do not know which style manuals might be preferred for German-language texts.

Your basic choices are:

Whether the original, or the translation, is the primary version.
Whether the secondary version appears in the body text, in a footnote, or in an endnote.

In your case, you have decided that the translated version is primary, which makes sense if most readers don't care about the specific wording of the original, but may still want it to be available. You've also chosen to place the original text in a footnote, which makes sense for a "mid-length" quotation. If you only wanted to gloss a few words, it would be more natural to do this inline. If you had a more extensive quotation, then putting it in an endnote - or even an appendix - would avoid the problem of the gigantic multi-page footnote which can be so hostile to readers. So I think your choices are perfectly defensible.

In the case where both the original and the translation are from an external source, it is clear that both should be cited. Otherwise, you would not be giving due credit to the author and translator.

Here, the translation is your own, and in principle you should note it as "my translation" in whatever way is compatible with your citation style. For example, perhaps your footnote would say:

  1 My translation; original: Es geht nicht ...

or perhaps you would write in text:

  ... the whole bakery." [DK 2009, my translation]

The specifics depend on which style guide you are following, if any.

Some of these "my translation" notes could be omitted, though that really depends on the quantity and variety of sources you are translating. If you have many translated quotations, some by you and some by others, then it would be clearer to retain the notes. If there is only one source which you quote repeatedly, then you could note "my translation" the first time and then not mention it again.

Another option is an explicit note early in the document, saying that all translations are your own unless indicated otherwise.


Should I list the journals/conferences that I have reviewed for in my personal website?

In general, People's websites tend to be less formal and more detailed, so I say go for it, especially because it shows some more well-roundedness and "giving back."


Politics in forming collaborations as a postdoc

Talk to your boss in general terms at first.  Then you'll get a feeling for whether a "go for it" approach will go down well locally or not.  You may have a good idea of whether you're working with a natural collaborator or not, but an early discussion is still worthwhile because they can warn you in general terms about rivalries/conflicts of interest etc. Try your hardest to keep your boss in the loop at all times. Of course this isn't always possible when you meet people at conferences.

Don't make promises you don't have the authority to keep -- so discuss possibilities rather than actually inviting someone until you can clear it.  It might not be just your boss but politics/policies that you have to deal with.  Money is always a good get-out: If you don't hold the budget yourself, everyone knows you can't just spend it without authorisation.


Is there any way to show that authors are equal in arxiv names?

There does not appear to be any facility presently in these archives of papers to indicate that contribution of both authors was equal.  (I suspect that this is mostly because it is not actually specified in most papers, so it would rarely be able to be known from reading the papers.)  In the absence of this, the best fall-back position is to specify this explicitly in the paper with a statement of contributions.  Some journals are starting to require this anyway, particularly for research papers submitted by teams of people.  There is no reason that you could not add it into your paper if you wish to specify the contributions of the authors.

In regard to this issue, it is worth noting that, except in a relatively small number of cases, the ordering of authors is generally weak information about the magnitude of their contributions to a paper.  Conventions and interpretation of the significance of authorship order differs by field.  In some fields it would be assumed that earlier authors did the majority of the work, and in other fields there is no such assumption.  The main time when you would infer higher contribution from earlier listing is when you have a paper where the first author is a PhD student at a university, and the later authors are academics in the same department, in which case this is usually a paper where the student has done most of the substantive work and the latter are supervisors who have contributed advice, reviews, etc.  In most other cases it is difficult to infer contributions solely from the ordering of the authors.


Is it unethical for a professor to misrepresent the format of an exam?

First, there’s some important background information to consider about professors, which is that they are human and occasionally make mistakes just like everyone else. In particular, as can happen to anyone in any other workplace or general life context, they may sometimes forget what they said to whom and when, or say something they didn’t fully intend, e.g., omitting an important detail or making a statement that is misleading or not entirely accurate.

Moreover, these effects are at their worst when a professor is overloaded with work. Small misstatements of this type can happen for example because a student accosts them with a curveball question at the end of lecture when they are frazzled and distracted and in a hurry to get somewhere (happened to me more times than I count), or due to many other kinds of cognitive overload that are a frequent occurrence in many professors’ lives. As an example, just this week I confused the lecture times of the two different classes I’m teaching in an email to a colleague about scheduling a meeting, and have found myself making a few other similar (fortunately insignificant) mistakes recently. This is very atypical for me, and it’s clear to me that it’s strongly correlated with a period of increased workload.

Coming back to your question, it’s obviously not great that the professor did not give you accurate information about the exam, but saying it’s “unethical” is making a statement about the professor’s intent. If they deliberately misled you, then yeah, that’s not very nice, and, depending on how misleading their description was, I can see the label “unethical” as being potentially appropriate. But based on my experience, I’m extremely skeptical that the misrepresentation was intentional. It’s much more likely that the explanation involved an error, forgetfulness, preparing the exam at the last minute and making a spontaneous decision to add an essay question without realizing that this would make some students upset, or some other such explanation.

Basically, in most situations of this type in academia, rather than assume bad faith, your default assumption should be that the person whose behavior you are aggrieved about made a mistake. They may be disorganized or even mildly incompetent, but none of that equates to being unethical. Unless you have hard evidence of an intent to deceive or the level of incompetence implied by the mistake is truly outrageous, complaining about this seems like a waste of time to me.


I wrote a research paper and just realized that my idea has been published before. Must I cite?

Must I cite?

Yes, you must cite the thesis, since it's part of an author's responsibility to give an accurate representation of the state of the art.

  I understand now that I can no longer publish my technique

I think these worries might be unjustified. Most research is incremental, in the sense that it improves on existing work, rather than inventing something completely new. Just cite the work and clearly discuss (or even better, show experimental evidence) why your technique gives an improvement in terms of generality and speed.


Can I talk to another professor about quitting my PhD before I talk to my PI?

Talking to other people including mentors is always a good idea.

It sounds like you're having trouble handling the stress of a PhD and your desires to drop out are not related to any particular issues with your advisor. It's almost impossible to tell how your PI would take it. However, I doubt most reasonable people would consider you seeking advice from others as "going behind their back."


Can auditing students attend consultation hours?

The easiest answer to this would be to simply ask the lecturer. A simple "Hi, I'm auditing this class, is it ok if I drop by your office to ask a few questions during office hours, if you have time?" would probably suffice. If the lecturer doesn't mind, then you're good to go.

I would probably not agree to auditing students attending office hours/tutorials, especially in large classes. Generally speaking, auditing classes is fine, as long as you do not put additional strain on the lecturer/course apparatus. If I start accepting office hours from one auditing student, I'll have to do so from all of them. If my guest students start attending tutorials and take up other students' time from actual registered students, I would probably intervene.

This is me, and other lecturers can have different attitudes towards their auditing students. The best thing to do is to ask.


Should I give authorship to a senior person whose main role was to connect me to other people?

It is more typical for me to weigh in on the side of not putting senior people's names on papers when their contributions were borderline or less.  However in this case it seems to me that it probably would be a good idea to include your former postdoctoral mentor as an author.

  Her role was to connect me with the other people (she knew them, and they had access to a specific patient population I needed).

That is a contribution.  It sounds like it is not an intellectual contribution, but in signing up with a mentor you probably were hoping to get increased access from her connections...and you did.

  Also, my mentor and I talked about some related ideas years back, but never the specific experiment that the paper is about.

That does sound like an intellectual contribution.  You didn't talk about the specific experiment, but that doesn't mean that your discussion didn't contribute to the design of the specific experiment.  In my opinion high-level general discussions can be at least as valuable as specific implementations...especially when they lead to specific implementations.

  She thinks the experiment was her idea, but she is mistaken about this: when I first told her about it, it was already completely designed, she gave no input.

Well, you are giving your side of this, and you are aware that her side is different.  Do you have records that would support your version of events?  If so, I would certainly discuss them with your mentor before deciding not to include her on the paper.  If not: if the only thing you have to rely on is your own memory of events, then even if we grant that you and not she are remembering correctly, you still may want or need to act in a way that an external observer would regard as correct.

In terms of your pros and cons: as you mention, keeping a good relationship with your former mentor is a real pro.  You seem to be able to put yourself in her shoes well enough to understand why she would feel slighted and react badly, so in my opinion you need to not let that happen, either by including her as a coauthor or by resolving the different perspectives you have on the situation.

Your cons are not very persuasive to me.  As you say, the paper already has five authors.  I don't know about you, but with that many authors I am going to assume that some have rather minor contributions unless I am specifically told otherwise.  I don't understand how adding a sixth author undermines the independence of your contribution (presumably you will be first author).  You mention that your mentor made no scientific contribution, but that's not clear to me since, as above, you mentioned earlier conversations on the general topic that led to your specific experiment.  I also think that people should not be added as authors for no intellectual contribution...but this is not a very clear case for this kind of principled stand.


How my admission would benefit the university?

If the student actively participates in and contributes to classes and department events, the university benefits.
If the student works for the university in a lab or as a TA, and does a good job, the university benefits.
If the student publishes interesting, useful, or important work while still a student, it reflects well on the university, and the university benefits.
If the student goes on to do great things after graduating, it reflects well on the university, and the university benefits.


Square brackets in quotes are usually used to indicate that a minor alteration has been made in order to make it more readable (e.g. to fit into the context that the quote is placed in) but that does not alter the intended meaning of the quote.

In your example, it probably means that the original quote had a capital letter, but has been re-written to fit its place in the middle of a sentence.

Another example would be if I wanted to quote your question. I could write

  "[BirdMars] come[s] upon a lot of quotes in academic papers [...]"

to maintain the spirit of your quote while clarifying who the pronoun "I" refers to. The ellipsis in square brackets indicates that this is not the full quote.


Co-Author is asking me to remove abstract submission of paper

You ought not to have submitted anything naming the PhD student as a co-author without his clear consent.  So you do need to withdraw the submission, immediately, and you owe him an apology.

After that, you can all work out what to do next.  Maybe you can all come to some agreement, and maybe the professor can help to mediate.  There's a good chance that you may miss the deadline and have to submit to some other venue at a later date; you'll just have to live with that.

No one author can unilaterally decide author ordering, even if it's "obvious"; you all have to agree.

Keep in mind it's a two-way street; he also can't publish without your consent.


I've never seen "mentioned in acknowledgements" on a CV, and wouldn't know how to evaluate them if I did see them on somebody's CV.  Acknowledgements are often pretty random and arbitrary in their threshold, and can often indicate a very small involvement indeed (e.g., "Mary was eating lunch with us one day when the project was being discussed, and happened to say something useful").  This is different than something like service (e.g., reviewing), which typically has fairly well-defined investment in time, and is a known burden that needs to be shouldered by volunteers across the community.


Invited to write a review on a field that neither my Prof nor I are experts in?

Your prof is thinking long term. You are thinking short term. Both of those are appropriate. But don't think too short term. Within a year you will want your horizon to expand and both the good opinion of your advisor and a publication will help.

But, I didn't read you as implying that this must become the first priority over a period of time. I don't see why your experiments need to be put on hold while you read papers (probably fewer than countless).

But, if your advisor wants to do this as a joint project ("write a review with him"), then you should be able to manage it as long as it isn't all dumped on you. I suggest you set a schedule to work together on it and lay out a plan.

And maybe the new field will prove interesting and even valuable in your future.

Of all these things, I think the good opinion of your advisor is the most important to manage. If you can do that somehow other than agreeing, then there is little downside. But there might be upside to agreeing. Your call, of course.


When to update an Arxiv posting vs. creating a new post?

I agree with Mangara that there's no problem with updating the previous paper if your new version subsumes the previous one.  It's understood that results in preprints are sometimes improved before publication, and so this won't trouble anyone.  Furthermore, there are several reasons why you should (and not just can) do this:

It's best not to leave incomplete versions of the paper lying around, since someone may run across them and never realize there's a better version elsewhere.  For example, it's better if readers following the reference from B learn that there's a new version, rather than just seeing the old one and potentially assuming that's all there is.
Posting very similar papers can look bad, like you are trying to inflate your paper count with minor variations.  That's not your intent, but someone browsing through your arXiv papers won't having any way of knowing.  You might also trigger the arXiv flag for text overlap between your papers, in which case the similarity will be explicitly pointed out to everyone.

The comments field in your arXiv submission can help address the potential for confusion.  Whenever you make major changes to an arXiv paper, it's a good idea to explain in the comments what has changed, so that someone who has already read a previous version knows whether it's worth another look.  Highlighting the changes in this way will also help clarify things for readers following older references.


Does google scholar rescan papers and update citations?

Article metadata and bibliography management is usually a service provided by the journal. In this there might be variations in the diligence with which it is done. But in general the metadata and citations data are pushed to indexing services. So yes, Google Scholar does get the updated data, either directly or via crawling, and will update citations, page and volume numbers after publications, etc.


What should I do when my accepted paper is subsequently rejected?

Check with the journal. Especially do this if the rejection email you received looks like an auto-generated email. No rational journal would act in such a way, so my gut feeling says there was a mistake somewhere, most likely human error. It is possible that, e.g., the final status of your manuscript was accidentally set to 'reject' instead of 'accept'.


What should I do to make the most of a stopgap postdoc position offered by my PhD supervisor?

Your #1 goal is to find a real post-doc position, so think of why that hasn't happened yet if you have been out trying for a while.

Next is finishing up those papers, since that may help with the #1 goal. Further, once you do get another position where you want to chase after new things, you will find that time slips away.

Anything else is gravy. Do not let anything new (much less competitions for goodness sake) get in the way of those. Don't think of it as 6 months, think of it as week-to-week until you have accepted a job offer.


PhD supervisor stalling research paper submission

No one here can judge whether your supervisor is right or wrong. Perhaps your paper really isn't yet ready. I don't know your field, of course, and don't know why it is important to you to submit the paper now rather than later.

Your first consideration should be your examinations, I think, and completing your degree. Perhaps publishing the paper is essential to that process, but you don't indicate that.

But, few students really prosper by directly going against their supervisors. It just isn't a productive career path. And, depending on your field, cutting your supervisor out of authorship might be considered unethical, but even if not, might be a career killer.

Having a supervisor who is happy with you and your work is much more productive. And giving a lot of feedback on your paper is, in most cases, a positive thing.

Once you finish the degree you get to make your own decisions, of course.


Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting

There are certain (informal) nuances I believe:

Symposium - Prestigious conferences, generally leading venues in their respective fields. Example: Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, European Test Symposium, Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) etc
Conference - Regular venues for publications, may range from established venues to the archaic. I understand the bulk of publications of most researchers are in one conference or other, as symposiums tend to have a very low acceptance rate.
Meeting - I'm not so sure there are many of these, but I understand that it is more of a forum for interaction/surveys/posters than for publication of full papers. (I based my answer on the description for SIAM Annual Meeting 2012, which describes itself as providing "a broad view of the state of the art in applied mathematics, computational science, and their applications through invited presentation, prize lectures, minisymposia, and contributed papers and posters".)
Congress - This would typically be held once a year per discipline, highlighting the achievements, notable results in that field. These are typically attended by leaders in that field, and feature a series of invited talks (for example, look at Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2013).


How could I reply an email from a potential professor?

From my experience, this means that he would be happy to speak to you after you've been accepted to the program. It's a polite way of saying, "Come back to me after you've been offered—and have accepted the offer to—our program." I wouldn't read much beyond that, including not assuming that he has open positions in his lab group.


After starting a PhD in Mathematics, I realized I am more interested in Statistics - can I transfer to a Statistics PhD?

Talk to your tutor or professor, they are there to help you and I always found mine very supportive. It sounds like you have thought about this. Find out what your options are they won't bite your head off for changing your mind. I changed direction twice before even getting to my Ph.D. then left that after 9 months when I realised it was not right for me.

Don't spend years of your life doing something you don't care for, you will be far happier and productive doing something you truly love. There is a good chance your profs and tutors will have zig-zagged through their careers as well.


How should I list an unfinished bachelor thesis in my application for a Master's programme?

I would list the title of the thesis along with an expected completion date.

Depending on the format of your CV, this may just be the year, or, if you know the exact deadline, the date in Month, Year or DD/MM/YY format (the specifics of your long date formatting is country-dependent of course).

The listing on the CV might look something like

  Bachelors' Thesis: "My Awesome Thesis Title Goes Here." May 2017

Or

  "My Awesome Thesis Title Goes Here." (Bachelors' Thesis, expected
  completion date 30/05/17)

If you are submitting some form of covering letter as part of your application, it would also be a good idea to talk about your thesis there and also note that it is not yet complete. However, I think the admissions committee would be aware that if you are a current undergraduate student that your thesis is likely to be unfinished at this point. Good luck with your application!


Contradiction on findings in existing literature

As Buffy notes, you cite both, and expound upon the apparent conflict.

If you are just reviewing literature, you would point out that the two studies came to different conclusions. If this is on-topic for your thesis, you would then dig a bit deeper and clarify what the studies have in common and how they differ, as it would lay out potential explanations for the apparent conflict.

This sort of thing is often the goal of reviewing literature to start with - identify a gap where there are no studies, or identify places where studies and/or theory seems to disagree.

Depending on what work you are doing, you may simply note this as a promising topic for future research, or you may want to try to address this conflict yourself with your own work to try to resolve the contradiction. The answer may be all kinds of things, from seeking out a mediating variable, to changing the analysis in a way that makes the conflict disappear, to ending up confirming that in fact "sometimes this variable matters, and sometimes it doesn't, and we don't know why."


Report blatant self-plagiarism to journal editor or PubPeer?

Taking the complaint public shames both the author and the journal, which may be counterproductive if the journal is responsible and willing to act promptly (mistakes do happen, even for very good journals).

I would thus recommend starting by reporting to the journal, which should have a procedure for dealing with such things.  If the journal does not take you seriously or refuses to act, then take it public and shame both the author and the journal.


Missing optional resume in graduate application

It seems as if you have done all you could. If they won't accept supplementary material, then they won't. I'm not sure about the comment on not reading letters, though. It seems like it would be a flaw in the system as long as the letters are in (readable) English.

If you get past initial screening you can raise such thing in interviews or in future correspondence, of course.

And, take more care in the future, of course, though it doesn't help at this moment.


Q: What should I do if suitable Professor for my thesis research is completely booked?

You might try to convince the Professor's best student to supervise you. (Formally, the Professor might need to be listed as your supervisor, but the student will be your supervisor informally.)


Is it conventional to provide a list of GUI element descriptions in a thesis?

I think you are writing a thesis, not a user manual for a program. Focus on the technical advances. That is what your thesis will be judged on.
I'd suggest leaving the GUI out of it unless you have designed new, and innovative, human-computer interaction elements. Creating such elements has value, certainly, but it doesn't sound like that is the focus of your work.
If you want a user manual, make that a separate project - just for fun.


Career change at 37: Should I start an Electronic Engineering MSc?

Disclaimer: I don't know the UK job market, I'm from Germany.
I'd just apply for jobs that seem interesting to you, using your current degrees.
You got a solid background in EE from your BS, and your MSc shows that you have a broader knowledge and a somewhat interdisciplinary, scientific thinking, documented by the ability to switch from EE to CS. That should count as an asset.
What you don't have, is experience in electronics engineering, at least as far as we can tell from your question. But a year at university also doesn't give you that. So, you should find a way to convince the companies that you're capable of doing electronics designs at professional level.
My impression from the German job market is that companies desperately seek employees for hardware development, so they'll happily give people a try who are willing to do it.
Spending a year (or more) at university might be a fun time for you, but I don't think that necessary for applying to an engineering job. It might even be considered a weird decision by potential employers.
P.S. I myself have an EE diploma and a PhD in engineering and have always been working in IT, often in projects where EE knowledge was very welcome. A similar thing might work for you, just the other way round.


Can Zotero collections be used as hierarchical tags?

Actually, the tool is there))

Steps (look at the screenshot).

Open advanced search
Choose "Collection" as a search parameter
Choose collections to search in
Add more that one collection

That's it!


UK Lecturer application: possible to refuse to answer "expected salary"?

(This does not really answer the question of whether one can refuse to answer "expected salary": rather it is a suggestion to help answer that question in a reasonable way, if you choose to do so.)

Something that may be useful to be aware of is the "Higher Education Pay Spine" which most (many? some?) UK institutions adhere to:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/he_singlepayspine

In my (admittedly limited) experience, Lecturers are typically appointed at a point somewhere around 36 on this scale. Others may have different information: please say if you do!

(For particular universities, a bit of internet searching will often show that they use a different scale, but the one linked above gives the general idea.)

Depending on your level of experience, you may wish to adjust what you ask for, but at least this gives you some context to help calibrate your response.


How much non-salary income do computer science professors make in the United States?

No, there has been no survey of CS professors' non-salary incomes. We can't prove a negative, but you and I both, and presumably others here, have tried to look it up and found nothing. The likeliest reason is that the research has not yet been done.

Despite the highly upvoted comment about the information being useless, if anyone reading this is interested in performing the income study, I will volunteer to be one of the datapoints.


Do social behavorial and economics (SBE) PhD students get funding in the US?

Yes, U.S. universities often fund these Ph.D. positions, though my sense is that there are fewer funded positions than in STEM fields. It would be very rare for a MS to be funded, as far as I know, and often opportunities for teaching assistantships (funding through teaching classes to (usually) undergraduates) are reserved for people in doctoral programs as opposed to master's programs.

Also, usually I hear these fields referred to as "social science," with the NSF being the only entity I associate with the term "SBE".


To what extent should relevant background be discussed vs. just referenced?

It depends.

What do your readers need to know to appreciate the main result of your paper? If your paper builds on the ideas of others, these ideas must be stated (included explicitly) and accompanied by a citation. If you simply note in passing that there are other relevant ideas, reference may be enough. Having said that, as a reviewer, I will question and discourage an excessively long list of references [1-22]. Authors should do their work to identify and tell the reader what they can find in each paper separately, not dump the whole reading list on them.
How long is your paper? If you are writing a 100+ page manuscript, then brevity is not as important as if you were restricted to 1 or 2 pages for your extended abstract.
Whom are you writing for? If this is a highly specialised journal, you can expect your readers to already know some sacred texts by heart, and a reference is sufficient. For a more general readership, you need to support your reader and tell them more , i.e. explain the main ideas and then refer to the texts.


How can I write a thesis if my master's program does not offer it?

While it wouldn't be, formally, a thesis, you can always write and publish your research. That would actually be preferable to a thesis that might get buried in university files.

But you probably need some guidance in going about it the first time. I'd suggest that you talk with a trusted faculty member to see if you can get advice and feedback if you want to do that.

But if a thesis-based degree is actually a hard requirement, you may need to study elsewhere, as you probably won't convince your university to change its policies.

However, your dilemma surprises me, assuming you are now studying in Canada and wish to stay there. I wonder if you have accurate information about the requirements for entry. If you do, I wonder why master's level place would be out of sync with what is required for doctoral education.

I would understand it better if you are studying outside Canada and want to later study there, but still wonder why they would have such rigid requirements.


How do I use MLA citations for the title of my paper?

You don't include citations in the title of an article.

Enclose the quoted phrase in quote marks, so it's clear that they are someone else's words, and then give the source in the introduction.

  "Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles": Swiss Foreign Relations, 1683-1715

  By user18347

  Shakespeare's character Hamlet considered one of his options to be "taking arms against a sea of troubles" (Shakespeare, p. 123).  A similar choice was faced by the leaders of Switzerland in the late 17th century. [...]

Then include a reference to Shakespeare's work in your bibliography or list of references, as with any other source.

If the quote and its source are common knowledge, so that's it's more a proverb than a quote, then it's probably not necessary to discuss the source, unless it gives useful context.

If this is an essay for a course, then if in further doubt, consult your instructor.


How can I make sure I'll get credit for my work when working with unwanted and untrusted collaborator?

Communication is needed and you need to communicate to your co-advisor your feelings rather than second-guessing things and increase your frustration. You may lack some aspects of the picture that your advisor's see. So I would suggest the following:

Prepare everything to as close as the final product (manuscript) you can at this point. Add your name as sole author (unless anyone else deserves co-authorship at this stage)
Present the work to your co-advisor for discussion and point out what "little" is left to do and discuss what remains to be done. This can then lead to understanding of what other could contribute that is not accomplished in your work.
Once you have the situation a little more clear and depending on the outcome, state how you would like to see the distribution of co-authorship and take any discussion that follows.

Hopefully this will put you in a clearer position when considering taking on additional collaborators.

Please also check the tag authors or search for contributorship here on academia to et input on what should be involved in adding names on a manuscript (here is a link to one example).


What are some important questions to ask former alumni of a PhD program we will enrol in?

You have a good start (how much flexibility is allowed to the students with regard to taking courses, choosing co-advisors, as well as about how the PhD process works, what the most important milestones are and what particular challenges one should be wary of).  Note that how the PhD process works is something you might want to leave out because the department materials should already lay that out, and it might take up a lot of valuable time for her to explain that in your interview.  But do make sure to read all the department materials before you meet with her.

I'll propose some questions to add to your list, but there are probably some things I'm not thinking of, and also you'll want to select a subset of these ideas, since it might be overwhelming to ask all of them.

Write a list of the key members of the cast of characters.  Give her a copy of the list when you meet with her, and take your own notes about what she says.  Ask her which of the names will likely be the most helpful for you over the years, and which ones have pet peeves to watch out for (and what the pet peeves are, of course).  Also ask her what other people might be important to know about, that you left off your list.
Advice for preparing for your qualifying exams.
Advice about course load (two courses vs. three).
Advice about work-life balance.
What do you wish you had known before you started at X University?
Tips for surviving TAing.
How to stay safe while working late and on the weekend on campus.
Suggestions for creating a support network.
What to do between now and then to prepare.
Fun things to do on campus and nearby (this will get your interviewee comfortable, taking a pleasurable walk down memory lane -- so it might be a good one to ask at the one-third point).

The more questions one asks, the more one might convey an attitude of anxiety.  But I personally think it's only sensible to ask questions.  Therefore I suggest that you try to keep the conversation light with plenty of humor, to counteract the possible anxious impression.


You give a partial version of the story using pejoratives instead of trying to stay based on facts. So it is difficult to answer your question with that information.

What we can say is that authorship is something to be discussed with your advisor. It will be his decision, in the end. A good way to help yourself is to work hard on that idea, and clearly make your point. The best way to help yourself be first author is to write the paper, or at least the more significant portions of it! Start already with introduction and methods, and as soon as results are gathered, write it up and then submit it to your advisor. If you have done a large part of the work and wrote the manuscript, you should have no problem being first author.


"Institution" on submission for a former student between jobs

Whenever I co-write a paper with former students of mine, based on their MSc thesis, we typically put XXX University as affiliation of both the student and me. The bulk of the work has been done when both of us were affiliated with this university, so this seems appropriate. The fact that the student is no longer affiliated with the university seems of minor importance to me.
Does the venue to which you submit demand that you specify the role of each author? If not, I'd just let it be. If so, consider "MSc alumnus", substituting the appropriate title for "MSc".


How would we identify a better measure of academic productivity?

I don't know that anyone has done this on a broad scale for tenure. There is a fairly recent study that used a machine learning approach to figure out what metrics are predictive of success in achieving a faculty position.

van Dijk, D., Manor, O., & Carey, L. B. (2014). Publication metrics and success on the academic job market. Current Biology, 24(11), R516-R517.

For an overview and a simplied version of the application, see this Science Careers story.

From the paper's summary:

  The number of applicants vastly outnumbers the available academic
  faculty positions. What makes a successful academic job market
  candidate is the subject of much current discussion [1–4] . Yet, so
  far there has been no quantitative analysis of who becomes a principal
  investigator (PI). We here use a machine-learning approach to predict
  who becomes a PI, based on data from over 25,000 scientists in PubMed.
  We show that success in academia is predictable. It depends on the
  number of publications, the impact factor (IF) of the journals in
  which those papers are published, and the number of papers that
  receive more citations than average for the journal in which they were
  published (citations/IF). However, both the scientist’s gender and the
  rank of their university are also of importance, suggesting that
  non-publication features play a statistically significant role in the
  academic hiring process. Our model (www.pipredictor.com) allows anyone
  to calculate their likelihood of becoming a PI.

tl;dr Publish lots of papers that get lots of citations in good journals. But you knew that already.


Can I still submit my work to a journal if a very similar paper was just posted on arXiv?

Sure, you can go ahead and submit your paper. Of course you are obligated to discuss the arXiv paper, and its relation to your work -- but it sounds like you can honestly describe it as independent work. It would be a good idea to also make your paper public at this point (perhaps by posting a preprint on arXiv).


Should I email a group regarding issues in work they've cited?

It would be fine to contact them and say that you tried X and would like their help figuring out why you did not get result Y.
Assuming you are right and they are wrong might be considered rude by some people.


Is it good to buy health insurance for time period between the date of entry into US and the date on which university insurance coverage starts?

Travel insurance is generally pretty cheap, especially if you exclude high risk activities like skiing and parasailing. My UK bank provides travel insurance for free and some credit cards provide travel insurance for free if you book your flights with them. If you were taking a three week vacation to the US, you should be able get insured for well under $100.

The issue is that you are not taking a vacation. You are entering the US on a F-1 student visa and possibly do not have a return ticket. While many travel insurance providers will happily sell you insurance and tell you you are covered, they will also direct you to pages and pages of terms and conditions. The key to insurance is making sure you meet all the terms and conditions, otherwise they will not pay out when you need them.

Assuming you can find reasonably priced insurance, the question becomes do you need it. Travel insurance generally only reimburses you for expenses and does not pay the bill up front. This means the benefits are often limited by how much you can afford to pay up front. There also things you can do to reduce the need to see a doctor (e.g., getting a round of general antibiotics from your doctor before you leave). Overall the answer is highly personal and depends on how you would pay a huge medical bill.


Do universities typically cover publication fees associated with open access publications?

Talk to your professor who will know better than us. It's possible your professor has a grant that also has an open access component, in which case that's where the money will come from. It's also possible your university's library has set aside some funds for open access. Here's an example page from the University of Hull. If your university has something similar, you might be able to get funding from there.

If you find you don't have funding, you can pay the OA fee out of your own pocket (probably not a good idea even if you are wealthy), decline OA (if it's a hybrid journal which publishes both OA and non-OA papers), ask for a waiver (Elsevier might grant this since you are from India, which is a developing country), and finally withdraw and submit elsewhere. If you take the last option, do so quickly so as not to waste the journal's time.


Restart a degree program with a fresh GPA

I'm not sure whether it's common, but my university has a policy like this, called Fresh Start.  A student who returns after an absence of at least five years can have their GPA recalculated, omitting all classes with grades of C− or lower.

As far as I know, they still get to keep credits earned for those classes, and those grades still appear on their transcript; they just aren't included in the GPA calculation.


Submitting course work report as research paper?

In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ?

So long as the results are novel and you meet the other necessary prerequisites for publication (acknowledge main contributors as authors, acknowledge secondary contributors in acknowledgements, reference and discuss related work, meet level of technicality/significance required, etc.), I don't see any problem of submitting course-work for publication, and if as you say the work has had some impact in the field, I think it should be encouraged!

  Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?

You should ask your professor or other senior staff member for advice, but I don't believe any special mentions would be required other than what's mentioned above. You could mention it as a footnote or as an acknowledgement if so desired. Also, if your work was (even indirectly) funded through a specific research grant, they may require acknowledgement as a condition of the grant. Again, talk to a staff member involved.


As an undergraduate, how can I explore research topics that may interest me without having a background?

This is a good question and I'm sure you're going to get a lot of "try doing X" style answers - however, I think it's important to zoom out for a second and remember that there are two forces which decide what topics researchers investigate.

The first comes from within - what you are most motivated and passionate to research, giving you a strong pull factor in that direction. Alternatively, some topics you will find totally and utterly boring, and there is a strong push factor there. When you are young, it can feel like this force is the only force guiding your learning, since you pick your elective modules, you choose which Wikipedia articles to read, etc. This is probably why you feel that choosing a good topic is going to be really important going forwards.

The second force comes from academia itself. Some topics are "sexy" and funding opens up for those topics, pulling researchers in. Other topics go out of fashion, pushing researchers away. This force is created by the hundreds of thousands of people working and funding academic research right now, and is totally out of your control. The significance of this force grows as you mature through your academic career, so while right now you probably barely feel it (beyond the fact that the electives you can choose from are decided by academics), in the future you will be acutely aware of it and how much of an influence it has on your research area. If you ever listen to someone accomplished explain their academic career path, they'll always tell you it was "unusual" because they started in X and ended up doing Y. "Unusual" career paths are so common place that these days i'd only be surprised if someone said they started working on X when they were 25 and now at 60 their still working on X. That would be unusual. Of the hundreds of researchers I have ever met, I can only think of 2 or 3 people like that.

So long story short, I wouldn't bother researching around to find other topics you may or may not be interested in, because it simply doesn't work like that - particularly in practical/applied Physics or life sciences. You will get funding and find mentors only in the topics society/academia finds most important. To go against the flow in this regard early on is to commit career suicide, since everything you do will be that much harder. No mentors, no funding, no one wants to accept your poster presentation, no one wants to publish your paper, no one asks you to review anything, etc. So from that point of view, if you want to make smart early-career decisions, look at new/expanding areas of research and find a way to make it your own. Learn to enjoy it because you are the best at it and you are energized by the progress you make, not necessarily the subject matter itself. Keep the things you love as hobbies, or save them until tenure :)


Where to find official publication ethics guidelines and best practices?

I would suggest to follow the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines to get enough idea on your mentioned issues. You could also find the some exemplary cases (here) and how are then being handled by journals or the COPE boards.
Briefly, it says:
"COPE is a forum for editors and publishers of peer reviewed journals to discuss all aspects of publication ethics. It also advises editors on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct." (Source: COPE Homepage)
Further, you could also find publisher-wise publication ethics guidelines, though they follow more or less the same practice:

Elsevier Publishing Ethics Resource
Springer Publication Ethics for Journals
IEEE Publication Ethics
Wiley Publication Ethics Guidelines for Authors
ACS Code of Ethics

A brief browsing through the above would give you a lot of information on such stuff, which one must know before entering into the research world.


Is it worth applying for PhD in the UK without the requested undergraduate average?

The short answer is you should apply.

Generally speaking, all your previous degrees and grades count towards your application for a PhD. But if you are having strong marks in your Masters, you should definitely try to submit your provisional scores to give an indication of your upward trajectory. Many PhD applicants would be in your similar situation. In many UK institutions, a provisional acceptance may be offered to somebody in your situation where the profile is strong, conditional on the completion of the Masters at a certain level. In other words, the final acceptance will not be offered until all the grades come in.


I'm confused and frustrated by my postdoc mentor's stubbornness and not caring for my future at all. What should I do?

The way you describe your relationship, it sounds like manager and subordinate employee. Regardless of anything else - if that's the dynamic, it would not be surprising he expects you to follow his (effective) orders, and not very interested in promoting your independent future.

I know that many research groups have this dynamic; so it's not as though it can be easily rectified in favor of something else. Still, that's not how a post-doc is supposed to be like - and that depends on him, but also on you.

The way it's supposed to be (*) is:

You're an independent researcher on your own right. Even when you're part of a group, you're supposed to have your own agenda regarding what you'd like to study.
The post-doctoral researcher position is not the same as a 'senior research assistant' or a 'research support engineer' position. In those, the researchers' needs and desires define what you occupy yourself with, almost solely.
As a post-doctoral research you should already have developed, or should now be developing, independent relationships with others in the research community, outside of your group, and the collaboration with them - direct, not just through your research group.
(the part you like) A senior researcher should help his post-docs with their personal development as researchers - but not in a close follow-my-lead-closely relationship as s/he might have his/her MsC/PhD candidates.

So, he's not upholding his side of what's supposed to happen, but frankly - I believe you might not be, either, and what's more, it seems you had not clearly agreed beforehand on a reasonable modus operandi between you two; so you're expecting one thing to happen and he's expecting another.

The bottom-line suggestion is to try to arrange to have a "state of our relationship and mutual-expections-alignment" talk with him that's independent of any specific single issue or grievance any of you might have.

It's hard to make other concrete suggestion without information about your research group, your field, your departmental/university politics etc.

(*) - Again, some would argue that post-docs as plain subordinate grunts with a brain is a valid arrangement. I disagree.


Is is ethical to not compensate experiment participants who withdraw from the study?

I don't see any ethical problem in not compensating people for work they don't do. However, you still have to frame the problem in a clear way in order to avoid frustration/litigations. Just write down explicitely that a student will receive compensation only if he/she completes the test.

As for motivating students to give you meaningful answer, that is a completely different story, and a much more complex one.


How am I supposed to find 3 recommenders for grad school?

First, I wouldn't make the request via email, although it would be a good idea to request a meeting via email to discuss your plans. We may not be able to put a name to a face from an email, but if you make a point of visiting and reminding them of the course(s) you took with them and how you did, that would go a long way in tweaking their memories. Second, come prepared. Bring copies of your transcripts, your resume (which should include work and volunteer experience), and a clear idea about what your plans are, including with who and what you plan to study. Finally, give the prospective reference time to prepare a good letter (a month is usually the minimum) and a clear deadline for when the letter is to be submitted by.
(As a side note, I assumed your comment about professors not being able to respond to your email simply meant they hadn't gotten back to you.) Good luck!


Sending M.Sc. dissertation to a big conference

Typically a dissertation is not considered to be a peer reviewed publication.  This means that the material in it can be extracted and turned into conference or journal publications.  In some fields, this is a typical practice after completing a dissertation, where in others it goes the other way (the dissertation is assembled from peer-reviewed papers).

You cannot, however, just submit your thesis directly as is.  A dissertation is generally much longer than conference or journal papers.  A dissertation typically also has much more freedom in style, and does not have to be targeted at the biases of a particular community.  Thus, to make a credible conference submission, you will need to compress or extract a nugget of contribution of an appropriate size, and may also need to tailor its focus and language to better match that of the conference where it is being submitted.


You were correct in not engaging in religious argument in an academic setting. But a valid answer, that is probably acceptable to most people, whatever their faith, is, "I don't know. Your question is outside the realm of science."

If further asked, "What do you believe?", you can say that it is a private matter.

Unfortunately too many religious discussions end up here.


How much plagiarism would you consider too much in an academic book?

There is no clear quantitative cut-off point, if that's what you're looking for.

The severity of plagiarism has to be evaluated qualitatively and within the context of the work itself and of the discipline and its conventions (e.g. regarding citations and "public", unattributable knowledge). Qualitatively here means several things:

Has the author fraudulently claimed a major idea or a finding? Even with perfect paraphrasing, this -- it might be argued -- is the most severe form of plagiarism.
Has the author claimed an idea as original that is only tangential to the author's contribution (but doesn't bear much argumentative weight)?
Is the author merely sloppy with citations, i.e. can it be guessed from the context that the passage was meant as citation, that the attribution was (conveniently) forgotten; or is it merely incomplete or erroneous?
Are we talking about "self-plagiarism" (if that exits)?

Depending on the answers to these questions, 50 examples might be a scandal or not worth making a fuzz about.

Moreover, even if plagiarism could be evaluated only quantitatively, it is unclear what you would measure. The number of copied and unattributed passages? The length of each problematic passage? The ratio of changed words in a paraphrase?


Uni group project being used by companies for profit

This question splits into a few parts.

First, are there malicious arrangements where people abuse students as labor?

Yes, there are. and this fear seems to be motivating what you are writing here.

There can be and have been instances where professors collude with companies to use their students' code or other forms of labor with the only compensation being credits. Chinese graduate students often described such things to me when they were in the US (particularly when they had advisors who also spoke Chinese and threatened their visa status and continued education to get them to cooperate).

Second, is this arrangement (the one you describe in the question). such a malicious arrangement?

That's not completely clear, but the answer is probably no. (1) there's nothing per se wrong with having your projects be used or evaluated by companies. If anything that's a great opportunity for real world exposure. (2) you can ask the professor in charge or speak with the IP office at your university and see if all of this is happening in accordance with UK law. Assuming you're not being forced to abandon your rights to take the class, there's no obvious abuse here. Presumably, you can even refuse to sell / grant rights even if a company is interested.

tl;dr - the mere fact companies will consider what you produce is not  enough to constitute abuse.


Let's party !: ways to interact with the students similar to "Science Meets Speed Dating"

Great idea, given that many students have no idea what scientists actually do (and some confuse scientists with full-time teachers; not sure what your students think -- that would be interesting to know in advance to address these misconceptions and to reinforce what is true). And even better to go beyond a simple poster session or the like.

But what exactly should the students take away from the event/this experience? For example,

that science is a weird mixture of great fun (doing something new) to excruciating agony (getting papers/proposals rejected, non-significant results)? Then I'd second a science slam. If you have good speakers who are willing to be open about their success and failures. Personally, I'd go by something "behind the scenes" like. A couple of placed cameras with a fast forward montage of a typical day might be interesting (explaining what you do in the video). And plan some time for questions.
to show specifically what your institution researches? How about something hands-on? Something that shows the progress, not the end result that ends up in papers or text books?

Just, whatever you do, I doubt that anything involving speed would get the message across. Perhaps it's my aversion to speed dating speaking here, but in the end it's all a blur and I wonder whether that fits your goals. I think identifying the misconceptions and specifically replacing them with what you actually do is the way to go, rather than just short and diverse contact that likely will remain superficial.


Scientific papers are generally read differently than literature.  Most people reading a scientific paper are not reading it for pleasure, but have some sort of agenda about what type of information they are attempting to extract from the paper.  It is only rarely that they will want to read the whole thing, but more often are attempting to extract particular types of information, which may or may not be included in particular sections of a paper.

As such, it is generally best to start each section (even of a non-review paper) with a terse summary of the contents of the section.  If you wait to put your summary further into the section, then it will simply annoy and frustrate many readers, since it will force them to read paragraphs they are not interested in before they get to the bit that tells them whether they want to read that section.  Worse, many will not get there at all!


When to label paper as "accepted" on your publication list?

I'd do it when getting the final acceptance letter. Before that, you can say "submitted" or "under revision".