Do PhD Committees separate applicants based on whether they are a fresh undergrad or have MS/Work experience? (USA)

If a university were to do that formally, I hope (and suspect) that they would say so. But you can't account for individual preferences in such things. And, I'll also guess that individual bias cancels out in such committees.
Some professors might prefer to admit a student or two who they think might finish early, freeing up resources. Some professors might prefer to have students around for a longer time so that they can get to know them and also have more of an influence on their future.
Work experience might be a plus, but some early research experience is a stronger plus. Work in industry isn't generally a good indicator of success in research, though there are a few exceptions.
But even a student admitted with an MS/MA has to pass qualifying/comprehensive exams, so, in the US, entering with a masters may not bring a big advantage. They also have to choose an advisor with less information since it is sooner. This works well for some, but not all students and professors recognize that in the admission process.
I think that the most important thing, far outweighing all others, is whether the committee can make a fairly accurate projection that admitted students will succeed, both in the degree and thereafter. This is one reason that letters of recommendation have quite a lot of weight in admission decisions and can overcome some deficiencies.
But, for a direct answer, no, there is no strong preference for any of the groups you list.


In the field of engineering, can GRE General test score be substituted with GRE Math score?

Pretty much all programs will reject your application without consideration if you do not submit everything they request.  Some places are flexible; they may be willing to accept either test score.  (Some of the department at my university, including my department, are willing to take any one relevant score.)  However, such programs will almost always state this explicitly in their graduate application guidelines.  If you think a program might be willing to accept the substitution, you can always contact their director of graduate admissions or director of graduate studies and ask.  Chances are strongly against their saying yes, but it probably will not hurt your chances if you ask.


What is the effect on a supervisor if a graduate student has been found to have plagiarised?

When reading "the effect on a supervisor", the first case coming to my mind is that of Haruko Obokata, whose supervisor had to commit suicide for her misconduct. But this is not plagiarism.

It is hard to define precisely the affect on reputation. There is a case, where a PhD student, then post doc in the same group, plagiarized 11 papers. His supervisor was the co-author in all 11 papers, but it seemed not to affect his career. I'm not sure about his reputation.

Here are the details of the case: http://carl.cs.indiana.edu/6S/plagiarism/


In computer science in the US, is there a bias towards hiring junior faculty straight from PhD programs?

In many fields these days, it is exactly the opposite: it is hard to get a faculty position until you have spent time as a postdoc.  Graduate students are often considered to be simply too inexperienced to become professors.  It is also the case that in some fields (e.g., biomedical research) postdocs are a source of cheap labor and professor positions are scarce, so there is a "market" that pushes people toward more and more postdoc.

Industrial labs are a different matter: they may effectively count either for or against you, depending on the situation.  In essence: if you are in a postdoc-like position, doing a lot of publications, it's probably in your favor.  If you are mostly doing proprietary research that cannot be published, then it's likely to count against you instead.

Specifically in US computer science, the field is currently in transition: historically, there were few postdocs and much hiring directly from graduate school (my own advisor did not even apply for his post).  Now, however, the field is moving toward more postdocs before professorship.


Has the proportions of articles to citations changed?

That's a really fascinating question. I looked at the original Nature article (https://www.nature.com/news/the-top-100-papers-1.16224) - my initial intuition would be that the proportion shouldn't differ to significantly from the earlier one (it will most likely differ to some extent as there is no reason to expect the proportional growth of citations and the growth of papers to correlate), but we would of course need to calculate it.
Wouldn't the best course of action be to use a research database where you can filter by number of accrued citations, set that to display papers with > 1000 citations and then divide the retrieved number with the total number of papers in that database? If you you wish to be consistent with the Nature article, I believe they did their analysis solely on Web of Science. Having that said, I'm not sure they provide these figures out of the box, it looks like Nature got special access to these figures for their article.


How to effectively explain why my research is important?

Ask yourself a number of questions:

Why am I doing the research?
What problem am I solving?
Why should anyone else by interested in this research?
How can my results help solve someone else's problem?

The first two questions will help you understand what you are doing from your own personal perspective, as well as establishing the context of the work. The latter two will help you establish why someone else would be interested in your work.

In short, ask What? and So what? about your work.


I need certain courses not covered in my undergraduate studies, can I take them at another institution?

I would still suggest you contact the admission director (one more time)! He is the one with the "right" and "only" answer you need to follow. All what we can do is share relevant experiences that may or may not be along the lines of your school's standard/system.

Having said that, If I'm not mistaken, I think you can take the courses in other schools (as long as they are accredited and/or sister schools + cover a similar syllabus as the one your school has). As for a database, try to look through your school's graduate handbook or admission website.


How should a student deal with personal criticisms from an assistant professor?

He may be competing with your supervisor. He may not like your general topic. He may not like you. Or, he really believes what he says. Or he wants to test you. You don't know.

You have to live with people who confuse what's going on with prejudice- or agenda-coloured "truth". Practically all successful researchers have encountered such put-downs.

Schechtman (later Nobel winner) got a "Introduction to Crystallography" book put on his table when he first reported that he got a 5-fold symmetry, hence quasicrystals, in his experiment. Feynman got put-down big time initially by Oppenheimer and was only saved by Dyson's aggressive intervention.

You think your progress is good? Your supervisor does, too? That's enough for you to go on, then. This guy may be a big shot, but for you, it doesn't count. Big shots are usually right when they think something is cool/great. They can be awfully wrong when they think something is not good. Trust your instincts.


Does emailing a journal to ask if my article is within scope hurt chances of getting published?

Don't worry.  There is nothing bad about what you have done, and it will almost certainly have no impact on consideration of any manuscript you may submit to any of those journals.

Most academics divide their time between large numbers of obligations, and they receive many unsolicited emails; this is even more true of those who are on the editorial board of a prominent journal.  Many of them will not reply to an unsolicited message from someone they don't know.

They have not put you on a "forbidden list" or labeled you as a crackpot (unless the content of your message was such as to warrant that -- but even then they probably don't remember your name).

Let me add that it is sometimes a good idea to contact an editor before submitting your paper, and I have done so on occasion.  This usually requires that you know the editor, or that someone who knows them can introduce you -- or that you can manage to bump into them at a conference.  Asking informally if your manuscript is a fit for their journal can be helpful when the work falls between disciplines, and an immediate answer saves time for you, for the journal, and possibly for potential reviewers.  When doing this you should usually contact the particular associate editor who is most likely to handle a manuscript like yours.


How does one balance between working on a research problem and writing up the results?

Do everything you can to reduce the exploratory nature of the data analysis.

Plan exactly what results you are going to need for your manuscript, what the tables will be, what the figures will be, how they will be formatted. Then when you get to the data analysis, you can be extremely focused, concentrating only on what's essential for your work.


Who get rebuttal in conference submission?

The answer will depend on the conference, but reviews are typically sent to all authors, to give all authors an equal opportunity to respond. At this stage, reviewers might not have seen other reviews, hence, no decisions will have made.


Why are Macbooks so ubiquitous in Science, if they are status symbols

Rest assured that there are reasons enough for using good quality hardware. Those of us who purchase a Mac do not do so because they are a "status symbol". We do so because they are the best tool for the job.

In many fields, using Windows is simply not an option. We need UNIX.
Linux is a good operating system, is free, and can be installed on a wide variety of hardware. However, Linux is nowhere near as refined as OS X in terms of its overall usability. We can often be much more productive on an OS X machine, and reserve Linux for use in virtual machines or on a powerful desktop when we need software stability or heavy-lifting power.
The other side of the coin is hardware. Until recently, there was very scarce competition in terms of hardware quality. Macs are built well, thin and light, and have long battery life – great for conferencing. Now, other manufacturers have caught up and are making hardware that is at least as good – but a high quality Thinkpad or Dell XPS is still just as pricey as a Mac. I repeat: comparably high quality Windows hardware is just as expensive as a Mac.

The money spent on a good machine pays for itself in productivity.


Projects funded by German Research Foundation---teaching duties

As far as I know, you shall not teach within your contract as doctoral researcher in a DFG funded SFB. The reason is simple: There is a project proposal and the DFG gives money to do the work that is described in the proposal. If the proposal does say that the PhD student should work on the research project (and does not say that teaching is part of the job) you shall do that and nothing else.

However, there are several caveats: This applies to all the part of your job that is funded by the SFB. It is not unusual that your position has mixed funding, e.g. 50% comes from an SFB (or another DFG project) and 50% comes from something else. You should not do any teaching in your 50% that are related to the research project, what you do in the rest of the time is another matter. I also know that it is indeed common that PhD students in DFG funded research projects actually do teach somehow (e.g. as a TA). (Probably it is worth noting that PhD students who are funded directly by the university always have teaching duties in Germany.) Maybe this is allowed under some circumstances, but I could not find any regulations by the DFG that are explicit about this. The only thing I found is this part:

  4.9.2 Eigene Stelle
  Personen, die mit einer Eigenen Stelle durch die DFG gefördert werden, sind verpflichtet, sich  mit  ihrer  vollen  Arbeitszeit  dem  in  der  Bewilligung  genannten  Projekt  zu  widmen.  Darüber hinausgehende Tätigkeiten für die aufnehmende wissenschaftliche Einrichtung (insbesondere  Lehrtätigkeiten  oder  projektfremde  Dienstleistungen  wie  beispielsweise  klinische Routinetätigkeiten sowie die Mitwirkung bei der Patientenversorgung) sind im Rahmen der von der DFG finanzierten Stelle nicht zulässig. Solche Tätigkeiten können außerhalb  der  regelmäßigen  wöchentlichen  Arbeitszeit  der  von  der  DFG  finanzierten Stelle im Rahmen des für die wissenschaftliche Einrichtung geltenden Nebentätigkeitsrechts ausgeübt werden.

This is a quote from the "Verwendungsrichtlinien" of the DFG an applies in the case where you write a proposal to fund your own position. The relevent sentence says that no teaching or non-project related service is allowed.


Guidelines for creating/designing an exam?

In my opinion the most important question is what should the exam measure?
Depending on the institution, the type of exam, and the course this can vary a lot. Basically, exams are to learning what thermometers are to temperature. You want to have it as precise as possible, and not to build a barometer instead.

Once you know what you want to measure, check it once more: are these expectations realistic given the course and training given to the students? Are they enough to ensure that passing students will benefit from the follow-up courses? Here you will usually need some coordination with other courses.

I advise not to adapt the exam to the level of effort actually produced by the students, but to the expected level of effort. Since my students seem to produce much less effort than I expect, I usually give quite low grades (I always warn them of this fact). This may seem harsh, but in fact I think I am doing them a favor not to blind them with artificially boosted grades that let them believe they will do great with little effort in the following years, which is usually a lie. I have seen too many students stuck in third year with no hope to go forward, after hardly passing the first two years thanks to very generous grades. Of course, this point of view is hugely dependent on the environment.

An exam should be too short rather than too long given the allowed time. If it is too long, you will have to boost the grade to be fair, but that will probably give too high grades to students who master only a small portion of the course. If the exam is too short, you can still measure the level of mastery they achieved. The only exception is when you really want to measure their speed, but it is rarely relevant. My personal guideline is that I let my students three to four times as much time than I take to write the complete solution to the exam (I have been trained to take exams quickly all along my studies, your preferred ratio may differ but it is useful to establish a ratio in a way that ensures that time is not too much of an issue).

I advise against always giving more points to more difficult questions, especially for numerical grades (a note is in order : in France we grade on 20 points and the passing grade is always 10, and in higher education one can almost always compensate a grade below 10 by better grades in other courses, even in minors). The point is to have a grading scheme which actually matches what you want to measure. I thus usually assign about 8 points to very basic or classical questions, 8 points to questions that are easy but necessitate some understanding of the material (as opposed to reproducing a method seen ten time without the need to actually think), and only 4 points to more sophisticated questions, even if they are long to solve. I try to make this clear to students, so that they first solve the easier questions. The more sophisticated questions thus only serve to do the difference between student with a correct mastery on the course, from truly bright ones. I also want to prevent students who don't really understand what is going on in the course but manage to reproduce standard exercises to get a passing grade. This grading scheme is not necessarily appropriate in other systems, but the important point is that your grading must be tailored to your goal, without letting other principles getting in your way.

Another point to think about is whether you want to have your exam very close to the course itself (which is what student prefer and what gives the highest grades) or on the contrary to have parts which are significantly different, but rely strongly on the course material. This later choice is in order if you want to measure how much your students are able to use what they learned in another context. Be warned that results are often disappointing, and choose this option with care.

On the long run, try to adjust your exam depending not on the percentage of passing grades (unless you are forced into it, which often happens), but depending on the correlation between passing grades and future success of students. The information is often difficult to obtain, but if you realize that your students struggle to get a passing grade with you but have good success in follow-up courses nonetheless, you should be more gentle in your questions or grading. On the contrary, if many of your passing students struggle a lot with standard follow-up courses, you should probably be harsher.


Do you consider it as weird if I thank the open-source community in the acknowledgement section of a paper?

I also mentioned technical forums and Q&A sites (about GAMS, C++, the GNU Scientific Library, LaTeX, Maths, Statistics..., in my case) in the acknowledgement section of my PhD memoir.

I do not really think that doing the same in the acknowledgement section of a paper is inappropriate. As long as it is expressed in the same terms as other acknowledgements, I actually think it is a good and revolutionary idea.

Of course, all the coauthors of the paper should agree in including that kind of acknowledgement, just as it would/should be regarding other acknowledgements.

UPDATE

To expand and complete my answer, I should say that, in my humble opinion,

the 'Acknowledgements' section of a paper is not usually mandatory;
in case there is one, it should be kept not too long;
you can mention anyone or any 'entity' you are thankful to;
if there are too many people or 'entities' to mention, try to select the most relevant ones;
you may consider to keep some place for sort of formulaic or routine acknowledgements such as thanking anonymous reviewers, etc.

But, of course, there should definitely be a place for the 'real' acknowledgements. If you are really thankful for the help from online communities, or you just want to highlight it, I think there is no problem. For me, it makes no difference with other 'personal' acknowledgements, such as thanking some concrete colleagues for reviewing a draft of your paper, for instance.


Proper "notice period" for resigning a tenure track position?

Hiring an adjunct or borrowing someone from another department for one course is about the least bad thing that can happen in this world. Giving the kind of notice (9 months?) that would have allowed them to do a full candidate search is impossible for folks who move laterally out of a department. This is pretty common and departments simply have to manage it. Everyone knows that offers are being locked in during the April-May time frame, and sometimes you lose someone key. It would not be unprofessional if you chose to avoid delaying your career by staying for an extra semester in order to make your current department's process painless.

Nobody wants to see you go, but you're working within the system to the best of your abilities. You're not screwing them, and it's not unprofessional to wait to give notice until the new offer is accepted.


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We launched in June 2020. Colleagues in over 30 countries have already shared their experiences. Sharing one's experience should take less than 90 seconds.
We display publication times, acceptance times, quality of peer review, quality and timelines of editorial/publisher communications and recommendations from past authors.
All reviews are validated in order to provide you with genuine advice which can help you determine the best journal for you to publish your research in.
We also add journal data such as CiteScore, Acceptance Rates, OA Licences and recent samples of articles published.


How do I cite a source from a another source?

Under some circumstances, citing a source inside another source is acceptable. For example, perhaps the original source is not in a language you can read or not readily available. This page describes the APA method for citing using this style. Here is an example that demonstrates how to do this.

For example, if Allport's work is cited in Nicholson and you did not read Allport's work, list the Nicholson reference in the reference list. In the text, use the following citation:
Allport's diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003).

I would add the caveat one should always try to view the original document whenever possible. I knew a professor in grad school who was added to a manuscript late in the publication process and his name did not appear in the yearly abstract book, but was only included as an author on the original article. He could tell who did not read his article, but only read the abstract book or cited other people because he was not listed as a coauthor in the work cited. For perspective, I was told this story in 2007 and the article was likely published in the 1980s.
This example was possible because prior to online journals and widespread use of search engines, annual abstract and indexes were published (for this professor's field, the practice continued until the mid-to-late 1990s). As noted in a comment, this would be more difficult with the advent of Google Scholar and other online search tools and their corresponding reference manager tools.


How do academics (faculty members, PhD students, etc.) balance their work and life?

Firstly I'd say around 50 hours a week is not unusual for academia (whether that's 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, or 8 hours a day 6 days a week). Its about what I work in an average week i'd say. That doesn't quite answer your question, because rates of burn out are also high in academia. I will however add that all my friends that work in any of "the professions" - doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, management consultants, financiers, all work more than the standard 40 hours a week.
You should also qualify if you mean "working" 10-11 hours a day, or working 10-11 hours a day. A 9-7 work day might not be unusual for me, but that would include 30 minutes for lunch, and perhaps grabbing coffee with a colleague at some point.
Its almost impossible to say how many hours you "should" be working. You should ask yourself whether it is working for you or not. I know some super organized people who can mostly work 9-5 and still become very successful. I am not one of those people. But I do also maintain some hobbies, and try very hard not to let work interfere with those. If I am teaching a dance class, I leave work whatever I'm doing at the time. I rarely decline social engagements because of work. But I don't watch a lot of TV, read a lot of books, or play many computer games these days (or I didn't till lockdown killed my other engagements). These are my choices and they work for me (most of the time). People with children of course have no choice. Once you've decided what is important, then you can fit work in with that, and if its enough its enough. And if its not, its not.
A wise man once described to me something like a Laffer curve for work. If you work 0 hours a day you'll achieve nothing. If you work 24 hours a day you'll also achieve nothing (because you'll be dead). Somewhere in between there is a peak of maximum sustainable productivity. You'll never find the peak, but you want to make sure you are to the left of it, not the right.


Which authority dictates/regulates that in computer science a journal paper cannot be presented in a conference?

As is, a journal paper cannot be presented in a conference in many fields, not only in computer science, whether the conferences are counted as publications or not. Of course, you can always present an improved version of a previous work, if the improvement is significant.

  It seem that this policy in CS emerged from the community (bottom-up) (e.g. see this), sort of hand shaking or bowing in Japan - and therefore self regulated by people.

The entire academic world is somehow self-regulated by people, and most people agree on the fact that trying to resell the same paper twice is unethical because it can lead to an artificial inflation of the number of publications, which is one of the many indicators employed to hire people in academia.

And even if you don't find that unethical, you don't want to read the same publication again and again, do you?


Etiquette of introducing yourself to a professor

Your best chance is to get one of the other examiners who is local to your university to introduce you. It would be better if this could happen at a social function (dinner, drinks, party for the newly minted PhD, etc), i.e., somewhere you might get a few minutes to actually talk. It would be best if your local acquaintance would pave the way with an email and some chit-chit so that you have a clue whether ProfZ even has a position available.

If you can't get someone who know you both to make an introduction, then you'll just have to walk up and introduce yourself. It would be better to have figured out in advance whether there is a position available or not, but it's getting a bit late for that (try anyway). If you can, you still might send ProfZ an email today introducing yourself and asking if they have a few minutes to talk about possible PhD positions at UniY while they are visiting.


Can international graduate student take the free online courses offered in Coursera?

As always, it's better to check directly with your advisor, who is in the best situation to answer exactly your question. That being said, as Zenon said, you should be able to do pretty much what you want during your free time, including taking online courses. However, if you take so many classes that it prevents you to work normally for your grad school, then it might be a problem. Furthermore, if you expect the online courses you take to count for your graduate program (i.e., to replace other courses you would normally have to take at your school), then only your advisor can answer that.


In fields where authorship order matters, the difference between second author and third author is very little, pragmatically, in terms of how people will think about your contributions.  Neither is the first author (whose name will be noticed in every citation), and neither is the last author (in those fields where last = senior).

What you can do, however, is what many journals now require, where you add a section at the end of the paper with a name like "Author Contributions."  In this section, you write down exactly what each author did, e.g.,

  R.L. performed the experiments, T.X. ran spectroscopic analysis, B.G. supplied a critical DNA construct, R.L. and T.X. analyzed the data, T.X. and B.M. wrote the manuscript, and R.L,.T.X., and B.M. edited the manuscript.

This won't change the "first impressions" that anybody has of the paper, but anybody who wants to know whether you're a significant contributor or not will be readily able to find out.


Should I send a research recommendation letter to teaching postdoc position?

It sounds like you are pretty dialed in.  My advice is to include the advisor letter.  For one thing they are explicitly open to some of the letters being non teaching.  And you have the teaching boxes checked.

Also, it still hopefully shows you in a good light: smart student, conscientious, etc.  If you could get your advisor to make some comments about any coaching, mentoring (or even personality suited to it) that would be a positive.  But even a straight research letter would still be fine.  Probably most of the committee did a research based Ph.D. so they know the world you come from even if the school is not an R1.

I would not skip the advisor.  That will look bad.  (If it is OK to send 3 letters that would be ideal...but I don't know the protocol.)


Do I always have to discuss conference attendance with advisor?

Practically, no, you don't always have to contact or discuss your advisor. It is possible that your advisor will not end up even knowing. Now, this isn't advisable just because you and your advisor should really be fostering an open and collaborative environment and your advisor might take this as a sign against this. Additionally, if you are submitting work, many would say that it is your advisor's business because they should be able to know most things about your research and career in order to properly advise you.


Without asking them directly, it's hard to say for certain what their intent is, but it seems like a mechanism to dissuade applicants from applying solely to those institutions. For example, they don't want everyone putting Oxford as 1st choice, and Cambridge as 2nd choice.


Author affiliation for co-authors not currently affiliated with an academic institute

Listing a former affiliation as if it is current is not right. Listing an employer as an affiliation may run afoul of their rules. Permission may be required. And if they didn't support the research it is good for disambiguation purposes but no other.
Listing yourself as an Independent Researcher is correct in almost all cases, though your employer should probably be consulted as there may be contract obligations.
No affiliation is fine if the journal (or whatever) permits it, but for people with common names is less than ideal. But don't worry that it stands out. People rarely care much about it unless they want to contact you.
If you have an established personal "business" perhaps for tax purposes to manage income from publishing books and such, as I do, then you could list that. It is accurate and honest. But it might need to be public enough to enable people to use it to find you. And, creating a bespoke organization for this purpose, especially as a one-off, doesn't really help for any of the usual purposes.
But affiliation in general is used for several things. The most important is probably to indicate support from an organization, though disambiguation of names is also quite important. And a previous affiliation treated as if it were current could be interpreted as dishonest. And if someone tries to contact you through a previous affiliation and is told that you are in no way affiliated with them then you could suffer a bit.
However, specifying "Formerly a student at Universal University of the Universe" is fine, since you are clear about the intent.

And a warning. Some employers require you to get permission to publish most everything. Some will forbid publication if it affects their core business in any way. Know what is in your contract.


Can I cite an accepted, pre-publication paper without DOI and the citations gets counted correctly?

It might be worth checking that neither journal assigns DOIs in advance - this is now supported by CrossRef, though not yet very common, and it's quite possible that they are able to tell you what the DOI will be now even if they don't normally inform you until later in the publication process. (For one thing, many journals issue DOIs based on an internal MS tracking number...)

Regardless of this, however, cite each paper as comprehensively as you can - accurate title, journal name, and clearly marked as "in press" or similar. This will make it easier for someone to know that there is probably a completed version out there somewhere, and give them the information they need to find it.

As I understand it, Scopus and Web of Science have a human involved in checking citations, not just an automated matching script, so hopefully they will be able to do the link manually when they see this. Both of them tend to lag a bit behind publication dates for citation records, meaning the chances are good that by the time the citation links are put into their database, the target will be online and citable.


Using the h-index to compare researchers from different fields

Reliance on any single index has many confounds. And these flaws are amplified when you attempt to compare academics across disciplines.
That said, there are more thoughtful ways to make use of metrics.
Here are some of the main things that should temper your use of h-index:

Proportion of first-author or lead-author papers (e.g., 1st, 2nd, last author): All else being equal, the esteem attributable to an author in  publishing an academic paper is increased when the author leads the work.
Number of authors per paper: All else being equal, fewer authors per paper suggests that the author of interest is contributing more to each paper.
Average time since publication: Papers accumulate citations over time. So, an academic with many recent publications may have many papers that will ultimately contribute to their h-index after a period of time has elapsed for those citations to accrue the requisite number of citations.
Discipline-specific citation practices: Disciplines vary in their referencing practices. The two big differences are (1) number of references per paper, and (2) citation half-life, which is to say the time it takes an article to receive half of all the citations it will ever receive. People who are in fields with more references per paper, get more citations and as a result, a higher h-index. People in fields with shorter citation half-lives see a more rapid rise of their h-index, although eventually (10 to 15 years after publication), differences in citation half-life will generally matter much less. In addition, citation databases vary in coverage of different fields (e.g., web of science probably makes biomedical researchers look much better than computer scientist compared to  Google Scholar).

What are you trying to measure?
Here are some fairly orthogonal elements from which you can conceptually derive other indicators:

Annual Output: Their contribution in partnership with others to Annual Academic Output, where output corresponds to overall value: some kind of  product of both quantity and quality (or impact).
Personal Contribution: The proportion of their contribution to that output.
Career length: The number of years that they have been making this impact.

So, from this perspective, h-index is mostly a function of annual output, career length, and the vagaries of discipline-specific citation practices.
Personal Contribution Indicators:
If you are interested more in personal contribution, you might get some of the following indicators:

Number of first-author and lead-author papers. This could be broken down based on the quality of the output as indexed by things like discipline specific journal ranking (e.g., Q1 on Scimago) or annual or total citation counts.
Fractionated paper or citation counts. E.g., sum of papers where the value of each paper is one over the number of authors. This would mean than one sole-author paper equals 10 10-author papers. Other weightings are possible to incorporate the value assigned to first-authorship or incorporate the assumption that actually having 10 10-author papers is more valuable than 1 sole-author paper.

Productivity indicators:**
If you are comparing researchers at different career stages, it can be important to control for the fact that people with longer careers have had more time to publish and more time for those publications to get cited.
If you are more interested in research productivity, then you probably want to focus on indicators of either average annual academic output or output over some recent time period (e.g., last 3 years, last 5 years, etc.).
A few indicators include the following:

H-index divided by years since first publication. Variants include the annual rate of increase of h-index over the last five years. Note that this does not control for variation in personal contribution or discipline citation practices.
Number of first or lead author papers per year. This could be adapted to focus on number of such papers in journals of a certain quality.
Average annual increase in annual citation counts over the last x years.

Summary:
All citation-based metrics have issues. That said, if you are aware of the limitations of the different metrics and draw on a complementary set of indicators, you are more likely to make a considered assessment of an academic's research impact.
In general, it makes most sense to compare researcher metrics to discipline-specific norms. It's important to characterise their publication style: quality versus quantity, degree of involvement in each paper, small number of authors per paper versus many authors per paper, etc. And it's also important to be clear on whether you are interested in recent productivity versus total career output versus total career impact.
More importantly, metrics are heuristics. Where important decisions are being made, they shouldn't replace reading the person's actual work or seeking out assessments by knowledgable experts.


I cannot say I agree with the practice: students should be responsible to know what they're doing as regards their studies, which, among other things, implies that they must have a sense as to how well-prepared they are for an exam (and they should also bear the risk and the consequences of occasionally making a wrong assessment). By setting a grade-threshold and ask the professor to give a non-passing grade if the threshold is not reached, the student effectively sheds this burden of responsibility off him or herself.

That said, the usual practice is to ask such things before grading (for example if the exam is in paper and not electronic, students note that on the paper they hand in). Asking for it afterwards... well, if the professor is friendly to the practice, start by apologizing for not letting him know in advance and then ask what you want to ask.

But if the professor is not friendly to the practice, consider living with the consequences of a lower-than-expected grade in your transcript.


It is possible to get Arxiv article metadata from its article ID?

The python script on this page seems to work. You can modify it easily to output the information you need instead of a bibtex entry.


publishing papers vs. receiving Masters/PhD

What's the point of any qualification? Well, ideally, it's a standard: a quick, easy and reliable way to assess a candidate's ability.

A PhD is, ideally, a standard that indicates a student is capable of independent research that results in a novel contribution to knowledge, at significant depth.

The publishing of papers can also indicate that someone is capable of independent research that results in a novel contribution to knowledge, at significant depth. Though - at least in the sciences - sole-author papers are relatively rare.

Not all papers are of equal standard: the quality can vary hugely. Not all PhDs are of equal standard, but once we exclude degrees-for-cash and other disreputable institutions, there is broadly (but not perfectly reliably) a certain standard required.

And for most people, the work and talent required to do the research to produce several quality papers, is broadly about the same as that required to attain a PhD. So the PhD provides a better route for many, because it will be more portable, and more easily recognised as a qualification of ability. The PhD course also (typically) comes with institutional support to learn the required research skills.

Additionally, some research grants require a PhD or equivalent degree, in order to be eligible to apply.

The academic posts that I've seen typically require a PhD or equivalent research background: but it's harder to make the case through the latter route. Nevertheless, there are many researchers, quite a few professors, and some heads of department without doctorates, at heavyweight institutions. And there's one department head that I know of who doesn't have any degree - and he really is exceptional.


Potential advisor offering to fund visit to lab

I do not think the etiquette you are talking about applies here. You need to go there in order to ensure compatibility between you and your potential future advisor. This is neither a gift nor a present; it it a business related trip and I do not see a reason for not agreeing to this.


Should there be a theorem or proposition that uses lemma?

But is it enough if I use some lemma in an example, or should there be a theorem or proposition that uses that particular lemma?

I don't think it really matters.  An example would be fine for most readers, while a few really formal people might disapprove.  However, even someone who disapproves wouldn't consider this seriously problematic.  I.e., they wouldn't think less of you or negatively evaluate your paper because of this.  The worst case scenario is that someone complains about it in a referee report, and even then you wouldn't have to follow their advice.


Can we mention our own idea of a project in the letter to a professor during grad applications?

Sure, that shows proactiveness, interest, creativity and many good things.

I'd suggest to publish it somewhere before, even if it's just a blog, arxiv.org, safecreative.org or your favorite option.

Otherwise it will be their idea, at least for some professors. Some of those may actually have had that idea (years) before you suggested it, so it may really be their idea. By publishing it you are able to prove that at least you got to the same idea/conclusion on your own, even if it was years after them. In case that matters to you.

Make sure to emphasize the research aspects of that project.


Asking my PhD advisor for a postdoc position. Is it bad to appear desperate?

First of all, your advisor of all people really should not be somebody who you need to play games with regarding the state of your career (academic or otherwise). They really can only do their job (advising you, also in questions of career development) if you are being honest with them. In that sense, it shouldn't really matter if it "looks bad" - if your situation is bad they should know.

Further, your advisor already offered you a temporary job, and presumably they did so under the assumption that it would only be a fallback if you did not find a more permanent next career step. Now this situation has arisen - why would it be bad to take them up on their offer in exactly the situation that the offer was made for?


Submit an article to a conference, which contains a section that has been already published

You could treat it as a new paper. Maybe after the conference, you could add more results and publish a paper from it.


Will it hurt my masters application if SOP focuses on my research interests, but the program has only a few courses on that subject?

Talking about your specific research interests in a SOP is great. If the specific interests are a good match for the program, they'll love it. If they are a poor match, you probably wouldn't have been happy or gotten the training you wanted in that program.

More importantly: Take a deep breath. (1) Your SOP for a masters program is not going to be scrutinized as closely as you seem to imagine. You are overthinking things. (2) It's too late to do anything.

Good luck!


Is it possible to access referee reports for investigating scientific history?

All reputable journals today use web-based manuscript management systems that keep information about each manuscript, its various revisions, who was asked to review and what their reviews were, as well as editor decisions. So yes, this information exists in these systems at least as far back as the introduction of these systems (at least ten years ago). As the editor-in-chief of a journal, I can look at all of this data for every article in my journal.

But I suspect that it will be exceptionally difficult to get at this kind of information if you're not the editor-in-chief yourself. To do research on this means that you're doing research on human subjects, with all that implies: You'll have to have IRB [1] approval for your study protocol, you might have to anonymize the data (which I suspect would be exceptionally difficult in itself), and/or you might have to receive informed consent from the reviewers, authors, and editors (all of which are involved in the decision making process).

I have a suspicion that few publishers are interested in going to this level of trouble. On the other hand, I have no doubt that such studies have been done, so I would expect that it is possible to get at the kind of data you're looking for -- it's just very difficult to do this kind of research.

[1] In the US, IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) are the bodies tasked with overseeing research that involves human subject research. All human subject research has to be approved by an IRB before the data so gained can be used for publications.


Transforming an MA thesis for publication

Rather than thinking in terms of condensing your writing, begin with an empty document in a suitable format for publication. For purpose of writing the paper, treat your thesis as though it were your notes from a period of research.

Remember the two documents have different objectives. The MA thesis was about convincing your department that you should get the degree. The paper you are now writing is about informing the world of some research results that you think are interesting and important.

First decide on the key points that will make the paper worth publishing. Write, in the new document, the background, lines of reasoning etc. that are essential to those specific points.


Pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt?

I suppose you mean the GRE general test, as opposed to the subject tests. The general test is easy enough to study part time, and there are openings to take the test almost everyday. Plus, you get to send only the best score now, via "Score Select". So, there shouldn't be a problem doing both at the same time.

IMHO research experience greatly trumps GRE scores. Great GRE scores won't help you get admitted and bad scores won't necessarily cause your application to fail. Good research experience, from my experience applying to grad school twice and speaking to professors, is solid gold.

Bear in mind that during the PhD, you will have to juggle coursework, teaching and keeping up with research in order to find an adviser during the first 1-2 years. In comparison, studying for the GRE while doing research is almost trivial. One trick is to not spend too much time actually studying for the GRE. Instead, get a book like Princeton Review, learn the tricks and game the system.

Tl;dr - Do both at the same time!


Cover letter for mid-career application in mathematics

I think that the length of the cover letter is the type of thing that differs greatly between research institutions and small liberal arts colleges.

At the small liberal arts college where I work, 1-2 page long cover letters seem to be pretty common. (I'm also in math.) There's no length requirement of course, but it's expected that in addition to the normal stuff (who you are, a bit about your teaching and research experience, potentially stuff about working with undergrads if it is relevant) applicants say a bit about what makes them a good fit for the school. Basically, small liberal arts colleges tend to have their own distinctive personalities, and it can be a major problem if your cover letter comes across as super generic. Also, remember that a lot of small schools don't really have research groups in any particular area. Thus, if they're hiring an analyst one year there is an excellent chance that it's because the previous analyst just left / retired. People will read your research statement of course, but many won't make it past the first page or two. In contrast, every member of the department will read your cover letter. So if the cover letter you send to our small liberal arts college looks like you could have sent it to a large state school as well, that'd be an issue. Having said all of this, it's not like you need to be super long winded in your cover letter. If you can say everything that you need to in less than a page that's totally fine! It's just that a lot of people will be reading your cover letter, so if you want to explain why you're committed to working at a small school like ours or explain the context of your decision to apply to our school (which could very well be the case if you're applying mid-career), this would be the place to do so.

I don't have any direct experience with being on a hiring committee at a research department, but my impression has always been that the cover letter is considerably less important at these sort of places. (Perhaps it's even seen as an unnecessary formality? I've always found it weird to read 'Enclosed you will find...' when it's just a PDF file on MathJobs and not even a physical letter.) For example, when I was a postdoc I had a number of friends that used a computer script to insert the names of the schools they were applying to into a generic cover letter. It's not clear to me that this affected any of their searches in the least. Hopefully someone with some experience at these sort of places will respond to your question, but I think that at research schools there are much more likely to be well-defined research groups with members that are going to be able to read your research statement carefully and already know your letter writers, and that these sort of things are likely to vastly outweigh anything you could write in your cover letter.


How should one acknowledge a funding agency if it fulfils its obligations only partially?

Since you did get support from your funding body, you will need to list it in the funding acknowledgements. This doesn't change with the fact that you have also gotten support from elsewhere. As profmartinez wrote, the proper term is to state that they provided partial support. Some researchers write "partly" exclusively in their funding acknowledgements, as their home institutions provide some level of support as well (offices, ...), which are not normally acknowledged.

The fact that your funding source provided less support than expected should not be written into the funding acknowledgements. Mentioning this somewhere would in the best case have no effect. In the worst case, it makes a bad impression both on you and the funding body. You have no ethical obligation to mention the quirks of their funding scheme, and under the "choose your battles wisely" premise, not mentioning the problem is the way to go.


Pros and cons of (co-)authoring a reference book in early career?

I agree with the advice Peter Clark offers in the bit you've quoted. You're further along in your career than I am. (Defending in May). However, I've had many friends in your circumstances. Here are two things that I have gleaned from their experiences:

(1) A mediocre book has little impact on the field, just like a mediocre journal article does, except that the book has such a higher opportunity cost.

(2) A bad book can actually be a kiss of death. People might laugh off a bad article, but if you put out a bad book, you might actually harm the good reputation you've built with your other publications.

(3) To write a good book requires so much time, and such a high level of expertise, that it's usually not worth doing for a junior person.

My sense is that these three sentences might not hold in all fields universally. Some fields are book fields where you are expected to publish the dissertation as a book. In those fields, I'd assume there's more reasonable expectations about book length publications. But in primarily journal based fields, I suspect (1)-(3) are true.

Can you write the publisher and ask for a long extension so as to be able to keep a more reasonable research/writing schedule?


Should I add Guest Lecturer experience in my CV?

I've seen a lot of CVs include guest lecturer. You would include it in the Teaching section of your CV.  A quick google for "guest lecturer cv" will show you some examples.

Do note, this is generally different than an invited speaker though. A Guest Lecturer comes and teaches a class where as an Invited Speaker comes to give a talk or seminar or colloquium. If this is an invited talk then you'd still list it on your CV, but in the Invited Talks section.


Creating a schematic figure based on an existing one

No, I think it would be insufficient to say : "Image based on [Reference]".

Because, from what you've written, it's not just the image you're using: you're also using the intellectual content that is the structure and information.

So, not only do you need to cite your reference for the image, but you also need to credit the origin of the structure and the information explicitly in its own right.

So do say:

  Image based on [Reference]

And also say something like (using the example of the image being a classification of the existing literature):

  In creating this classification, I have followed the classification scheme set out in [Reference], using information from [Reference] and [other Reference]


How to improve my capacity to follow my advisor's instructions during research?

I've found that taking notes, even point form, is really helpful.

Even if you were good at understanding oral instructions, taking meeting notes would be useful.

They let you go back to things you didn't have much time to think about at the time later on.

You could also email your supervisor a summary of your understanding of the meeting and your plans until the next meeting, so that he has a chance to correct/clarify in writing any misunderstandings, or refocus your priorities.

As for the problem of connecting oral instructions, you should take every opportunity to confirm your understanding of the main points discussed so far in the meeting. Rephrase what you just heard back to your supervisor. If there is a definition you don't know, either ask right away, or jot down the word to ask about later.


Can I reference a result on a dataset without any research paper by that author as state of the art?

Yes.  You can cite the survey paper as evidence to support your claim.


The class in question is a not a major or graduation requirement

Assuming you want to go to graduate school in a topic closely related to your major, taking one unrelated course pass/fail will not matter under normal circumstances.  It will matter even less because everybody knows students are being encouraged to take classes pass/fail during the pandemic.


How to tell my mentor to be careful when discussing my work in progress around people I do not trust?

If you can trust your mentor, just tell them. Say it as it is. But not in an email. This requires personal communication.

But, if you cannot trust your mentor then you have a bigger problem than you state and need to find better guidance.


How do hiring/promotion/grant committees assess individual applicants who've authored papers with huge teams

There's generally a way of assessing your contribution to the project even if it's enormous. So even if you're 29th author, if you were the senior manager of say particle detection and analysis, that's knowable. And they'll have a letter of recommendation from the project supervisor detailing your role.

And people on the committee (especially the person's department head) if they think you're great will advocate for you, the importance of your role, and the importance of your contribution to it.


The author instructions state that "A single PDF file is acceptable for initial submissions of all research articles except Contributed papers". Further down it is also stated that "Publication-ready file formats include Word or LaTeX."

This means that depending on what type of manuscript you are submitting, different rules may apply. Word and LaTeX (the latter must be accompanied by a PDF file) are fine but for a few forms like their "Express Submissions" require a single pdf to be submitted initially. Only of the manuscript passes the initial stage will it be required to provide editable files.

You should generate the PDF from your Word document or LaTeX class files according to the instructions.


Returning to a different field in academia after industry

One of the problems that I see is that you are going to struggle more to get subsequent postdoc positions, since some (many?) of them are limited by the number of years since you finished your -first- PhD.


How can I find out under what license a title was submitted to arXiv?

There is licence link under download.

Example here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.10781

And screen capture here:


How should I ask for a modification in the admision procedure of a Master programme?

Skype interviews are usual (e.g. I have one with Oxford). The school might prefer face-to-face interviews but there is nothing wrong in sending a polite (brief!) email.


Actually, I think it is a mistake to try to submit without letters. People will wonder about your motives and worry that you don't think you can get good recommenders.

Your break isn't that long, actually. After 20 years it would be different. Your old professors probably still remember you if you did good work. Of course, you will need to reintroduce yourself, bring them up to date on what you have done recently, and remind them of what you did in the past.

But, assuming that you had a good enough relationship back then to have asked, that hasn't changed. It is certainly appropriate to do so. Many professors, in fact, are happy to hear about old students and to support their further advancement.


How do I add a little bit of personality to my SOP without turning it into another "trembling steps" narrative?

I received similar feedback from a professor who doesn’t subscribe to the “trembling steps” narrative, so I felt it was advice worth following. I navigated the problem by adding a “because...” to a few of my sentences. So you could say something like “I did research on X for [number of years] because I feel it is important/worthwhile/interesting etc.” You’ve prepared yourself for grad school and have lots to show for it, so if you start thinking about why you decided to do those things, it’ll make it easier to add a “because” here or there, which should make your statement stronger.

Think about your field and what you want to contribute to it. Why is your field worth studying? What makes it important? How are your unique attributes going to advance your field?

I would avoid directly saying something about yourself as a person. The wording of the statement should be enough to convey your voice, and your accomplishments discussed in the letter speak enough to your personality and passion. Just like in creative writing, show don’t tell. Ask yourself what you want the readers to know about your personality, and rephrase your existing sentences in order to convey that sentiment if you feel it is lacking.


Does PhD work experience (scholarship was tax free) count in Postdoc Salary contract (TVL-13) in Germany

In general, no. The previous work experience you can claim for a higher entry point on the scale needs to be relevant for the job for which you are applying. There are very general rules about this (since the TV-L covers everything from dishwashers to head physicians) so there is some leeway in interpretation, but the basic assumption is that the duties of a postdoc are different enough from those of a PhD student that experience as the latter does not count for the former. Time in education (which a PhD counts as) are also explicitly excluded by the regulation.

It might be possible to claim that even as a PhD student, you already performed duties of a postdoc (independently organizing tutorial sessions for a large class, say, or managing the IT needs of your department), but the usual case for a higher entry point is if you previously were on a fixed-term contract of, say, five years where you received your PhD after year four. Then you could claim the last year as previous experience for a postdoc position at another university.

EDIT: See also my previous answer to a similar question. In short, you need to distinguish between times which must be counted by law (which your PhD experience definitely doesn't fall under) and times which may be counted if argued for specifically, e.g., with arguments as in my second paragraph.


Note that TA is normally only granted to a (usually) doctoral student. You need to be accepted into a program before you can be considered to be a TA and that will be determinative.

The evaluation will be different at every university as we have no national system here. Also, TAs do different sorts of things in different fields and in different universities/departments. Some actually teach undergraduate courses and some simply grade papers. In between are those common cases where a TA will work a few times a week with a small group from a large lecture section. For most of these situations fairly good English skills are needed, but each department will do its own evaluation. But it is probably understanding and speaking ability, more than writing, that is the most important thing as a TA.

Treat TOEFL as important but there may be other considerations that are treated as more important in a given situation.


How can I tell whether it is the volume or the issue number that is given?

The general rules are:

If there is only one number, it's the volume.
If there are two number, it's first volume, then issue.


What order should I list author affiliations on a conference poster?

Typically, affiliations are listed in the same order as order of authors.
Listing them on a poster should be no different than listing them on a paper or in any other form of scientific communication.

Thus, for example, if you have the following set of authors:

  Smith, affiliated with Ivy University

  Chou, affiliated with Arrwun Tech

  Patel, affiliated with Ivy University

  Garcia, affiliated with McName Institute

Then you would typically list them as something like the following (adjusted for your desired format):

  Smith, Chou, Patel, and Garcia

  Smith and Patel are at Ivy University, Chou is at Arrwun Tech, Garcia is at McName Institute.

As for when authors have multiple affiliations: for any given author, affiliations should be listed in descending order of importance (as judged by the author).  Typically there is a clear "primary" affiliation which comes first, and the order of any others after it matters much less.  The order of the overall set across all authors is determined just the same way as when there are single affiliations, by listing all in order and combining duplicates.


Should I put my marked assignments online?

In my alma mater, this is indeed common. The student representatives actually maintain a repository of exam answers and assignment solutions for all large classes. Contributing to such a repository seems better than putting it online on your own web page or GitHub, because you need to think about how the students coming after you actually find your material.

As for other implications: the only thing that I can think of is that lecturers are sometimes not all that happy about this practice, as it makes re-using assignments from previous years more difficult. However, that's not actually that big of a deal, as most lecturers will assume that the solutions to re-used assignments are somewhere out there anyway, and adapt grading respectively.


How to change corresponding author of my published papers?

I do not know whether it is possible to change the corresponding author, but I suspect it is not something journals do as they are reluctant to change published articles.

To reduce the issue, however, you could improve the online profile of the article:

Have a Google Scholar profile, so someone interested in the article has a link to your profile
Similarly, you could have a Research Gate profile and an Orcid number
Have a professional website

In this context, someone with a question about the article can easily find you, if they do not receive an answer from the corresponding author. Yes, it is less direct than corresponding author, but I think it is the best you can do.


Stating surprise about another researcher in my talk

Talk about the work. Stick to the facts.

Clearly and bluntly stating the limitations of a result is fine, but criticism of a researcher during a research talk is completely inappropriate.  Your expression of surprise could be taken as criticism of either the researcher's ethics or their competence, neither of which is appropriate to air in front of a research audience.

Whether the researcher is junior or senior is irrelevant.  Whether the researcher is known to your audience or not is irrelevant.  Criticism should be delivered privately.


What do mathematics graduate schools look for in undergraduate students?

I am an (associate) professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia and was involved in graduate admissions for several years.  My answer is based on a perspective which is somewhat skewed towards pure mathematics: we have applied mathematics in our department as well, but it is one of seven research groups, so when looking at applications, to a first approximation we select for the same things among pure and applied applicants (and in fact not all applicants clearly identify themselves as one or the other, which is fine).  There are other departments that are more than half applied mathematics, and yet other departments (e.g. at Harvard) where applied math is a separate department entirely.

The main things we look at are competitive  GRE scores (including the math subject exam), strong grades attained in strong courses, and very strong recommendation letters which convince us that the student would have a good chance of succeeding in our program.  These letters generally come from faculty who have taught the student multiple courses, including an advanced course and/or a reading course.  Getting one letter of recommendation from someone who directed undergraduate research is a popular choice and is fine, but it does not really make a big contribution to the application because most such letters sound exactly the same (no one is going to say "So and so did an REU with me, and let me tell you: we got nothing done over the whole summer.")

  [S]chools actually place stronger emphasis on performance in 4 classes: a proofs/logic course, analysis, discrete math, and a linear algebra course (this was apparently has less emphasis than the first 3).

I don't find this to be especially good advice.  For me, the key courses are
(i) real analysis, (ii) abstract algebra, (iii) topology, especially the first two. These are in fact three of the four topics in which most of our PhD students take qualifying exams [some applied students take numerical analysis and/or probability].  Moreover, every graduate program in math I've ever heard of requires students to take exams in real analysis, abstract algebra or both.  Because these courses exist at both the advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate level, we really want students to have taken the undergraduate versions and have done well in them.  If they haven't, then they need to begin a graduate program taking these undergraduate courses, then make the transition to the graduate versions and then take and pass the quals, all within a couple of years.  That's hard.

Concerning your list:

(i) proofs/logic

Many students do not take a separate course on this.  In my undergraduate program we have a course on this but the strongest track of student avoid it by taking a kind of analysis class in which this material is taught on the fly.  Whether a student knows proofs and logic should be clear from the rest of their coursework and their recommendation letters.

(ii) analysis

Yes, this one is dead-on.  Let me say that a lot of courses are called "analysis".  We look carefully to see what the text is and what the topics were.  Something at the level of Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis should be taken in order to be competitive.

(iii) discrete math

No, this is really not a critical course.  I can't think of many graduate courses that have such a course as a prerequisite.  Also the name "discrete math" is often used for a lower level course not even taught to majors.  But if you mean something like combinatorics, probability or graph theory: these are courses which most students enjoy, but they are not the courses we are looking to see if our applicants have taken.  This is not to say that the material from these courses is not important or useful in mathematics: it most certainly is, increasingly so across all parts of mathematics.  But it's not hard enough to learn to separate applicants like certain other courses.  I have never taken a course in graph theory, but some of my papers contain results about graphs: it's just not that hard to learn graph theory on the fly.

(iv) linear algebra

Yes, you need to have taken such a course, just like you need to have taken a course in multivariable calculus.  But this is (at the latest) a sophomore-level course for most students who go on to graduate school.  A course (or more) in abstract algebra, which will in places build on the linear algebra, is much more critical.

  I was told that these classes are the bread and butter of most graduate math classes and are indicative of how well you can learn the more rigorous content. Is this true?

As above, I don't think the list is well-chosen to be among the most important courses.  Also "indicative of how well you can learn the more rigorous content" is a red flag to me: a student's graduate application should be replete with evidence of how well she has learned the more rigorous content, by successfully completing coursework containing this content!

Who is giving you this advice?  Faculty in your department?

  Do these schools care about extracurricular such as volunteering experience?

Not really.

  I know these aren't going to get you into Harvard per se, but do they slightly augment your profile? I know academia is primarily concerned with research so this may not be too relevant.

Very slightly at best.  Just putting it on your CV is probably worth precisely nothing.  If you can describe your volunteering experiences in your personal statement in a way which makes them sound compelling and relevant to your graduate career then....well, then you have written a good personal statement, which could help you a bit.  If you did something really substantial which shows
off organizational and administrative skills that most students lack, that would also help a bit...but not as much as the time you put into it.  Obviously there are other good reasons to do volunteer / community work that have nothing to do with an academic application, so you should certainly feel free to do so.  Just don't think of it in terms of improving your application.

Added: The OP asked for followup information from an applied perspective.  I can only give the perspective of a math department that admits some students who study applied mathematics.  In our department, the requirements for applied students are only slightly different from all other students.  In particular, see here for qualifying exam information, which shows that all students are required to take both real and complex analysis and (algebra or topology); students who do not want to take both algebra and topology can take probability (which by the way is very close to real analysis and quite challenging) or numerical analysis.  I believe that the vast majority of students in my PhD program specializing in applied mathematics have taken the abstract algebra qual.

My department has recently added on applied area of emphasis for its undergraduate math major.  In this track, abstract algebra is not requrired (though it is required for all other majors): see here for some sample programs.  On the other hand, as a student interested in graduate study you need to know that these major requirements are very intentionally designed to be as minimal as we can get away with.  We want to have more math majors, not less.  Students who want to take more classes are always free to do so.  Moreover we tell our students that for certain career paths they should take more classes.  Especially here we recommend further classes, including two semesters of algebra.  This advice is not specifically targeted at students who are interested in pure mathematics.  And by the way, there are many kinds of applied mathematics which you would be absolutely locked out of without an undergraduate background in algebra.

  I do not think I will need abstract algebra directly, but I'm slightly ignorant.

It is very unlikely that any undergraduate math major can say with any assurance what kind of mathematics they will not need in their PhD studies or later career.  Making this kind of decision is a kind of negative investment in the future.

  Some schools of interest do not have that content in the curricula.

Please let me know what specific programs you are looking at.  That would be useful information to me and I could give you more targeted advice.  In particular, all of this advice is predicated under the assumption that you are applying for graduate study in a mathematics department in the United States.  If you are interested in an interdisciplinary program, or e.g. want to do mathematical biology from a biology department, then things will be very different.  If you are applying to a university which has separate programs in pure and applied math -- or has separate posted admissions requirements -- then things will be different again.  But for general admission to a math department in the US: not having abstract algebra will be a huge point against you, I believe.


What is the official way of addressing a lecturer/tutor in an English speaking university?

I'm from New Zealand, where "Master" is used to address young boys, often by a doctor/dentist etc. I guess that it's the same in Australia and the UK. Do not address an adult (in any situation) as Master Smith. Conversely (as suggested in the comments), addressing someone as "Master" without being followed by a name, such as "yes, Master!", sounds like you're addressing a slavemaster.

The formal and safe way is to address them according to their rank - Mister Smith for teaching assistants who are Master or PhD students, Doctor Smith for postdocs and staff who hold a lecturer position, and Professor Smith for associate or full professors. The abbreviation Mr. is fine for emails, as this is commonly understood as the abbreviation of Mister, not Master.

However, Australians are generally quite informal, so the younger staff in particular may prefer to be addressed on a first-name basis. Calling your TA Mr Smith might come across as a bit fusty, so they might tell you to "just call me John". If in doubt, just ask how the lecturer wishes to be addressed.


Making figure legends for papers in the biological sciences

In general, the figure should contain a title which concisely captures what it's showing: 'Effect of manipulation A on measure B', or 'Level of A influences property of B', or 'B vanishes when A is larger than X', or some such.

After that you would go on describe what the figure shows, as precisely as possible - go panel by panel and say what's on the axes (and in which units), what denotes statistical significance in the image (e.g. gray shaded areas), what the colors mean, that sort of thing. You can also write what the main statistical finding is, using just words (i.e. no p-values or similar).

Those are the basics. However, take into account that some journals allow unsubscribed readers to see the title, abstract and figures of their papers. If this is the case, try to imagine what it's like to be able to read just the abstract and see the figure with legends, and build from there. See if an experienced reader can infer what your specific contribution is from this information only (in fact, many people will anyway just skim over the figures before deciding whether to read the paper). This often means that the figure legend should also include a mini-recap of the experimental setup or specific manipulations next to the finding it depicts, but the exact contents will vary depending on what you're showing.


Are there any organisations which approve or manage open science projects?

Yes, try looking at the Center for Open Science and their study management website, the Open Science Framework.  They primarily deal in psychology and cancer biology studies right now, but I'm sure other areas of science are welcome or will be soon.


Literature search: Finding the most reliable data

The US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) runs a web database where you can look up constants: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/

These might not be the most recent ones, but they are regularly updated, reliable and represent, sort of, the academic consensus.

There are similar databases for specific fields of research. E.g. in particle physics, there is the Particle Data Group (PDG) which publishes the Review of Particle Physics (and the much shorter, yet comprehensive & handy Particle Physics Booklet).


There is one piece of advice that seems particularly important to give: do whatever is needed to enjoy working on your PhD. You won't go very far if stress and pressure is all that gets you going, and the probability of getting an academic job after even a very good PhD is too thin to go into PhD without enjoying the PhD years by themselves.

Of course you will have to work hard whatever path you take, and not all the work will be pleasant. But if you are not enjoying your current work at least from time to time, you should definitely change something. Having insufficient foundations is a pretty good explanation for not enjoying oneself, so going to a subject where this problem will disappear feels reasonable to me.


Who should write references for me in a mid-career job search?

At 7 years post PhD, your letters are getting stale, in that your PhD advisor, probably is no longer the person most familiar with your work. The person who taught you in grad school is definitely not going to be the most familiar with your work. It sounds like you did not provide a list of names when you went up for T&P. If you did, you should reconsider those names.

Some possible ideas of letter writers:

Find someone who is teaching from your book(s)
The person you most like having a beverage with when at a conference
The person who has, or that you would ask, to write a blurb for your book jacket
Someone who has invited you to give a research seminar or be on their conference panel
A trusted colleague in your department or at your university


According to this article from 2012, papers with multiple hundreds of authors began primarily as a phenomenon in physics, and the massive physics collaborations in areas like particle physics and space sciences continue to be the ones expanding the bounds of mass authorship.

Historically, the post notes:

  In 1981, the highest number of authors on any paper indexed by Clarivate Analytics was 118; by 1989, the annual number regularly surpassed 500.

Another article notes, however, that despite the overall dominance of physics, the first article to pass 1000 authors was actually a 2000+ author medical study.

None of the sources that I have found talk about any particular difficulties in publishing multi-hundred author articles, which does not surprise me. Many of the issues, such as assigning responsibility, already had to be worked out for articles with "mere" dozens of authors. Moreover large-scale collaborations are typically difficult to conduct (and fund) without already having effectively satisfied many of the challenges of peer review.  In short: while I don't have evidence for it, I would suspect that the early mega-collaboration papers were well received by journals eager to publish such high-profile and likely impactful research.


What should I do if a student has already done all the work for my course elsewhere?

Talk to the person in your department who is responsible for overseeing the undergraduate education program (the title is usually a variant on "undergraduate advisor" or "director of undergraduate studies"). Such individuals usually have the authority to waive and approve courses that are not part of the "official" study plan when exceptional circumstances arise. This individual should be able to tell you what is necessary to obtain a waiver, and what could be used to substitute for it within the program.


Professor I applied to is about to move – can I ask them to consider my application for the new institution?

It is absolutely not a problem for you to ask for help!

Faculty move is part of academic life and often times one of the trickier things to handle – especially when figuring out how to handle relocating a lab full of people. Your interest in their work is not tied to where their lab currently is, at least as far as you describe it, so it is fully acceptable for them to advise you on the application process.

Regardless of their affiliation, their role has been strictly advisory (as described). This means it is as if one professional is simply giving advice to someone entering the field – there is no conflict of interest.

Continue, and if that professor’s research excites you, you should certainly try to get into their new university and rotate with them to see if it’s a match.


APA location/address of publisher vs location of conference

I think "location" means the venue of the conference, where it was formally organized. This location is needed to conflict when there are two different conferences with the same name organized in two different locations.

The location that shows in your example "Germany" is most probably the place where the proceeding is published. This location is not very required.


Does getting a request to review from a professor count me as a reviewer?

I think not. Ask yourself what the editor of the journal would think if your CV crossed their desk, and they saw you listing yourself as a reviewer and they'd never heard your name before. Having a review delegated to you does not make you a reviewer for that journal. The journal chose your professor, not you, so you should not muddy the waters about what you've been asked to do. If someone asks you about your reviewing experience, feel free to tell them that you did some subreviewing for your professor.


Undergrad seeking information about PhD/Masters in Economics math requirements

Before you make any decisions, ask yourself very seriously: What do I want from a PhD/Masters in Economics?

If you want to qualify for a certain type of job, then this will inform your strategy.  If you want to master certain skills, or to explore what interests you, then you may have a different strategy.  If you want an academic job in Economics, then you'll have another strategy, different from the first two.

I suggest you consider three things:

First, you should understand that PhD and Masters in Economics are very different.  Basically, a Masters in Economics will qualify you do to certain types of empirical data analysis.  (I've never heard of a Masters that involves theoretical economics.)

Second, I believe its true that nearly all top or upper-echelon graduate programs in Economics require strong proficiency in mathematics before the will admit you.  This is true even for programs that are no explicitly quantitative (e.g. Austrian).  The math you need is Calculus, Probability and Statistics (based on Calculus), and preferably Ordinary Differential Equations.  You'll need a high GRE math score.  It's very hard to read most Econ papers with out significant math proficiency.

In my opinion, if you really want a PhD in Economics, then you'll bite the bullet and do what it takes to learn this math.  It doesn't require a "gift" or special aptitude. If it doesn't come easy to you, it does require dogged persistence and diligence.

Third, given your interests, I'd strongly suggest that you investigate PhD programs that have a specialty in Experimental Economics.  My University, George Mason, is one of them.  There's very interesting and fruitful work going on in this area, including links to neuroscience and cognitive science, but it requires very strong skills in statistics and behavioral sciences.


How to merge mendeley contiguous citations in body text?

With Mendeley Citations Plugin, you should be able to highlight all of the citations that you wish to merge (as long as they appear next to each other) and then select the 'Merge Citations' option from the menu, next to 'Insert or Edit Citation', to bring them into a single citation/square bracket.


Why would a Ph.D. be awarded five years after attendance?

In many universities, attendance (in the sense of registering for courses and/or paying tuition) is not required for Ph.D. students once they have completed the coursework and residency requirements for the Ph.D. After thus period, the Ph.D. student can work independently with minimal (or no) supervision from the Ph.D. advisor. When the Ph.D. thesis has been written, it is usually submitted to the advisor who does the first evaluation as to whether the research is of adequate quality, and then to the Ph.D. committee (examiners), the thesis defense is scheduled. After the defense has been successfully completed, the thesis (which often undergoes revision based on the Ph.D. committee's comments and questions that arose during the thesis defense) is submitted to the University and the degree granted at the next commencement/convocation etc.  During this last period that begins with the thesis being submitted to the Ph.D. advisor, the Ph.D. student might need to be registered at the university and possibly have to pay some tuition (usually not the entire fee for a full term), but this is usually not regarded as attending the university or listed as such on CVs and job applications.  In short,
it is quite possible to have a gap between the last date of attendance and the Ph.D. degree award date.


No response from journal after submission

It's February, so the holiday season is long over, and no reasonable journal ought to have lost its entire staff to vacation for so long.  Moreover, most journals have an automated system that will acknowledge your paper and tell you about its current status.  If this journal hasn't got the infrastructure to even acknowledge your submission in over a month, then I would it a rather dubious prospect for publication.

Note, however, that there is another possibility that you should rule out before withdrawing, and that is whether either your emails to the journal or their emails to you are getting lost in a spam filter.  This is particularly likely if you are from the developing world, to which blacklists are often applied quite carelessly.


Failed my professor months ago, not sure what to do now

I think you are being a little bit too hard on yourself. That said, you acted unprofessionally and were irresponsible in communicating with the professor. The prof may feel like you treated him with a lack of respect, so it is important to make it clear that you do respect him, and that your behavior was selfish and childish.

The best course of action is to come clean.

Write an email or schedule a call with the professor.
Apologize for behaving unprofessionally.
Do NOT make excuses. You can mention that you couldn't have started the masters program because of visa issues, but you should have told him as soon as you discovered that information. Remember, what you did wrong was fail to communicate. Not starting the masters is not the "crime".
Acknowledge that your behavior was unprofessional.
Thank them for their mentorship over the years. Take some time to think about what you learned from them and let them know. This demonstrates your maturity and shows that you respect and appreciate him.
Apologize again and mention that you hope that you haven't ruined the relationship.

Assuming the professor is a reasonable adult, they will accept your apology, and you may ask for a reference in the future.


Who to cite for fundamental mathematical definitions?

The objectives of the citation, imho are:

To point to some material that will give more details on the subject
To give credit to the original author

In recent works, you don't have a choice, because there won't be a detailed explanation in anywhere but the original article, which covers the second point as well.

For well established developments (old stuff), the original article might be unreadable, considering current standards. The figures improved considerably in the last 10 years.

Personally, whenever is easy, I do both, cite the original work AND a current accessible textbook on the subject. If the original work is too obscure, just cite the text. In these cases, point 1 is more important than point 2.


Will it give a bad impression?

Lots of people quit their PhDs.  It's not a big deal.  But I suppose finishing makes a better impression of yourself.

Quitting your PhD creates a negative impression of your university and supervisor.  However, that shouldn't stop you from doing what is best for you.

  Will it have severe consequences on my further career (for example in industry).

Only if you want a job that requires a PhD.  Most industry employers do not care if you did not compete your PhD.

  I have 7 publications

You should consider if you can complete your PhD in a very short period.  Most PhD students do not have seven publications.


In experiments involving study participants, why are some studies allowed to only have a small number of test subjects?

Although large samples produce more robust results, small samples are not completely devoid of usefulness - they're just more likely to be wrong. As long as the reader keeps this in mind, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with publishing these small-sample studies.

Further, sometimes you just cannot get enough samples to make an assertion with confidence. Examples:

GW170817 was a one-of-a-kind neutron star merger event. Since the rate of neutron star mergers isn't well-known, one could easily wait another five years and not get another sample (plus you'd need hundreds of samples to make the kind of statements you're looking for).

The Berlin Patient - there's no cure for AIDS. Even if this single case were a fluke, it's still worth reporting since it's a signpost telling researchers where to look.

Habitability research - The question of whether aliens exist captures the public imagination. Like it or not, we have to approach the problem from what we know, and we know only one planet with life (i.e. sample size of one). You could of course just decline to work in the field until we've discovered several hundred alien civilizations, but then you could be waiting forever. Plus with no idea what to look for, observational astronomers would have a much harder time finding these civilizations.


How to list this accomplishment on my vita?

Great work ! The way I do it is under the Publications section of my CV. The following citation is formatted in the ACM style. You can modify it for your own citation styles.

J1. Smith, J. 2013. "The best paper ever". ACM Transactions of Awesomeness, 1 (4). ACM Press, NY, USA. (most read article in March 2013)


Why is Hawaii time used for conference deadlines?

It's likely the most westward time zone with universities - or at least with a noticeably amount of academic work. Hawaii is in GMT-10, and in GMT-11 there are only a few small island countries, probably without any university.

In short, if you put the deadline in Hawaii time, in nearly any place of the world you can just forget the clock and just mind the date. It is also a great way to avoid complains like "I meet the deadline but I missed the time because I didn't notice the time zone", because in any other zone the deadline would be earlier.


Dealing with professor after not getting back to him on a project?

Go talk to the professor, and tell them exactly what happened. Worst thing than can happen is that you get thrown out. Not exactly pleasant, sure; but at least you get it off your chest. And you might get another shot at the project.


Are there any practical reasons at keeping record of my past university work?

Yes.

(1) You might have to prove to people that you took these classes. Transcripts may become unavailable or untrusted.

(2) Perhaps you'll find something of use for your own research or writing in them. Happened to me at least twice in graduate classes. (For example, a lemma I proved in homework turned out to be useful in a proof I wanted to write up elsewhere.) Of course, you probably will not want to reuse them verbatim (I cringe when I read my writing from 10 years ago), but they still can be better than nothing.

(3) You might eventually want to revisit one of the classes you have "casually" taken, for example because its subject is leaking into yours. By looking back on your homework, you'll get a quick impression of where you have left it (although this is only a good thing if you have been learning it reasonably thoroughly; if you were sloppy, then it might be better to start from scratch).

(4) In order to encourage your own students to submit LaTeXed assignments, you will want to provide a usable blank LaTeX template for them. And where do you get such a thing? (Well, there are several places, but one is in your own homework folder.)


Should historical data be considered ambigious if not proven as fact?

Any time you have a single source for information (generalizations given by a conquering foe), there is no other supporting evidence, and there are no counter-examples, then yes, it should be accompanied with disclaimers since the data is actually quite weak.

It would be like saying "John Smith reported the sky turned red just before the earthquake." This is far better than saying "The sky turned red just before the earthquake." The latter implies that there are multiple independent sources for the information where, indeed, there might only be one.


Unofficial documents for admission process

I would bet that the postgrad admission process at most universities involves at least the following steps:

You send in scanned copies of your transcripts (I am assuming here that these days most of the admissions procedure is handled electronically, in particular for international students)
Someone checks to which degrees from "well-known" institutions your degree is roughly equivalent to and convert your grades into the local scale (e.g. GPA). On this basis, a first assessment is done whether you satisfy admission criteria.
In my institution the previous two steps are handled centrally, but the next step involves academics: assuming your grades are good enough to satisfy requirements of the department (which for highly attractive departments might be higher than the regulations say), it is checked whether your profile and interests align well enough with one or more academics to be sure that a supervisor can be found, and (if applicable) whether sufficient funds are available to support you.
Only if all of this is checked positively will the university make an offer to you.
When you accept the offer, you have to supply the formal (perhaps) transcripts and have to provide evidence that these are indeed proper certificates (i have heard of cases where this has to be duly apostilled). Clearly, there is a strong expectation that your official transcripts match the ones from the first step.

Universities have a strong interest in getting students (and their tuition fees) so they want to make the first few steps as easy for the "customer" as they possibly can and "lure him in". The onerous part only comes with the last step.


To your title question

Is consistency in citation style important?

Yes!
On first reading this, it sounded as though you were planning to mix two citation styles such as APA and Chicago. Obviously, this would be unacceptable.
However, in your example, you are using two entirely compatible forms for your in-text citations, which is perfectly acceptable. I would strongly prefer this over the awkward and boring alternative of using exactly the same form for every citation. Continue to use the form that is most appropriate for the situation. Variety is acceptable, even commendable, as long as you are not violating the standards for your documentation style.
Edit: To clarify the point above; mixing the in-text citation style Lastname et al. [#] and [#] is OK! What is not OK is using two separate documentation styles, for example, also using the in-text citation (Last name, year, page), which is proper is APA documentation style, but not in Chicago documentation style!