Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing

I think speed primarily comes with experience. Reviewing will nevertheless take lots of time for good reasons. Unlike when you read a manuscript (MS) for referencing in a MS of your own, you need to read everything. You also need to think about what has been referenced in detail and evaluate if omissions have been made in the referencing. You need to look at figures and tables for errors or problems, or just to suggest improvements. If you can, you also can or should comment on the language and structure of the paper. To cap off, you probably need to read the paper more than once, perhaps not in the same detail but one read is not enough. In all, this takes time. With each review this may become easier and you will be able to expedite the review.

I personally probably spend around a working day on a normal MS. Early in my career it may have taken twice the time. Some MS may take even longer. I don't think there exist any dependable short-cuts apart from being well read-up on the subject in general, and being experienced in reading and commenting on MS and reports. I am, however, convinced that the larger reductions in time occur early on since the benefits of experience comes quickly.


Funded PhD position chances for international students in Austria

Doing a PhD in the German-speaking part of the world works a bit differently. Typically, you would find an advisor that has project funding or the like and is willing to hire you as a "scientific employee". Being admitted to the PhD studies itself is most often not that difficult once you have an advisor - there are formal requirements, for sure. But with a Master degree from a "proper university", this is likely not to be the problem.

The employment part is also very relevant when it comes to visa questions, health insurances, and the like. It may easily be that the reason why you have been told that no international students are taken is that without the prospect of getting employed in a Professor's research group, there is little hope for getting a student visa for PhD studies (that's just a guess, though).

A notable exception to the above guidelines are graduate schools. A well-known example is the one of the IST Austria (http://ist.ac.at/), which has internationalization as one of its explicit goals. You might want to have a look at their web page. But even the text on that page talks about "employment as a PhD student".


Rephrasing and Reproducing some part of the Introduction of a Research publication without citing that publication. Is it plagiarism?

Unequivocally, yes. Plagiarism isn't limited to results or figures alone. As for automatic plagiarism-checkers, they will make even less of a distinction, and will almost certainly flag it as plagiarised if a certain contiguous amount (I am told it is 2 sentences, but I don't have a confirmation on this).

You mentioned rephrasing - this could help avoid automated checks, but if the changes are trivial (changing voice, shifting subject/object, substituting synonyms), a reader may spot and report this.

That aside, why would you want to reproduce it? Different papers should have different introductions if their motivations are different. Is it to save writing time/effort or something else?


How to figure out if a certain algorithm has already been discovered or not?

I'm afraid I have bad news:

Unless you are writing algorithms for entirely new scientific areas, you can safely assume that every algorithm anyone can come up without being familiar with the literature is either (i) already known, or (ii) inferior to already known algorithms. In other words, since you don't seem to be familiar with the literature in your field, I would think that the chances for your algorithm to be new and better are slim. It may of course be new, but inferior to existing methods, in which case it's not useful.

(The reason for this is that people who are familiar with the literature, have been thinking about these issues for a long time, and know about the limitations of the existing methods, are most likely to come up with improvements. It is unlikely that people who are not familiar with an area waltz in, come up with something, and it turns out to be better than what all of the experts have come up with. It probably happens every once in a while, but it's unlikely.)

This doesn't help you find out whether your algorithm has been found so far. But it helps you determine whether it's worthwhile pursuing this further -- which it is likely not. You are probably better off spending your time reading the literature in the field to understand what others have been doing, what the limitations of existing algorithms are, etc.


I did a double major is physics and mathematics at a US university. Therefore, I think I can give you a somewhat accurate answer from my own experience. I hope you are coming to school with a lot of AP or IB credit, or some other way to get out of general education requirements. You are going to need the space in your schedule. I took a look at the requirements for the ME and Math majors at Hofstra, and there are four classes that overlap, and (if you choose the engineering math option) an additional nine hours of engineering courses count toward the math degree. That's a total of twenty-four overlap credits. That's pretty good, but it leaves an additional twenty-four credits dedicated to the math major to fit into your schedule. The total number of hours for your double major will be 155, or about nineteen hours per semester if you do eight semesters. That is quite a lot, which is why I hope you have some outside credit or take summer classes, or in some other way reduce the workload to sixteen to eighteen credits per semester.

If you are able to fit these classes into a reasonable schedule, the workload will not increase too much. I do not think that undergraduate math classes require all that much work. Most do not require essays or large projects. Furthermore, if your university's policies are like mine, you can drop out of the double major at any time, reverting to single-major status, so there is little risk in applying for a double-major. If you do double major, and find that your engineering classes are suffering because your math classes are taking too much time, I strongly advise you to drop out immediately. Having one strong major is much better than two weak majors.

Here are a few things to remember:

Neither employers nor graduate programs place a lot of weight on a double major. If you have a strong GPA in an engineering major, and have several elective mathematics courses on your transcript as well, that is just as good as a double major.
If you do get a graduate degree, employers will care way more about that than a second major.
Unless you have a full scholarship, you are paying for this. I do not presume to know your financial situation, but I feel fairly comfortable in saying that the joy of taking math classes simply because you find them interesting is not worth $40,000 per year. So do not delay graduation to get a second major.  Especially when you can check math books out at the University library for free.
I would even be hesitant to take summer classes in order to double major if they come at the expense of an internship, REU, or some other career-enhancing opportunity. A double major looks good on a resume or a graduate school application, but not as good as work and research experience.
As with all choices, there is an opportunity cost to double majoring. If you have time to double major, you could also use that time to take graduate level classes, or learn another language, or get a minor in computer science, all things that employers and graduate schools will see as valuable.
Finally, it should be noted that a double major may be viewed by future employers as a sign of a lack of focus or of scattered interests. I do not know if this is a prevalent opinion, but I have heard it before. It may even be true in many cases.


What is normally done if there is an underspending of a research grant?

First, you need to plan expenditures to make sure you don't end up with too much money at the end of the project. If you have grants, you're essentially running a small business. It's your job and responsibility to have a budget, plan with and for it, and to track expenditures.

If, however, for reasons that may not have been under your control, you end up with unspent money at the end of the grant period, you can often ask funding agencies to give you an extension of the project. For example, the National Science Foundation pretty regularly provides a one-year no-cost extension on "normal" grants. To get a second year, however, you probably need to have good reasons, or they will take the money back.


[T]he book is written in first person, in some narrative form, with dialogue added. I find it a little strange, because the text has complete conversations, that I think could not possibly be recorded in such detail.

The author may have recreated dialogue, rather than definitely sourced dialogue. Perhaps look for an author's note, disclaimer, or similar, to see whether techniques are disclosed.

Should a history book written as a narrative be disregarded as a source? Are these types of texts something I should skip over when writing a research paper?

Use sources you believe to be accurate. When there's doubt, sources needn't be abandoned, caution can be taken to absolve responsibility for prior errors, e.g., Author X provides the following account, "...".


Can my PhD thesis supervisor be a reviewer for my paper?

In many cases this would be inappropriate. PhD advisors are considered to have a permanent conflict-of-interest when it comes to their advisees.

Some conferences/journals relax this condition and allow for reviews from former collaborators if there has been no collaboration in the past 5-6 years (or some similar time window). You should check the rules around CoI for the particular journal if these are publicly available.

However: it is best to not have your PhD advisor listed as a potential reviewer. If the Associate Editor or Editor-in-Chief makes that call -- to have an advisor review the advisee's work -- it is a different matter but one should not rely on obtaining reviews from former advisors.


How does a math degree help in electrical engineering graduate studies?

Yes, it would help if you study Applied Mathematics.

However, how much it would help depends on your intended field of study. If you plan to go into Computational Electromagnetics or Digital Signal Processing or similiar fields, then it's great. If not, I advise you not to invest more than one semester in studying Math.

To give you a perspective: I graduated with a BS (GPA:3.5) and MS (GPA:3.5) in EE only. I took the subject Math GRE and scored in the 30% percentile.


Aligning my Master's degree with prospective PhD's

There are a number of major issues here:

In the US, you normally do not need a master's degree to be admitted. Keep in mind that in the US, the PhD program normally begins with a coursework phase, which roughly corresponds to the European master's degree, before the research phase.
Additionally, in the US, admissions are normally done at the departmental level, rather than at the level of an individual PI. The PI might have some say in admissions—particularly if she serves on the admissions committee—but there is no guarantee that you'll get admission to the school of your choice.
Moreover, in many schools and programs, particularly those where the advisor-graduate student "matching process" takes place after enrollment, advisors are normally not allowed to make commitments to particular students prior to enrollment. Additionally, the advisors generally have to show the ability to pay for the graduate students they take into their group, but also have the freedom to select any of the graduate students in the class.

So, you may be spending two or more years pursuing a master's degree that may not be needed, so that you can take a chance on whether or not a particular advisor has both funding and open positions, and also wants you over the other students interested in joining the research group. There are a lot of places where things can go wrong here.

So, my recommendation would be to talk to the programs, find out if you need a master's degree before applying (or if they'll exempt you from the coursework you've already had). You should also note that tailoring your application too narrowly to the interests of a single advisor is not always advantageous in a US graduate application, because if the advisor who you're trying to appeal to isn't interested, the other faculty will probably pass as well, and you'll end up without an offer of admission.


Professor expressed interest in working together, is not responding to emails?

It's normal for professors to be extremely busy for an extended period, and not be able to respond to anything that requires significant thought or planning.  I would not say that she is "ignoring" your emails.

I would wait about a week from your last message, and then send one more message with a deadline.

  Dear Professor B,

  Just wanted to touch base again regarding my application and our discussion about working on Project X.  I am trying to make plans for the next few months, so if we are going to move ahead on this, I would need to know by date MM/DD.  I really hope it works out and look forward to hearing from you soon.

After that, do not send any further messages unless you get a substantive response from her.  If you don't get a response by the deadline, move on and look for other opportunities; either she isn't interested, or she hasn't been able to make time to evaluate your request, which would itself be an indication that she wouldn't be easy to work with.


Your institute is the one who gives you your degree, revoking it is only going to happen if there is some sort of serious academic misconduct that they find out about much later. They know at the time you submit your thesis whether or not your code is included, so there is no reason that they would give you your degree knowing this, and then later deciding it is a reason to revoke your degree.

The most important thing is that your degree needs to be approved by your advisor and committee, so if your advisor says not to include it, don't. You could always put your code up on GitHub and include a reference to it in your thesis. (My thesis included my code at the end, as an appendix; I'm pretty sure no one ever looked at it).


What is the etymology of "Assistant Professor"?

The OP dictionary is inaccurate.  The term assistant professor was in use prior to 1827.

In the 1805 book The College of Fort William in Bengal there is an article dated 20 September 1804, beginning on page 225, that uses the term several times, to name several assistant professors of various languages.  The term is used in this article at pages 226, 227 and 228, and the book also list four assistant professors on page 237.

Also, the 1801 The New Universal Biographical Dictionary, and American Remembrancer, volume 4 says, under the entry for James Hay Beattie:

  On the 4th June, 1787, the king, upon the unanimous recommendation of the university, appointed him assistant professor of moral philosophy and logic, although he was not then nineteen years of age.

And volume 2 of the same Dictionary, in the entry for Euler says:

  he was called to St. Petersburgh, and was admitted as an assistant professor in the university of that city ... In 1730, he was promoted to the professorship of natural philosophy; and in 1733 he succeeded his friend D. Bernoulli in the mathematical chair.

However, there is an earlier (1785) version of the Euler biography that uses the term "joint professor" instead of "assistant professor".

The 1802 book Travels through Sweden, Finland and Lapland to the North-cape, in the years 1798 and 1799 discusses assistant professors, saying for example concerning University of Abo:

  In the branch of theology there are six professors, three assistant professors, and three private teachers or magiltri docentes: of law, two professors and two assistant professors : of medicine, three professors and two assistant professors : of philosophy, ten professors and twenty assistant professors: of genteel exercises...

Also, in the US, a law was passed 29 April 1812 concerning the Military Academy (meaning West Point):

  each of the foregoing professors to have an assistant professor, which assistant professor shall be taken from the most prominent characters of the officers or cadets, and receive the pay and emoluments of captains, and no other pay or emoluments, while performing these duties.

So, at least according to this US law, the assistant professor was assigned to a particular professor.


I have several Australian colleagues, and the challenges are, in fact, real.  The key challenges I have heard them speak of are:

Time zones isolate Australia/New Zealand from the United States and Europe, though not from India and Asia.
Travel is very long and costly.  Most particularly, it is often difficult to get people from elsewhere to attend conferences in Australia/New Zealand.

The strategies that I have seen employed are:

Some universities in Australia and New Zealand apparently provide significant amounts of travel funds to make it easier for their scholars to travel and to bring others for sabbaticals to Australia.
Increased emphasis on collaboration with Asian colleagues.  My anecdotal information seems to point particularly toward India, where there are fewer language, cultural, and legal barriers, particularly for computer science.


Applying to History & Philosophy of Science (HPS) PhD programs?

HPS isn't a huge subfield of philosophy. I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I'd guess there are maybe 5 or 6 jobs in the US per year in HPS. It's hard to tell partially because the field is quite diverse. Philosophy of Physics and Philosophy of Social Science are pretty different sub-subfields. So you should try to think about your interests more narrowly. Are you wanting to do philosophy of biology? Philosophy of Neuroscience? Or maybe you're really interested in the birth of modern dynamics at the turn of the 16th century? You need to think about what exactly you're interested in and then find the very best programs you can apply to for that interest. For instance, if you wanted to do Philosophy of Biology, the University of Wisconsin, Madison is a great choice, but if you wanted to do history of physics stuff, the program at the University of Pittsburgh might be stronger for those interests.

As a first pass, take a look at the Gourmet Report rankings in each of the Phil. Science subfields. But then go through and actually read recent papers by the key faculty at the places that end up high on your list and see whether they're doing the kind of stuff you want to do.

Finally, it would also behoove you to check out the placement data of every school you are considering applying to with a fine-toothed comb. The philosophy job market has been abysmal since 2008. (Not that it was that great before, mind.) So if your ambition is to someday become a philosophy professor, then you should really take a look at whether these schools are managing to place their PhD graduates and if so, in what kinds of places. Investigate the kinds of schools that the graduates land in. Are they the flagship campuses of big state research universities? Are they tiny religious colleges in far flung places? Are they elite small liberal arts colleges? Are they two-year community colleges? You need to really think about what kind of school you'd like to teach at because the experience of being a professor at each of these different kinds of schools is very different. Religious schools pay less. Community colleges and satellite campuses of state schools tend to have heavy teaching obligations. Etc.

If, like many but not all grad students, you want to end up teaching at a research school with PhD students, you probably would have to get into literally the best program in your subspecialty of HPS to be a competitive candidate.

Good luck.


Is there a web service that receives a reference and returns the impact factor?

I recommend you to search the publisher of the impact factor's website which indexes the journals or even the journal's websites themselves in which their IF is written. However, if I want to answer your question; I found one website which may help you the way you want to search for impact factors.

I searched over the net and only found Impact Factor Search website in which you have to enter the journal's full title (seems simpler than uploading the bibtex information) and by clicking on the provided link, a search list will appear to you. You then have to choose the name of the journal you want to get information about and in the output's window you will have the following information:

JOURNAL NAME:

ABBREVIATION:

IMPACT FACTOR 2013:

The website currently prints the most up-to-date IF, for the year 2013, and is ready to support IF for the year 2014 too as the latest data become available .


Can I publish research as "working paper" after journal submission?

Most journal publishers have policies allowing you to release the manuscript that you have submitted to the journal (usually called the pre-print because it is pre-peer review) as long as you meet some requirements. Requirements vary by publisher, but commonly include only being able to put your manuscript on certain web sites and having to add a note to the manuscript saying it has been submitted to that journal.

You can find the policy that applies to the journal you've submitted to by searching for 'pre print policy' or similar on their website. You could also look at a website such as Sherpa Romeo, which act as a searchable database of different journals' policies.


Does a department have any obligation to respond to a student petition against a teacher?

Such a petition is something that a department head or dean would take seriously.  But at most universities, it would be their decision what action to take, if any; a petition wouldn't obligate them to make a change.

Consider that if such petitions were binding, it would give the students an undue amount of leverage over the professor; if they got a difficult homework assignment or something else they just didn't like, they could threaten to submit a petition to get the professor removed.

There is a principle of "academic freedom" that the administration will generally avoid interfering with how courses are taught, within reason, so it would probably take a pretty egregious deficiency for the administration to take the disruptive step of removing a professor in the  middle of a course.

It is likely to be more effective to start with one or two students having an informal discussion with the department head about the situation; a petition doesn't leave much opportunity for dialogue or compromise.

Note also that the department head's decision would likely be based less on the students' opinion of the course, and more on objective information about what the professor is actually doing.  So it would be more helpful to avoid phrases like "everyone hates this class" and prefer specific examples: "the professor did this and this, and here is why we think this is a problem".


How to provide attribution to a media source in a research paper?

Why don't you provide a list of media sources in the appendix similar to the obligatory literature list.
You number the images anyway inside the paper, so you can easily reference them in an appendix. Depending on your textprocessing tool you also can generate backlinks to the images for hypertext reading.
This could look like this:

Apendix C...
sources of media used in this paper
For detailed Information on Licences see [Link... creative commons, gnu, whatever...]

Figure 1 (p. 42) Apples, Takeaway (Own work) via Wikimedia, Licence CC-BY-SA 4.0
Figure 2 (p. 69) Oranges, Finsh, Ellen Levy (own work) via Wikimedia, Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0
Figure 2 (p. 104) Tree, Gimmel, Benjamin (own work) via Wikimedia, Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0


As a male student, did I say something wrong to this female professor?

From what you've said, it doesn't sound like a sexism issue specifically, but it might have come off that you regarded her sabbatical as a vacation rather than serious work. You might be worrying about this a bit too much--she's probably already forgotten the exchange.


Online tool to convert plain text references into list of PubMed IDs or DOIs

You could use CrossRef

Go to this link:

Paste the references into the box
and supply an email:
If you want PubMed IDs then click the box:

You'll get results like this:

You could then do some text manipulation to extract the doi or PMID.

Note: the tool requires to register your email.

  Enter the email address you registered for use of Crossref services. If you have >not registered your email address, request an account. [link to register]


How do i find top journals in my area of interest?

There are problems with the Impact factor, but to find top journals in a field (as in leading/high reputation) the IF (relative to others in the field) is usually a good proxy. The problem with IF is mainly that it is a fairly poor predictor of citations to individual papers. Alternative journal rankings can be found at SCimago and Eigenfactor. However, I do not have any knowledge about HCI and industrial engineering in particular.

Beside @MatthewG recommendation to talk to your advisor, I would also suggest that you look at what you are reading and what journals the papers you are citing are published in. This is usually a good way to find suitable journals.


Will marking on graduate application that I'd like to be considered for admission without funding hurt my chances of receiving funding?

It shouldn't but it might.

For example, in my department, if you are the best candidate then you will get the funding no matter what. However, if you have exactly the same qualifications with another candidate (almost never happens) and we have funding only for one, we would offer the other candidate funding and to you to come without funding. Of course, once at the department, we would try to get funding for you for the next semester/year.

All these, depend on the department policy though.


Is it a good idea to include a work draft in application to US Physics graduate school?

You may be worried too much about getting scooped, but you could protect yourself by including an abstract instead of a draft and clearly mark it as work in progress, not to be shared.
The abstract could include something about the problem(s) you are addressing and say that your solutions will appear in a future publication, rather than revealing them. You might give an indication of estimated time frame to submission.
Having "work in progress" is always a good thing in an application.
But if you intend to continue this line of research, then the SoP is a good place to discuss it and mention there that you will upload an abstract.

Note that someone "stealing" your work through the release of a draft in an application would be clear plagiarism. And you have a dated verification of the priority of the work you have done in the application itself and could be pointed to. But that doesn't save you from getting "scooped" in your work as parallel independent research is common in many fields.


When should one change advisors? When should one keep going?

I would like to know what you would consider signs that it is better to change advisors?``

1) Not getting along
2) Difference in methodology and study design
3) not willing to discuss in depth your research plans
4) treat you as a lab technician (some people like this)
 5) harrassing ( mentally, physically, sexually)
 6)changing your thesis topic frequently/ not giving you title of your thesis for long time
7) not paying much attention to you or provide you with advice that cant benefit to your progress
8) dont provide grant for your research
9) delaying consultations and skipping lab progress hours(consultation hours)
10) Steals your work
11) No constructive criticism

`What would you consider unfavourable in the advisor-advisee relationship but not detrimental to growth in research potential?

wy advisor look, talk and personally behave, these things shouldnt influence research potential

 What constitutes a good advisor-advisee relationship in your opinion?

You can become independent researcher and valuable contributor to science after finishing PhD. Your advisor method and behavior can shape you in adequate PhD holder

How does all this depend on where someone is in graduate school at the moment (e.g. 1st year masters vs 3rd year PhD)?
it is much easier to change advisors and programs in 1st year of master then in 3rd year of PhD, procedure is really hard, especially when you are until the end of studies

 What would the ideal advisor-advisee relationship look like?

I dont know, there is no unique example, everyone is different, you need to get along that is for sure, ideal situation for me is not ideal for you,
I like advisors that can be there all the time, some people and student like different style, important thing is that you can benefit from your advisor in professional sense !


Can a graduate school dean prevent you from attending a class?

The answer to the title question is, unfortunately, that the Dean of your graduate school is in a much better position to know whether he can prevent you from attending class than we are: we don't know what the school is, and we don't know any of the details of what sounds like an ugly situation.  This is not the sort of question that you can rely on the internet to answer.

Having said that, given only what you've said, the Dean's directive sounds outrageous.  A student's right to attend class should only be forfeited by serious negative behavior on the part of the student.  Reporting negative behavior of the instructor should not remotely qualify.  Moreover, a student who may not attend class should be withdrawn from the course...because the alternative does not make much sense.  In this case, if your withdrawal is necessary then you should be excused of any negative consequences of it.

I am at a loss to make any specific recommendations to you.  Frankly, as you depict it the Dean's behavior is so outrageous that I have to wonder about the further details of your story, including the nature of the bullying, but a sufficiently full accounting of your story would involve divulging too much personal information on the internet, so I am not fishing for more information here.  On the off chance that the Dean is simply behaving very strangely, it could not hurt to follow up with other university officials: e.g. your own academic advisor, an ombudsperson, the human resources department and/or the registrar.

Finally, 99% of the time, using the American legal system to resolve academic disputes is the wrong thing to do.  But (depending in part on the nature of the bullying) your case might be in the 1%.  Your issue -- namely that your institution is handling your allegations of interpersonal workplace misconduct in a way that seems inappropriately punitive to you -- is not an inherently academic one.  So you might look into exploring that further.

Good luck.

Added: @tonysdg's comment of looking into withdrawal is a good one.  I wouldn't only do this, but if withdrawing from the course saves you from failing and losing your financial aid, then it would give you some breathing room at least.


Distinction between Article writings and Academic writings?

An article for publication is a manuscript formatted according to a particular journal's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by the editors, following the advice of referees.*

A thesis or dissertation is a manuscript formatted according to a particular university's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by your advisor, following the advice of a committee.

In both cases, the expectations for ethics, language, length, novelty, rigor, formality, background exposition, typesetting, submission processes, approval processes, and so on strongly depend on the specific people who judge whether the manuscript is acceptable, and more broadly on the institutions and research communities to which those people belong.

You should ask them.

*In computer science, substitute "conference", "program committee", and "reviewers" for "journal", "editors", and "referees", respectively.


Does tenure protection extend to professors saying that evolution is false in class?

Having tenure doesn't mean a professor can spend large amounts of time in a course talking about off-topic things. They still have a duty to teach the subject of the course.

Have your wife talk to the department chair if she feels she isn't receiving the education that she expects from the course.


How do I put professional affiliations on a CV?

By 'Professional Affiliations' it is meant that one is a member of certain professional association such as IEEE, ACM, ICE, ASCE etc.

These professional bodies often arranges conferences which anyone can attend, so registering for the conferences does not mean that one is a member of a organizing body. Conference participation information may be put into your publication list as conference papers and/or given talks section.

So, You should only list the organisations as professional affiliations of which you are a member.


How to cite a paper whose place and status of publication is questionable or unknown

I have double checked in IEEE Xplore. The paper does not appear in the table of contents, the authors do not appear in the author list. Additionnaly, I cannot trace it in ISI Web of Science (which mentioned other conference papers by C. Kaner in 2004).

There are three options (in general):

A mistake in the proceedings for a regularly accepted paper,
The paper is more a tutorial, a keynote, a late breaking paper that has not been through the standard review process,
A paper that was not published in the conference, and which was put online carelessly in the conference paper shape.

As I am really unsure, and know that papers sometimes cite papers they have not read (and papers that do not exist), I would cite it only as an online document, or a preprint, with the url, without page number, and a potential note like "(often refered to as published in Metrics 2004)".

Most of all, I would suggest you not to cite it, unless it is really useful for your work. Or cite a paper really "published " by the authors instead (good luck with that).

EDIT: after a long search, I have found using the Wayback Machine that this paper could have been part of Metrics 2004 Late Breaking Papers:

  The purpose of the late breaking papers session is to give authors the
  opportunity to present work from on-going projects, new ideas and
  papers not complete at the time of the original call for papers. Each
  paper has been peer reviewed by at least 2 independent experts.

  The late breaking papers sessions allow authors to make a short
  presentation of their work in the main programme. Printed copies of
  the extended abstracts are circulated in delegate packs and, due to
  the timescale, the full papers will be published electronically on the
  conference web site.

Finally, I observe that with some online journal, it gets more difficult to have standard page numbers. Sometimes each paper gets a number. As much as I like citing papers correctly, may be page numbers are becoming  useful when the work only exists in paper-like form: a DOI is an interesting alternative.


University policy of publishing student course evaluations: Prevalence and pros and cons

I used to adjunct at a strong college as part of a larger university where the student government was able to get a policy in place on publishing (statistics on) evaluations.  The professor/adjunct had the choice to not publish their results; but this was uncommon since then you would be an outlier and it would seem like you had something to hide.

Pros:  Frankly, with things like "rate my professor" out there, I'd rather have everyone's evaluations take into account than just the extremes.  I think the point is that, provided we avoid the cons I will outline, there is transparency of some sort of metric of performance.  Generally I found the statistics to show something reliable about professors based on what other faculty and students said about them.  It prevents faculty from thinking they can just disregard the opinions of their students and it helps students have a consistent and official place to decide which instructor they would like to teach them (in a larger college anyway).
Cons:  You need not look far to see academics complain about this practice.  The only concern for me would be if for some reason there was some sort of plot to purposely bomb a professor's evaluations or a professor tried to game the system; these are generally not serious worries and one would hope there would be checks and balances for these concerns.


Can one prevent a co-author from publishing on arXiv without consent?

Once an author has put their work into the public domain, it is very difficult to rescind it. All of the authors still have rights to the works, like attribution or trademark, but not copyright since that was given up as part of uploading to arXiv. So it might be impossible to force arXiv's hand with any legal tool where both of you are co-authors of the works. You do have one option though, but it's not pleasant...

If the co-author claimed joint-ownership over some part of the paper that you can prove (or they will agree) that they do not have rights to, then the works was illegally shared with arXiv, and arXiv have a duty to take it down if you DMCA it. The key is that you have to be sole owner of the copyright, and not shared ownership. Since you never personally signed off on the publication, that should be fairly easy to put forward. I don't know what arXiv says about this though, since their may be a fee for the co-author for retracting the paper - which I suppose you could both share, and i think you should, since arguably you should have done more to prevent a communications error like this ever arising in the first place.

Finally, may i just add, that this would not be illegal, but it would go against the principles of academic honesty...


Extremely mild punishments for academic misconduct

The situation you describe in your last paragraph does not sound like business as usual at all: on the contrary, it sounds so bizarre that I am having trouble picturing it taking place.  (This is at a top 10 university in the US??)  I suppose there must be more to the story, but: granting what you say, indeed this professor does not have the right to publish the paper without your permission.  Especially if you think the work is not valuable enough to be published, you should absolutely contact the journal ASAP to withdraw the paper.

Unfortunately I suspect that you're correct that punishments for faculty who plagiarize or commit other forms of academic misconduct are distressingly light, in particular for many of the reasons that you suggest.  If someone is caught intentionally falsifying data or -- the horror, the horror -- submitting a knowingly false proof, then the community as a whole is going to feel victimized and take some steps to ostracize or ban this faculty member.  However, if it's a case of stealing material from a student: it pains me to say this, but often the easy course is to slap the faculty member on the wrist and look out to be sure that this behavior is not repeated in the near future.

I don't know what other people are doing, and I have heard more stories of faculty skullduggery on this site than in the rest of my life combined.  But for whatever it's worth, 99.9% of all faculty members I've ever met would sooner break into my office and steal my computer than steal a paper from a student.  If the trends are different in other fields and/or other parts of the world (and I think they must be, to an extent), I am really sorry to hear that.  Academia without academic integrity is one of the most hollow pursuits I can imagine.


What are paths that physics majors/PhDs can follow?

Various AIP subsidiaries including the APS keep tabs on these things: check out the APS's 2011-2012 survey results.

Don't believe "Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors", most engineering employers expect to teach a substantial set of specific skill they need in house even to engineering majors. And a physics major is well positioned to bone up on engineering subject.

But do be prepared to have a little trouble getting your foot in the door; you have to get past HR so that your paperwork is seen by a technical manager. That takes a well designed resume, and you if don't have a mentor with the right experience it might be worth paying a consultant.

General answers to the "What can I do question?"

BS Programming, engineering, business are the big three and lots of other jobs are represented in the surveys. With a JD there are specialized areas of the law available to people with a technical background. With a MBA, there are companies who want to hire people to lead the technical end of the business. Med school is an option too, and physicist actually pass the MCAT more often than any other major (they're only second in passing the LSAT as the mathematicians squeeze in front).
MS Minimum degree for some reasonable chance of doing science. All the usual suspects plus industry research work and some chance of teaching at the post-secondary level (but generally not tenure-track).
PhD Programming, engineering, business, teaching and research. The thing to understand here is that many Physics PhDs don't end up doing physics,1 but most do end up employed at a job that uses the traits that brought you to the major---curiosity, focus, detail orientation and the ability to construct and organize large and complicated models.

With a MS or PhD there are good jobs in the patent office.

The APS recently held a webinar on this very subject.

1 The percentage that end up doing some kind of physics is in the low 50s, and about half end up changing subfield from their dissertation work.


What to do if authors don't respond to my serious concerns about their paper?

Write a response. (Would such a thing get published?)

This. Such things are usually titled "Comment to..." and, yes, they are published, typically alongside with a reply from the authors of the commented paper (the comment is usually sent to them by the journal editor).

As usual disclaimer, since things may vary across fields and journals, check if the journal in question has already published comments of this type and, in doubt, contact the editor.


How important is GRE in Econ Phd Applications?

Yes, it does, at a large number of, although certainly not all, top economics departments in the United States. Indeed, they have a lot of applications to read from perfect applicants (at least on paper). Why should they give any exceptions?

But they do give exceptions. I don't know entirely your circumstances, and certainly mathematics isn't economics. But from my own experiences, having 1. written letters for people with bad mathematics subject test GRE scores and 2. being swayed when I've been on committee to admit people with bad mathematics subject test GRE scores, I would encourage at least one of your letter writers to contact someone at each of the schools you applied to to keep a lookout for your application/not throw it out immediately presuming a GRE cutoff, especially if other parts of your application are quite competitive for the schools you are applying/have applied to.


What strategy should I follow for lecturing a course in which I have only a basic background?

I have a few additions on top of the related question.

I don't think you should be too concerned about your abilities. Your domain knowledge will be beyond the vast majority of the undergraduate students, and thus you will acquire knowledge very quickly. It is inevitable that you will miss some of the obscurities and fine details in the first time running the course, regardless of your graphics background.

Specifically about Computer Graphics: I had a lecturer who had no background in computer graphics. She was taking the course for the first time, and it was one of the best courses I've experienced as an undergrad.

Factors contributing to success:

She took material from the previous lecturer (who had experienced success) and adapted it to her needs.
She used many illustrative, well-commented code examples
The assignments were fun, the results were impressive, and there was much opportunity for creativity and your own modifications. (bonus marks awarded for 'extension' tasks such as rain, fire, shadow effects)
Lectures were absolutely full of practical examples. She wrote code on the spot and demonstrated how they affected the graphics. She solved mathematical equations on the spot and connected them up to code examples.
The ideas taught facilitated graphical effects that were impressive and instructive, and with simple code examples. For example, a rain effect is constructed very concisely by randomly generating 2D rectangles, and you can teach billboarding with it. A realistic tree is constructed concisely with a lindenmayer system.

The course website is open to everyone.

I think you should mention that it is your first time teaching it, and ask the students for feedback during the semester (early in the course). They will be more forgiving and more inclined to offer helpful suggestions.


How to cite a game and props invented by the researcher?

Similarly, should there be a citation (where?) and a reference for the game (what does it look like)?

No, it is not necessary or expected.  Imagine if you replaced the game with an experiment.  Then the paper would describe the experiment/game, but not cite it.

If the game has a published manual, you could cite that as if it were a book or report.  If there are other publications about the game, you might cite them.  This does not appear to be the case.

The fact that the game is someone's intellectual property does not imply that you need a formal citation.  You cite sources of information.  There are many examples of intellectual property which are not sources.

You might mention who invented the game.

  For example, the paper has a picture of the props, but no credit. Should there be a credit, and what does it look like?

You should credit the photographer.


What time can be considered enough to withdraw my submission?

The review process often takes a long time. 2-3 months is typical. I’ve known instances of it taking 9-12 months. You need to be patient. This process is about the same for each journal (well most take a month or so at least. You must consider resubmitting to another journal carefully as you won’t save time by starting over, even if you don’t need to reformat it or write for a different audience (note that you cannot submit the paper to more than one journal at a time).

That it’s still with the editor (hasn’t been rejected) is a good sign. If they believe your manuscript does not have relevance to their journal or sufficient merit, they would have rejected it by now. They will now only do so if the reviewers raise serious concerns, it’s often accepted with revisions if it goes out for review.

The editorial process takes a long time. Many scientific or academic editors perform this role as a part-time job on top of their own academic responsibilities. The most time consuming part of the review process is finding the reviewers. They need to find reviewers with the right expertise who don’t have an existing relationship with the authors who are available to review. It can take a long time to get responses for requests to review.

Once they find reviewers, the review process should be quick. Reviewers are only given a couple of weeks to return their completed review (usually they submit them in this time or a few days late). They should decline to review if they cannot do in this timeframe. Once the reviews have been returned, an editor should give you a decision and the reviews within a few days.


Fear that my thesis topic is too broad and perhaps belongs to another discipline altogether

First let me say: This is definitely something you need to discuss with faculty members in your department. If you can find a supervisor who feels the topic is appropriate for the degree and wants to supervise your thesis, then go for it.

Having said that, I suspect that this topic is out of scope for your department/degree, and also too broad for a MSc thesis. It also sounds like you have already realized this.

I would guess that you can find a topic that is CS/math but also relates to the topic that you feel really passionate about -- just try to aim for a smaller piece of that very large question that you outlined.


I'm required to apply to multiple projects but I'm interested in only one

You will always have to work with more than one faculty member as a PhD student. Certainly during your class work, you must be prepared to interact with other faculty. During your research, you will figuratively (and perhaps literally) have to "go down the hall" and talk with another faculty on a topic that impacts your research because your advisor is not the expert on that part of the work. Finally, your dissertation committee will contain more than one faculty member.

The reason you are asked to select more than one faculty at this point is to give you the opportunity to prepare for the above situations well enough in advance. We have another reason too. Suppose that I am a faculty member who is to interview a potential PhD student for my research group. I would be far more impressed to hear the student tell me that he/she already knows about my colleagues that have potentially useful contributions to make than I will be to hear the student say "No, I had no idea that person was here".

Take the time now to get to know the place where you plan to start your life-long career. Learn to network by learning how to get to know who to contact to start your networks.

This exercise in discovery carries over ten times or more when you are later going to interview for a faculty position at a university. Do you believe the department where you will apply will be impressed when you know only about that one person in the department who has the research equipment that you need for your studies?


Has anyone had to switch to a different research/study focus to obtain an RA postion?

There may be general assistantships available outside your department that could serve as a stop-gap until you can get within-department funding. The first year of my PhD I got funding working under a Dean in the School of Graduate studies. I also was a library GA during my master's. While funding specific to your degree is ideal of course, there are some fringe-benefits to some of these other positions. The library position allowed me to do my own work for 15 of my allotted 20 hours, and the Grad Studies position gave me a ton of insight into the inner-workings of administration that I may not have gotten otherwise.


Reference for annual journal subscription costs paid per university?

There is, in fact, a resource with the information you asked for, for institutions in the United States.

Detailed information on individual academic libraries' expenditures (by university) is available from the National Center for Education Statistics in the United States, as part of their Libraries Statistics Program.

The data from these surveys, including the individual responses from each university, are available for download in plaintext format at this link. The most recent year available is 2012.

To take your example, according to that data, Harvard's expenditures for library resources in 2008 included $9,248,115 for serial subscriptions. In 2012, this number was up to $16,391,638 (the most of any library in the survey).

If you're interested, a set of related information on amounts paid by selected public universities to specific major publishers can be found in

  Bergstrom, Theodore C., et al. "Evaluating big deal journal bundles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.26 (2014): 9425-9430.

(see especially the supporting information for the latter.)


Some funding agencies (e.g., DARPA, AFOSR) use the term "white paper" to mean a brief synopsis of a project idea; this is similar to NSF's "Letter of Intent".  White papers help funding agencies evaluate project ideas quickly, and provide feedback to the proposer about whether or not they're interested, without having the proposer go through the (considerable) hassle of preparing a complete proposal.

Wikipedia shows other meanings of the term (link), but given the context my guess is that NASA is looking for a synopsis of your idea.  You might look at this DARPA solicitation for an idea of what sort of information an agency might want to see in a white paper (see Section 4, and note the length limit).


In peer-review, is it common for a reviewer to be shown and asked to comment on other reviewers' reports?

I don't know about other fields, but this is a fairly common practice in computer science.  Computer science has a very strong culture of significant publications in conferences, which have significantly different reviewing challenges than journal publications.

The key problem is that conferences typically have a large number of papers that all need to be dealt with by a fixed deadline and with a single iteration of revision.  This generally means that:

You have to cast a wide net for reviewers, and are likely to be trying out a "new" reviewer on several papers at once, rather than iteratively.
People typically commit to reviewing far in advance, when the program committee is formed, and may find themselves with less time than expected and no opportunity to ask for an extra couple of weeks to produce a review.
There is no opportunity for the cycles of dialogue between reviewers and authors that happen during the journal manuscript revision process: generally there is no "major revision" option, just "accept with minor revisions" and "reject."

All of this adds up to getting a collection of reviews with more uneven quality and less chance to work the differences through in dialogue.  Outlier reviews can be problematic: a very low outlier can cause an otherwise good paper to be rejected; a very good outlier can cause the authors of a rightfully rejected paper to feel that they were robbed of a publication.

One of the typical ways to try to deal with this (supported nicely by platforms like EasyChair) is to ask the reviewers to look at each others' reviews and to discuss differences.  This way, when there are major differences of opinion, the more careful and informed participants can influence the others to adjust their opinions, just as happened in your case.  Another mechanism (less commonly practiced, due to time constraints), is to allow the authors to write a rebuttal, which the reviewers are then asked to consider and see whether it leads them to adjust their scores.

There are other, more experimental methods as well---many computer science subfields take their conferences pretty seriously, and are constantly tinkering to try to improve them.


Research Director not responding to email - should I call him?

Before you call him, email the department receptionists and ask if the Research Director is around. It's possible he's on holiday, he's on bereavement leave or paternity leave, he's attending a conference, and so on. The department receptionists are likely to be more familiar with his schedule than most. If they say he's around, you can also ask them to pass a message to the Research Director.


In general, who can apply for research grants (in Europe)?

Rules will very strongly depend on the funding institution you're applying to, and even on the details of the grant program. Eligibility criteria are listed in each funding program, so go check up those programs that are of interest to you. Even restricting to “in Europe” doesn't help much, because Europe is a large continent with very heterogeneous research (and funding) institutions.

Regarding students (undergraduate or graduate), the only types of grants I can think of are:

grants to fund your degree; for example, getting a fellowship that would fund you during your PhD
grants that encourage international collaboration and exchange; e.g., the Chateaubriand fellowship to spend some months in a French lab, or JSPS fellowship for short stays in Japan.

A student is expected to devote his efforts to the project for which he is employed, not to bid for new research projects on their own. Thus, I don't think you can get funding for a new research project of your own, until you are an independent researcher.


Do I use a title in the mention "joint with [...]" when mentioning my advisor or a coworker?

In my experience (math), I have never seen a title used on such an occasion. It's always "joint with Jane Doe and John Doe", i.e. the full name without any title. Even if it's a student jointly working with a professor.

Think about it: in a bibliography you never use any title. The goal of the mention "joint with" is the same as in a bibliography: give credit where credit is due, and let people look up who did the work. A title is unnecessary for that.


Is it a good idea to go for multiple bachelor's or master's degree?

You need to identify what specific courses are needed to enter into the fields you are interested in. Then determine what you are missing and what your options are for completion.  For example, for many health professions in the US there are post-baccalaureate programs specifically for career changers to finish their prerequisites.


A potential PhD supervisor declined to accept me as a student; can I ask a second time?

You can always ask.

However, be prepared that the answer may easily be still "no". Direct funding is by no means the only resource that an advisor has to pour into a student. There is also the time investment of actually advising a student, assorted costs for overheads and utilities, as well as presumably some money to fund conference trips. This isn't even to speak of simple inter-personal matters, such as that the professor may feel that you are not a good fit for the lab culture.


How many research interests should be included in a statement of purpose/objective

Be as specific as possible.  Do not bluff.

Remember that admissions committees are looking for strong evidence of research potential.  One of the markers of that potential is a deep interest in your intended research area.  For that reason, it's important to describe your potential research interests in specific and credible detail.  Why are you interested in field X?  What specific problems are you interested in working on?  What projects have you done?  What papers have you read (or written)?

It doesn't matter all that much what you write about.  We know that your interests will change over time.  Nobody is going to limit you to the specific research topics you describe in your statement.  Your statement is at least as much a demonstration of intellectual maturity as it is a description of research interests.

Eykanal's observations are correct.  Most graduate school applicants "barely know what's being researched".  A list of buzzwords mined from faculty web pages is not credible.  You can't effectively describe what your interests are when you aren't familiar with the field.  But I disagree with his conclusion; just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.  Don't be most applicants.  Know what's being researched.  Don't be vague, and don't just list buzzwords.  Make yourself familiar with the field.

After you've done that, writing about your research interests is easy, because you actually have some.


Do journals with double-blind review allow submission with some of the references are yet to appear but already accepted in another journal?

It's allowed. Ask the editor how they'd like you to blind this particular reference.


Should I be stressed about asking for an Academic Reference?

If the person who you're asking for a letter of reference knows you well enough to write a good letter of recommendation, you don't really need to be worried about the formality of the request. You should be able to ask: "I would like to talk to you about writing a letter of recommendation for me. Could we set an appointment?" or something similar to that, and it should be fine.

Remember: writing letters of recommendation is one of the responsibilities of faculty members (and other instructors)!


How do academics control their own biases?

Everything is in the end vetted by the community and by time.
Many researchers were fooled by their biases (including Galilei or Millikan who did systematic errors in their studies) and the biases were slowly uncovered by time. This is normal. Of course, a good researcher, as Feynman says, needs to take care not to fool themselves, and good researchers work hard to do so. In the end, however, it is time and the scientific community that filters out the wheat from the chaff.
One key thing to maximize your objectivity is to avoid p-hacking. Be aware what your hypothesis is before you run the experiment. Be aware of what parameters you extract from the experiment and how to factor them into your evaluation of the theoretical vs. experimental model.
Try to have at least two maximally independent ways of getting to a critical result. Understand the assumptions that got you a result.
Taking care of these various things will minimize the probability (it will never entirely go away) that you fool yourself and increase your confidence that you have done a proper job at doing good science.


A senior faculty hates me -- should I prepare to leave?

I think it is critical for you to get more information about what's going on.
I do not know what it is like at your university, but usually starting junior faculty is assigned to one or two senior mentors, usually part of the group who supported the original hire. Otherwise, find the person you trust most among the colleagues that help recruit you for this position. You should bring up this topic gently with one of them and see if this is a common issue for others with the senior faculty member and if there is anything you can do about it.
That said, I would not even consider moving to a new place before you find out more. It is not clear that a) the senior faculty member would greatly impact your career at this university and b) there is no guarantee that things wouldn't be worse somewhere else. I would only make such drastic decisions if you have more information. Taking into account how hard it is to find faculty positions these days, I would only consider this step as my last resort.


If you feel that you want to thank members of the panel for their time and consideration, go on and send them a brief note. In my experience, it is usually impossible to exclude one or two people from the list without irritating someone, so I would say — write to all of them or none. It is natural to feel that a communication like this is "meaningless", "time-stealing" and "unnecessary" — long story short, it is not.  A senior academic receives a ton of spam and unrelated correspondence, which they delete with a grunt. Make your message short and positive, and they will delete it with a smile.


Is it OK to send the same research proposal to several professors?

If you wrote the proposal entirely yourself, I see no problems with trying multiple universities. Do note the deadlines: you don't want to be in the situation that you need to choose between accepting an offer of a "lower-tier" university while still waiting for your first choice university to respond.
If you incorporate the suggestions of the faculty member of one university in your proposal to other universities, I'd at least let that faculty member know. Something like: "your university is my first choice, but as you know it is very competitive. Do you mind if I use this proposal to apply to other universities as a fallback"? This achieves 2 things: first of all it prevents a possible faculty member that might feel taken advantage of by using his/her comments to get into a different university. Second of all the advice you get might predominantly apply to his/her university, and might not generalize to other universities.


Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals?

I have just received an email from the editor and I am writing it here

Dear Dr. * * *,

We cannot prevent an author to upload her/his paper to Arxiv. However, because of the double-blind process applied in Communication Letters, we don’t encourage it.
There is only one restriction: Your paper should stand alone without any supplementary material and/or reference to an ArXiv post.

Sincerely,


Phd program @Harvard when my '''education''' didn't go beyond highschool?

You PROBABLY don't have any chance at the moment. Have you published in the field? Do you have any projects that you could show to a professor (outside Harvard first?) that might shed light on your exceptional ability? Without ever going to any college you would have to be extraordinary enough to be an exception to Harvard's admission criteria. Of course, alternatively you could try taking some graduate level classes somewhere else, build a relationship with a professor, and either join their program for a preparatory master's or get them to comment to Harvard on your abilities.


You don't need to say much about simple things like typos. As for the other, if you go over the one page limit make sure than everything essential is on the first page. Even that is a bit risky if someone is a page limit fanatic. The best route is to say what you can in one page, mentioning only important things.

But if you think of it as a "response" rather than a "rebuttal" you won't get into an argumentative mode which won't serve you well.


What should a good theoretical physics PhD progress look like at the beginning of 3rd year?

"but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts" — this sounds weird to me. It is not rare at all for a project/idea not to work ou the way you would like, but for it to fail so utterly that you cannot get any work published out of it, i.e. that there is nothing for the community to learn from it, is rather rare. That it happened multiple times might be an indicator that you threw the towel too early, or that you could be looking harder into how to extract something useful from your failed attempt. Helping you out with that would typically be the job of your advisor, because it is not the easiest part of the job...

Other than that, your account does not look particularly worrying: as others have noted, you have already built a good network of collaborations, have one publication, and advanced your course requirements... Sounds good to me!


How many "office hours" are common (or standard) for full-time lecturers?

My undergrad university held regular "helpdesks" in a classroom - where one or more teaching assistants and  sometimes the lecturer were present. They essentially functioned like an extra (and optional) tutorial class, and the more proactive students would come in and work on their assignments, discussing among themselves and asking questions.

This allows you to spread time a bit more fairly among students than at an office hour, where one student might take up a lot of time and leave others waiting at the door. Answer one question, and then move on to someone else.

Perhaps you could try a similar strategy?


What is the point of being the head of the department?

I can't speak for the work environments at other schools, but where I teach, the department chair gets an nicer office, a reduced teaching assignment, and extra pay, in addition to some political and financial power associated with the fancier job title.


How to tell my advisor I am leaving the PhD program, when he is the reason I'm leaving?

Tell him why you're even more excited about the places to which you're applying.

At University X, Dr. Y is doing groundbreaking work in Z, and has published three papers in Prestigious Journal With A Latin Title in the last two years alone. Her students are also proving amazing results and speaking all over the world about them, and one of them just got a job at Top-Class University W. Every week they have a seminar where they discuss blah-blah-blah... [etc., etc.]
I'm grateful for all the opportunities you've afforded me here, and I think that X,Y, and Z would be an even better fit for me.


Continue applications after accepting a position

In my experience, setting up academic jobs more than one academic year in advance is uncommon precisely for this reason: each party gets nervous that the other will back out.  Thus for instance it is relatively common that one wants to accept one position and "finish out" a current position, and in my experience it is quite often acceptable to stay for one additional academic year and very rarely acceptable to stay longer than that.

I would be interested to hear more about the circumstances in which a position gets offered and accepted 1.5 to 2 years in advance.  As for the ethics: formally accepting an academic position involves (i) announcing your intention to do so and (ii) signing something saying that you accept the job, with a certain start date.  I do know that some positions which are funded by external grants need to be accepted conditionally on final funding of those grants (I was quite recently involved in such a situation).  This is potentially awkward, as the risks involved in a conditional offer not coming to fruition are highly asymmetrical: for the employer it means that some people's time has been wasted and that certain proposed projects will not get carried out; for the employee it means that a highly trained, valued worker is out of a job for a year through no fault of their own.  It may be that one has the ethical right to turn down a conditional offer for an unconditional offer under certain circumstances; I don't think you should use this an excuse, but if you honestly have doubts that the offer will become actual, then I think at some point you are entitled to take a real job rather than a virtual one.  (I would be interested to hear more about this point from others.)

If you are really signing on a dotted line a commitment to a position far in the future, conditional on funding, and with an uncertain salary...well, it is not clear to me why one would sign such a contract.  Barring exceptional circumstances you probably shouldn't.

I feel like the standard unit of "going through with the position you accepted" is one academic year.  In other words, if you agree in writing to take a position, then ethically speaking you should keep it for at least one year (I think).  Most formal contracts I am familiar with are academic year to academic year anyway: I am a tenured faculty member and I still sign a contract every August.  In my department we have the understanding that a postdoc, for instance, should feel to vacate the position at the end of any given academic year if they get a better job: in fact, these usually count as success stories, including on our part.  In general vacating a postdoc for a tenure-track job seems especially understandable.

All of the above makes me unsure of what the etiquette might be on a position that starts so far in the future.  As you can see, I am skeptical that such an arrangement should be as ethically binding as a standard offer, but it depends on the understanding both parties had when entering the arrangement.

Added: The additional information seems helpful.  Is the current postdoc at the same institution as the partner's tenure-track job and the future "soft-money" gig?  I gather not.  Anyway, in this case the "soft-money" job sounds more like a courtesy to the tenure track partner than anything else.  Have you signed any paperwork saying that you intend to take the job?  If not, I think you're totally fine not to end up taking it (however if your partner plans to stay this should be done carefully so as not to cause trouble for him/her) and they probably will not even be that broken up about it.  Probably you haven't signed a contract for something so far in the future, right?  If you did sign a form signifying your intent to work at a certain job, it seems to me that you need to ask if you can not take the job rather than tell.  But it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which they would hold you to a future job that you no longer want.


Is it permissible to ask the advisor if she has funding to support me as a postdoc for a year?

Regarding the main question, I refer to xLeitix' excellent answer to a similar question.

Addressing the specific parts of your situation, I see two likely reasons why your advisor hasn't offered you anything yet:

publication record - in most fields, securing a post-doc position requires a reasonably good track record in publications. If your publication output during your PhD was not on par, she may be worried if an academic career is for you.
lack of funding - to offer you a position, your advisor would need to have funding for you readily available. This would be most likely if she recently won a grant. You should ask her about that. If she has no funding for you now, you can ask if she knows any other PIs who are looking for post-docs, which might be more likely.

You can also consider writing your own grant proposal for a post-doc position; some countries have dedicated funding options for that. (However, the decision process may take half a year or more.)


Can a professor ask you to get a medical clearance from your doctor

Yes, the institution has a responsibility to all students and faculty in terms of infectious things and it is probably in the detail of the enrolment form you signed somewhere...

I have seen situations where students were told to not come to class and stay in their rooms until the Doctor cleared them - this was when europe had a "flu / respiratory " bug a while back...

Students are also sometimes required to provide proof of sickness, or death of a relative, when asking for repeat exams or assessments. Had one case where the student photocopied a medical certificate and changed the dates - got caught because the signature was identical on 5 certificates - size, position on the paper etc etc


What does "percentile' mean in this recommendation portal?

Lower is definitely better. For example, the "Common Application" which is used for applying to undergraduate schools is pretty clear that 1% is good.

The same generally holds for graduate school applications.

You should ask the recommender to try to change it and, if she is unable, she should contact the admissions committee directly. A top 50 percent ranking will almost surely lead to you not being accepted.

If your reference writer is so unfamiliar with the US system, you may want to consider asking someone else. There is an art to writing good recommendation letters. For example, it is reasonable for a recommender to rate the "intellect", "communication ability", etc. as being top 1% even if the student is ranked 2/60 since there is a difference between class rank and "intellect", "communication ability", etc. In fact, differentiating between the two is the whole point of the recommendation letter.

If the recommender is unable to change the letter at this point, it is much better to put in a phone call/email to the chair of graduate admissions than a phone call/letter to the university. In my experience the central administration is useless and you need to get to whoever is actually looking at the applications. It is critical that the recommender, and not the applicant, makes this call/email.


Is it weird to contact a professor in foreign university for research internship opportunity if I am not a student?

It's not weird, but do be prepared to have your email ignored or politely declined. Professors regularly get such emails, especially if they're famous.

In particular, what you should do is to show the professor what you can do to help them in their research. Which works of theirs are you going to focus on? What does your experience mean for the professor?

Good luck!


Advice for a career in healthcare management

Just some thoughts and hopefully others will provide more ideas for you. I am answering with the assumption that you're in the US.

First, I don't think a Master in HCM is going to be a good fit. These programs want to prepare workforce for the HCM but you have already done that with real experience under your belt. Unless their syllabus contains a good amount of materials that you absolutely want to learn, or you feel that you're lacking the theoretical base for a PhD, I wouldn't suggest that.

PhD program seems sensible. And I'd also suggest checking out programs such as DrPH (Doctoral in Public Health) degree which usually gears toward applied rather than theoretical. I believe a DrPH selection committee will value you more than a PhD committee does. Regardless, since you want to come back out and work rather than stay in academia, look for a large mix of applied components with perhaps 30-40% research training.

As employment potential... I guess that depends on what you want to be. But generally, if I am to read a resume of an HCM candidate, I'd value experience and knowledge in:

Program monitoring and evaluation
Health economics
Cost effectiveness analysis
Statistics, biostatistics, or econometrics
Qualitative methods
Leadership training and conflict management
Budgeting and management of organization
Grant writing and management

That should open up some doors. Save some credits to specialize (it's better to have a broad research/work interest and a focus one, because funding streams are different in these two levels.) For instance, if you want to work in some large hospital, you may add a couple courses (or summer training or capstone project) in clinical trail management and electronic medical record. If you want to serve more specific group such as undeserved Hispanic population in California, then you can add a couple more components in health equity, community participatory research, and coalition management.

I guess my ultimate confusion is that you have already worked in HCM for 4 years, which means you were/are employed. What prompted you to get more employ-able? What is that extra thing you want? If you want to advance to the management position, then I'd perhaps suggest checking what kind of degrees these people have, and perhaps talk to a couple seniors and mentors in your company.

Regardless, I'd suggest opting for a slower pace and complete your degree while keeping the job. The affordable health care act is going to be an experience and you should keep involved in the field while studying. Apply what you learn back to your office, make your company treasure you (or even invest more in you.) When the degree is done, and if you're not happy enough to stay, then consider leaving.


What to say about somewhat forgotten studies?

Revise them!

There could be possibly no other way to overcome the obstacle in your situation.

Sure you may be able to make out on what you already know and express your regret on what you forgot. But what is the end result? You don't remember what you ought to know.

Although this isn't something to be embarrassed about (as this happens to even to the best of us at some point of time), this isn't something you should ignore either.

Going through your ancient notes may bring nostalgia (personally that's why I keep them) but it's intent on effective revision depends on the quality of the notes themselves.

The Internet should be filled with tutorials and crash coursers to bring back what you once knew. It may also allow you to learn more than before too.

Forgetting doesn't necessarily mean memory erasure. Note that if you really did study your subjects with passion back then as mentioned in your post, it might not take long to remember them through revision.

Best wishes to remember your once forgotten subjects and hopefully learn new this in the process too.


Explaining an unusual undergraduate degree title

I don't know how popular this answer will be with others but ...
Call it a BA phase
whilst applying to graduate schools
In all honesty after having read as to what Scottish MA is, I would suggest that in applications (especially to the US or other parts of the world not particularly familiar with the degree type) that you merely enter it as a BA

2004-2008 BA (honors) Testing Bureaucracy

With this seems inaccurate, consider it a matter of translation rather than some sort of dishonesty with degree names, etc. As the University of Edinburgh states, these are "conventional undergraduate degrees."
Then when it's explaining time, explain that the degree is called a MA for historical reasons (by say printing the appropriate explanation page from your school or wikipedia) and providing that along with the degree certificate or transcript.
None of this is to deny that it looks like a very high quality undergraduate education.
My motive for this suggestion is that doing otherwise will confuse people at a time when their confusion costs you scholarships and other things.
Call it an MA Phase
Once you have some higher degree above it or when you no longer care about graduate school
Revert to calling it an MA on your CV and in applications as you are suggesting. At this point, the only people reading it will glance only briefly at this and not really care.


How should I confront an under-performing coauthor?

You certainly need to sort this out. Would you like to stay on good terms with this colleague going forward? I'm going to assume the answer is yes, and I would certainly encourage that.

Being direct is indeed the best approach, and it can be rudely done or considerately. Perhaps the person is having personal problems at the moment? You do not know what is causing the problem, but it is not necessary to assume that the person is just an unreliable jerk. They might be, but you can give them a chance to explain the situation.

Since you are doing all the work, and the two of your are peers, you are really in the driver's seat. But you do have to talk--not about promises for the future at this point but explanations for the past non-performance.

You might ask the person what they want, since their actions to date suggest a lack of interest in the project or some problem interfering with their ability to work on it.  That's a considerate way of giving them an opportunity to explain the situation. You are not being mean or accusing them of anything. And you will soon enough find out whether or not the person really does have a short-term problem or is actually unreliable. Then you will know what to do.


It's your first month. You will be in the program for 3-5 years. Everyone knows this, and you will have the opportunity to redeem yourself. Be patient. Do better in the future. Everything will work out alright.

What's more important is that you understand your weaknesses. Work on them. Become a better person and scientist by figuring out how you can address your weaknesses by either addressing them directly, or working around them.


Where can an academic put their lecture slides for posterity?

Archive.org (not to be confused with arxiv.org) aims to be the world's library. According to its FAQ,

  The Internet Archive focuses on preservation and providing access to digital cultural artifacts

It cites the destruction of the Library at Alexandria as the kind of loss of cultural heritage which it aims to avoid, so preserving an academic's teaching material should be perfectly aligned with their goals.

The FAQ also has a large section on uploading content. I suggest you pass that URL along to your colleague.


In general I don't think it's a big issue but alternatives may look better, here are a few suggestions:

"Let's take a step back" -> "from a broader perspective"; "in a larger context"
"Let's look at the data" -> you don't need this at all, you can just start talking about the data: "the data shows that...", "in the data we observe that..."
"Let's look at the context" -> you don't need it here either: "the context consists of...", "to put this analysis in context, ...."


In reality, few PdDs wind up homeless. A few do, and at certain times more do. But, in general, it shouldn't be a concern for someone wanting to study for a doctorate. But occasionally...

There are a lot of factors. The general state of a nation's economy at the time you finish can have a lot to do with it. When I finished (1970's) there were almost no jobs for mathematicians. We had landed on the moon and all money for science suddenly dried up for several years. I was lucky to stay in academia at all, and many PhDs at the time were pumping gas, etc. It cleared up in a few (several) years.

Some people get a doctorate not intending to use it for anything but the love of knowledge. Some turn out to be writers.

Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was evading capture by the police.

Lots of reasons.

At the current moment there is a glut of doctoral graduates relative to the market for those skills in many fields. Academia in general graduates more PhDs in a given year than there are positions open in academia. So the system depends on jobs being available elsewhere. Sometimes that is true and sometimes not.

A lot of people take jobs below what their skills and education would require, such as teaching school with a doctorate.

And, as to bad life decisions, it is impossible to say. Having a job shouldn't be your highest lifetime goal, actually. Moreover, because of the length of time it takes to earn a doctorate the economy and the demand for your skills can change drastically before you finish. This is what happened to me. When I started grad school everyone would predict a bright future for a mathematician. When I finished, not so much. Nothing, really. I looked into becoming an actuary, for example. And, I switched fields to CS to become more employable in the short term.

But, I'm glad things are better in Kenya. Here (US) politicians have decided to drastically decrease funding for education at all levels. The feeling among some of them is that it is up to you, not society, to see to your education. This is a great way to assure that the population gets dumber and dumber and poorer and poorer over time. I have an opposite view that an educated populace is a national resource that shouldn't be compromised. Silly me.

Postscript: I didn't interpret the question as "Why do so many...". I don't see that implication anywhere in the original post.


What foreign carriers can I use under the open skies agreement?

The best way to check this is to clarify with your institution's travel office (the one where you will submit the reimbursement).

However, my general understanding of the situation (From the days when I worked for the government) was that if there's a code-share between a US airline and the foreign airline you wish to use, they will generally be OK with that. The problem is if it's purely international, and there's no American airline that partners with them. Then you may run into some difficulty.


"Research Statement" vs. "Research Plan" for assistant professor applications

Do ask the administrators in respective universities. A question of 'How long and detailed a document do you expect?' is legit and acceptable. Otherwise, you are prone to misunderstandings.

For a personal example (though it was a graduate admission), I was once asked to bring a synopsis of my research work, only to find that they wanted the actual thesis instead.


What is the limit on reimbursement of indirect expenses due to attending conferences (e.g., baby sitting, winter coat, etc.)?

The usual solution is very simple: you will get a daily allowance ("per diem"), which is a lump sum of money that covers all small costs related to travelling.

A concrete example: a researcher at a Finnish university, travelling to a conference in Germany. You will get a daily allowance of 61 euros per day, tax free. This should cover food and all other small expenses related to travelling.

Direct costs related to travelling (conference fees, hotel, transportation, etc.) are covered based on the receipts. However, lunch & dinner is not covered, as they are included in the daily allowance. Corner cases have special rules (e.g., what if lunch & dinner is included in the conference fee).


Number of publications needed to get into a computer science PhD program?

You don't need any publications to get into a good Ph.D. program.  Publications are often slow, and it's an unexpected bonus for an undergraduate to have publications, not a necessity.

What is a necessity is to have strong reference letters attesting to your potential for research, and one of the best ways to get those is to get involved in research.  Being involved in research, in turn, will also tend to lead to publications.  Thus, you see the correlation.  Research and research-related activities that help a person into graduate school also tend to help cause that person to end up with publications.

In short: publications aren't the key, they are simply dependent on the same root cause.


Should I address a "Charge de Recherche" or "Directeur de recherche" in France as "Prof."?

French academia is not big on titles. Whether it's by students, colleagues, or the administration, people are rarely if ever addressed by their titles. I'm a "maître de conférences" myself, and nobody addresses me as anything other than "Monsieur", and my colleagues of another gender are addressed as "Madame". That's it, no fluff, no "Prof Dr", no "Maître" -- which wouldn't be appropriate as this is how you address attorneys and notaries, not even "Dr".
If you want to err on the side of the formality, which is perhaps better until you know more about the person in question and how they like to be addressed, you can call them "Prof". It's inaccurate, yes, but we are used to the outside world wanting to impose American title norms on us. You can take comfort in the fact that many institutions have "research professors", so a chargé de recherches could be viewed as a "junior/associate research professor", that you would address as "Prof", indeed.
Personally I wouldn't care if a foreign applicant started an email with "Dear Mr. XYZ" (or Ms. as appropriate), and I doubt (m)any of my colleagues would. But I hesitate to give this advice, as it's possible that in some French academic subcultures some people give more importance to titles. I'm thinking of law and medicine, especially.
However, do not ever address someone as "Dear Chargé de recherches Dupont" or "Dear CR Dupont". That's just not used as a salutation, even if it's the title used by that person on their website.


List dollar amount of small grants on C.V.?

I would say yes. I have done so from when I received my first grant/stipend. I ceased listing once I received a permanent position (or thereabouts) and started getting multiyer grants from national sources.

As long as you think adding it shows that you are active and competitive (well merited) in terms of receiving the trust to receive money it will be a good thing. You need to constantly evaluate the possible pros and cons of adding informaton to your cv, including funding. I would imagine that being in a soft money situation, listing funding will only be a positive. But, be aware that gaps in your funding stream may become question marks unless they are explicitly explained.


"Anomalous citation patterns" as exclusion criteria in Journal Citation Reports (aka Impact Factor)

It is referring to practices such as citation rings (e.g. this account), excessive self citations within a journal or other malpractices to boost the impact factor of a journal or a group of journals.

These three articles will give you some more background and examples:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/420794.article
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/06/record-number-of-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/06/29/citation-cartel-journals-denied-2011-impact-factor/

I don't know if the exact algorith used my Thomson-Reuters to detect “Anomalous citation patterns” has been officially published. However, they look at things like change in impact factor between years (which can lead to false-positives) and the citation networks between journals. As you note, the practice is very similar to link farming.

This quote, from another Nature article on a Brazilian citation cartel, offers some information on how Thomson-Reuters work to detect malpractices:

  Marie McVeigh, who leads Journal Citation Reports, Thomson Reuters’ annual report of journal citation patterns and impact factors, says that the firm does not assume intent in the patterns it sees. “We just analyse data, and see where the impact factor, due to this unusual concentration of citations, is not a reflection of the journal’s citation in the broader literature. Until we can algorithmically measure motive, we are just going to measure citations.” She says that because citation stacking is only a problem if it excessively distorts journal rank, only four Brazilian journals, and not all of those that Rocha-e-Silva says participated in the arrangement, have had their impact factors suspended.


Should my supervisor acknowledge me in his recent paper?

What deserves acknowledgment and what does not is vague. It completely depends on the author(s). In my view, what you did definitely deserves at least acknowledgment. Maybe they decided that because they did not use your data, then there is no reason to mention you. Maybe they did not really care about you and what you think, given that this was some time ago.


Current timeline for hiring a tenure-track position amid the pandemic

I am curious to know the current timeline amid the COVID-19 pandemic starting 2020.

There is not one.  It is utter chaos because nobody knows how much money they will have next fall.


I got a 3.46

In general, a 3.46 is reasonably good. Given your otherwise excellent performance, it is not necessary to make excuses or explain. In fact, I recommend not doing so, for two reasons:

Grades are only one part of your application. You are clearly a "check" in that box, so there is nothing to gain by dwelling on it. In fact, this is likely to come across unsympathetically ("I'm a millionaire, but listen to my explanation about why I'm not a billionaire....")
The explanations/excuses you would offer (transition, personal conflict) are not particularly compelling, and are largely aligned with what the reviewers would have assumed in the absence of any such explanation.


How to indicate that a drawing has been re-adapted and expanded or integrated from another published illustration?

There are some guideline regarding drawing / figure attribution. I found some here which seem quite reasonable. You might want to look for the specific guidelines of the publisher you are targeting.

In your case, where you adapted an original drawing, the link referenced above recommends to put the reference to the original in the caption:

  Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Adapted from Book Title (page number), by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, Place of Publication: Publisher. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder. Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.

  References:

  Author Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (Year). Book title: Subtitle. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Which begs the question: do you have the explicit consent of the original authors to adapt their diagram for your specific needs ?


Master's degree in a different field while in a PhD program?

The question you should really ask yourself is: What is the purpose of having an extra degree? Is it to enlighten yourself and learn something new or related? Is it to improve your CV and future job prospects?

IMO, looking at your situation, it seem a bit of a waste of time and a lot of extra effort to also pursue your math master. You can study math  on your own accord at any time with the best universities and lectures using the edX free and open university.

Q: Would I have to apply and be accepted to the Master's program at my university?

A: Probably not.

Q: How likely do you think this is?

A: Most universities allow for completing multiple degrees concurrently as long as your academic records are in good standing and you pay the additional costs.


What is the difference between the Method and Experimental Setup section

The answer to this question depends a little on the field of application.

Method

In fields like computational sciences, this is the section where you describe a set of algorithms to be implemented. In fields like material engineering and life sciences you describe the general procedure to be followed to solve the problem defined in the problem statement. General in here refers to more of an overview of your implementation rather than its deeper aspects.

Experimental Setup

This is where you explain the implementation aspects in detail. You where and how the algorithms are applied in computation. You depict the use of instruments, apparatus, and other tangible items in material engineering and sciences.

In short, I presume your supervisor wants you to give a breif overview of your implementation in the Method section and would like you to explain it in detail in the Experimental Setup section. However, the level of detail can vary widely among the above sections.