You can use Microsoft Word on the add reference tab-new source (Im using Word in another language, so the term might vary in english, and click on the extended info. There is an option for multimedia/digital mediums.

You dont need to add the specific frame. You cite the entire video and where you retrieved in case it's online (or as movie if its a movie). The reference to the frame or the second where it was paused goes in your text, not your cite or reference (at least not in APA).
Cite the manual normally but the author is a corporate author.
It's still an image and the citing/reference so t depends where you saw took the screen-cap. You cite is as multimedia/digital medium and rather than 'retrieved from' you can say 'captured from' , otherwise, the normal way works and you ad din your text when describing the image directly as a screen capture.

And yeah... generally you need to cite individually if you are using them individually. You dont need to cite 10000 articles, just the ones you are specifically using. If they form part of a collection then you cite the collection but add the specifics of what you are using. In this case, APA might not be the best citation style, so consider using another one if you are not required to use APA.

Regarding the confidentiality of documents, it is very situational.

For example, there are articles/papers that cite for example a prehispanic codex of which there is only 1 copy in the world and the author has that copy in it's personal library, so it isn't really available for others to revise.  However, when it comes to 'confidential docs', if you have permission you can mention it in your text as "Personal Communication", or as the type of document from company X (if you have permission for it) , but the thing about citing is not only to give credit tot he original authors, but to lets other researches be able to peer review your work too.

So, if there's a way to retrieve that confidential doc (like when it is going to be declassified at some point) you can cite is as the type of document it is with a corporate author. If it can't be retrieved/revised by anyone else then just mention it in the text but don't make a reference out of it.


What should I do when images in a publication appear to have been faked?

Manual alteration of figures aimed at deceiving readers (by fabricating, obfuscating, 'cherry picking' results, etc.) is a serious matter. It surprises me that people still try because it's very often quite easy to spot (other types of data fabrication are harder to catch). But it's sadly not uncommon, even in highly regarded journals and from researchers from reputable institutions.

For life sciences, according to one of pubpeer's moderators in a comment: 'Most of the life science reports involve image manipulation - a good majority are gels, with a bunch of duplicated specimen images as well. […] we see sometimes on PubPeer […] things like doctored NMR spectra in chemistry.' The latest seems to be related to your observation, although it's outside my area of expertise.

You can get a sense of the type of things that are reported on PubPeer reading this thread among many others. As an example, a close examination of this figure shows the use of copy paste to fabricate data:

Or this one, initially published, not in your average pay-for-publish shady 'open access' journal, but in Nature, that has a rather obvious copy-pasted middle panel:

(both the articles where retracted).

In your position, your first reaction is totally appropriate. Here is what I think is the best course of action:

Contact the author(s) it is a good way of showing that you are concerned but not necessarily interested in public shaming. If the authors do not react, then:
Contact the publisher (mentioning that you already contacted the authors to no avail) as suggested by @alarge in a comment. If it's a reputable publisher, the issue will be taken very seriously.
If all fails, you are left with public reporting of the issue, anonymously or not, via social media or the website listed above. Note that you are always at risk of putting yourself in trouble when reporting misconduct, the same as in any other field, so weight this risk if you intend to associate your name with the complaint.

EDIT:

  Should I report that to the journal or leave it as it is (may ruin
  someone's career)?

I think that, as a scientist, you have a responsibility to report that sort of misconduct when you see it. What may ruin someone's career is their sloppy ethics, not your concern for integrity.


How do employers verify that job applicants have the degree(s) they claim?

Most of the time, employers trust that potential applicants have the degrees that they claim they have. When applicants apply for jobs, they are frequently asked to attest to the fact that everything they are submitting is truthful. There can be enormous legal and reputational consequences to lying.

If it emerges later, for any reason, that an employee lies about a degree, they run a very strong risk of being fired and having their reputation and credibility destroyed. In some case, fraud can lead to criminal changes. Because the consequences can be enormous, most people will not lie about something like the conferral of a degree.

In situations where employees needs to verify a degree, there are many options. Employers might request a copy of a diploma or a transcript from applicants (I was asked to do this by an Academic HR department at my current university to finalize my appointment). In some cases (e.g., when applying to graduate schools) it's routine for the degreeholder to request signed and sealed copies of academic transcripts that are sent directly from the registrars to potential schools or employers. Some universities and fields have automated systems that employers can use to verify that an applicant has the degree they claim.

Although it's possible that a university or department might have multiple students with the same name, you won't have two students with exactly the same experience. Two identically-named students will not likely have started in the same department at the same and ended at the same time (information that would normally be on a CV). Registrars will often have systems in place to ensure that they only individual students can grant access to their transcripts (e.g., by requiring less public information like a password, birthday or, government-issued ID number) which acts as another form of evidence.

If an employer was incredibly skeptical, they could just ask an applicant basic things about their experience in school. Who did they take classes with? Which professor did they have the best relationship with? Then send an email or call and see if things check out.


Rejecting a PhD offer after giving promise to the supervisor to work with him

You should have been cautious with your word, especially since your prospective supervisor told you about prior disappointment. Being noncommittal would have been more unpleasant, but more honest and giving you more leeway.

On the other hand, the supervisor might have put you under pressure  and you caved (depending when s/he told you the story with the other student).

I do not see a "good" outcome unless you are lucky to get turned down immediately, so that you immediately know to go for your original offer. That not being the case, the other outcomes are bad, even dire (waiting for response, being rejected, the superviser then realising that s/he was only a substitute).

I do not know you, but my hypothesis would be that you were inexperienced; but the damage is done. So, all that I can recommend is that you should consider whether, ignoring for a moment the quality of the university (which is the reason you want to leave), you would like to work with that supervisor and on the topics s/he represents, all other aspects of the positions on offer being equivalent. Reflecting on that may help you make up your mind.


I started applying for jobs because the PhD is not giving me any
  knowledge at all, just monkey lab work togheter with people who
  disturb and try to mess around with my very small outcomes.

This is called a toxic work environment! It is not specific to research/academia only, but it is a general problem.
Unfortunately, it is not good for mental health to stay in this kind of work environment.

  I just write here because I dont know whether if I can keep going like
  this anymore. Should I just quit even if I am jobless afterwards?
  Should I keep pushing harder?

Pardon my words: if your supervisor is not aware of the status of your work, you shouldn't be a laboratory mouse for your supervisor. However don't jump out of PhD without any plan.

1. Discuss with our supervisor about the situation and your limits (time, funding, psychological issues).

2. Spend minimum 1 (and max. 2) hours every day for:
2.1 confiding to your friends that you are looking for a positive change by switching to a full-time proper scientific job; preparing your CV and looking for opportunities.
2.2 forging new connections and contacting recruiters, by using online platforms e.g. linkedin etc.

A smooth transition may take sometime. So don't panic, don't be impatient. AND don't be apologetic for this tough time. Be confident when talking to people for job, otherwise the chances are very low that someone with low self-esteem will get a chance.

  Is this even normal? I don't see any other PhD like this here..

Unfortunately this has become normal, and there are many victims. Not all are innocent, but without supervisor's support its almost impossible to complete PhD. So his role is critical.

*
P.S: whatever is written above, is not hollow. I had to quit my PhD in 4th year due to amalgam of problems. And this is how I could rescue myself from PhD-whirpool and change to industry.


Can different departments offer similar courses?

There are a number of reasons why a department would want to teach their own version of a class, even if it's very similar to a course taught by another department:

They think they can do it better. Imagine if most graduate students in your Department A end up taking a class in Department B. Department B views this as something of an imposition, not really interesting, not taken by many of their students, etc. so treats it as a dumping ground for new or poor teachers. Department A might decide to teach their own version to the level they think it warrants.
Different audiences. What one needs to know may differ by department in terms of sophistication or focus. For example, very few students in departments who use statistical methods might need to know the nuances behind how variance is calculated, or be equipped with the background to develop their own estimator, whereas a student in a statistics department might very well need to. Splitting these courses allows for fine-tuning of content and pre-requisites (do you need to know Linear Alegbra?).
Field specific focuses. Epidemiology, as a field, is by and large uninterested in prediction for its own sake, and so really doesn't do much with machine learning (see here). Other fields are keenly interested in exactly those methods. So rather than try to teach a course that's a little unsatisfactory to everyone, why not split them? Similarly, while an Applied Math department could very well teach a class on "Mathematical Modeling", the assumptions and methods needed in Physics vs. Chemistry vs. Ecology vs. Epidemiology vs. Engineering are all different enough that those departments might be well served by bringing their class in house, if for no other reason than to make sure most of the examples are relevant.
Geography. As @tomasz points out, the "logical" department for a course to be held in might be quite far from a department, leading to students not taking a class, not knowing about it entirely, or complicating their schedule. For example, a statistics or math department might be on the "main" Liberal Arts campus of a university, while many of the potentially interested students may be located on a specialized Health Sciences campus a considerable distance away (at the University of Iowa, for example, they would be across the Iowa River from one another).


I have sit the TOEFL iBT for several times, Which one can I post: my most recent score or my best score?

In general, the only way for schools not to receive the complete record of test scores is for you to cancel the test score. Since nowadays the test scores are usually finalized once you agree to get the score, I think the answer is probably no.


Amount of edit after submission (conference paper)

The general rule of thumb for conference papers is that nothing you add should be such that it would cause a reviewer to worsen their opinion of the paper.  That's a very fuzzy boundary, though, and it's certainly possible for somebody to make changes that would be considered too much.  Moreover, such changes would likely go unnoticed for most conferences, since there is often little checking of differences between the initial and final versions, except in the case of borderline papers.

Personally, I tend to use the following rubric to decide:

Are the changes a strict improvement?  Sometimes improving one aspect causes degradation in others, and that's not OK.
Is the improvement worth its own paper?  Post-acceptance additions should be incremental only.
Will adding new material require dropping anything else significant?  Conference papers often have strict page limits, and new material should not displace material important for acceptance.

What you describe sounds likely to pass this rubric.  Even if it does not, however, remember that in fields with peer-reviewed conference publications you can typically publish an "extended version" as a journal paper.  Such extended versions are an excellent place for any incremental improvements too large or too late for the conference version to go.


PhD advisor does not correct my writing: how can I get feedback?

Communicate more directly with your advisor about your expectations: state that you are concerned about your writing and would prefer more feedback on it, and be specific. Are you concerned about organization? Word choice? Grammar?
If your advisor isn't a native English speaker, they may not be the best person to give you feedback on some of these; they may themselves make mistakes in grammar and word choice even with more experience writing papers. In that case, you can ask them for advice on who else in your circle might help.
At my own institution, there is also a writing center that caters to undergraduate and graduate students alike; they won't copy edit your work for you, but they'll help you work on proofreading and editing skills. Your institution might have something similar.
Beware also of the impostor syndrome: you might be overcritical of your own work, so don't be too skeptical if you get feedback that your writing is actually good. That said, everyone can improve their writing at every stage of their career, so don't skip opportunities to read about writing and find stories about how others have become better writers or discovered bad tendencies and worked to correct them.


Advice for getting a paper published as a highschooler

I'd recommend not trying to submit a paper to a journal without guidance from a more experienced academic. That academic doesn't have to be a professor; anyone with more experience with the field than you should be good.
You've contacted the professor, which is a great start. If they don't reply, you can/should also talk to your teachers. Since you're fresh out of high school, there's a good chance your somewhat novel method might be wrong, or not novel. Your teachers have been in the field longer than you, so they probably know more than you; furthermore they know you personally so they'd be more likely to look at your method. If your teachers are unable to help, you could also ask friends/family for anyone with more formal training in the field.


How important is the time it takes to graduate?

to answer your first question and then comment on a statement:

Personally I graduated from both High School, and my first B.S early. There's not advantage or disadvantage when another school (or even the school you attend) looks at your record to decide if you can enter the program. There isn't a disadvantage to graduating late either. The rate of students who graduate (In the U.S) has dropped the past years for a few reasons:

1). Financial issues.

2). Work & school at the same time limits the amount of courses you can take at one time.

3). Single-course to graduate students (there's no formal name for this so I'll explain). Some students take 1-2 courses a semester and may even skip a semester or two. They do this to keep educating themselves and eventually earn a degree without having to stress over taking 4-6 courses at once.

You mentioned failing courses because of personal reasons. Normally when this happen's grades are seen to drop and the student either drops out or get's back in the school motion and grades rise. You mentioned failing courses for 3 semesters which could look bad (granted I don't know what caused the issue in the first place). Be ready to talk about it in person and in your essay because it's unusually for someone who is failing semesters to continue to attend.


How can an Error in Google Scholar be corrected?

First of all, make sure that the place where Google Scholar is getting the data from has it listed correctly. They scrape from other sources and there's a mistake in the source, then there will be a mistake in Google Scholar as well.

Then you should try to contact them and let them know of the mistake. Even though the chance to get it corrected might be low (Google Scholar isn't as highly prioritized for Google as some of their other services), it is still worth a try. Here is the link to their contact form, hope it works out:

https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general


Journal article suggestion website or application

There are quite a few paper recommender systems (a highly active area of research, by the way; see this Google Scholar search on "paper recommender systems"). They first draw from a corpus of research publications you 'follow', have read or stored; second, they use algorithms to find related papers; and third, they recommend these related papers to you.
To name a few platforms:

Google Scholar: You can 'follow' Google Scholar profiles with the option to get e-mail alerts with publications related to the followed
profiles' research. This is possibly the widely used approach.
ResearchGate: You can 'follow' ResearchGate profiles, and the RG main site will show you papers related to their publications.
Academia.edu: Same like ResearchGate, but including with the option to get e-mail alerts.
Mendeley: If you use Mendeley, its feature "Mendeley Suggest" sends you (I think weekly?) e-mails to recommend similar papers to
you as the ones you have stored.
Twitter: Follow journals and 'journal lists' (an aggregation of Twitter profiles of journals, such as this one on Political
Science) on Twitter, and you will see them announcing their newest publications in your Twitter feed.

In addition, there are some platforms that require you to type in a DOI of a paper and that then search for papers that are in a co-citational relationship with the DOIs. Just some examples:

CitationGecko: https://citationgecko.azurewebsites.net/
ConnectedPapers: https://www.connectedpapers.com/
CoCites: https://www.cocites.com/


Dressing etiquette for interviews in academia

While its not mandatory to wear a suit for a faculty interview, it doesn't hurt, and may actually be expected in certain disciplines. Best to ask around beforehand. I've never heard of a dress code for student visit, but something semi-formal doesn't hurt.

As a general principle, it doesn't hurt to be more dressed up than necessary. The reverse can often be embarrassing. But as with most such thing, the departmental culture is the most important factor.


How to handle disagreement between collaborators on licensing academic code?

If that other 1% of the code isn't anything special (which I'll assume is the case since your question would have otherwise made a point of it), tell the other coder that if he is going to be adamant about it, it will force you guys to rewrite the code, and he might not get any credit at all.  See how he "likes them apples".

Otherwise, you might search for his reasons (is he hoping to commercialize it?) and find a license that he's amenable to.  There are many licenses that support a basic idea of "open source".

I'd opine that you can't legally use his work without his consent, but you can rewrite it.  But if he made new IP (that is new thoughts/techniques that no one has coded before) encoded in that 1%, you will probably have to negotiate those rights.

Note that this opinion, is applicable within the academic community where a "shared intellectual commons" has been fairly active for centuries.  It may not be appropriate policy for commercial entities.


How to deal with working papers when quoting?

You can cite any manuscript, public or private, be it a work-in-progress, technical report, or  peer-reviewed publication. Relevant results should be cited and, when building upon them, they must be.


What do polarized student evaluation results say about my teaching?

Evaluations only tell you whether your students liked you or not.  Your main goal, however, is to have students learn the material and develop their intellectual skills, not to have them like you.

Have experienced colleagues sit in on your classes and give you feedback, and have colleagues look at your assessments and the students' performance on them (with appropriate attention given to how you prepared the students - at an extreme, assessments mean something different (but not nothing) if you've given the students the questions and answers in advance!).  This will give you much more useful information than student evaluations.


Getting a master in math after an econ PhD

It seems like a very strange route to take, and I'm not sure how it would be received since I've not seen anyone take more math after their PhD in econ.
Did you have differential equations and real analysis before starting your PhD?  If you covered those common bases, you might still gain a few useful things if you go a highly theoretical route, but you've already got most of the math you should need done.
If your interests are more empirical, it definitely does not seem like a good use of time to me.  If your interests are theoretical and you were able to keep up with PhD-level theory in econometrics, macro, and micro, it's probably still not a great use of your time, especially compared to actually getting to work in an econ field.
The best I can say about it is that it probably wouldn't actively hurt anything directly, except for the opportunity cost of publishing economic papers, and it might give you a route into doing more heavy theory.


Can I pay a professor for revising my paper?

Yes you can pay someone to edit your work. It doesn't matter that it is a professor or not. But a professor might rather want to become a co-author than a paid editor. If the other person contributes content it might be a more valid thing to do.

You would need to acknowledge such help in any case, I think.


Do I need to send e-mail to follow up a PhD interview day?

A polite and courteous thank-you email is never inappropriate. Also, if you've left anything out of your interview day (or promised to follow up on something), it's a good opportunity to do so.

However, you shouldn't turn this into an opportunity to go overboard and plead or beg for a spot, or oversell yourself. That is unlikely to go over well, and can undo the good job you did on your interview day.


Applying for a PhD. Is it OK to reach out to a member of the lab who gave me his card before for advice?

Is there a way I can accomplish this without anyone being insulted or annoyed?

Of course, especially since the research scientist explicitly asked you to get in touch. Some people will be annoyed by contact no matter what, but the invitation to contact them seems to indicate this will not be the case. Be polite, professional, and brief in your initial email.

  I don't want the professor to think that now I'm going around pestering members of his group after we spoke and trying to push my way in, so I think it would be important to somehow remind the scientist that he told me I should get in touch and that's my motivation for contacting him.

The first line of your email should indicate exactly this sentiment. Perhaps you could write that you are following up after meeting at X event, for example. Alternatively, you could reply to the earlier email that you sent, which would convey that more explicitly, though I do not think it is necessary.

  Is this asking too much of his offer?

Asking them to read your SoP is perhaps asking too much, but perhaps not. I received help on my SoP for applications from multiple professors, but I only ever sent it to those who asked for it explicitly. Conveying your goals in a short email will probably suffice if you would like general advice, but I would avoid asking for direct editing help.

You could mention your close geographical proximity in your email if you think that it would be more helpful to have this conversation in person during office hours, for example.

  Should I forget about it and look for my advice elsewhere?

There is no reason why you should not pursue this avenue of advice and others that you feel may be beneficial as well.


I dont see why your graduate scholarship and masters award are not the honor or funding. I have used them in my CV for PhD applications, and plan to to include for my post-docs as well.

About funding: if you have received funding from any source, do mention it. It will not hurt your chances. In fact, it will demonstrate that you are a dependable researcher. Do mention about the project detail (if you can) and that you have successfully completed the project. When they ask about funding, it does not mean that they are not willing to give it to you. They are looking for someone who know the worth of the money he/she will get.


Associate Professor vs Assistant Professor vs Lecturer

Here in the US, an assistant professor is an entry-level tenure track appointment but does not come with tenure.  An associate professor is the next level up and does come with tenure.  Tenure track appointments virtually always require a PhD but not necessarily from a US institution.
A lecturer appointment is a teaching position, almost never comes with tenure, and does not necessarily require PhD, though it does usually require a master's at minimum.
A typical initial contract is three years.
Open positions are often but not always posted on the department website.  Contact the department you're interested in for more info.  Typically, you'll be asked to supply a CV, references, various statements describing your objectives, teaching philosophy and research interests, and possibly a teaching demonstration video.  Obviously, all of this depends on the department.


My research supervisor left the university and no one told me

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left?

While it sounds like your subject (counselling psychology) is much closer than mine (mathematics) to understanding human emotions, I would suggest that it may not be productive to think of emotions in terms of "right" and "wrong".  I don't know what your personal relationship with your advisor was, or what the norms/expectations are in your field/department with respect to supervisor relationships.  While in most instances, I would expect a supervisor to let their students know personally if they are leaving the institution, it sounds like this may have been a sudden leave and supervisory expectations for masters theses can be quite different than for PhD theses.  (In math in the US, the former is quite rare.)  To continue...

she had informed the head of the department with my name and thesis topic and asked them to check in with me. I was never informed about this change. My supervisor didn’t send me an email to inform me when this happened in June and I still haven’t been contacted by anyone from the department

With the pandemic and other disasters, I would guess that someone accidentally dropped the ball, so you could be upset, or be understanding, or some combination of both, but I don't think that any particular "choice" of these emotions is "right."
Anyway, after you learned this, did you contact the head of the department?  If not, try this and/or the graduate student director if your department has one.  Presumably your former supervisor's goal was that the head of the department would try to find you a new supervisor under which you can continue your current project.  I don't know how it is in your field/department, but in mine if your thesis was essentially done, we would just have someone else formally complete the supervision even if we don't have an expert in the area.


Math graduate, not enough physics coursework to apply straight to physics MS

If you are studying in the United States, you should take the core physics undergraduate courses from a reputable university.  Then you should apply directly to PhD programs.


Is it possible to get research experience between undergrad and grad school?

I spent a year as as a "research student" in Japan doing just that; for me it was between my Master's and Ph.D, but you can also do it after your undergrad.

Basically you need to find a school that offers such positions (here is where I did it), find a faculty member in that school whom you'd be willing to work under, and send them a friendly e-mail to ask whether they can host you.


Fastest way to browse journal papers (from Web of Science)?

Use Google scholar instead

Advantages over Web of Science:

Less clicks to access full text, or to save a citation
More literature (including books) is available

Advanced search options (e.g. filter by Journal) can be accessed by clicking the arrow at the right hand side of the search box


Advisor writing bulk/entire student thesis

Contact the University Thesis Office regarding policies regarding professors making edits. Maybe what he is doing is sanctioned; maybe there is a strict policy against it. The prof. won't tell you, and the college won't shake the boat. University administration offers the only chance of independent administration.


Master's in computer science vs Master's in information technology

Take a look at the courses in the two programs at your selected institution.  You will likely find that the CS master's is more theoretical and the IT master's is more applied.

Then decide your own path.  Do you want to continue as a developer, do systems integration, or something else.  Map your proposed path to the program.


Is open-plan office for academia at all?

There is plenty of research showing that open-plan offices are a very bad idea, not just in academia but everywhere (see below for some examples).

Unfortunately, they are also much cheaper than proper offices (mainly because you can pack people much more densely).

Danielsson et al. (2014): "Office design's impact on sick leave rates", Ergonomics 57(2), doi:10.1080/00140139.2013.871064:

  The cumulative evidence thus indicates that traditional open-plan offices are less good for employee health.

Oommen et al. (2008): "Should Health Service Managers Embrace Open Plan Work Environments?: A Review" Asia Pacific Journal of Health Management 3(2), 37-43:

  Research evidence shows that employees face a multitude of problems such as the loss of privacy, loss of identity, low work productivity, various health issues, overstimulation and low job satisfaction when working in an open plan work environment.


How to train students to write high-quality research papers?

edit: To clear a misunderstanding that might have arisen (see the answer of Kimball): the papers described here were not solo-papers. Neither me nor my advisor would ever have the idea to write a paper together and then put only one name on it...

My instructor did a really good job with that (and is still doing it), so I'll explain here approach as I experienced it:

For our first paper, we were sitting in her office, she wrote it and asked my opinion from time to time. I was still really new to everything and agreed most of the time, but I also already learned about some questions that should be considered and, of course, I learned the style she was using first-hand.

For the second paper, we started in the same way. At some point, she told me that I should write a part (the proof of a theorem, a short paragraph,...) myself. Of course we discussed the content first, but I was responsible for writing it down. I already had the first part of the paper that we wrote together to use as a starting point, to adjust my style to it, but I was still ultimately responsible for it myself. Once I finished it, she looked over it, gave me comments and asked me to write a new version. And a new one. And a new one,... until it looked just as good as the rest of the paper she wrote. Of course it would have been easier for her to just write it down herself, but doing it this way I learned how to write myself and I had the success of having something I wrote myself in a paper. (Yes, I had to adjust it a few times, but ultimately I did write the final version that we published)

For the third paper, she told me to write it completely myself. Once again we went through a long process of her commenting on things and me correcting it, but in the end I had a paper that I wrote myself, and I felt really proud of it.

After that, she got me some review jobs, so that I could learn what to look for in a paper, how to recognize strong parts and flaws and (I assume) so that I don't just copy her style but also see other authors and learn from them.

All in all, she did a really good job and with only three publications yet I feel like I am now able to write a paper on my own.

Now let's end with some general disclaimers: The approach given above assumes a motivated student that wants to produce good quality papers and is willing to adjust it until it looks really nice. A lazy student who just wants to increase his paper count with the least effort possible is of course still a problem. Also, your students should be able to produce papers in English. If not, point them towards English courses offered (most likely) at the university, help them install spell-checkers on their computers, etc.


Accepted vs. published (for grad math admissions)

I don't think published versus accepted for publication matters a lot for a PhD position (or indeed any position). The date of publication is determined by the editors (I think) and not by you. If your article is accepted for publication then it is already in final form (as far as the content - which for most mathematicians is the important thing - is concerned). The difference between published and accepted for publication is, in a sense, a mere formality.


Advisor asking to cite his works in my thesis. Not sure if the right thing to do

You are working on that subject because your advisor has worked on sth. similar, aren't you. His mentoring will have been based on that work. By not mentioning it you would be hiding valuable information from the reader.


How do PhD admissions look at A- grades from a Master's student in Math?

Your letters of recommendation will be much, much more important than the difference between an A- and an A. Spend your time on getting the strongest letters you can (and learning how to do this, if necessary).

Source: I have served on grad admissions for a top math department.


What happens to NSF funding when someone passes away?

It probably depends a bit on how accommodating the program officer is.  The money is allocated to the university and they can put a different PI on the project.  It seems likely to me that if students are depending on the funding, they should find a way to make it work but you never know with this stuff.  The onus would be on the university to come up with an acceptable alternate plan.


Whom and how to include referees in the CV?

How to decide upon the inclusion of scholars? Naming your supervisor
  of the PhD thesis might be obvious, but then? Do only professors count
  or should the referees come from different institutions, etc.?
  Especially as an ERC (early career researcher), I don't have many
  senior co-authors or collaboration partners at other universities.

This would be a good question to ask your PhD supervisor. They will have a good idea of what is the norm in your field. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of getting a reference from someone who knows you and your work well, but is not in a senior position. Often this can be balanced by having at least one of the other references come from someone senior (likely your supervisor or even head of department).

  Do you ask these people whether it is okay to name them in the CV and
  they might be prepared to get contacted or should I avoid this?

Personally I only list referees in my CV that have explicitly agreed to write me a letter (i.e. I have asked them before even sending any application). Consider how you might feel, as a busy professor, receiving a request to write a reference letter for someone that you didn't even know was applying for jobs. If they are annoyed at the surprise request, this may affect the tone of the letter they write. Overall, it's definitely far more polite to ask them in advance. Furthermore, the majority of jobs (at least in my field) ask the reference letters to be sent with the application, so you have to ask your referees beforehand anyway.


Do we know what proportion of scientific reproducibility issues are fraud-related?

I very much doubt we "know' this in the empirical sense, as:

As a scientific problem, the "reproducibility crisis" is fairly new, and we're still developing the methods to really understand it.
It's very hard to distinguish fraud from error except in the most egregious cases. You can say, for example, that there's clearly some bias in a body of work in a field, but it's hard to say that any particular paper is clearly biased.

For example, is a convergence error that you chose to ignore because it was "pretty close" to the convergence criteria you set for a statistical model an error, or fraud? How about using Bayesian priors that turn out to be stronger than was probably justified? How do you distinguish fraud in the form of "nudging" a result over the line into significance from a largely insignificant effect being estimated with error that sometimes crosses the null.

Frankly, there's not even, IMO, a solid definition of "irreproducible". Is that "Finds a statistically significant result"? "Effect estimates are on the same side of the null"? "Our clinical/policy conclusions would be the same"?

Lacking even that, I'd assert it would be particularly difficult to attempt to assess fraud vs. error in any systematic fashion.

It would also be an exceedingly difficult study to run, as you'd need the cooperation of a bunch of people who comitted fraud.


How to emphasize the main contributor to a paper when the field typically orders authors alphabetically?

I wanted to see if there is any way to point out who was the main contributor in a graph paper or not?

Generally not.  In pure mathematics it's extremely unconventional to use any author ordering other than alphabetical.  You could try, but it will look weird and attract negative attention, and nobody will be quite sure how to interpret it.  In particular, you run the risk of having people think "this jerk insisted on being listed first despite the near-universal use of alphabetical order".  I virtually never see papers with any other author ordering, and I would not recommend it.

It's also rare and considered awkward to include any discussion in the paper of who contributed what.  One reason is that it's difficult to write such a discussion fairly.  For example, suppose your collaborators try three approaches that fail before you find one that works.  Reasonable people could disagree as to whether your collaborators were obviously on the wrong track all along, or whether they pointed the way to the solution by eliminating other plausible methods.  (The general principle is that if your collaborators aren't useful, then you shouldn't be working with them.  Turning this around, if they are useful enough that you are happy to work with them before the problem is solved, then you can't retroactively decide that they weren't useful enough afterwards.)

The flip side of this is that the standards for being an author are fairly demanding, and coauthors should have seriously worked on the mathematics itself.  In particular, supervising the project or editing the paper are not by themselves sufficient for coauthorship.  But it's reasonable for these people to be coauthors if they worked on the problem with you, even if you were the one who ended up making the decisive contribution.

  I think it may be a very deciding factor in being accepted by a good university for a master program because we can only have a few papers before graduation.

The usual way this information is conveyed is a letter of recommendation from your supervisor, who can highlight the role you played in the project.


What are the most important questions to your phd professor after the proposal stage

First of all: If you are not happy with the way your professor advises you: tell him. It is possible that he wants to help but does not know how or that he wants you to have as much freedom as you want.
However, it is also possible that you are expecting more guidance but you should (in his opinion) be able to figure it out yourself.

So, now to your questions:

  What are the most important questions to ask him after the proposal
  stage?

(in no particular order)

Do you think that the problem I want to solve is possible to solve?
Do you think it is interesting?
Do you know related literature I should read?
[Explain what you are planning to do - as short as possible] Is it clear what I am planning to do or have I left out important steps? Do you think this is the best way to approach it?

  Any organisatorial stuff that will be later important for me?

That depends too much on your situation, but that is another question you could ask (However, it may be possible that he does not know anything about that, some postgrad coordinator/secretary or whoever is responsible might be more helpful there. And, most importantly: ask the other PhD students).


Teacher has done nothing all semester - should I say something?

Not if this is the format you're going to bring your complaint in. You really need to get a group together with very clear, well documented, explicit examples of the problem behavior and bring that to the attention of the administration. You've probably got an ombudsman who would be a good first place to bring such a complaint to.


I don't know if it is the case at all universities, but at least at mine, journal access is tied to a specific IP range - as long as one connects to the internet within the campus, they can freely access the journals. However, the only way to gain access from elsewhere is through our university's VPN.

You should try asking at your university if they have something like that set up and available for students, but it's possible that they don't.


PhD outside of Germany after a Master's from a German Fachhochschule

In principle, there's no formal obstacle to applying to a US program, since almost all of them require only a bachelor's degree for admission. I similarly don't see a major problem with admissions to Canadian or other European universities, since you would have a master's degree and therefore have an "equivalent" degree, so long as you're staying in the same discipline (electrical engineering to electrical engineering); rules may be different if you're moving between fields (e.g., computer science to materials science).

Where you may run into a problem in admissions is that as a Fachhochschule, your school may not have as strong an international profile as from Hochschule and other schools of equivalent rank in Europe. Consequently, the school you're applying to may not have ever had applicants from your Fachhochschule. Consequently, regardless of how good your profile and application are, you still represent an "unknown" quantity, and therefore there is a greater risk to the department by admitting you instead of someone from a school that is better familiar to the department to which you're applying.

For non-European questions, the number of credit points aren't that important. For European admissions, there may be an issue regarding this, but that's really decided on a university-by-university basis, so you'll need to consult the individual schools you're interested in for guidance. However, taking additional credits beyond what is required for admission won't help you nearly as much as demonstrating research potential.


Do generalist journals try to make sure every subfield is adequately represented? If so, how?

I think you are suggesting that there might be some sort of quota system and I doubt that such a thing is done, or even viable. You are interested in fairly broad areas of specialization within mathematics and, while I'm not in the game anymore, I have to guess that there are plenty of papers submitted in each of the categories (or they would be dropped or coalesced).
But the editors, and especially the editor in chief, is most interested in publishing the highest quality papers. Those that are interesting. Those that make serious advances. Those that suggest new ways of approaching mathematical questions. The "balance" will come naturally, due to the sheer number of papers.
But, if I'm the editor in chief (as I'm not), and I have two papers, one in a recently popular field and one in a less popular one, I'm going to choose the better paper. The other consideration would be far down my list of criteria. If I have a great paper and an ok but not earth shattering one, it is an easy choice.
And if there is some imbalance between the number of papers published in a subfield, I'll have to guess that it is related to the number of practitioners and the current state of the art in that field. Some fields have fewer researchers, and some threads of research get "stuck" for a time. Publishing "extra" papers in that field seems counterproductive at the moment decisions need to be made.

For the specific technical questions about quotas and such, you should ask the EiC of TransAMS, for example.


How much do Springer-Verlag authors make per book sold?

This varies substantially, depending on the sort of book, how well the author negotiated (each book involves an individually negotiated contract), the price of the book, etc.  Based on one Springer contract I'm familiar with, here's a first approximation.  I can't say for sure how representative it is, but it's at least one data point, and I'd guess it's typical for Springer and competing publishers.

For regular sales, the author may get 9-12% of "net cash receipts", defined as what the publisher made on the sale (excluding taxes), with the percentage depending on things like how well the book has sold.  Note that "regular sales" excludes some special cases, for which there may be lower royalty rates.

Then the question is how much Springer charged the bookseller for the book.  You can download a 6 megabyte zip file of Springer wholesale prices.  I glanced at a few math books, and the prices look like they are about 60% of what bookstores are charging.  That's certainly the right ballpark, but I haven't computed any real statistics.

So a first approximation is that the author's royalty is probably 5-7% of the price you pay in a bookstore.  Considering that academic books are expensive, that's not bad, but nobody's going to grow rich off it.  For advanced books, selling 1000 copies in total is very good and selling 10,000 is amazing.


How to fix a mistake in an accepted paper?

Send them both a revised version and a detailed explanation what needs to be changed. Depending on where your submission is in the production process, they may prefer the former or the latter. Do it as quickly as possible.


The solution -- as in so many cases in life -- is to communicate. In this case, write to the editor in charge and ask what happened here and how they intend you to proceed. Like @Buffy mentions, it is likely that the second round of the paper went to different reviewers. This is not entirely uncommon, but awkward anyway -- the editor should have looked for substantive reviews the first time around already, rather than just go with the typo fixes. But it happens, among other reasons because a reviewer who promised a review just doesn't get it done, and the editor feels the need to go with what they have -- just to receive the missing review a week later.


What incentives can a faculty member offer to a potential lab manager?

I've actually worked in a lot of places with paid staff scientists in permanent/semi-pemanent positions like the ones you're describing. Below are a list of things they've mentioned about their jobs that they like, or things that made me consider exactly those types of positions:

Some academic freedom. Of course they are being paid by you, so they need to work on funded projects primarily. But some ability to be working on side projects, "There's an interesting direction I'd like to take this in..." etc. are extremely valuable. This also applies to research output - being able to author the occasional paper, take some credit for things they've worked on with authorships, etc.
Respect. This is a big one, and one of the major perks that can be offered. Treat your staff like trash, and it's just another job. On the other hand, if you treat your staff like highly-trained professionals who have expertise, don't accept hot-shot new grad students acting like they're "just" technicians, etc. that goes a long way.
Job security. Hard to do as a new faculty member, but most of the more established faculty I know treated their staff as essential employees. If funding started to get hit, staff salaries were the last thing on the list to get cut before you hit "Turn off the lights and go home" stages. Make it clear to them you consider this to be true.
Support if they want to do something else. This one seems a little counter-intuitive, but supporting the professional aspirations of staff has been helpful in my experience. It means they're not looking for an escape hatch under the radar (and thus leaving with little warning), they talk to other people who are interested in replacing them, students of yours see that working for your longer term wouldn't be a career dead end, etc.
Flexible hours, the ability to work from home, etc. Essentially some of the same things that make academics value their positions over industry jobs.
Insulation from some of the petty nonsense of academia. Basically, make sure you're the shield between your staff and the things that make an academic's life hard. That includes things like not having grant writing duties fall squarely on their shoulders to keeping them out of most departmental politics.


Is it worth posting reproducibility studies

Yes, publishing reproducibility studies is encouraged:

It helps the research community determine whether the original study is valid and reliable.
It helps other researchers or students reproduce the study themselves, in particular in order to improve or build upon it.
It benefits your reputation: people might cite it, and it will be taken into account when you apply for a position or a grant later.
Some conferences/journals in ML encourage submitting reproducibility studies, so you might even be able to get a peer-reviewed publication out if it.


Should I ask a journal for provided peer review when a corresponding author will not share communications?

No, it's not appropriate. The whole peer-review system relies on the corresponding author's trustworthiness. Asking the journal to provide reviews to other authors is an implicit allegation that the corresponding author is not fulfilling their duties or possibly even engaged in misconduct. Unless there is actual misconduct involved or the corresponding author no longer available (e.g., sick) other authors should never contact the journal. Bringing this lack of communication among authors to the journal's attention is the last resort and will not only cost you a collaboration (and thereby make an enemy) but probably also prevent the publication.

It even would be more appropriate to contact the corresponding author's superiors, although that would be a nuclear option too.

I would have a frank discussion with the corresponding author. I might even say that this could be the last collaboration if they don't start taking me serious.


Can I get inspired from Patented Algorithm?

If your question is whether you can cite the patent in a research paper, then yes, absolutely: patents are fully citable sources, and patents don't protect publication of related ideas.

If, on the other hand, you want to use your related algorithm commercially, you'd better get legal advice on that...


How to cite in an appendix (and where to put the Citation list) of a PhD thesis?

For a PhD thesis (as indicated in the tags of your question), check your university's reference style guide. I suspect, however, that it doesn't go into that much detail. So:
do what you like best, as long as it's clear and coherent.

If you have many citations in the appendix, and you suspect that people will want to read the appendix and main document separately, just maintain two separate lists of citations. It makes each of them shorter, and thus easier to read.

If you have very few citations in the appendix, you can also consider citing them in a different style, such as footnotes. It keeps them separated from the main references, for clarity, but doesn't necessitate to have a full “appendix list of references” if it's very short.


Second PhD in Astro after a PhD in CMT (Physics)

Don't plan on doing two PhD for all the reasons in the comments.

Whether to stay and throw yourself fully into the best and most active and dynamic CMT group (try to be a CMT star for goodness sakes)  or leave for another university depends on being honest with yourself about your reasons for choosing one over the other. (Is it 'liking' to call yourself an astrophysicist? ) Intellectually - they are both fascinating fields. You will find the smartest of the smart in either.

You talk about losing work, but did not mention being involved in any research projects with either of the astrophysics faculty who are leaving. If you had, they likely would be already talking to you about whether a plan could be put in place to help you finish your project somehow.

It wasn't clear if you were in UK or US. In the US- those 2 years are typically core courses and preparation for the qualifiers. If so, those core courses will transfer pretty easily to any similar department, and if you did stellar in them, will probably make it easier to get into a department that matches your interests. You will not have to take the core again and in particular, the pressure will be that you should hit the ground running and  get involved in a significant way in a project (even if you have less time because you are supported initially on TA instead of RA). If you can pass the qualifier will be the main issue.

As an additional note - most faculty understand if a student wants to switch schools because the subfield of interest is not represented. They will write recommendation letters without qualms and wish you the best.


Could undergraduate degree be revoked for minor noncompliance in human subjects research?

(Not an IRB expert - but will hazard an answer since I don't think we have many resident IRB experts)

First, it sounds like this is for a class "assignment" and was not published. In this case, it seems unlikely that this would meet the definition of research as it pertains to such things. The IRB apparently agreed, since it issued an exemption request - this does not mean that it approved your procedure; rather, it means that for whatever reason, it agreed that it was not necessary to approve your procedure. Not sure if this is because what you did posed "minimal risk" or because it did not meet the definition of research. If it gave the latter reason, then your professor is correct, and you were fine to use the data.

Second, there is the issue of responsibility - if there had been an ethical lapse involving this, whose fault is it? Normally it would be the principal investigator of the grant that funded the research. Not sure what changes in a classroom situation -- but, I'm guessing it would be the instructor of record. As you are an undergraduate student (and therefore don't have a PhD), I don't see how you could be expected to perform research without supervision. Assuming you were honest and straightforward with your advisor, thus, I think he would be blamed for a failure to supervise, rather than you being blamed for misconduct.

Finally, degree revocations are exceedingly rare, and almost always tied to evidence of serious misconduct (e.g., plagiarism) emerging after the degree was granted. Doing research without IRB approval does count as serious misconduct; however, you personally are not on the hook per the above points. Even if you were, the cognizant authority (i.e., course instructor) was already aware of the issue at the time and dealt with it internally rather than beginning expulsion procedures. So, it would make little sense for him to say "I know I gave a good grade, but I've been rethinking it, and want to revoke the degree." Normally, a new complaint would have to be raised to even open the question of whether a degree should be revoked.

TL;DR: your degree will not be revoked.


Should I publish a given unit of work in more smaller papers or fewer larger papers?

In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers.  There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries.  However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers.  There are several reasons for this:

Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers.  A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like "by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]" because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now.  But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers.  Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural.  Basically, this is a form of technical debt.  Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch.  Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit.
If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications.  Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial.  These are not messages you want to send to readers.
If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals.  Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV.  Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.
Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully.  For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work.  Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.

  One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.

If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project.  On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.

Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing.  If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.


How to create an editorial board for a new journal

Recruiting a strong initial editorial board for a new journal is not easy.  There are several important criteria:

You need editors with strong reputations, to attract attention to the journal and inspire confidence that it will be well run.
You need to assemble a group that is diverse enough to cover the full range of submissions within the journal's area of coverage.
You need editors who have enough time and energy to do a good job.  Keep in mind that most of the good candidates are already overcommitted.
You need editors who are committed to the success of the journal and who are eager to inform the community about it and solicit submissions.

Ideally, you have a great idea for a journal that fills a troubling gap in the publishing landscape, and prominent people you mention it to say "What a wonderful idea!  How can I help?"  If that's the case, then you will still have to make wise choices and put in a lot of hard work, but your chances of success are reasonable.  On the other hand, if you have to convince people to join the board, or to restrict your attention to people who are eager to join any editorial board that will take them, then you'll have a much more difficult time.

If you don't yet have enough connections in this field to identify and recruit the right people to join the board, then founding a journal is a bad idea (and it would be wise to wait for a point in your career at which you'll be better positioned for success).  I don't mean to be harsh, but your question does not inspire confidence.  If you do a poor job of setting up a new journal, it will be a negative for the academic community, and it's not easy to do a good job.

  After doing all he initial work about setting up a journal now I want to know how will I be able to create an editorial board?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this sentence, but it comes across as suggesting you view the initial work as the hard part.  From my perspective, anything that comes before assembling the editorial board is easy compared with the scholarly and management decisions that will follow.  The formalities of setting up a journal are easy (which is why there are so many low-quality journals); the hard part is building a high-quality journal that that achieves all your academic goals and operates stably and successfully for many years to come.


Job market after PhD in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

I am a little puzzled by your career goal and perhaps, this is rather early for you to decide.

Your immediate goals are:

Software Developer
Data Scientist

Your future goal is:

Entrepreneur

As far as I am aware, you don't need a phd to be a software developer and certainly not for an entrepreneur. So, discussion about a PhD in HCI is moot there.

There are also excellent data science jobs available with a bachelors or masters degree pre-requisite but a PhD can certainly help there.

A PhD candidate in HCI usually goes towards one of three ways -

They can gravitate towards usability design/usability studies/usability analysis. This requires ~60% knowledge in social sciences (e.g. theory, experimental design) and ~40% knowledge in the computing sciences - basically in applications (e.g. applied ML, application development)

They can also gravitate towards data analysis i.e what industry calls data science (I am not a fan of that term). For that, ideally they should have ~70% data analysis knowledge (ML is not the only approach for analyzing data) and ~30% social science knowledge. (i.e. if you are in the Facebook data science team and studying rumor propagation then you better have a very good intuitive grasp of cascades, diffusions and homo/heterophily theory). Many data scientists have 0 knowledge of their domain - which is both a reflection of their demand as well as the inchoate state of what "data science" actually is.

Finally, there are those rare few who manage a zen-like balance between social and computing sciences. They are equally good in qualitative and quantitative methodologies and have appreciation for all spheres of knowledge. Generally, I find these folks in academia (which is not to say that you won't find such folks in industrial research - you will!)

Answers to your particular question:

1. Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field?

No. This depends on what your specialization is and what you have done so far.

2. Do they expect me to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?

No. Not necessarily. Again, this depends on who you are and what you have done so far.

3. Finally, does having a PhD in HCI hinder my chances to achieving my career goal

Yes, but its not a function of HCI but the fact of being enrolled in any PhD program. As I pointed out, you don't need a PhD to do software development or to be an entrepreneur. There is some advantage in having a PhD if you want to go specifically into data science but you can also see many counterexamples in industry - those who enter the data science domain with a MS and do extremely well.

Therefore, your current plan of action depends on what you want to do immediately. I urge you to ponder and self-reflect whether spending a sizable chunk of your adult life in a PhD is really worth it for you if all you want to do is to write code or start a business or analyze data.

Most PhD candidates from my departments and other similar ones in the US (CMU, UDub, GaTech etc.) either go into academia or into industrial research. I know of a few examples of folks who dropped out of their PhD with a MS because they realized that they don't want to do research but they want to contribute to industry in other ways.


Even if your department does not allow a "stapler" thesis, it is entirely reasonable to expect that you should be able to freely use this material in a thesis. In general, I would expect that you would have to include a copyright statement similar in form to hose that would be used were you to copy the entire paper outright.

To cover against charges of plagiarism, I would simply acknowledge something like "Some passages have been quoted verbatim from the following sources," and list them. Also, when you reuse figures, I'd include the "reprinted with permission" tag.

Finally, ask your advisor or other members of your department for guidance! Since you're not the only person subject to this restriction, they've gone through this situation before, and can provide you with information on how former students have handled this.


CRediT contribution statement: Pros and cons of including non-author contributors?

However, the ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on fulfilling all of 4 criteria (including 1) contributions to the conception/acquisition/analysis, and 2) critical contribution to the actual paper). Most journals (to my knowledge) follow this recommendation regarding authorship.

I do not think that most journals do follow the ICMJE recommendation regarding authorship, at least outside the medical field. To take the journal Nature as an example

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it

To take another example away from the medical field, the American Physical Society say that

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of the research study. All those who have made significant contributions should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged, but not identified as authors. The sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Again this is much less stringent than the ICMJE guidelines.


Who "owns" a project idea after a grant application is rejected or declined?

If you can prove you are the originator of the idea with timestamped emails, notebook with dates, journals, etc. then that may be sufficient to prove priority for the idea when registering intellectual property (IP).

If the collaborators furthered the idea with you, then they own part of the idea, and may make a claim to any IP that is generated.

If you worked on this idea / project while you were being paid by University X, then University X may also own partial rights to the idea/IP.

Keeping the previous in mind, anyone that contributed to the idea could use the idea in another proposal.

If you are the originator of the idea, you can submit the idea to another group. If intellectual property is produced from the project, others that helped you develop the idea (including University X) could try to claim partial rights. You are not required to inform prior collaborators that you are using the idea, although it is a courtesy to ask them to collaborate on the new project if it is accepted.

Normally, grant application ideas are somewhat vague since you rarely know what you are going to find during the project. No one "owns" this idea until it becomes intellectual property through patents, trademarks, etc. That is when you really need to consider who contributed.

Note: Intellectual Property rights differ in every country, and Universities have very different policies. Check your local legislation and University contract.


Does the NSA hire mathematics professors often for projects / contractual work / full-time work?

I asked my own prof this question and he said that the NSA is highly selective - something that he is not sure he could even get, if he applied. Yet, another (more senior in rank) professor that I spoke with says the NSA is one of the largest employers of algebraists and number theorists. So I seem to have two conflicting ideas.

Note that these don't necessarily conflict: there aren't many large-scale employers of algebraists and number theorists, so they don't need to have low standards to be the largest.

I have no direct experience with NSA hiring or any classified work, but I'll give an answer since I doubt any NSA employees will volunteer first-hand accounts on this site.  My answer is just based on my observations of people who have applied to or been hired by NSA or contractors.

My impression is that full-time hiring at NSA is fairly selective, but not extraordinarily so.  You have to be a good mathematician, but it doesn't look nearly as difficult as, say, getting a tenure-track job in a top ten department.  You don't have to be particularly well-known in the mathematics community, but you'll need to beat out other good applicants for the job.

It's hard to make precise comparisons between NSA and academic hiring, because of a lack of information.  When a young mathematician is hired by NSA, the outside world typically never finds out how successful they became.  If a promising student is hired, we don't find out whether their promise was fulfilled; if a seemingly less promising student is hired, we never learn whether NSA identified real talents that weren't obvious in academia.  The net result is that I don't believe anyone without a security clearance can do more than roughly approximate how selective NSA is.

There's also a fair amount of part-time and full-time consulting done through private companies.  Some of these organizations are extremely selective, so you should not assume this is an easier way to do classified work.  (In particular, my impression is that the companies that hire mathematicians are among the most selective.)

  Or is the NSA highly selective and just because one has a PhD in Algebra and / or Number Theory does not mean that one can just "sign up" to work for the NSA, like signing up to join the military but with math skill sets to contribute.

Definitely not, it's not remotely like that.  Just having a Ph.D. in a relevant field in no way ensures you'll be hired.


Wearing a suit for a presentation and meeting with potential postdoc supervisor in Germany

Speaking as a math professor in Germany, a suit is definitely not necessary, and might even be seen as overdoing it. (Caveat: things might be different in financial mathematics.) Most of my colleagues never wear a suit except for a few very formal occasions (meetings with the top administration, hearings for grants or evaluations, festive affairs).

In particular, if you are visiting for a job interview, they want to get a feel of how it would be to have you as a colleague -- if you come across as too stiff, that might not be in your interest. If you want to, you can wear a suit for your talk; nobody would complain, but you might get some amused smirks ("He's really keen on this job, isn't he?"). A research seminar of a group is usually a rather informal event (compared to, say, a faculty colloquium).

Of course, the main thing is that you feel comfortable, but if you're unsure what to wear, go "smart casual":

neutral jeans (no holes, not too baggy/tight) in blue or black (or chinos, if you prefer; jeans seem to be more common in Germany, though),
a nice dress shirt (i.e., with a collar, ideally ironed),
decent shoes (i.e., no dirty worn-out sneakers); for extra-smart, wear leather shoes,
no tie.

This will be appropriate for any occasion during your visit, and be seen (by those who look for such things) as making enough of an effort to avoid distracting (by being either under- or over-dressed).


Can you contribute to Public Loan Forgiveness (US) while pursuing a funded Masters/PhD?

My understanding is that you can only participate in PSLF when you are required to make a payment; as at least a half-time graduate student, regardless of your employment at the time, you are not required to make a payment, so you cannot participate.

Source: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service#qualifying-payment

Student aid reps at your institution might be a better source for clarification on this; perhaps you can declare yourself not a student for the purpose of your undergraduate/JD loans, and begin making payments? However this would also prevent you from using your student status to limit interest accrual on some of your loans.

If you have friends in tax/financial law this might be a good time to call in a favor on a 5-minute consultation.


My university is listed on Anabin as H+ but my degree is not listed. Should I worry about this?

In the hard end, what some random listing says about your school is irrelevant. You will get accepted or not.

The only way to find out how much importance your prospective places for MSc studies place on the listing (or not) of your undergraduate degree is to ask them directly. Attach a short description of your undergraduate studies, state the degrees listed in Anabin, and give e.g. your GPA. It might just be that your curriculum is too new to have been included, or has not been presented for evaluation, or has other external certification that might be relevant. That you'll have to ask locally, and add to the above.


What do faculty members mean when they say "happy to find a time some time to chat more about it..."?

The "just let me know part" invites you to let them know your preferred times and propose a way to have a chat.

The typical medium to let them know would be via email. And then the typical medium to chat would be in person. But that's it's not so important. You've been invited to make a suggestion without much advice. So any response that is both reasonable and polite should work. Even if the professor will "counter" your suggestion with an alternative.


In case of in-lecture quizzes, is it unreasonable to fail students who are late or absent?

Do you think it's me being unreasonable?

Sadly, yes. I see two problems here:

You said in a comment that the policy of "the quiz can happen at any time" was not articulated at all. You gave the quiz near the end of the class a couple of times, and the students naturally assumed that that's when you'll always have it. Now you are trying to argue legalistically that since you didn't say when the quiz will occur, you were reserving the right to hold it at any time. However, in my opinion if you are going to argue based on legalisms, the burden is on you to dot all your i's and cross all your t's and make sure that you gave your students such amazingly clear information that they couldn't even imagine arguing with you.
The thing to keep in mind here is that you are an educator, not a prosecutor trying to entrap a criminal in court. The students deserve to have clearly articulated rules so that they can focus their time and energy on the material; in particular, if there's a quiz, they deserve to know the precise time when it will be held, or at the very least to have an explicit announcement that the quiz can be held at variable times. Overall, your approach to dealing with the students who came late as I'm understanding it from your question seems to me to place you in an adversarial, combative position relative to your students, which is not where you want to be as a teacher - it can only serve to distract from your educational objectives and provides for a poor learning environment for your students.

A second problem is that I'm getting a strong feeling from reading your question that you're trying to use the quiz as a crowd control mechanism, which feels wrong to me (and partially as a result has gotten you into the current messy situation). You've devised an elaborate strategy that consists of holding a quiz at a randomly selected time during the class as a solution to the problem of making students come to class, and come on time. The problem of students coming in late may be a very real concern, but random quizzes are simply an inappropriate and ineffective way to address it (and one that can potentially be perceived quite negatively by the students).
A quiz is a form of assessment, and is a legitimate device to use for that purpose, but let's keep things in their right place: deal with the problem of disruptive late-coming students in the appropriate way, and have your assessment in the way that makes sense from an educational standpoint, whether it be quizzes, exams, homework, or even mandatory class attendance if that's important to you and your institution's policies allow it.


Many people have different opinions, even among those who are native English speakers and/or think a lot about what makes for good exposition.  That said, here are a few rules of thumb:

Your thesis is possibly the most formal writing you will ever do.  Survey articles and expository articles (especially for undergrads or other non-experts) are often written less formally.  Even many conference proceedings and some journal articles omit some details, and thus can feel less formal than your thesis.
No one will fault you for avoiding contractions altogether.  If in doubt, leave it out (the contraction, that is).  I hate some techniques common in formal writing, such as overuse of the passive voice, or nearly any use of the pronoun one.  But lack of contractions doesn't bother me.

As a more general resource for non-native English speakers, consider Doug West's The Grammar.  West has written two textbooks and over two hundred papers, as well as having served as a problem editor for the Math Monthly for the last 20-something years.  Surely many people will disagree with at least one piece of advice he gives, but what I find helpful is that West explains his motivation for each piece of advice he offers.


Can a reviewer suggest literature for improving the language?

Certainly, poor English is a significant problem, one that hinders communication, and undoubtedly has an impact on one's ability to publish top-quality articles.

It may sound a bit rude to make such a suggestion, but in extreme cases I think it is warranted. It's probably better and more cost effective than trying to improve the English yourself and better in the long run than  simply ignoring the problem (and suggesting to reject the paper).


These students are attempting to cheat. “Prospective” is not the right word here. They have already crossed the line from just contemplating cheating to actually doing something. The fact that they derived no benefit (as far as you know, that is), while perhaps relevant to the significance of the offense and the punishment they might receive, does not change that fact. It’s clear misconduct and not at all morally grey.

To put it differently: if you saw someone attempt to rob a bank but fail, would you think you needed to report it? If you saw someone attempt to kill another person but be foiled by a lack of assistance from someone they turned to for help, would you report it? Etc.


How an extremely competitive, but non-accredited "regionally" program will be perceived in a phd applicant application?

I would simply mention that you were accepted to a highly selective program, providing the name.  Hopefully, the institution is well-enough known that you need not go any further.  As for the Distance Education Accreditation Commission, it is sufficiently recognized by the major US agencies (e.g., US Department of Ed and Council for Higher Education Accreditation so I think you are sufficiently covered.


This type of question can only be answered by your advisor and thesis committee. They know what caused your delay, and they can likely advise you as to what should be your only—not your top, your only—priority at this point. Once you graduate, all your other projects can resume, but at this point you have one task, and that is to graduate. Only the gatekeepers to graduation (your thesis committee) can really tell you how to do that.


When if comes to reviewing grants and publications, from an ethical perspective, my understanding is that you have three duties:

To not compromise the authors' priority in their investigation of their ideas and their ability to capitalize on investments in preliminary work.
To not compromise any intellectual property claims through premature release of information.
To not expose the authors to potential embarrassment due to the harsh and mocking comments scrawled all over the place in red pen.

If you personally are behaving ethically, then it really comes down to how much you trust your recycling waste stream.  Is there any likelihood of a student, colleague, or other malicious agent going through the bin and pulling out the information, either intentionally or just in a search for scrap paper?  Shredding is definitely safe, but a low-priority piece of information in a big communal recycling bin with a latch is also certainly exercising a reasonable standard of caution unless you have reason to believe that you or your institution are being targeted for industrial espionage (yes, it happens).

Honestly, though, in most cases the information just isn't important enough to worry about.  An incremental paper presenting the next step of a well-established program, a badly written manuscript on its way to a well-deserved reject, a grant proposal filled with "you should totally fund us to keep doing what we're doing"---these sorts of things just aren't of much interest to anybody except the authors and their close colleagues in any case, and are probably perfectly safe in the recycling bin.  It's not ideal, but it's also very low risk.

Beyond ethics, I believe that there are also sometimes legal requirements, particularly when it comes to being an external reviewed of grant applications for government agencies.  In that case, the best thing to do is to ask the program manager involved.


What is the correct way of citing scientific publications?

Each venue has its own set of rules. Sometimes it can change from within the same publication (on special issues and such).

Therefore, sorry, there is not straight answer. Check the guidelines of the journal/conference you are currently aiming...

ps: I don't remember ever mentioning the title of any work in my articles. At most "The method X was introduced by A et. al [1]".


Can I withdraw an accepted paper if the fees are higher than expected because the proof is longer?

You can withdraw the paper.

That said, it is expected that you are informed about the rules before you submit. Unless those prices/editing practices were hidden upon submission, it would not be professional to have your paper reviewed by 2-3 experts, evaluated by an editor, perhaps multiple times, and then withdrawn because you do not agree with the publication policies.

Your particular case makes me think that your submission was within the declared costs, and that the editing process made it longer than required.

What I can recommend to you is to explain your situation to the editor and to the publishing staff. You might obtain a fee waiver, or a discount.


I don't think that it is possible to search author order in Web of Science, Scopus or GS, directly from their web sites. However, if you get access to a database built on e.g. raw WoS data it is possible (author order is preserved there).

In your case the easiest solution is probably to export all publications where your PI is a co-author from e.g. WoS or Scopus and process the data in excel/R/whatever, to extract the last author name in the author string.

In Excel you can e.g. use this on the author field (AU) from a WoS export to get the last author:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A2,";",REPT(" ",LEN(A2))),LEN(A2)))

This can then be used to filter out the publications with PI as last author, maybe after some more cleaning for e.g. first initial.

Long author strings (which is partially what your question is dealing with, i.e. long author lists) may cause character number overflow though (excel cells can only hold a certain number of characters), so you might want to run e.g. =RIGHT(A1;100) on the AU field first to decrease its size, before running the other function to get the last name.


Why do graduate engineering schools ask for academic reference letters?

I agree that references do not have to be from academics. That seems like an arbitrary restriction, though I can see how it makes sense to have at least one of your letter writers have a background in academia -- after all, you're applying to a university.

Why do admissions committees require letters to begin with? Because graduate school is different from undergraduate. It requires you to show creativity, initiative, independence. Only having good grades in undergraduate is not enough, so the transcript by itself only provides one piece of the picture. In addition, more students have good grades than can be admitted to graduate school -- so admissions committees have to have additional criteria to select from all candidates.


Do computer scientists care about the complexity of specific games still?

(Expanding my comment.)

I think your assessment is correct -- it's much harder to publish results of the form "game X is NP-hard" today than it was last century -- although it is not something I've looked into.

I think the reason for this is the following.

The first few examples of NP-hard games are interesting. It means we can say "many games turn out to be NP-hard". That helps motivate research on NP-hardness and helps scientific communication with the general public.

However, once, say, half a dozen examples have been established, what is the value of adding more examples? Of course, there is value in having more examples, but it becomes more marginal. Each successive example is less surprising and doesn't really change the above statement.

Moreover, many of these proofs are quite messy -- not the sort of thing a reviewer is keen to work through.

Note that this phenomenon is not exclusive to results about games. I think there are many papers that struggle to get published today even though they'd sail in 30 years ago. For example, Karp's 21 NP-complete problems is a celebrated paper, but a similar list of NP-complete problems would struggle to get published today. The reason is simply that those 21 examples were surprising then, but are not today.

An important side note: In essentially all examples, the original game is not NP-hard because it has a finite, albeit extremely large, state space. Thus the NP-hardness is proved about some generalization of the game. Such as Chess on n-by-n boards with slightly modified rules.


Coming up with an activity to replace a quiz

How about a “reverse quiz”?

Say to the students that they each have to write 5 questions spread through the material. They provide the q and a and submit them 2/3 the way through the class.

The last 1/3 of the class you diplay the questions and discuss phrasing, ambiguity etc If the class is large then you pick at random, but I always did this anonymously - the number of students who would shout out “that’s mine” was high :) they liked this activity...

I did this with a simple grading structure : 80% for submission of 5 q and 90 or 100% for 5 perfect q ie no errors: grammar, spelling etc You can carve the marking scheme as you wish...

I found they spent more time working with the material for this than they would do for a standard quiz. It was also good as part of revision work.


Forwarding Email of a future employer to my Supervisor. Broken code of confidentially?

Legally, no. Ethically, no. He felt free to reveal it to you, you felt free to reveal it to someone else. And nothing he revealed seems that earthshaking to me: Lots of people work on famous problems, lots of people work with major corporations.


How reasonable is it to ask about my application status to the Chair of the search committee?

It is completely reasonable to ask about the status of a job application at any time, let alone after so much time has passed.  Definitely feel free.

Since you have applied for a tenure-track job in the United States, I wanted to mention that my first thought was that it is overwhelmingly likely that the job search has concluded by the end of the academic year.  However, you say that you applied for the job "more than four months ago", which I guess means you applied in February or March.  That is an unusually late job application: most commonly applications are due sometime in the fall semester -- say, between September and December -- and the hiring process takes place either at the end of the fall semester or the beginning of the spring semester.  So if the application deadline was indeed in February or later, this is a somewhat unusual time (although such things certainly do happen occasionally) and it is not as overwhelmingly likely that the process has been completed.  Still the chances are not good: most American departments do not do tenure-track hiring over the summer, and once the new year starts there will be a flood of new candidates so they might as well start the process all over again.

For your future use, you might also want to look back carefully at the wording of the job application.  Some job applications have a "rolling deadline", and if you apply on certain automated academic job serves the application will be "accepted" in the formal sense for many months (usually; this depends upon the way the account is set up).  In most cases there is some text like "Candidates who apply before XX/YY/ZZZZ will receive full consideration."  You definitely want to get your application in by that date.

Finally, I hope you know that with the current amount of job applications, many if not most departments make no effort whatsoever to contact candidates negatively.  It is also not in their best interest to do so: maybe another job opens up at a weird time or maybe the person who they thought would take the job cannot or does not for some reason.  If that happens they can go back and look at the applications that are still there and see if people are still interested and available.  Unfortunately the current academic climate is such that this not especially considerate policy has some strategic merit.


Can a professor refuse to introduce any textbook for a course?

There is no "right to have a textbook". Students do have a right to pick a different professor, or a different major, if they want. You should assume that the lack of a textbook for the course means that the instructor has evaluated existing texts as not appropriate.


Do online recommendation systems ask specific questions about the PhD candidate?

Take a look at this:

They pretty much ask the same sort of questions (mostly in a Likert scale).


Dividing paper after Reject & Resubmit decision

This is common for very novel, high impact findings, particularly when the issues are complex and have both theory and application. What I’ve seen work is a shorter theoretical work submitted to a high impact journal that touches on application (often, the work references this ‘submitted’ or ‘in preparation’ work). The longer work is then submitted to a lower impact journal, sometimes just because the page limitations are more forgiving.

This of course works best when you can tell two separate but related stories that feel complete on their own. If you and your coauthors feel like such separation is forced, it may weaken rather than strengthen the effort.

I’d say your #1 might be unlikely unless you get buy-in through discussion with the journal. #3 may not do your work justice. I’d lobby for #2 based on the limited information available.


How write an article when the "waterfall model" is not a good fit?

Whatever format you choose, you have to make sure that your audience can grasp what your paper is about within the first 4 sentences, that (s)he won't get "lost" while reading your article, and that it is easy to strategically skip much of the article and still get the main message. Remember that there is way too much being published, and that it is impossible to read it all. So most articles are only quickly glanced at and are only read if you convince the reader while (s)he is glancing at your article that it is interesting. This is the benefit of the standard format of articles.

While writing your article, you are obviously convinced that your article is worth reading, but keep that reader in mind for whom your article is just one of way too many and who won't read your article very attentively.

For example, the research process almost never follows the strick linear form in which it is presented in most articles. If that deviation is somehow relevant, then you can often use footnotes to discuss that without deviating from the standard form. For things that need more room, there are (web-)appendices.


Endowed Assistant Professor vs Assistant Professor

There really is very little difference between the answer Chris Gregg posted and the answer for this question. An "endowed" assistant professorship is a position which provides funds for the group of the faculty member appointed to the professorship. It can be either salary, or perhaps additional funds that can be used to support members of the group.

Usually, applicants are not hired directly into such positions; instead, they are hired to the department first, and then appointed into such positions after a few years. They often have names like "career development assistant professorship" which indicate that this is a transient award, not a permanent one. If the hiring advertisement actually specifies the position as an "endowed" assistant professorship, I don't think it really changes the hiring process, except that they're looking for the best candidate who satisfies the conditions of the endowment.


How to tactfully "decommit" from projects?

Better to withdraw explicitly rather than just disappear.

After you decide which are the projects that you can and must stick with, go to the leader(s) of the others - in person - and tell them you must withdraw. Tell them your "youthful enthusiasm" overcame your good sense and you are in danger of shortchanging everyone's expectations and that you value their work too much to get in the way at this time.

A good time to be a bit honest and humble.

But this sort of thing has to be done face to face. Email isn't going to be a good vehicle. If face to face is actually impossible it is much harder. In such cases you may want to offer, in email, say, to stay connected but to take a lesser role. That is the sort of thing that would likely come up in a personal meeting in any case.

Note that you don't have to be a youth to have "youthful enthusiasm". See, for example: Paul McCartney age 73


Half good and some not good results in a research paper?

It's important to remember that a paper is supposed to make some kind of contribution. It's not merely a report on "things you did". So if you have some good results and some inconclusive results, what's the contribution ? As sr3u says, you need to work out what's going on and come up with some answers. It's entirely possible that you fail in this endeavour and end up with NO paper. That's not fun, but it's something that you must accept as a possibility.


do American engineering students build projects at the end of their bachelors degree

This is dependent on a school, however yes, generally undergraduate students complete a capstone (or thesis) that requires them to complete a project demonstrating what they have learned over the program.


I need help please about being accused on cheating

He sent me an email to discuss, and then during the online meeting, he asks me to do an oral exam.

You present this as a bad thing, but it's actually a good thing.
Apparently you did all the tests unusually fast, and in a way that looks to an observer like you're cheating. But that's not enough proof. It's possible that you're just pretty good at this subject. So the professor needs to test whether you cheated or whether you're just really good and fast at this subject.
That's what the oral exam is for. If you know this subject really well, you should also be able to do well in the oral exam.