Uploading online all Data used in thesis?

In general I think this is a good idea, but it might depend on your area. This way others can verify your method and compare it to yours. At least this is how it is used in for example Computer Vision and Machine Learning.

Some examples:

Online image database (University of Edinburgh
Different data sets of the University of Texas
Computer Vision test images (Carnegie Mellon University)
Microsoft Research Image understanding

Some theses with a dataset published:

Doug Downey's PhD thesis
Soo Ling Lims' PhD thesis
Toine Borgers' PhD thesis

Professor S. Rüger from the Open University UK, wrote in How to write a good PhD thesis and survive the viva (for a PhD in the computing subject):

  Some value in a PhD thesis is drawn from careful
  experimental design. It is best practice to only change one parameter at a time; to use datasets that are publicly available or at least make datasets available; to describe experiments in a way so that they are reproducible; and, particularly in Computing, to set up experiments in
  an automated batch fashion.

You however have to make sure that you are allowed to (re)publish the data on your web without violating any copyrights (even if it can be downloaded for free), otherwise you can just link to the external data set.

Edit: also see this question about Publicly Available Datasets.


Citing medium of access for a book in MLA

According to the Purdue Online Writing Lab, which is usually a good source for such things, journal articles that are available both online and in print should be cited based on which medium you actually used to access the article:

  Article in an Online Scholarly Journal That Also Appears in Print

  Cite articles in online scholarly journals that also appear in print as you would a scholarly journal in print, including the page range of the article. Provide the medium of publication that you used (in this case, Web) and the date of access.

I would thus anticipate that the same principle should be applied to a scanned book.  Even though the original was generated long before the web existed, you accessed it through the web today, and since you are recording publication medium, that's the publication medium by which it was actually delivered to you.


I suspect someone deliberately ruined my experiments by poisoning my lab insects. What should I do?

I assume you're doing CO2, in which case you frame it as a serious safety concern and insist on looking into it. You're in an enclosed space with an asphyxiant that appears to be leaking. This is a critical health and safety issue and should be treated accordingly.
It's unlikely in my opinion that you are being sabotaged but if you are whoever is doing it will stop if these issues are investigated


A PhD is about research. Of course, there are some other things - for example, in some universities you have to take classes because it is assumed that they help you with your research. TA is - in the universities I know - necessary to get money. Some supervisors also see their PhD students as their assistants and assume they help them with things not related to the research (e. g. with teaching, without compensating the student).

The goal of a PhD is to write and defend a PhD thesis. If everything is done correctly, this implies that the PhD student has substantial knowledge about her subfield and has made a groundbreaking contribution (but the ground that she breaks may be small!) Moreover, the student should learn in her PhD to be a professional researcher. This includes things like publishing, going to conferences etc. Those are then the things a PhD graduate will be evaluated on if she applies for academic jobs.

Your supervisor should, of course, also help you to become a successful researcher. However, it she does not care about you, the only thing you can probably do is to change your supervisor. However, you being successful is also good for her career.


Over-qualified candidate for a master programme?

I doubt that a follow up would be needed. I interpret her reluctance to tell you her decision at the time as just an ethical requirement. She would, I hope, say the same if you were under qualified.

You might want to send that follow up if you didn't discuss the reasons in the interview. But make that note mostly a note of thanks for her consideration. That would be a very natural thing to send.


As a freshman BME interested in graduate school and academia, where do I begin?

When you're a new undergraduate, you can't make real statements about what you want to study. It's simply too soon. Saying you want to work in [field] doesn't carry much weight if you have no idea what working in [field] is actually like.

At this point, don't worry too much about what kind of research you're doing. Just do something, anything, and figure out what you like. If you end up doing research in many different fields before deciding on something, that's fine - most other people do the same.


Tool that suggests references based on a given bibliography

Ok, in Science Direct, I see 'other papers that might interest you'.

Also if you're reading a really good paper look for the papers they cite and the other papers that have cited that paper.

I find this is incredibly useful when doing a literature survey.

Best of luck with it!


How do I determine whether "Global Scientific Journal" is reputable or not?

Although the question may be flagged as "off topic", I think that it is essential to expose predatory journals nonetheless. Hence my answer is:
Yes, most probably Global Scientific Journal - GSJ Publication is predatory (which is worse than non-reputable).
My assessment is based simply on the reputable Beall's list  here (updated two weeks ago, 18 Aug 2019):

Here we include journals that were not originally on the Beall's list, but may be predatory.
Global Journal of Advance Research on Classical and Modern Geometries
Global Journal of Research on Medicinal Plants & Indigenous Medicine
Global Scientific Journal - GSJ Publication


Would you submit your paper that got rejected in a top-tier venue to a lower rank conference?

I would not continue submitting the same paper to top-tier conferences after three rejections.  The Universe Has Spoken.  Move On.

Many of my colleagues do submit such papers to lower-tier conferences, but I usually just send my papers directly to journals after two conference rejections.


Would it be rude or helpful to ask a foreign coworker if they'd like for me to correct their English when there are obvious mistakes?

It is hard to say what your colleague would feel since I cannot predict how anybody would feel in any situation. Yet, if I received an offer like this, I would most certainly not get offended. I often consult my native speaker colleagues about my writing and get useful feedback.

One thing you definitely want to do is to not do this in front of others. Doing it in an e-mail privately would certainly decrease the "embarrassment" if there is any.


How to narrow down a research topic in mathematics?

Short Answer Don't be too picky at first, learn about others' work; try to come up with some problem <-> solution pairs; and then you shall find your own path; when writing them down.

Longer Answer

Fun Fact: Publishable results are based on published results and some more. You need to do 'the some more' part, and know the 'published results'. So:

1. High Rank Publications and their citations: Find the best publications in the area of your work, and see how they solve the problems and how the present their results and who they cited; and read and learn them as well.

2. Narrow Down More and More When Writing Down: Ok, now after reading some papers/journals/books, you want to write something. Here we do the following:

2.1 Problem and Solution (Potential): You might ask what problem I want to work on? Well the one you know how to solve! I might go and write a code generator and say: "well, it is fast and 'efficient'". How do I know? Well I don't know! I need to check it with others. So, we go to the next phase:

2.2 Evaluation and Background Checks: You start evaluation of your work by others' approach (and write about it). Must likely your approach is not good enough, so you go back to he first step and update this one.

2.3 Introduction and Evaluation Now you know what you are talking about, you write the introduction and conclusion about it.

Then Boom! you have a paper, that could be published. Find a conference/journal and hope for the best!


Can I still update my camera-ready submission on IEEE-CPS after the deadline?

If they permit it then feel free to do so. The worst that would happen is that the update is rejected and the current version is published. Especially so, if they say "option to edit".
Of course, an edit that would seem to require another round of review or that changes a major result will have serious issues. But a "minor mistake" shouldn't disrupt things until they "go to press".


How can I know if I’m working through my PhD correctly?

My question is: how can I be know that I’m working through my PhD correctly?

Well, you can't as you haven't done it before, but in some sense you can never truly know anything, if that makes you feel better.  In any case, there's no "right way" to do a PhD.  Research is by nature a process where you wander into unknown territory, and at first you have no maps or guideposts.  Then maybe you find what you are looking for, and maybe you don't, but as some measure of reassurance:

After wandering around long enough, you can usually discover something new.  Many times it may just be a different point of view or minor results, but at least you have understood something new.  Still, usually when you spend a long time on a project you can get something publishable out of it in my experience.

Here are some other points regarding other things in your post:

Many PhD advisors are very hands-off.  It's also natural that they become less helpful as you go beyond the bounds of their expertise.  However, it's probably not great if your advisor is thinks what you're doing is uninteresting.  (I don't know if this is the case or not.)  It's probably worthwhile to have a meta-research talk with him, including whether he thinks it's worthwhile to continue along these lines or consider a different approach.
If you go out of the realm of your advisor's expertise, it might make sense to try talking to an expert who can give you better feedback.  Conferences are one good opportunity for this.
No professional mathematician has time to understand all or even most papers of interest to them.  You need to learn to prioritize, which it sounds like you're already doing.
You actually don't have to be that creative to do new things, or have too many new ideas, or be successful in research.  Many PhD theses boil down to learning a bunch of stuff and then doing computations.  This does not mean they are bad--many of them are very good.  It's also hard to be creative before you reach a certain level of understanding, so you may not realizes your creativity till later, at which point you will almost invariably think, "How did it take me so long to come up with that?  That's so simple."
Organizational skills are not so separate from creativity.  Many times problems can be understood easily after organizing your thoughts about them in the right way.  This was part of the Grothendieck philosophy, and I doubt many mathematicians criticized Grothendieck for not being creative enough.
While research can be frustrating and disheartening, you should generally enjoy learning and thinking about math, otherwise a PhD or academic track is not for you.  Most people have good times and hard times with research.  This is natural.  I view one of my most important duties as an advisor is to encourage my students to help them get through the hard times.


The first introductory text I used is Survey Research Methods by Babbie. It gave (and still serves as a refreshment of) a pretty comprehensive look to the whole process, and the writing and layout are quite easy to understand.

I'd also consider a Google search on different syllabi using phrase like "research methods syllabus filetype:pdf" and see what most instructors recommend. You can modify the search phrase to make it closer to your field; you can also change the pdf to other extensions such as doc, docx, or even ppt if you desire other types of document.

I'm sorry to say that we can't be ready to run a study just by one book. Common methods such as interview, focus group, and questionnaire are their own field of research: For interview and focus group, you'd have to expand into the field of communication and qualitative analysis. For questionnaire design, you may have to further tap into some psychological manifestation of questions, measurement theory, and item response theory.

To build a better foundation, I'd also recommend flipping through Craft of Research by Booth et. al. and it will also pay off to befriend some statisticians or people major in statistics because you may need to learn something about probability-based sampling as well.


How to properly point out the M.Sc. thesis in a Ph.D. application

I would advise to add the links, because I don't see what you could possibly lose by doing so instead of not doing so.

You can add links in LaTeX using

 \href{link.to.thesis}{My MSc thesis title}

In my opinion, this is a nice way to link to everything relevant that can not be properly adressed nor otherwise included in your CV. You can for example provide references such as the homepage of your advisor, your department, your other software projects etc. - all just by putting links behind their names.


Finding Mistake After a Conference Proceedings

Obviously you cannot change the printed version of a conference paper as soon as it has been printed. Whether or not it is possible to change the online version (or to add an errata list) depends on the publisher. Check the publisher's web site and/or contact their author support by e-mail.


How to start doing undergraduate research in mathematics when I have limited support from my professors?

I think this can only be explained with a personal story. I did my undergraduate at a small liberal arts institution and because of that there were not many professors to choose from. However, I knew who I wanted to work with since his general area (dynamical systems) always interested me, although we had never met (since he was on sabbatical for awhile).

I sent him an email listing 3 different projects I had thought of, and he emailed me back saying he wouldn't do those, but he had a project I should do (climate mathematics, never even thought about it before). I was kind of taken aback, but in the end I thought, well this is the best I am getting, and took the project.

When we finally met the following year, I was still a little skeptical, but as we started working through the problems I found out how interesting the subject was. I learned a lot through his mentorship, and gave chalkboard talks on different papers / analysis results (working out of Courant/Hilbert and Wittaker) every few weeks and a few months in I was very fond of the project and was spending all of my time on it just because of how interesting it was, and the story ends with it turning into a good publication.

Turns out the professor had the idea planned out during sabbatical. He was working with a research team there where many ideas were created, and the papers I worked from were recent results by newly minted PhDs he was working with. He had even published a paper on how to teach undergraduates climate science: this man had though it through!

There are a few morals to the story. First of all, when you're young in your research career, you don't know what is interesting yet, and a quick read of the literature is not enough to gauge this. Also, if plenty of people are researching a subject, it's probably pretty interesting and worth a try. Lastly, for research with undergraduates, the good mentors would like you to go with their ideas because they have a plan for how to teach it / work through the problem.

All together, I would say find a mentor you respect and trust and just ask them to take you under their wing. It may not be the project you had in mind, but you will learn a lot more this way, and you'll be surprised how interesting the project is.


Thanking a "shepherd" in acknowledgments

CS conferences often ask a member of the Program Committee who reviewed a paper which is accepted but has some problems to help the authors fix it up for publication. This person is usually called a "shepherd" for the paper with the overt connotation to people who mind sheep in a field. The problems with such a paper can include English language problems, other kinds of bad formatting, the need for a few additional results or cases, or the elaboration of some component of the work that was insufficiently described. This is all done in order to increase the quality of the presentation of otherwise excellent work.


What changes after peer review but prior to final submission are acceptable for a conference paper?

Following the acceptance of a paper, I would not make any changes that go beyond "editorial"—that is, improving the grammar, or adding a recently published citation. These do not change the "technical" content of the paper.

Anything where you make edits that change the actual research or results presented in the paper should be presented to the editors of the journal or conference in question, with a request for guidance. The individuals in charge can then make a determination whether or not additional peer review is required.


Is it ok to post an abstract of a conference paper... which I will be presenting in a conference scheduled 3 months from now... on ResearchGate?

Ultimately, only the conference organisers can tell you whether posting the abstract is acceptable, but it is very unlikely that they would object. It's now fairly normal for academics to have their own websites on which they post the abstracts of all their papers, presentations etc, with links to the published versions. I have never heard of a publisher or conference organiser objecting to the posting of abstracts (rather than full papers) in this way, but academia is a diverse environment and it's always possible that there is an exception out there.
Some of the big conference organisers have published policies on this (the IEEE policy is an example), so if the conference is organised by a large organisation then it may be worth searching online. Otherwise, just email the conference organisers.
One other thing to find out is whether you can post the submitted version of the whole conference paper on a pre-print server or your own website. Doing this makes your work more accessible to a wider audience, and is allowed by many large conference organisers (see the IEEE policy linked above, for example). If you're not familiar with the benefits of pre-prints or the process for posting one, there is a useful guide in Nature Index.


What should I do If I find out that there is a typo (repeated many times) in a recently published paper of mine at Elsevier?

Contact the editor you worked with and let them know.  They will advise you of your options and hopefully work with you to update the online version and (if possible) either delay or fix the print version.


letterhead required for recommendation emails sent electronically?

I would not worry.  It's traditional to use letterhead for electronic recommendation letters, but it's not really essential.  The admissions committee is very unlikely to care whether letterhead is used, and it should not have any effect on their decision.  In the unlikely event that they have questions about the letter's authenticity, they would contact the writer directly (e.g. by looking up their contact info on the university's web site).

If they haven't sent the letters yet, you could let them know that letterhead is customary and suggest that they use it if convenient.  If the letters have already been sent, then I'd just ignore it.  It's not worth the trouble of resubmitting.


Edit a manuscript after submit and approve it

I think that submitting a new manuscript will just confuse them. The version you submitted will be checked and reviewed. You will get back a report and, hopefully, a request to update and resubmit changes. Make your changes then.

If that isn't enough to satisfy you, then contact the editor of the journal and ask for advice on how to proceed. But what you have discovered is pretty common.

The journal needs, for now, a stable version that can be sent to reviewers. You are just at the beginning of the process and will have time to fix things.


How to mention "failed" final year thesis in SOP?

I am not so sure that your final year thesis has actually 'failed'. It is not actually expected that many students will propose something truly new in their bachelor's thesis. The purpose is to teach you how to research a topic and write about your research. In this case, the fact that your supervisor did not give you much guidance or direction may actually be seen as positive, since you have succeeded in finding the relevant papers on your own, and have (I presume) written a decent paper about your research.

You are now heading into a phase where you will be expected to go beyond a literature search and propose "something new". Finding the relevant references is a basic skill required of any researcher. So is being able to work independently (that is, without someone always telling you what to do and where to focus your research). Your current supervisor's supervisory style has forced you to do this--point out this fact in your SOP! Take credit for having initiative and independence, and do not see your final year thesis as failed. It may not be outstanding, but it has served the purpose well.


Can someone with only a bachelor's degree teach at a community college?

The basic answer is that it depends on the field. For example, here in California we have minimum qualifications called FSAs, which are written into the ed code. I'll answer the question based on California law, but I don't think it's terribly different in other parts of the US.

First let's talk about an example in an academic (not vocational) field. In my field, physics, the minimum qualifications are essentially a master's degree in physics, although certain closely related degrees are also OK. There is also a process for granting equivalency if you don't meet the FSA. In reality, when we hire for a tenure-track position we would not seriously consider a candidate who did not have at least a master's in physics, and we would strongly prefer someone with a PhD. We might consider someone who barely met the FSA if we were desperate to fill a part-time position, especially if it was something like the lab for a gen ed course and the person had the necessary technical skills. It's also sometimes necessary to go through the equivalency process as a formality in cases where the name of the degree doesn't exactly match what the ed code says, e.g., someone has a diploma that says "applied mathematics," but the FSA is "mathematics."

Community colleges also do vocational education. In those fields candidates must have either a bachelor's degree and 2 years of experience, or an associate's degree and 6 years of experience. For example, someone with a bachelor's degree in history and 2 years of experience in appliance repair would meet the minimum qualifications to teach appliance repair.

In general, the minimum qualifications are just the minimum. Hiring committees are not looking for a candidate who barely meeds the minimum qualifications, or who needs to go through equivalency.

Hiring committees for community colleges are usually going to count two factors as the most important: education and teaching experience. When someone gets a tenure-track community college job with a lower level of education, such as a master's degree, it's usually because that person has extensive teaching experience.


Citing my own thesis in the extracted paper

This would be an excellent question to ask your advisor, who will be familiar with the norms of your field.

If your thesis is already finished by the time you submit your paper, treat it as you would any other reference. In particular, you may want to cite it if you wish to refer the reader there for more details on certain points.

In my opinion, it's not necessary to explicitly state that the paper is extracted from your thesis, though you could if you want. (If it's your first major paper, people will probably assume it's from a thesis anyway.) Normally the place to mention this would be either at the end of the introduction, or at the end of the paper.


How to formulate my resume, if a PhD defense exam fails with mark “Dissertation passed, Oral failed”

So, have you officially been granted a degree of Ph.D. or have you not?
I cannot tell from the way that your question is currently phrased.

If you have a Ph.D., you can simply honestly write down that you have a Ph.D. degree, and not attempt to explain whatever it means at your institution to be given a Ph.D. while failing your defense.  Don't hide it if you are asked, but if this is the case then apparently your institution thinks that you are worthy of a Ph.D., and it's up to others to judge whether they respect your institution.

If you do not actually have a Ph.D. yet, then you can't write that you have a Ph.D., and it probably doesn't matter all that much to the reader that you have an accepted dissertation.


In (sufficiently) theoretical fields, such as theoretical computer science, parts of theoretical physics, or mathematics, it is completely fine to publish a paper without graphics.
Whether in the case of your specific paper, topic, or field graphics would have helped is a different question, and essentially impossible to answer here with the information given. On the other hand, if it is a field where papers with no graphics are reasonably common, there should be not a big issue in convincing the editor that graphics are unnecessary.
Note that similar arguments could be applied to other things, like examples, applications, etc.: Nice to have, they likely don't hurt, but not needed in sufficiently abstract fields of research.


How to improve the skill at storytelling and paper writing?

As with most skills, both physical and intellectual, the key is practice and feedback. To be a better swimmer, swim a lot. To excel at it, get a coach who can give you feedback.

The same is true of writing and many other things. To be a better writer, simply, write. But the feedback is also important so find a way to get that. You will get it from referees when you submit papers, but you can also get it less formally if you share drafts among colleagues. If you are a student, you probably get feedback from professors, but ask them to comment on your writing specifically, not just your ideas.

There are, of course, books and such to help you be a better writer. Their advice may be helpful: Keep the reader in mind; Be correct but not pedantic; the opening should entice the reader to continue...

But the books won't make you a writer (or a swimmer). Just write.

And get feedback.


Senior professional admissions for a PhD

No, so far as I can tell, age is not a negative for application to graduate school in the US.  But you will have to explain your reasons for wanting to do a PhD and provide some evidence of your interest and ability to do research and that could be harder for you.  Admissions committees like to see published papers and letters of reference from academics in a position to comment on your research skills.  If you've spent your career in industry, it could be difficult providing that kind of evidence.


Issues in self-publishing old work. Recommendations for Necromancy?

This is in response to Question 1:

The university only cares if some portion of your work is monetizable, i.e. leads to a product that people pay money for.  If not, they would prefer you to publish rather than not; it can only help them.

The real issue is your advisor and collaborators, if any.  They may have a claim on that work.  Before publication you should contact them and discuss possible coauthorship.  Resolve this issue before investing any more of your time; see other posts here for what happens when authorship is not clearly agreed among all participants.


How to attract good teachers to a young university?

Adequate salaries would probably not be enough

That's true.

Superior salaries

Superior salaries are needed to attract superior staff. There are many examples of companies that pay (significantly) above-average salaries so they can attract the best. This is true in retail (The Container Store), tech (Google), and other industries. I see no reason why it would be different in academia. While salary is not the only thing that matters it does matter a great deal. Countless research on motivation (Herzberg, Ariely, Pink) shows that what is important is to pay enough that people stop thinking about money. If people are just "getting by" then they will be thinking about money rather than thinking about how to be the best in their field.

Freedom

Once you get the money right, you need to give freedom (as written in the comment by Sverre). Hire the best and get out of their way. Yes, support them but do not "tie their hands" and make them do things because "it has always been that way." This is one point which it should be both easy for your university to do as well as to convince candidates that it is true. Your school is young and so has not been doing things the same way for 50 years. Let the candidates know they will have freedom to do as they see fit.

Support

Giving freedom does not mean abandoning them. If your teachers want start producing videos, acquire the tools they will need. If they want to experiment and they need help, help them. If they are not from the area, help them transition. Be open and supportive.


Teaching Robotics to Mechanical Engineering Students Vs Electrical Engineering Students

You could focus on the kinematics and classical mechanics of robotics, particularly in anthropomorphic robots such as robot arms and human analogues. A good example would be the inverse kinematic equations required for translating end effector position and orientation to revolute joint angles. That can cover things such as Devanit-Hartenburg models and numerical vs. analytical solvers.


Funding for PhD students in the UK for EU student

I do not know actual numbers unfortunately but I will tell you what I know from my experiences in a Computer Science and a Statistics department (of different universities). Your question is tricky because there are a lot of different cases:

BBSRC, NERC or EPSRC funded places (by far the most common). UK Research councils are the standard funding bodies for PhD programs in UK; they usually do not cover maintenance fees unless you are a UK national. They pay only the registration fees for EU students. (I know, I am one). The success rate for something like this is the highest compared to the following options; it generally equates that of a PhD program acceptance rate to the university you are applying to.
University/departmental funded places. Generically also called PhD bursaries. UK universities have self-funded places but they are not very common; usually not more than 2-3 places per department. In most cases those are money on hand but registration fees are occasionally lifted, I think because you are an EU national that might be easier (I know that for an Indian national fees where not waived.) their acceptance rate is obviously harder than those of option 1.
Industry (or goverment agency) funded places. Industry collaborations do occur, I have seen some brochures but I don't know anyone that got them. Pretty much the same situation in terms of fee coverage as option 2 but they tend to be even more rare. I would guess it is not "harder to get" than usual departmental funded places given you actually apply to one. Almost certainly these are tighten with a faculty member and they are not "up for grabs" by all applicants.
General university scholarships. These are usually merit scholarships and you compete against the whole university. They are hard to get: In the medium size university I am now this translates into 25 places. They do not differentiate between costs, they give you a lamp of money (about £13k-15k) and you are on your own. It is not completely unusual to get one if you are an EU national and you have already a registration-fee-only scholarship. Obviously these are really hard to get, but selection is non-random: if you are great you might get them.
Supervisor money. Usually they are tighten to specific grants/research programs/etc. It is almost the same as option 3. This is weird money for you to directly tap into. Essentially they are money a supervisor/department has and it is decided that they'll be used to fund a PhD. They might not even be advertised. I know two cases, in first one fees were waived, in the second one not. Success rate? I have no idea, probably the probability of really impressing with your research potential, a successful and well-connected professor with a shortage of good PhD students (Given you are good, the hard part is actually finding the professor; not many people have a couple tens of thousands of pounds to allocate to a person they think is awesome.)
EU programs. Sci-fi. I know only post-docs that got these kind of funding. I can not give any estimates, I am just mentioning them cause I know  they exist. I have come across them in relation with the Erasmus Mundus program, worth checking.

From what I understand, if you are an EU national registration fees are somewhat easy to be waived (ie. paid by the university or a funding body). Getting the extra money is the hard part but if your supervisor wants you, strings can be probably pulled. Teaching also pays good in UK in comparison with other countries. In general, do not let finance hold you back from applying to places. Especially for an EU national if they believe in you they will find a way to make you a somewhat good offer as your registration fees will not be horribly high to start with. Good luck!


The Admissions department of the institute you apply to will do their own “conversion” as they see fit using the courses or modules they consider relevant or they wish to “credit”...

Trying to predict what and how they convert - well you probably have more chance at the lottery...

See this other answer : How to convert german undergrad grade to US GPA


Writing an open-source software and publishing it, for the sake of getting cited

FieldTrip (citation)
MNE (citation)
Nutmeg (citation)
SPM, (citation)

The preceding software are all open-source research software, each referenced by dozens, sometimes hundreds of research papers. It is expected that an open-source package developed by a research team will have an accompanying paper or set of papers, and that the users will cite those papers when using the package. You should make this very clear on the package website. (You do have a website for the software, right?)

To expand on this a bit, it is assumed that any research-level software package will have at least one accompanying paper, typically more, describing both the software, the functionality, and the algorithms. If you don't have that, people simply won't trust it. From my experience, most packages come from researchers with a good deal of experience/publications under their belt, who have decided to make their own scripts and techniques available for the general community. Given that it is quite difficult to obtain funding for this sort of thing until the software—and, by extension, you—is already very popular, you're essentially going to do most of the development on your "free time", which makes this a highly thankless task.

That all said, if software is your thing, go for it! If your software makes analysis easier, you can have an outsized impact on your field.


Now I want to publish the articles as chapters of a tiny textbook I am writing, but I think he doesn't deserve his name to be mentioned in any way in this work. Is there any way I could achieve this?

Pretty sure the answer here is no.

First, your textbook needs to cite its references, so in the Bibliography, you would need to list the paper where he declared himself the first author.

That being said, you will probably chose some citing format for your textbook such as "According to [3]", rather than "According to DUDESNAME, 2008".

If your book is written in first person speech (which I dislike, but is your option), you can still claim "Back in 2007 I've done A and and B, as explained in [3]". Your former advisor will likely not dispute those claims with you, but you would probably gain very little from this passive agressive strategy.

Moreover, having your advisor who contributed very little as a co-author is very common. Although he usually would have contributed in other ways, such as providing equipment, references and guidance, which may not look like a lot of hard work, but it does take a lot of hard work to have the knowledge and resources to do this properly. Also, the co-author status is part of his reward for advising you. He making himself the first author sounds pretty unethical though.


Is it possible to get a teaching job in US/Canadian universities with an NZ/Aus PhD?

Australian Ph.D. programs tend to be shorter than American Ph.D. programs because their system is similar to that of the United Kingdom; I believe that New Zealand is much the same.  This isn't "worse", just different.  This sort of difference is familiar to many scholars, and there are no special barriers to Australia/New Zealand scientists getting faculty positions in the US or Canada.  These days, of course, they will likely need to do a postdoc first, just like any other scientist.

A nice example of an Australian scientist who has done well in America is Rod Brooks, famous roboticist at MIT for many years before he headed out for greener pastures.

So why do you see so few Australians and New Zealanders in the US and Canada?  Let's start with the simple fact that there aren't all that many around, period.  Right now, there's about 24 million Australians and 4.5 million New Zealanders.  By contrast, there are about 320 million Americans and 35 million Canadians.  Thus, even if there were perfect mixing between the two countries there would be a pretty small percentage of Australians and New Zealanders in American and Canadian faculties.  And of course, it's not perfect mixing: scientists are much more mobile than many other professions, but even scientists are most likely to stay in their home country, where their professional networks are strongest and where they are likely to have good personal reasons to stay as well.  Put those together, and I would be surprised to see more than about 1% Australians in US faculties, no matter how good their education.


it is at least somewhat common to find a collaborator with more publishing experience, who can help with the process. i would encourage that because personal conversations are a much higher bandwidth connection than Q&A on this site.

if you are intent on getting your work out there alone, you'll choose to target some point on the spectrum from likely rejection at a high-impact journal to certain acceptance at an unimportant conference. a journal that has already published related work is a good option. read their web site, look at their document norms and submission process for an idea what would be involved in getting a yes or no answer. (if it's a no, of course, you get to start over, somewhat wiser.)


From which activities am I (not) excluded by not registering for a conference/symposium?

The terms "conference", "workshop", "symposium" might have specific meanings in some specific contexts, but in generall, they are rather interchangeable terms.

Registration fees are typically intended to cover the cost of the conference, and maybe to make some profit for the organization running it. In any case, part of the fee will cover the costs directly attributed to the person attending, and other parts go towards general costs.

Even if one is not causing any specific costs, it is often frowned upon to attend any part of a conference without being registered, unless this has been cleared with the organizers.

In your case, this happened, and the question is what exactly you might attend. The rule of thumb is that if there is a cost-component per delegate, stay away from it: Coffee breaks, lunch, conference dinner, conference excursion would be typical examples. Also, do not take a conference bag.

For most conferences, the rest will be talks (in various incarnations), and maybe poster sessions. If you find something else on the schedule, you should ask the conference organizers directly.


Will dismissal from one graduate school affect me applying to another?

Unfortunately, your transcripts are likely going to be required at time of application to any other program, and you can assume that you will be asked about your poor grades during the application process. That said, you're not the first person to have made bad decisions in the past, so I would definitely still apply.

One thing I would strongly advise not doing is attempting to hide the fact you have poor grades by simply not sending the transcript, and pretending it didn't happen. Doing so will almost guarantee career-threatening problems later on when someone finds out what you did (and it won't be hard, there will be a gap of a few years you won't be able to explain, and all the officials at the other university still know that you were there).

I have no idea about the visa.


In Elsevier Editorial System, how do I resend a paper with "Submission needing revisions" status?

The expected action would be for you to quickly but thoroughly make the necessary revisions to your paper. Sometimes the journal, through the electronic submission system or through the decision mail, provides a time frame for revisions. in my environment minor revisions is commonly expected within 3 weeks and major revisions within 6 weeks of receiving the comments. This is by no means a universal time frame so you should try to figure out what applies in "your" journal.

What is important is that you address each of the comments received and provide a clear account for how you have done so. You should make the revisions as quickly as you can. If you are uncertain about the time frame, send an e-mail to the editor and ask. Since a minor revision is likely to be follow by acceptance if revisions are made successfully, also go through and make sure your manuscript adheres to journal style requirements. This is usually given by an "Instruction for Authors" (or equiv.) but can also be gathered from looking at a recently published paper in the journal. Pay particular attention to the reference system.


is it normal to work as an university professor in engineering but have no real professional experience (in the industry)?

What are my best options to get some professional experience in the field?

You could get a secondment to a company to do specific (applied) research for example.
When I was a student, some of the best professors had spent time in both industry and academia. One I remember had used temperature sensors to record brake disk temperatures on a testing rig - they were glowing... So he was slightly amused at how we were finding it difficult to calibrate a temperature sensor for use between ambient and 100 deg C... He got us sorted though.


Project is going nowhere, can I nix it and try a new approach without my co-author?

Do you have a supervisor who would appreciate being kept in the loop?

I think your best bet is to give this colleague a clear message that the methodology he has proposed is flawed and that the results coming from that methodology are not promising.  Ask him if he can think of any justification for you to spend more time on this project as currently contemplated.

In other words, pull the plug on the project.  But indicate that if he has any other ideas for collaboration about something else, you'd be happy to work with him on a different project.

If you work up your other idea, and publish that work, make sure to mention him in the acknowledgements.


As a PhD student, how do I benefit from reviewing a book my adviser is writing?

You'll gain his trust, if you do a good job. You will also gain a deeper understanding of the material as you'll read it thoroughly not just to learn it, but also having to think about how the material is presented. Don't expect anything else.


Can I become a research psychologist by studying maths and computer science?

Sure you can! There are some things you'll need to keep in mind, though, to make sure your current plans for undergraduate fit your longer-term desire to be involved with psychology research.

First, psychology research take many, many forms. There are many inter-disciplinary fields of psychology research that actually prefers at least some background in computing and strong quantitative skills, especially in areas like human factors (also called engineering psychology or ergonomics in Europe - in the US ergonomics usually means something a little different), Human-Computer Interaction, and some programs of "applied psychology" and industrial-organizational psychology. Cognitive psychology also has quite a lot of use of computing backgrounds, while some fields of psychology lean heavily upon advanced statistics, such as some experimental social psychology. On the other hand, some areas of research psychology - such as clinical/behavioral/counselling - typically do not make much use of computing or advanced math at all. If you wanted to go into clinical research I'd strongly question your plan to study math/computing instead of a more related field like psychology, sociology, etc.

The second issue is being perceived as needing to make a switch, and so having to try to convince people that you have sufficient background in psychology to be accepted into a psychology program. Most programs in the US I've seen request someone have the equivalent of about 5 classes in psychology if they don't have a degree in a psychology-related field. Will you be able to get any psychology classes with your current plant? If not, then wanting to go into any research field without actually studying that field first is a questionable plan, at best. It's a different matter if you want to switch after completing your studies - but if you are still studying, why not switch now?

The third issue, noted partially in the paragraph above, is your preparation to do original research and so be able to make the most of your time in a graduate program. If you are studying math, this may or not be actually helpful in research. Psychology research most commonly uses quantitative skills in the areas of data analysis and advanced statistics. While a math background can help prepare you to learn the stats, it may not actually teach you the stats at all, and it most likely has no course in research or experimental methods. Similarly, computer science only sometimes includes any courses in stats, and rarely stats you'll actually need to use (ANOVA, linear regressions of all varieties, non-parametric stats, factor analysis, etc.), and it very likely contains no course in research methods or experimental design.

My personal path was actually to start studying in computing and I considered a minor in applied math, and I became interested in the intersections of computing and psychology after I discovered fields like human factors and HCI existed. I used the research-based focus of the psychology field to give me the stats and experimental design training I needed, and used the computing background to enable my particular research interests in applied technology. This combination has worked very nicely for me so far, but it is particularly challenging at times and requires you to be very self-driven and willing to teach yourself things that aren't the focus of any of your classes and may be outside the area of expertise of any of your professors.

The fields of computing, math, and psychology are very large and varied, and so while there may be an area that might be just right for you that allows you to combine all your interests, you'll need to work hard to 1) begin to locate just what that area might be, 2) ensure you are getting the preparation you need to thrive in that environment, and 3) be willing to get creative, because most established pathways, advertisements, and listed opportunities are often tailored for more "traditional" students wanting to go from Undergraduate Program in A to Graduate Program in A.

Finally, you should be aware that inherently multi-disciplinary fields can be a bit..."different". The same basic area of research might be called a half-dozen different things, and the home of a department might vary by University. An example of this is human factors-related programs are sometimes hosted by a psychology department, sometimes by an engineering department, sometimes by a computer science department, and sometimes even by a business department, each with their own unique flavor and research focus - and you might be a great fit for one but a terrible fit for another. Meanwhile one program may be called one thing but seems to really do research in another. My first research project was considered primarily psychology research at my home institution, yet is being published in the top conference in the area of HCI; the topic of the project was actually the topic studied as "human factors" 10+ years ago, but is now considered primarily the domain of HCI. My next research project is in HCI, but a lot of related previous research was in the field of aerospace engineering, geospatial information systems, and remote sensing. If being in such weird situations terribly bothers you, you might want to consider a more "traditional path". I thrive on the complexity, but it really isn't for everyone!


PhD student working as a substitute teacher | interview tips

A good question! I would hope that more teachers would care so much as you do.

I understand you will teach undergraduates, I hope my interpretation is correct.

You should first find out what the officially requirements are to teach. This will vary from university to university (the universities I know, for example, didn't care at all - they take every (math) PhD student for every (math) course as long as they speak the local language). No proof of educational or subject-related background was required (just like for the teachers in Harry Potter). Since you are substituting someone, maybe you could ask them? If not, ask at the interview.

Some tips from me:
- think about comparable courses you liked. What did your instructors do?

are there teaching superstars in your field? Maybe with lecture videos online? Watch them and learn!
ask friends which were avarage (academically speaking) about good courses. Many professors/teachers were always great in university and cannot efficiently teach average students. On this very website, I often have the impression that the only thing which matters is to make good courses for the best students. In my opinion, educating the average well is at least as important.
Treat every (reasonable) question seriously (especially from freshwomen and freshmen). At least in math, you have to acquire a certain way of thinking which most fresh-students don't have and all instructors have. This often leads to questions from students where it's hard for instructors to understand what the problem is. (For example, to prove that a statement A doesn't hold for a set S, one gives a counterexample - an element s from S which doesn't satisfy A. While this is the most logical thing for instructors, many students do not understand why giving a counterexample is enough.) Some instructors then say things like "This is trivial" which does not help.
maybe there is a book about teaching in your subject? If possible, read it.
read about your subjects and its connection to the real world. if you follow a boring-written book which has a no motivations and does not explain why things are important (many recensions of such books unfortunately say that they are didactiacclly well written), provide these. Even of you don't find real-world-life examples important, many students will. Provide them.


Time management and organization for PhD Student in first year?

In my time as a PhD student over the past few years,  I have really benefited from the simple old-fashioned technique of just making lists on a small notepad.  Whether in lab or at home,  if I feel disorganized or anxious, I just write down the things I know I need to do. As well, I can check the list of things I have already written down earlier in the day. Putting things on paper by hand is really a simple and effective way to get things "out" so to speak. Has worked great for me in my first 3 years of my PhD.  If I am on the go and can't write something down Siri (on my IPhone) is awesome for reminders. Don't stress too much either. Work hard, stay organized, but make sure you still have time for sleep, hobbies, friends, and family. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy. I ensure this for myself by not working on Saturday's or Sunday's. Believe me, in the long-term, a rested and clear-minded scientist working Monday-Friday will outcompete a mentally exhausted scientist working 7 days a week. I learned these things while an undergraduate student from one of my favorite professors. Not only was he an awesome teacher, scientist, and Department Chair, he was a Army Colonel working in military intelligence several weeks out out the year. I figured this guy must know a thing or two about life. I put it into practice and come to find, he was right!

Best of luck to you!


You want a recommendation from somebody who can speak to your strong qualities.  This means faculty members you have interacted with; the more substantial the interactions, the better.  However, you also want the interactions to have demonstrated your existing skill and future potential.

If you took a one-credit class from a professor and have had little interaction with them otherwise, they probably cannot write you a strong letter.  The one-credit class probably had more limited interactions between you and the instructor.  if you were very active in class, that would be good.  But if you were not an extremely active questioner and class participant, that means the professor will have very limited basis for evaluating you (especially since one-credit classes tend to have rather little homework on the basis of which you can be evaluated).

In contrast, a professor you have taken a full three-credit course from and also interacted with outside class will probably have a much better idea what your skill level and potential are.  The downside is obviously that you earned a lower grade in the class.  Unless you had a lot of in-class interactions with the first professor, I think you should get in touch with the second professor and simply ask them whether they can write you a strong recommendation.  If they say they cannot, I would go with the first professor.  Otherwise, I go with the second professor.


Having children while at graduate school

Anecdotes are not usually the right kind of answer on stackexchange, but you have specifically asked for them, so here goes...

My experience

I had two children in graduate school.  The first was born during my second year, and the second was born during my fourth year.  Most of my fellow students thought I was crazy.  I graduated (obtaining both a MS and PhD) in five years, with no debt and certainly no regrets.  Surprisingly, I found that graduate school allowed me to be more involved in my children's life than if I'd had a regular job.

Advantages

Some important and perhaps unusual factors worked in my favor.  First, and most importantly, my wife had already decided that after we had children she wanted to be a full-time homemaker.  Her support allowed me to focus on my studies, although I did change hundreds of diapers, stay up a lot of nights, and after the birth of the first I didn't get any research done for about three months (I did continue passing my courses).

The second important advantage I had was generous funding from the US DOE's computational science graduate fellowship (CSGF).  It is (or at least was) the highest-paid government fellowship in the US, at about $33K/year.  That was still officially below the poverty line for a family of four where I lived, and half my income went to rent, but by careful budgeting we had no problem getting by on only that income.  Could I have done it with less income?  Yes, though I would possibly have needed student loans, and the added load of being a teaching assistant would have been a challenge.

Finally, I found that I could get a lot of high-quality research done by focusing intensely for a few hours per day.  For me, that was (and is) a more productive strategy than trying to focus on research 24/7.  This made it possible to complete my thesis and care for my family simultaneously.  I was home by 5-6 p.m. almost every evening and spent most of my weekend time with my wife and children.  I did often do research for an hour or two after my kids were in bed.  I know that many grad students tend to spend a lot more time each day on research, which might make things more difficult.

Assessment

Having children during graduate school was a good decision for me.  The time I was able to spend with them as babies and then toddlers is precious to me.  After I graduated and became an assistant professor, I found that the time I could spend with my children was much more limited, due to the added demands of teaching, advising, service, and administration.  Indeed, with my third child (born 2 years after I got a permanent position) I changed a lot fewer diapers and really spent a lot less time with her early on.  I've reached a better balance since then, but it took years.

In short: with the right setup, having kids in grad school can work out very well.


How to use competitions to encourage students to work harder and study more

I often have competitions in class. I try to use them primarily for motivation, not assessment.

Let me give an example: I was teaching an image processing class and we had some images of x-rays of "old master" canvas paintings. The goal was to create an algorithm that could count the density of the thread weave patterns. The quality of the answers could be assessed by comparing the algorithmic answers to manual counts, and I had about 200 locations where I knew the answer. I gave them 100 to train the algorithms. After about two weeks, there were 25 different algorithms submitted (most people worked in pairs) and then I ran the submitted codes on the 100 "unknown" locations.

I called it the "2010 Thread Counting Olympics" and made a big deal about giving out "medals". I created several different ways of measuring the quality of the algorithms: closest in least squares error, number of answers within +/-1 mm per thread, number within +/-2 mm per thread, closest in absolute value of error, closest on the canvases by Van Gogh and closest on the canvases by Vermeer. Then there were bronze, silver, gold, and titanium medals in each category. As I presented the results to the class, I described the various approaches and pitfalls of each of the algorithms, and often asked for clarifications and comments by the authors of the algorithms. By the end of the competition, well over half of the students had won "prizes"... plus they had the recognition of their peers.

The amount of effort that the students put into this project and into the class were amazing, and I think the "competition" aspect was a prime motivating factor.


Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections

This is a form of branching (I guess "conditional branching" based on a screening question).

A good model for this is the Bureau of Justic Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey. In that survey, respondents are asked screening questions that identify incidents of crime victimization (e.g., respondent was attacked). Respondents are then asked to complete an "incident report", which asks an extensive number of questions about the episode of victimization. Here's an example of such an incident report for the 2012 survey. Respondents may complete zero of these incident reports or they complete up to ten.

Another, simpler, model is the U.S. Census (or most household surveys) that ask for basic details about household members. For example, the 2010 Census Form asked for details of up to 12 household members. In a telephone or online context, of course, respondents would not see the questions relating to household members beyond the number they initially list.


It all accounts to got much effort you believe you put in to your work.

Doing a good review isn't at all easy. It involves a whole lot of work to

collect relevant studies
collate them to groups
assess originality
connect the dots
produce illustration
coherently present the information

If that isn't enough, getting permission from authors and publishers to reuse relevant figures is another hassle. To add on, it would be an ordeal to manage 100+ references without a reference management system like LaTeX/BibTeX.

The point is that as you go through this process, you'll notice that your skill would gradually improve over time. I'm actually  going through this process at the time of writing this post. I came across a couple of double publication, extensively overlapped concepts, and inconclusive studies. These sort of items are the ones I filter out.

Hope this helps.


Can I make a citation only in the beginning of a chapter?

First, I would modify your sentence as (Mathoverflow etc. goes into the bibliography):

  The following proof is based on the ideas given by Iosif Pinelis [1].

Then,

  Do I need to cite Pinelis' answer whenever I use a notation/an idea of his post?

For the notation, you can make an addition to the sentence above (but explain the notation in the appropriate place):

  The following proof is based on the ideas given by Iosif Pinelis [1]. The notation employed in this section shall follow closely that of the cited work (or some equivalent sentence).

Instead, when using an idea, yes, I would put again the reference "[1]".


Are there guidelines for choosing colors in figures?

The problem of different color perception (at least with respect to climate science) was pointed out 2004 by Light and Bartlein in EOS. With a strong emphasis on climate science the blog "Climate Lab Book" discusses the problem of the so called "rainbow color scale". As mentioned in the comments they recommend "Color brewer 2" to create color palettes. (There are packages for MATLAB, Python and R. The link to R includes some more advice.) Already pre-defined palettes (again with a strong emphasis on climate science) are presented by the Department of Geography of the University of Oregon. This palettes include color-blind safe ones, as well as palettes useful for specific associations.

For example when displaying temperatures blue is often associated with "cold", while red is associated with "hot". Diverting from similar common associations may prevent an more intuitive understanding of your figures.

Another reason for caution regarding color palettes: "Rainbow" (and similar ones) may distort your perception of boundaries.

To conclude: There appears no easy way to select an appropriate color palette for your figures, but there is plenty of advice.


When should conferences precirculate papers?

I can't see this happening in any sort of large-scale conference. This would involve too much work and logistical planning on the part of everyone involved to be successful. It's hard enough to get abstracts for many conferences—let alone finished papers far enough in advance that people have time to read them!

In addition, this last point is another major obstacle: people don't have a lot of time to read all the papers that we're supposed to, let alone a bunch for a particular conference. The main reason why I would undertake that much work was if it were for a relatively specialized workshop in my personal field of endeavor.


Unresponsive supervisor blocks submission to conference

Can I remove him as a co-author from the article, even though he supervised the bachelor's thesis?

Based on the information that his sole contributions were to approve the plan and to proofread the thesis, yes, you can remove him as an author.

As a common guideline applied in many disciplines, the Vancouver protocol of the ICMJE specifies the following four criteria for authorship:

  The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

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


How to cope with life changes and burnout after PhD thesis submission?

The first thing to do is to get rid of the 90 hour weeks, and resolve never to get back into that trap. There is a lot of experience suggesting that the maximum weekly output for intellectual jobs is produced at around 40 hours a week. Going beyond that reduces actual production, because of more mistakes and less creative thought. Your mileage may vary, but it would be very unusual for 90 hours to be optimal.

You need to accept that sleep, exercise, relaxation, and social life are all essential to achieving maximum productivity when working, and to general mental and physical health. If you feel intense guilt when not working, and cannot change that by yourself, you may need some sort of counseling to help you get a healthier attitude.

The mental issues you describe could just be because you got into a bad habit of working too long and relaxing too little. On the other hand, there could be an underlying problem that needs a professional. I am not qualified to evaluate that, and agree with the suggestion in comments that you should consider counseling.


How to best present a PhD application when moving from professional work without a masters or honours degree?

Your next step is quite clear. Discuss this with your potential supervisor. That person will be aware of university policies and practices, and could perhaps set up another meeting with the relevant staff.

Be proactive.


'Read before The Royal Statistical Society ' What does it mean?

This means that the paper was presented to the members of society who were present at the meeting noted.

I am more familiar with this language in much older papers. I believe its use here is a holdover from a time when paper would be presented by a Fellow of the society (who may have been the author of the paper, or otherwise) to the assembled members of the society. For example, neither Darwin nor Wallace were present at the 1848 meeting of the Linnean Society at which their joint papers were presented; instead the papers were read by secretary John Bennett.


Has it ever happened that one paper's findings were contradicted by another?

Make sure the difference comes from the experimentation not from the
adopted technique/method.
Make sure you have the same settings as the other paper. Sometimes
people make assumptions for the sake of simplicity in
experimentations. For example, I remember I did experimentation
assuming acyclic graph exists.
Do you have some kind of randomness (i.e. generating random
instances of the problem)? If yes, revise
its output. Sometimes you examine easy instances while others base
their experimentations on hard instances of the problem.
In some areas, there are benchmarks and robust solvers for particular
problems/structures. If your field have benchmarks, try to compare your method against it.

Either way, I am sure you have important parameters to control the experimentation (i.e. number of variables..etc). check their role.

Most importantly, you need to theoretically justify why your method will save 14% while other method saves only 2% in practice.


How to ask current grad student in a lab for advice about getting a position in the lab?

You can email a grad student but you may not get a reply, depending on lots of things, including how much effort it would take to answer.
You can ask about what the work is like. You can ask for the expectations of the PI. You can ask whether the work complements their dissertation work. You can ask about what skills are most useful in the lab, but this might be a hard question to answer.
Don't make it personal. In particular, I'd suggest avoiding questions about the PI's personality, and such. Don't ask for assistance in getting accepted into the lab or the degree program as it isn't their job to assist anyone else in that.


Two different abbreviations of your name in literature

One of the implications that will happen is that it will be slightly more tricky to cite your works:

general confusion when citing an author with the inconsistent spelling of the name
this and this talk about initials usage
inline citations of multiple works may become weird
reference manager systems might be confused, and organizing a library would be more complicated (it is already complicated with all other caveats)

However, I have to say that the problem of the different spelling of the name in cited works happens quite often, so I would incline to say that the author being happy with the way their name is spelled is much more important.


Should I write an email to the professor I want to work with regarding my performance in the exam?

From your explanation I assume that you are very keen to work with him/her in future as a PhD student. So you were trying to your best to do very good in his/her paper. How about your project work? I assume that it was appreciated by your professor, but doesn't matter.

To answer your question, you can always write emails to him/her mentioning about the project work and future advice. So if you write emails, then forget about the exam results and no need to mention about the performance of this exam in your email.

I would prefer to take an appointment after the exam and meet him to discuss about my interest to work with him as a PhD student.


I want to know a little about everything, not everything about a very specific topic. Is this a good/bad mindset for a career in research?

Instead of thinking about research as 'thinking up my own problems' - is there something that you read that your immediate reaction was 'that seems weird, I wonder why that it is?' and then not been able to find the answer? While it is true that research is about finding problems that other people haven't investigated yet, it is more true that research is about finding answers to those problems.

Reading widely is a good thing as it exposes you to different approaches and different potential sources of the question that sparks your interest. However, you are probably getting to the point that you should be focussing on a specific problem (since you have passed exams you must be some way through). I don't know what your program allows, but you might consider an interdisciplinary area where the balance between breadth and depth is different.


What are some examples of negative effects on a career for boycotting Elsevier journals?

People decline to serve as editors or reviewers for all sorts of reasons. "Too busy" and "conflict of interest" are two common ones that are easily applicable to your case.

All junior faculty have too much on their plate and no one knows what your chair or mentor has told you that you need to focus on. So "unavailable/too busy to take this on" is an unprovable and thus good excuse. It's also impossible to know who you've had a fling or a spat with and so "conflict of interest" (and you don't have to give the reason for a CoI or for why you're unavailable) is perhaps less apt in this situation but also a valid excuse.

  Example: These are the three options I was given when I received my last reviewer assignment email. If I clicked on decline due to COI or unavailable, I'd be taken
  to a webform that asked me for alternate reviewer names, but that was
  entirely optional on my part. I would not be asked for a reason or justification for my response.

As to negative effects, I think it's fine to have principles, but when you're junior faculty, you're also vulnerable. You can choose not to buy products made in China (for example) or to decline to provide free work to Elsevier, but you also don't have to tell any and everyone that you've made that decision for yourself. It's fine to decline with a vague reason if that will protect you from the  possibility of retribution.

When you are in a position where you can speak your mind without fear of retribution(which is what tenure is designed to ensure), then do so.

As an aside: Especially in well-established journals, editors and editorial boards tend be composed of people known for their expertise as well as their dedication to the field of study. These people also tend to be very, very busy. Your response to the 'board' will likely be entered by a junior editorial assistant and it's highly unlikely that the editorial board will even get involved -- except perhaps to solicit names of other reviewers. Quite simply, it's too small of an issue and people are far too busy to get worked up over this. While I've heard of editors being angry at junior scholars for not publishing in their venues, I've never heard of anyone being angry because someone didn't serve as an article reviewer. A declination then is risk-free. But going out of your way to declare "I'm not reviewing because of my political position against ____" is making a statement (which is what you want, right?) and thus carries the risk that that statement is offensive to some.


Log in, go to your profile, click the "+" icon, and select "Add article manually". Then fill in the details and it will appear on your profile immediately.

However you cannot upload a pdf to Google Scholar or anything like that. Google Scholar is not a repository. And the citations will only appear after the crawler finds it on the internet.


First time being in an applied math lab - what are some tips to overcome shyness?

Since you are asking about viscosity, there must be some kind of fluid dynamics in your lab. Schaum's Outline of Fluid Dynamics is quite useful as it has worked out problems.

If you have actively avoided all social situations, never asked a question in class, or even had lunch with a fellow student, then perhaps you need to investigate resources at your institution to help overcome your extreme shyness. This will be a significant problem for you in the future - regardless of whether you stay in academia - if you don't take care of it now. Don't wait until you get older.


What is the typical cost of Summer Course education in the US?

The cost of summer courses in the United States is likely to be as staggeringly variable as the the cost of courses during the semester.  To the best of my knowledge, most universities generally do not change their tuition fees significantly during the summer.

As such, it will range across at least two orders of magnitude depending on the school you are dealing with, and can easily change by nearly an order of magnitude depending on the type of student that you are.  Consider, for example, this table of tuition rates published by the University of Iowa: you will find that summer course charges are almost identical to semester charges, and differ wildly for Iowa residents and students coming from out of state.


How do instructors grade a one-person project when everyone else in the class worked in pairs?

First, I'm surprised the instructor didn't ask for a volunteer to work alone. In a reasonably-sized class with pair projects, there's almost always at least one student who would rather not work in groups or pairs.  It seems a lot of this angst might have been avoided had the professor simply polled for a volunteer. Is it too late to ask for groups to be rearranged? He could ask for a volunteer, and you could be paired up with that person's previous partner.

(Then again, maybe those students who would rather work alone are the very students who need group experience the most – and maybe that's why your professor opted to do this at random.)

Getting to the crux of your question, though, I would first study the assignment carefully and imagine how things might be different if you were working in a team of two. Would you be able to divide up the work? Brainstorm ideas? Once you have something concrete in mind, I'd reengage with the professor and ask for more clarification about how you will be graded.

In other words, if you simply say, "Will I be graded more leniently?" that might be regarded as premature grade grubbing. However, if you say something more specific, like:

  I noticed this project has a lot of work, and I think I might be at a disadvantage working alone instead of in a team. For example, if I had a partner, we might divide this up, so that he was working on the interface while I was writing the guts of the program. If I have trouble getting this assignment completed on-time, will you take into account the fact that I had to work alone?

then I think you'll get your professor to think objectively about your disadvantage and answer accordingly.

It's generally best to be up-front about potential hardships that might affect the quality of your work, and to do so early. Otherwise, you risk coming across as a whining procrastinator. However, your question is reasonable, and I think it's best to get an answer sooner rather than later.


Should I expect to be invited to visit the grad schools I was admitted to?

In the US context, for most graduate programs in science or engineering fields, at relatively wealthy and prestigious institutions, it's quite normal for departments to pay travel expenses for prospective students to visit the department before making a final decision to accept an admission and assistantship offer.  In some departments, prospective students are invited to visit before admissions decisions are made, which is more like an interview.

For programs outside of science and engineering, or for programs at less wealthy and prestigious institutions, such visits are much less common.

I would ask the department about the status of your application, and if you've been admitted whether they are sponsoring recruitment visits.


Future prospects at the moment seem bleak after PhD. What steps can I take now to make best use of the next 1 year?

If you want to stay in academia, you should keep working on your research portfolio. Ideally, you should do that as part of a full-time occupation, such as being a postdoc in an university or a scientist in a research lab.

Given that you have already studied the basics of machine learning, I believe that using machine learning in your research projects would be a good way to acquire further practice, since you will be driven by a research question and will end up getting hands-ons experience with ML techniques as you try to tackle something you care about.

That said, you should keep in mind that carving a niche is very important to succeed in academia. Hence, as you consider new topics to master, you need to think about how they would fit with what you have done up to this point and what kind of academic position would that lead to.


Is it possible to submit new GRE scores after having applied to an acadmic program?

Honestly, the GRE scores are perhaps the most useless part of the application record. Good scores tell me that someone speaks English well, and is capable of basic mathematics. A bad score could just be a signpost of having a bad day, or perhaps some issues with English that don't necessarily translate into being a bad student or a bad researcher. (Just about the only thing GRE scores tend to correlate with in grad school is the performance in first-year classes!)

If you do have replacement scores, you can definitely send them to grad schools. They'll be considered, but they're not likely to sway a decision (unless the school has a minimum cutoff—which is possible for international students).


How to proceed when you are coordinating a project among several research groups and they do not contribute to the progress of the project

The path to proceed likely depends strongly on four factors:

Does the project have clear and specific milestones in the contract that the collaborators are failing to meet?
Are the others subcontractors to your institution or independently contracted?
What type of oversight is being exerted by the funding agency, and how is the relationship with the responsible program manager?
Are you willing to burn a bridge?

Typically, as lead PI you are responsible for the execution of the entire project, not just your portion, and therefore have a responsibility to your funding agency to appropriately manage your subcontracting collaborators.  If the funding agency has instead decided to execute independent contracts to each of the PIs in the grant, then it is largely out of your hands and there is little that you can (or should) do.

Assuming you are lead PI, then if the contract (not the proposal) has requirements in its statement of work that they are not meeting by the given milestone deadlines, then you have much more leverage and a clear case for a "shape up or get defunded" conversation.  Similarly, if the funding agency is exerting strong oversight (e.g., in the USA, DARPA often threatens de-funding unless you meet strong milestones by particular frequent deadlines or regularly outperform other research teams; NSF has a much looser oversight process that often just wants to see that something interesting is being accomplished) then you have a strong case that their failure to perform is directly imperiling the whole research project.  In either case, as lead PI you have both the right and the responsibility to cancel their funding and redirect it to better accomplish the research tasks that you are being held accountable for.

If the contract doesn't have accountable goals and you aren't being held accountable for their behavior, however, then it is more just a moral offense to you, and you have much less basis on which to legitimately defund your colleagues.  Instead, you might look at it as a lesson for the future on writing more specific contracts that can give you the leverage you need to deal with non-performers.

Now if you do defund your colleagues, this has a high likelihood of burning bridges.  If you didn't trust them to shape up, why would you want to work with them again?  If they feel you defunded them unfairly, why would they want to work with you again?
If the mandate comes from the funding agency program manager rather than you, that may make the defunding somewhat more acceptable by making it "not your fault," but your colleagues may still see it that way.  Thus, if the relationship is more important than the money being lost, you may then want to just write this off as a lesson learned and plan more carefully for the future.

In short: there are no easy paths, but which one to walk depends on the balance of relationship value vs. accountability in your contract with your funder and your colleagues.


Good illustrations can have disproportionate impact; this is true. Reviewers often seem to be swayed (I'm uncomfortable with 'fooled' here) by new or interesting looking images. This is generally true, and papers like this often are frequently cited, so that is good for the journal. Effort invested in this area is likely to be rewarded, though it may not substitute for substance.

However, as to your specific question about the same journal accepting it, that may be very difficult to judge. It depends on what the other half of paper B is. If the same explanation is applied to some problem, I should think it will be well accepted. If it's a restatement of a previous paper, unless it contains a contrary viewpoint, I think it's unlikely to pass muster. This is assuming, of course, that the reviewer/editor connect it to the previous paper. If they don't, then it's a fresh paper to them.


Well, the pedantic legal answer to the question of why an academic re-using blocks of text they themselves have written in a previous publication would be plagiarism is that said academic has (almost certainly) assigned the full copyright of the work to the previous journal publisher. Given this is a forced part of academic publishing I would argue that the above is ethically something of a grey area, but legally chances are our hypothetical author no longer owns the text they want to reproduce.
However, I would say you are missing something here! The most efficient thing to do in the case you describe would be to cite the publication containing the data set and original description. Perhaps providing a brief summary in the new paper would be appropriate depending on the specifics of what you're writing about.
A similar example of the above from my own research was experimental equipment descriptions. I realized fairly swiftly that I was often reproducing text describing a particular spectroscopy setup. This can easily be condensed down to: "Technique X was performed as previously described.[REF]" and those who are interested in the exact details can read the referenced paper.


How to decide whether a mistake is sufficiently relevant to publish about it?

You should talk to colleagues from that area of interest to check whether it actually is a mistake or maybe a common generalization that, although not perfectly correct, is still 'good' in the systems that were discussed in the papers. Also writing a mail to the authors of said papers is a better idea before writing to the journals without any cross-check.


Under which title in CV should I list a paper accepted in a conference?

For papers that have been accepted, but not yet published, it is common to mention them as "accepted for publication". This is similar for journals and conferences.

So in your case, you could mention the paper under a section titled "accepted for publication", or you could add this information at the end of the paper entry:

  author name, paper title, conference name, year (accepted for publication).

Another option is, as mentioned by @David Ketcheson, to list such papers as "in press".


Supervisor delays publication over style questions for years – can I remove him from the authors list?

Can I just acknowledge him for hosting me and remove his name from the author list?

Probably not.  If he deserves to be an author based on his intellectual contributions to the paper, then it would be unethical to deny him authorship based on being difficult to work with.  He presumably thinks he deserves to be an author, or he wouldn't have spent years going over the drafts with you, and you apparently thought he deserved authorship at the beginning of the process.

Theoretically, you could declare that you have changed your mind and now think he never met the criteria for authorship.  That would be risky: he'll presumably be angry, and you'll need to have a very persuasive argument regarding authorship to avoid major damage to your career.  You should not try this unless you are certain that you are right and that the community will agree with you.  Would you make the same decision if your supervisor were cooperative and easy to work with?  If not, then you have no grounds for removing him as an author.

  I acquired the opinion of two professors (one of them is my 2nd supervisor and is a co-author) recently about the quality of paper and they recommended to send it to a good journal (impact factor of 10 and above). After many years of struggle my supervisor wished to publish it in a journal with an impact factor less than 1.

Why aren't all the coauthors discussing this matter together?  That sounds like how the issue of where to submit should be resolved.  You can start an e-mail discussion or schedule a phone call, everyone can make a case for where they'd like to submit the paper, and then you can debate the issue.  Hopefully you are all reasonable people and can come to some sort of agreement.

If this doesn't happen, then hopefully your other coauthor will decide that your supervisor is being unreasonable and will be willing to have a private discussion with him and try to get him to behave better.  On the other hand, if your other coauthor doesn't think your supervisor is being unreasonable, then you probably won't get anywhere with your complaints.


Are reputations earned and questions answered on Stack community considered as worthy publications?

Useful work in academia (I'm coming from a US perspective; perspectives elsewhere I think follow similar trends but may differ a bit) falls into three broad boats:

Research
Teaching/education/mentorship
Service/outreach

Publications fall under the category of "research". Stack Exchange participation definitely does not fall under this category (except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances; I don't think those circumstances are much worth considering in any general answer given how rare they are).
Teaching/education typically considers activity within the university. That's the stuff that students pay for (or more generally, the university receives some compensation for the benefit of the students).
Service/outreach includes all the "extra" stuff academics do: it includes participation on faculty committees (service to the university) and also includes service to the broader community. If, for example, an academic volunteered at a local primary/secondary school, that would fall under "service".
Service is almost certainly the least appreciated of the academic trinity, and service to the whole world is probably not weighted as heavily as service to the local community. Service in a local community or to the university itself is more easily justified to other stakeholders, like government officials who control university budgets. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value, just that it has the most chance to be undervalued.
Stack Exchange participation might, at best, be seen as a form of Service.


How does Stephen Hawking conduct his research?

Have you read his article in the Wikipedia? I believe most of your questions are answered there.

As for students and researchers with disabilities in general: Every disability is different and different things can be done to help, from extra time on homeworks and exams, to special reading / blackboard viewing devices, hearing aids, keyboards that require very little finger strength, to having another person take notes for the disabled student / researcher. I'm sure I forgot lots of other tools.

The most important tool for research is the mind and with a keen mind most obstacles can be overcome.


I'm going to start my PhD with weak foundation in research

So, Is it possible to do it or will be very difficult in my case?

Unless the faculty in your new department are negligent sociopaths, they would not have admitted you to their PhD program without a firm belief that you could succeed.

Your lack of research experience could make your PhD more difficult than for other incoming students, but mostly because it will take you more time to settle into a research pattern.  If you want to speed up the transition, get involved with research as soon as possible.  Do not fill your weekly schedule with standard homework- and project-heavy classes.  Sign up for independent study/research credit.  You're unlikely to produce publishable research in your first semester, but that's okay; your primary goal is to develop research habits, not research results.

In fact, I'd suggest getting in touch with faculty in your new department now to arrange for independent study time in the fall and to ask for reading suggestions.  If you know who your new advisor/supervisor will be, ask them first.


Is there a reason to spread your research into multiple journals instead of just one?

There is obviously no right or wrong here, one should try to publish in the best suited journal. That said, in fields where there are several options, sticking to a single journal may look a little strange. If you publish in different (but suitable) journals, it may be looked upon as that your research is accepted by a wider set of peers. Some may perhaps also think you have a special connection to the journal etc.

So the need to publish in different journals should primarily be the focus of the journal. Some people I know enjoy the fact that they are published in widely different journals and some people may see that as your research being more widely accepted (right or wrong).


If you, the faculty, want to retain any rights, I suggest that you (as a collective group negotiating with the administration) write them into a contract. You might be able to come to a royalty agreement, but I doubt much beyond that.
If faculty are employees of the university then most of the IP created can be claimed by the employer, just as if you were employed by IBM in a research capacity.
I don't think that universities (none in my experience) get in the way of a faculty member publishing books (or software, ...), but those are normally written at the full initiative of the author(s) rather than at the direction of the university. And since there are other alternatives for teaching a course than writing your own book, it is normally an independent activity. Lectures, however, like other explicit course materials, seem to be in a different category.
The course materials were created by yourself, but at the direction of the employer. The university provides the infrastructure and the audience.
IANAL, but guess that the above is a pretty general interpretation. Copyright law, however, is variable around the world and to some extent, so is the relationship between the faculty and the university. So, "your mileage may vary."
Absent a formal agreement, the university will probably claim to own all rights including the rights to reuse such things in the future whether the faculty member is employed there or not and without additional compensation. It would be difficult, at best, to contest this view, I think.
I would prefer a different interpretation, of course, in which the law would recognize that the faculty is the university and derives all function and authority from the consent and participation of the faculty. However, that is a late medieval view. Yes, I'm that old.
If a university wants to maintain a high quality faculty and keep them happy and productive, I think they would be willing to negotiate some sharing arrangement. It would need to be formalized. An argument for such an agreement would, I think, be an improvement in the general quality of such things.


How does academic hiring work in the humanities in Denmark?

Disclaimer: I work as a postdoc in social sciences in a Danish university. I have seen parts of the process from the inside on a few occassions, once very closely.

In my experience, more than 20 applicants should be considered quite a few, and I suspect this is especially true in the Humanities, unless it is an extremely coveted area.

Applications are graded qualified/unqualified, usually along with a brief statement on the reasoning.

The dean may make a shortlist of favourite candidates as a recommendation, but it will usually be the department head making the decision. At my department, relevant senior researchers/associate profs get a say too, and the process is quite democratic.

I have never heard of anyone being hired without an interview. Test lectures are sometimes used, e.g for tenure-track positions.


How to read effectively a research paper?

Read it from top to bottom, try to understand everything in it (that is, do the math on your own and check that you arrive at the same results), and try to write the essay without looking much at the paper.

At my department, we offer a course like this and the most common reason for bad grades are students who just copy-paste selected paragraphs from the paper.


Ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly?

For many types of moral situations, university rules actually require that you inform a superior as soon as you find out yourself, or you are also in violation.  It may be that the classmate who informed you didn't have the civic courage to report it but knew that you did.  It is precisely to break cycles of no one saying anything that the rules are set up in the way I just described.

Or of course it may be that they were lying.  As long as you passed the full information to the professor about how you knew what you knew as well as what you believed you knew, it is now the professor's responsibility and not yours.  If there's anything you haven't already told the professor, I'd suggest contacting them again.


Since you mention ScienceDirect, I guess the publisher (and owner of any copyright claims) is Elsevier.
If you follow the guideline in the caption you linked to, you could therefore write:

Figure reproduced with permission from Author (YYYY); copyright YYYY Elsevier.

As regards a possible Creative Commons license (as is visible in the caption you linked to as CC BY-SA 4.0), this will likely depend on the journal and/or article. I would recommend you to fetch the DOI of that article and insert it into CrossRef's API at https://api.crossref.org/works/THE-DOI-HERE. Then take a look at the license field. An Elsevier Open Access article I randomly looked at, for instance, carries the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 according to the API.
However, if the article you take the Figure from is not an Open Access one, then probably you do not have to list any particular license at all.


My adviser will be out of the town during the semester when I'm planning to defend

1)  agree with others that this is the 21st century.  committee members (chair or not) should be able to skype in to a defense.  this is common practice at all 3 universities i've been associated with.

2)  there should be a graduate advisor type person in your department or college with whom you can consult.  this person is likely someone who helps with recruitment, ensuring students are properly registered for courses and comprehensive/qualifying exams, helping students navigate the "rules" of defending, etc.  talk to this person and explain the situation.  they will likely be able to help you with #1.