Overcoming a profound basis of underperformance as a freshman

The cruel irony is that by the time I realised I enjoyed math I also handicapped myself to learning it.

I've had a somewhat similar experience so I'm going to describe it in a few words. Perhaps it will be helpful for you.

When in school I was labelled "gifted" as well. I was a member of a club for children with math aptitude and participated in competitions but never put in any effort. Eventually, after entering university, I realised that research is what I really want to do. That is the most important thing, I believe. I would have been smarter if I studied seriously in school. Sometimes I regret not doing it. However, it's in the past, it doesn't really matter, it's not relevant to the present situation. You have a goal and your current skills as starting parameters. What happens next is up to you. From your background section I got the impression that you think about what you could've done a lot. My advice: think about what you can do instead. Right now you're in a perfect positions to study what you like! Some people face a lot more difficulties.

Now to address your actual question.

  Frankly, I don't quite know where to start relearning. Where would a starting point be?

I don't think you actually need relearning. Judging by your grades, you have a pretty good grasp on the material. If you really need to sharpen your skills do some exercises from a textbook. What I think you should do (it worked for me) is pick up a book/ online course / seminar on the topic you are interested in and just start learning. Whenever you encounter something you don't remember from the classes go back and refresh this knowledge. Eventually things you really need from those courses will become second nature (and this way you can avoid deliberately solving boring exercises).

You edited the last part out but it did indeed sound like the impostor syndrome. There is a ton of people with imperfect knowledge in academia, both students and teachers. More importantly, you're only a freshman. Even if you don't get into that cool project next year there will be other opportunities. You have a lot more before you than behind you.


multiple authors format for saving space

The conference chair might tell you otherwise, but you could probably do it. I've even seen (with ACM conferences) putting both emails on one line as

(author1, author2)@institution.edu

But that assumes the email addresses are easy to associate with a person's name.

But there is no particular reason not to submit it with your best effort as to layout. Maybe it gets edited after review in any case.

But also note that most people in CS expect that the author listing will be alphabetical. But the "true" meaning of that is "the order doesn't matter and we all built this together." So, it might not be a problem.


What is the point of a PhD thesis whose content already exists in published papers?

Like @ff524 (comment above), I too have found PhD theses useful, and over the years I've collected quite a few of them. I've actually purchased at least 20 since 1992 from UMI/ProQuest. Unfortunately, I don't have access to their digital archive, but I have also photocopied more than double this number from various libraries during this same period. I have often found  them to contain fuller explanations and motivation, more historical details, and numerous minor tangential results, all of which tend to get edited out in the typical concisely written published papers (I'm in mathematics).

To answer your question, perhaps what you can do is to write an overview of your results and how they fit into the larger scheme of similar results on your topic that others have done. Even if no one else reads this, it can help by giving a useful summary of your work that you can siphon off when you need to give talks about your work (such as in job interviews) or when you need to write introductions or abstracts for future papers based on the work. Also, if for some reason you find yourself not working on this topic for a few years and thereby forgetting some of the details, and you want to return to the topic, your summary and overview will be very helpful in remembering what it was all about.


Is it okay to struggle with the content of research paper you are reading?

Reading a paper shouldn't take long. Now, completely understanding the proofs and details can take a really long time, even months. Specially depending on your background, and on the technical tools/ideas the paper is using. It is okay to take that long.

There are two questions you should ask yourself:

Do I need to completely understand the paper I am reading?
Do I need to prove every line of every paper I read?

The first question is related to reading or skimming through a paper, a more agile read of the paper to understand the main ideas and conclusion. This should allow you to figure out if this is a paper that is useful to you and your research, and if it is, then you move on to the 2nd question.

If the paper is important to you/your research, and contains techniques/ideas that you must know and be comfortable with, then it makes sense to completely understand it and spend a lot of time with. Even still, ask yourself if you need to prove every single statement, or if there is a more important body of statements  that you actually care about, so that you do not need to prove every single thing.

It is okay to struggle with what you are reading. And it is also ok to ask questions to smarter or more senior people about it. If you get super stuck ask them for help, and ask them for intuition regarding the result (why is it useful? where did the idea come from? where can it be applied). It is okay to ask! (See Paul Garrett's answer here!)

It is going to improve with time. As long as you work hard, and learn the theory/ideas, you will eventually start to see things repeating here and there, and when they do you will be able to read papers much faster (and, more importantly, identify what is new and where you need to put more attention). Experience and knowledge will naturally lead to efficiency.

Keep working, you can do it! Good luck!


How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result?

An appendix, if allowed by your university style/guidelines (and it usually is), is the best option. It strikes a balance between two legitimate concerns:

you want your thesis to be self-contained, and you want to showcase the work you've done (as well as convince others of your work's quality)
in the main text, it may make your message less clear and burden the reader's mind with new notations


Fields of computer science with good academic outlook

What is hot right now doesn't actually concern you and the job market is volatile enough that in six or seven years when you enter the market it will probably be completely different. It isn't a great life choice to make decisions based on such changeable factors.

You are better advised to study something that deeply interests you so that you are more likely to become hugely successful at it and (a) hope that the market isn't terrible when you graduate and (b) be assured that it will improve in time in any case.

You also need to keep a bit of flexibility in mind as you study so that you can change with the times if necessary without losing your interest in things.

So, do what you like to do and do it well. Doing what you think will give you some 'advantage' may turn out to disappoint you in too many ways to count.


What is the difference between academic and administrative department heads?

An administrative head of department heads up the administration of the department, and will typically have little or no involvement in the direction or the content of the research or teaching.

An academic department head leads the academic direction of the department. This often include somes administrative duties. Well, they nominally lead the academic direction of the department. In theory, they guide the direction of the department's researchers and teaching. In practice, that's like herding cats.


Is the Chegg Honor Shield tool an effective promotor of Academic Honesty?

I'll make the argument: No, instructors should not use this tool at Chegg.
In general, Chegg is among the worst actors of the online academic community. Their business model is fundamentally predicated on supporting violations of academic integrity, fraud, and malfeasance. In this sense, we should not be supporting them with engagement, mind-share, or test cases for their systems.
In the same vein of general lack-of-trust, Chegg is not an entity that can be trusted with our exam information. Despite the fact that they currently claim no IP rights to uploaded exams, and a promise to delete information after a month, their promises are not reliable, and we should not give them an opportunity to use our exam information in any scurrilous fashion in the future.
There is no transparency to the exact details of how the tool works. Does it look only for exact text matches, or something similar? If we assume so, then it's quite likely that students will learn to slightly modify the text of submitted questions, so that they avoid the blocking tool, but still get the essence of the answer they need. In this sense, the tool will be a waste of time and give a false sense of security to the instructor.
Additionally, the details say that attempts to post such exam questions to Chegg are simply blocked, with no record of such attempts made. (Per website, "We will not be able to provide any information regarding users who attempt to post a blocked Exam question during the Exam Timeframe.") This short-circuits the possibility of detecting students who make such attempts, and giving required corrections to the students in question. Students may also be driven invisibly to some other platform or method of cheating in those cases.
And the instructor-registration process gathers the instructors' .EDU email addresses, which could be used for other profiling, marketing, or spamming purposes (noted by Anonymous Physicist).
Arguably, even in principle, the tool does not prevent academic dishonesty, as going online to search for answers is itself already a violation. The fact that the Chegg Honor Shield turns students away without reporting them is a broken process (noted by Scott Seidman).
The Forbes article on Chegg as of January 2021 assesses:

It’s doubtful that Honor Shield will dent students’ chegging.


Can I call myself an assistant professor without a PhD?

the position is called "Assistant Professor"

If you hold an appointment as an assistant professor, then you are an assistant professor. Still, I understand your concern....

  kinda makes no sense due to the size of the institution and the lack of research required by it...however this is a bit of a no-name brand institution

Context is everything.

I agree it would look foolish or pompous if you use your title in a way that gives the impression you are a professor at an R1. When meeting colleagues at different institutions, you may wish to describe yourself as a lecturer or say "my title is assistant professor, but it's mostly teaching" or something unambiguous like that.
On the other hand, everyone at your home institution should understand what an "assistant professorship" at that institution entails, so there is no issue with you using the title internally.
Similarly, non-academics don't know or care about the subtle differences in academic rank, "I'm an assistant professor" is fine in such contexts.

Regardless, your PhD (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.

Sadly, such overloaded terms in commonplace in Anglophone academia. Many of us with doctorates select the salutation "Mr./Ms." to avoid being confused for an M.D. ("real doctor"). Those with PhDs from online schools face a similar dilemma.


Are online exam proctoring services efficient and trustworthy?

According to an article of the German news site "Spiegel online": NO

http://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/uni/iubh-fuehrt-on-demand-online-klausuren-ein-so-einfach-war-schummeln-noch-nie-a-1129916.html

A short summary of the article in English:
There was a test exam that was supervised externally using the students smart phone and computer. The student used his own computer where he had to install a special software. After some technical trouble, the connection to the proctor had been established. The student had to identify showing his passport, he had to present the room to the proctor via his mobile phone camera. He ensured that there are no illegal tools (additional books etc.) or other persons in the room. The mobile phone was then set up to show the student as well as his computer and keyboard. The tool on the computer enabled access of the proctor to everything that is shown. Then the test started and the proctor appeared to continuously observe him.

However, the student tried cheating and was VERY successful by doing so.
The student was able to read from an undetected cheat-sheet that was pinned to the wall in some distance. The student managed to open some book and to read in his notes, despite this was not allowed. Finally he even stood up and walked around in the room. The proctor did not react. All this cheating remained undetected.

The proctoring service has some statistics that mentions 4000 detected cheating attempts in more than 63000 online exams. The article finally raises the question how many more undetected ones took place.

From my personal experience in IT security: A computer system (and especially a room) that is under the student control should never be used for such an exam since its security cannot be guaranteed. Clone the monitor signal, have a special kernel driver in place, have the exam running in a virtual machine, ..., there are many ideas. Some might work, some won't. It is a similarly difficult task as preventing cheating in online games: A lot of effort goes in but you NEVER get rid of cheaters. As long as there is some motivation (there definitively is for university exams!), you will find people helping you cheat.


how long does a company normally take to respond to the question asked for dissertation?

The time seems extremely short to me. Unless they know of the urgency and agree to expedite you could wind up without the data you need. A normal request could take a while as the person you contact needs, perhaps, to gather information from those who may be busy or unavailable.

They may be willing to work faster if prodded, but it might be better coming from your professor, if that is appropriate. A note that the information is needed asap to allow the completion of research might help if worded correctly. Unfortunately, people have their own priorities.

The more extensive the information, the longer it takes to pull it together, of course.

It sounds as if visiting the person you contacted, face to face, isn't an option here. But you may be able to use voice communication with your correspondents to get the data if it isn't too extensive. In that case, make appointments for calls.

I suggest that you don't wait for the information to come in before you start. There might be a lot you can do and only plug in the results in to a framework already in place in case the information is delayed. The structure of the dissertation shouldn't depend too much on the actual data, though the conclusions might.


Are speeches by Heads of States academic sources?

A speech by a head of state is a primary source and can be used and cited as such:

  Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address begins "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation" [Lincoln, 1863]

It is not a peer reviewed scientific document, however, and should not be used in that way:

  The United States was founded in 1776 [Lincoln, 1863].

That's a very easy way to get things wrong, because speeches by heads of state are generally used for political effect, not for delivering factual information.  For example, if you used Lincoln as a citation, you'd be rather misled, because the United States per se did not exist until the adoption of the constitution in 1789.


Can an instructor ask students to write a letter of recommendation for them (the instructor)?

As others say, there are good reasons not to get reference letters from students: they are biased to please you, don’t know how to write references, and it might be perceived as cherry picking (you’re in fact an awful teacher but one or two students like you).

If you want to offer insights about what students think of you, why not use your teaching evaluations? If you’re indeed an excellent educator, this should reflect in your evaluations. It’s also acceptable to offer snippets from written course evaluations: while this is still a bit of cherry picking, at the very least it’s unbiased. However, I would check your institution’s policy regarding this practice. Some universities are ok with it, others may not be.

Finally, if you want to show you’re a great educator l suggest indicating how you go the extra mile: participating and organizing student events, mentoring, volunteer work etc.

Good luck!


How should academics handle communication with the media?

I've had one paper I wrote garner significant media attention, so while I'm not a practiced hand at it, some things I learned along the way:

Be able to convey the idea behind your paper simply. A brief, non-technically "What happened", and why this matters. Don't oversell, but if you provide good information, you have some more control over how it gets conveyed, instead of forcing a non-expert journalist to translate your work into words.
Keep it short. It's harder to misquote or provide out-of-context soundbites if you keep things short and to the point. Don't pontificate.
Make the caveats of your work clear, but don't over-hedge.
If it's clear they're trying to get you to say something in particular, decide if you're okay with saying it. If you are, just do it. If you aren't don't go anywhere near it. Don't dance around, or try to add qualifiers - just don't approach.
Be prepared for rage-inducing discussion of your work online after it hits the air. Learn to have a thick skin, or purposefully ignore it.
Remember that, in the grand scheme of things, even a fair amount of media attention is a flash in the pan, and the odd story that makes you wince is just that - a single story.

While I think you can help mitigate some of the problems around media coverage of your work with an active social media presence and a blog, it's only by engaging the audience. It's not going to let you "stand aside" from the media - no website or news paper is going to go "Oh, Dr. X has a blog. On second thought, lets not bother with the story..." If anything, an active social media presence will probably raise your profile among science communication types, and increase the odds of getting a bit of media attention.


As the status message suggests, the Reviewers have completed their reports and submitted them online via the Elsevier manuscript system. Your paper is now with the Editor. Since the status did not change for the last 2 months, we can assume one of the following:
 - the Editor did not have time to deal with your manuscript yet;
 - the Reviewers Reports are contradictory, and your paper requires more attention and more time of the Editor than usual.
In my experience, the first explanation covers most of the real-life cases.

It is completely OK to write a polite message to the Editor asking them about the status of your paper. However, be prepared to receive no answer, or not-really-an-answer.

Yes, there is always a possibility that your paper can be rejected as a result of the review process. However, the Editor's decision should normally be made based on the results and the writing of the manuscript. If your communication with the Editor is polite and justified, there is no risk that it can reduce the chance of your paper to be accepted.


Writing the dedication in language different than the language of a thesis or a book

You're allowed to write a dedication in whatever language you'd like. Most readers skip the dedication page anyways, so it's not as if it's going to really influence their view. I'd find it interesting, myself, but others might be slightly confused to see a different language or alphabet. But I doubt many people would stop reading just because they saw something like that.


How do I go about making a program suggestion to my department chair as a graduate student?

As a graduate student, I don't have the authority to suggest how the department should conduct itself

That’s incorrect. You absolutely have the authority to suggest improvements to the program curriculum, and in all but the most incompetently run of departments, your suggestions would be welcomed, and given at least fleeting consideration; in a really well-run department they may in fact be considered quite seriously. Whether they would be adopted or not in a separate question, but if they are not adopted, it’s not because anyone thinks you don’t have the authority to suggest them. Regardless, no one would think you’re overstepping your role as a graduate student by making a suggestion (as opposed to making a demand or coming across as someone who thinks they’re entitled to run the place).

  I wanted to bring up the idea to the Department Chair that introducing some applications like JupyterLab, GitHub, and R to our future graduate students could be a great move to not only support the move to online learning, but allow students in our department to get additional skills that are widely used in industry and currently not offered by our courses, but for which I know a number of our professors use routinely.

It sounds like these professors you mention already see the value in what you want to propose. Why not try to enlist them as allies and supporters of your idea, while offering to do the grunt work of promoting it? For example,  you could send them an email where you outline your proposal, say you are contacting them because of their interest in these software applications and that you intend to present it to the department administration (not necessarily the chair - see below), and ask whether they are willing to be included in the correspondence and to be mentioned as possible endorsers of the idea. Stress the fact that they wouldn’t need to get involved in the effort in any more substantial way than that if they didn’t want/have time to.

  I have a good personal relationship with the department chair as well, but I still want to be cautious of how I approach this.

That’s good, and the department chair may be a good place to start. But it’s worth keeping in mind that the department chair is usually an extremely busy person who is stretched thin between managing a whole bunch of completely different aspects of the department. In particular, at all departments I’m familiar with (including the one I was chair of for several years), the chair would not get directly involved in detailed thinking about the graduate program curriculum - that’s simply too “micro” for the level of detail the chair is able to handle. Usually there will be other people below the chair — a graduate vice chair (sometimes called the graduate program chair or graduate chair), graduate program committee etc — who make those sorts of decisions (maybe with the department chair ultimately being asked to sign off on any major decisions).

I suggest that before you officially propose the idea, do a bit of l asking around informally to find out who are the person or people who are in charge of thinking about these sorts of issues within the department. This way you won’t waste people’s time and your own time getting bounced around from one person/committee to another, with the attendant risk of the communication being misdirected or misinterpreted at each step along the way.

Good luck!


Is it bad to join the editorial board of a journal on Beall’s list?

Joining an editorial board is a form of endorsement as well as a service to the community.  You should never become an editor unless:

You understand how the publisher and journal operate, and you have good reason to believe the operations are competent and professional in every way.
You know the other editors, at least by reputation, and are certain that they are actively engaged in running an academically respectable journal.  In particular, you have talked with other editors about how the journal is doing and what is involved in joining the editorial board.
You honestly believe that publishing papers in this journal is good for the research community as well as the authors (and no well-informed person could describe it as junk, corrupt, predatory, or exploitative).

If you know enough to be sure all three conditions hold, then it doesn't matter what Beall says.  If anyone questions the respectability of the journal, you can convince them they are wrong.  Over time, the reputation should improve.

If you aren't sure, then you need to investigate further.  You have no business joining the editorial board of a journal you aren't prepared to endorse.  (I'd even go so far as to say it's unethical to lend your reputation to a journal that doesn't deserve it.)  If the journal is predatory, then being an editor will look bad.

When I've joined editorial boards for journals I know well as a reader and author, I've still had discussions about expectations for editors and how the journal works from the inside.  Becoming an editor is a substantial decision that should be based on careful consideration.  Nobody will be offended if you have questions or just want to talk.  (At least, if they are offended, then you shouldn't trust them.)

There's also the question of whether becoming an editor of a low-prestige journal looks bad, assuming it's not predatory but just publishes below-average papers.  One key question is whether the journal publishes papers you are interested in, papers you or other people you respect consider worth reading and citing (even if they aren't exciting or important papers).  If so, then being an editor sounds worthwhile.  If not, then what's the point of being an editor?  If the papers aren't worth reading, then listing it on your CV risks making people think "This person either has low standards or is willing to do pointless work just in order to be an editor."  That's not a disaster, but it's not a particularly flattering assessment.


What is the acceptable similarity in a mathematics PhD dissertation when checking by Turnitin?

Is this percentage acceptable by most committees?

This is the wrong question to be asking, since academic decisions are not made based on a numerical measure of similarity from a computer program.  The purpose of this software is to flag suspicious cases for humans to examine more carefully.  It will identify passages that appear similar to other writings, but it can't decide whether that constitutes plagiarism.

For example, part of your thesis might be based on previous papers you have written.  In some circumstances, it may be reasonable to copy text from these papers.  (You need to check that your advisor approves and that it doesn't conflict with any university regulations or the publishing agreement with the publisher.)  Of course you would need to cite the papers and clearly indicate the overlap.  It's not plagiarism if you do that, but Turnitin doesn't understand what you've written well enough to distinguish it from plagiarism.  So it's possible that Turnitin would flag lots of suspicious sections, but that your committee would look at them and see that everything is cited appropriately.

If you haven't committed any plagiarism, then you don't need to worry about this at all.  If you genuinely write everything yourself (or carefully quote and cite anything you didn't write), then there's no way you could accidentally write something that looks like proof of plagiarism.  There's just too much possible variation, and the probability of matching someone else's words by chance is negligible.  The worst case scenario is that Turnitin flags something due to algorithmic limitations or a poor underlying model, but human review shows that it is not actually worrisome.  (Nobody trusts Turnitin more than they trust their own judgment.)

I'll assume you don't know you've committed plagiarism, but it is possible that you honestly wouldn't know?  Unfortunately, the answer is yes if you have certain bad writing habits.  For example, it's dangerous to write while having another reference open in front of you to compare with.  Even if you don't copy anything verbatim, it's easy to write something that's just an adaptation of the original source (maybe rewording sentences or rearranging things slightly, but clearly based on the original).

If that's what worries you, then you should take a look at the most suspicious passages found by Turnitin.  If they look like an adaptation of another source, then it's worth rewriting them.  If they don't, then maybe Turnitin is worrying you unnecessarily.

But in any case a plagiarism finding won't just come down to a percentage of similarity.  Any percentage greater than 0 is too much for actual plagiarism, and no percentage is too high if it reflects limitations of the software rather than actual plagiarism.


PowerPoint presentations including Latex both under Windows and Mac OS

On Mac Os only, you can use Keynote and Latexit, as explained in this question: How to make a presentation that includes math symbols? I've been using this technique recently, and it's very nice!
However, as far as I know, you cannot show Keynote presentation on Windows. A possible solution could be to export them as PPT, but I've just tried, and it's not very nice, especially for the included formulas. You can also export them as PDF, in which case it's graphically nice, but you lose any animated transition.

Another solution could be to use Latexit to generate PDF, and to include the PDF directly in Powerpoint. If you use a white background, that can do the trick, since formulas will be exported with a white background (but maybe it's possible to set it up, I've never tried with Powerpoint to be honest, so maybe you can import SVG format directly in Powerpoint).


How should I let a professor know that I don't want to work for her?

It isn't much clear as to why Mr. K would insist you to work with Ms. E. It might be either of the following

It might most probably of Ms. E's suggestion/influence.
They might be on the same team (@virmaior's point)
Mr. K has just got another student he prefers over you.

To figure out why and how to react bases on why, @demitau's suggestion would be most appropriate; speaking openly with Mr. K should provide a solution.

If the answer to the last question is what you require (how to let Ms. E know I'd rather work with Mr. K?) then the most diplomatic approach is to say something like this: state that you feel much honoured to work with her. But it seems you current research interest are much inclined to that of Mr. K. Hence the decision.


Differences between fellowships in Europe

I am assuming you mean the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowships, since the Humboldt foundation has many different funding programs. Each of these programs all have their own application procedures and eligibility criteria, so you should read the respective application guides carefully and keep track of the different deadlines, if applicable. For example, the Humboldt and Emmy Noether fellowships have to be taken up in Germany, while the Marie Curie fellowships are EU-wide (well, it's slightly more complicated than that).

The main component of all of these applications is a research proposal, but each of them require different formats. For example, for the Marie Curie applications they provide a template describing all the sections that should be in your proposal.

The Emmy Noether fellowships differ from the others in the sense that they allow you to become a junior research group leader, i.e. they also provide funding for some PhD students and postdocs. You have to have at least two years of experience since your PhD to apply for a Emmy Noether (but not more than four). Because the amount funded is larger, I think the Emmy Noether is regarderd as the most prestigious of these fellowships (and presumably also the most difficult to obtain).

Finally, for your bonus question: yes, there are certainly many more fellowships, some field dependent, but for Germany specifically I think these are the most important individual fellowships.


Transitioning from pure mathematics to artificial intelligence

Congratulations on knowing what you want to do! This already puts you a step above many people who are still unsure.
There is good news and bad news for you, at least based on what you've written.

The good news is that familiarity with pure mathematics can be your biggest strength: formal concepts in AI will come easy to you, even when they may be difficult for others. For example, you likely already have the skills necessary to understand matrix algebra, derivatives of multivariable functions, probability and basic statistics, etc.

The bad news is that there are a lot of others like you -- AI is a very hot field, which draws a lot of interest from undergraduate and master's students in general. This makes getting into good programs more competitive.

Taking coursework, including online if you can't take relevant classes as part of your master's program, should put you in a position where you can get into master's programs as well as possibly weaker PhD programs. While you are still studying math, take classes in probability and statistics. If you want to get into good PhD programs, you will need research experience, so the route to take is to first get a master's (for example) in AI, and try to get to know a professor during that time and do some research in a lab.
Whatever your route, having a good mentor to advise you for your personal situation is critical (I would almost say strictly necessary). So keep this in mind as you look at programs. A large program or online program is less likely to give you a good mentor. Even a mentor in a related area like pure math statistics would be much better than nothing.


If a journal not indexed in SCI nor in EI, is it worth publishing in?

There are good journals that are not listed in the SCI, so this alone does not mean that the journal is bad. However, an overly long list of topics including non-descript terms like "web-service" and "Future technologies" looks bad. Also the sentence "Our journals’ impact factors have been compiled by Indexing Citation Board (ICB)."  is pretty suspicious, when you find out that ICB is actually "Infonomics Society’s Indexing Citation Board (ICB).". A review process of 4 to 6 weeks is also not hinting at serious checking. So even if this is a serious journal, someone tried really hard to make it look like trash, and I would definitely not consider publishing there.


Trimming my CV; or, what is appropriate to have in a CV at a given career stage

As has been suggested above, keep one version of your CV which is complete with everything you've ever done, and then trim it down as needed for a particular purpose.  I keep my CV up-to-date with lists of publications, conference presentations, grants, courses taught, graduate students supervised, committees served on, etc.  It's a very long document, but its easy to cut/paste what I need in various situations.


Value of having done applied math research when applying to PhD programs in pure math

Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math?

Certainly.  In my experience, nobody cares at all whether an applicant's research experience is directly related to their proposed specialty in graduate school.  There are several points to keep in mind:

There are only a limited number of research opportunities available for undergraduates, so finding one on your very favorite topic may not be possible.  Nobody would hold this against you.
Some topics just aren't accessible to undergraduates in the first place (e.g., motivic cohomology).
Most applicants don't really know what they will write their dissertations on, even if they think they do.  Many will change their minds a year or two into grad school.
Undergraduate research in mathematics is generally not as deep as grad student research, and the specific things you learn are not crucial.  Instead, the point is to see whether you have an aptitude for research and whether you enjoy it.  For those purposes, the precise topic doesn't really matter.  (Unless, of course, there's only one thing in the world that you would like to study, but I would consider that sort of narrowness to be a problem itself.)


When did English come to lead in published research?

English became the dominant international language of science across the first half of the 20th Century.

To summarize an excellent BBC article on the subject:

At the beginning of the 20th Century, there were three main language of science, French, English, and German, essentially corresponding to the biggest economic and political powers of the time (England, France, Germany, and the USA).
After World War I, Germany and the German language were essentially ostracized by the victorious nations, including an (unconstitutional) ban on the language in the United States. Europe was also generally weakened as a power.
The continued devastation of World War II and the rise of the US as a technological superpower cemented the collapse of German. French took longer to decline, but network effects and relative power had their impact eventually.

Thus, by the middle of the 20th century, English had become, in general, the dominant language of science. It was by no means absolute (and still is not), but its dominance has further strengthened over time. How long this will last and what will replace it are for anyone to guess.


Are there Conference Proceedings that have impact factor?

Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?

There is nothing like the "formal IF". What you are referring to is probably the Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Reports impact factor which is one of the most respected measures in the academic world. As such, to my best knowledge there is no such thing for conferences.

However, there are other sources which could prove useful as an estimate of conference quality:

As already Charles pointed out, there are exist cached versions of Citeseer's estimated impact factors for computer science, but this is too old to be useful.
Furthermore, Google Scholar lists ranks of top venues mixing journals and conferences in their listings. Here is an example of top publications for AI, as you might see, there are several conferences mixed in. They list h-index of the venue instead of an impact factor.
Another very useful, resource for ranking conferences is Microsoft Academic Search, where you can find profiles of conferences, such as this one for IJCAI and they also publish rankings for different categories of venues, see an example here.
Finally, you might find useful the Australian Research Council's ERA conference rankings from 2010. In 2012 they decided not to rank conferences any more, but the 2010 list is still very useful and at least somewhat authoritative. They would rank conferences into categories according to their own quality metrics, which however (at least in my area) correlate with the community's perception.


How to conduct research as a non-Latino in a Latino-studies research institute?

Congratulations on your upcoming research position! I understand why you might be nervous, especially since you expect to have two major differences with all your coworkers (ethnicity and methodology). Quantitative researchers are often treated as if they have higher status than their qualitative counterparts (funding discrepancies, accessibility of their research to colleagues in STEM fields, ability to "dabble" or "consult" in different situations without as much background knowledge, easy transfer of skills to jobs outside academia). So, you have (at least) two areas, central to your job, where it may be hard to communicate with coworkers and where you may have had very different experiences you're working from.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Your coworkers will (presumably) all be from different backgrounds. Even setting aside migration-related cultural differences, there are very different cultures across different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the extent to which people identify with indigenous heritage will also add diversity. Afro-Cuban religion, Andean culture, the Chican@ movement, and Brazilian social stratification are in the background of Latino studies, and probably none of your colleagues will have lived cultural experience with all of them.
That said, it is entirely possible that many people will feel comfortable chatting in Spanish or Spanglish, or making cultural references you don't know. It may be valuable to brush up on your Spanish and brush up on whatever Latino culture is local to where you are. (For instance, you might see if there are guest speakers or film nights at a cultural center on campus or arranged by your school's Latino studies program.)
(I am white and non-Hispanic.) I grew up with the idea that there was no longer racism in American society and that most apparent continuing racial differences were attributable to economic factors. In college, I learned from African American friends that yes, racism persists. In graduate school, I learned from the social science literature and colleagues' research that race definitely matters. Stated in the most conservative way, even after accounting for many, many other factors, race and ethnicity still help predict many life outcomes in modern America.

Racism is an active factor in society. Shaun Harper writes in his 2012 paper "Race without Racism: How Higher Education Researchers Minimize Racist Institutional Norms":

  I do not believe that every racial disparity or negative experience a minoritized person has is attributable to racism. However, ... most higher education scholars rely on everything but racism in their attempts to explain, theorize about, and discuss findings that emerge in their race-related studies. This trend is consistent with approaches sociologists commonly employ in their research (Bonilla-Silva & Baiocchi, 2001). (pp. 22-23)

There are many barriers that your colleagues have faced to get where they are. In this very readable article, Harper and Charles Davis III present "Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms," and they will probably be good to think about for a scholarly research environment, too.
Let's say that something you say is (mis)perceived as racist. It's hard to talk about race, and your job will involve talking about ethnicity and (likely) race. So you may want to think about what happens if you say the wrong thing and/or someone calls you out. This blog post, "My Fellow White People, Here's One Simple Trick You Can Do About Racism TODAY!" covers this situation. (You did not mention your racial/ethnic background beyond being non-Latino; however, at least some of the advice may apply even if you are often minoritized yourself.)
Show interest in your colleagues' research and methodologies. If any of them study/studied at the same place you do, ask for course recommendations.
If they are interested in your computational sociology, help them understand it, and (if appropriate) recommend resources they might benefit from.
Make sure that your research is written in a way that qualitative sociologists can fully engage with it, and help de-mystify quantitative work.
As in any position like this, remember that you're new but that you have interesting ideas. (If you tend to be more outspoken, use this to hang back more at the start. If you tend to be quiet, use this to speak up.) Talk with your advisor/boss/PI if you have questions about things, including office culture.
For the longer-term goals, your work at this institute is a good start. Be open to mixed-methods collaborations with the colleagues you meet here; many of them will probably work in fascinating settings and may have the opportunity to collect novel quantitative datasets alongside their detailed qualitative work.

Finally, here are some lengthier suggested readings:

Edward Bonilla-Silva's Racism without Racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America
Tufuku Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva's White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology
Acquaint yourself with the Culture of Poverty debate and its modern versions.
Acquaint yourself with the work of the top scholars at the institute.


How to approach a researcher regarding his latest publication?

I have some considerations about their results, parallels with our work, ideas for future research etc.

So use this as a starter. Write/ask about their paper and get a discussion going. In my experience this will very often automatically lead to a collaboration of some kind, like a follow up paper or a whole joint project.

As an alternative I would recommend that you talk to your supervisor, what he thinks about the group and if he would think starting a collaboration would be worth a try. Maybe he will then start to initialise the communication.


What are acceptable purposes in Statement of Purpose?

"I have no clue" is not going to get you far. The committee will probably interpret that you will not be very motivated, and motivation plays a big role in succeeding in study programs, especially if they include research.

You are also not expected to know exactly what you want to do the following ten years. From your question, you seem to know as much or as little about your future plans as the average applicant to graduate study, maybe even above average.

You are interested in the topic, and want to study further to learn more about it and have a better chance to make valuable contributions, either in academia or in industry. Say that.

You are not sure yet whether you want to continue in industry or academia, but you want to experience research in academia and be able to make a better informed decision afterwards. Say that if it is true.

You can mention your long-term goal, but make sure not to make it sound too ambitious/impossible to do. For example, I am interested in analyzing Machine Learning from a statistical point of view, with the aim to hopefully provide the community with a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is so powerful. Suit this to your own needs.

The fact that you have friends there and like the weather is in my opinion also worth mentioning, but without focusing on it. Mention it last, and only in one short sentence. Although this does not say anything about your ability to do research, it adds to your motivation to go there.

And just in case, do not copy-paste any of my sentences, but use them as a guide to come up with your own. This is about your motivation (not mine), and answers on StackExchange are public and easy to find.


TL;DR: If in doubt, leave it out.

In talks, avoid anything that can offend or be misunderstood, especially if you do not know your audience. It is ok to make self-deprecating jokes, but you want to keep the atmosphere somewhere between serious to light (depending), but outside the sentiment of sadness or anger if you do not have political ambitions. Your "angry faces" may be funny, but never underestimate that they may be misunderstood (including people believing that you did have a fall-out with your friend in the preliminaries of this work - you would be amazed at what people can read wrongly into a throwaway remark).

Myself, I am quite happy use caricatures in talks, but spend time choosing them carefully to help to highlight the scientific point, never on a meta-level. People are busy enough trying to understand what you are doing, do not waste their brain power on issues you think are funny, but irrelevant to the matter at hand.

But if you think something can backfire, you are probably right. If in doubt, better one caricature/clever idea less.


Your supervisor's first objection is against empty "connecting words", as you call them. Since they are empty, you may as well drop them:

  To effectively curtail pollution from all sources requires attention paid to the long-overlooked industrial pollution. [To this end T]his PhD research emphasises the need to...

Your argument, rather than some connecting words, should build the connection:

  To effectively curtail pollution from all sources requires attention paid to the long-overlooked industrial pollution. This PhD research emphasises the important role of industrial pollution in most immissions today [or whatever your argument is].

The second objection is not against starting sentences with an infinitive, but against splitting infinitives. I don't know whether split infinitives are really bad style or just a matter of taste. Since some of your readers believe the former, I would err on the side of caution. From Wikipedia:

  The opening sequence of the Star Trek television series contains a well-known example, where William Shatner says "to boldly go where no man has gone before"; the adverb boldly is said to split the infinitive to go.
  [...]
  The construction is to some extent still the subject of disagreement, but modern English usage guides have dropped the objection to it.

Here are my additional two cents: Avoid the passive voice. Who does the "requiring" in your first sentence? Who must pay attention?

  To curtail pollution from all sources, researchers and policy makers must pay more attention to the long-overlooked industrial pollution. This PhD research emphasises the important role of industrial pollution in most immissions today.


Should you go for computer science if you aren’t interested in it?

The situation in India may vary from my experiences, and the situation in times of a pandemic may vary from my experiences. Therefore, it is unclear how definitive any answer to your questions can be. But these are my two cents:
You should not go for any major that you're not interested in.
A degree from any of the fundamental sciences sets you up for many interesting jobs. From my math class, every one who graduated and wanted to find a good job, did find a good job.


Is it more acceptable to list interview talks on CV if they're also part of a seminar series?

Is that appropriate for inclusion on the CV as an invited talk?

Yes.

If someone invited you to give a talk, then it's an invited talk.  It is perfectly appropriate to list it on your CV as such.


Proper citation of scooped or defective articles

If the paper duplicates or rediscovers earlier results, you can simply cite the earlier work together with the new one.

  All splines are reticulated [Smith 1963; Jones 2008].

Or if only the earlier paper is really relevant, you can cite it alone. But if the Jones paper is commonly cited in this context, and you don't cite it, a reviewer may wonder why.  You can of course explain why you don't want to, but it may cause more friction between you and the reviewer than you want.  Or, your apparent unfamiliarity with the famous literature in your field may, in a borderline case, cause your paper to be rejected before you have a chance to explain.

If you feel strongly, you can say something like "The work of Smith is often overlooked, but is particularly significant because blah blah blah...".  In other words, you can promote the work of Smith if you don't think it is as widely known as it deserves, but don't explicitly put down Jones.

If a paper has an error that is relevant to what you are discussing in your paper, then describe it in the text.

  It was shown by Jones that every snark is a boojum [Jones 2008]; note that Equation 4.16 in that paper contains an error, where X should be replaced by Y.

I do not see any reason to mention that the authors have been notified.  The reader will presume that you did so, because that's what any sensible academic would do.  If the authors didn't do anything about it, you can take it up with the journal if you feel it's really important; but I think it's unprofessional to use your paper to passive-aggressively shame them.


Is it wrong to unintentionally withhold information?

If you were not aware, you did not "withhold" because that requires intention.

With time, you will practice insight about what implicit assumptions you make - this is part of the scientific development and even great scientists have not been free of that. Galilei transformation, for instance, was taken for granted for centuries, which was initially fine, but was sustained to the point where "ethereal" concept-bending had to be introduced to keep it alive.

As Einstein said: "The fish is last to discover water." Do not be too hard on yourself, as long as you put it firmly into your agenda to do your best to be fully aware of your assumptions and their validity. Discussion with friends/colleagues can help here.


Are one journal editor able to see decision of other journal editor in same publisher?

No. You can see the decisions of papers submitted to your journal, but not to other journals, even if they are by the same publisher. An employee of the publisher with access to both journals might be able to, but not the members of the editorial board.


Make a study plan, spreading time across all subjects.

Perhaps limit the number of questions you attempt in each etc - perhaps choose numbers 3, 5 & 7 for example.

Also include downtime in the plan - even 10 minutes between subjects as a 40 minute max period of concentration then a break is suggested by many.


Why does the UK produce so many research papers?

It is very common for academics to not live and work in the country of their birth, and I would assume that this becomes the more common the more research active they are. Many of the publications from British universities will not have been written by British (born) scientists.

Instead, we see stable loops of the following type:

University X has a good reputation
-> Productive researchers move to X
  -> a lot research gets done and published at X
    -> the reputation of X is good

The UK is home to many very prestigious universities, is not subject to language barriers and has mostly avoided historical disruptions to its research activity.


Can I use a Google map in my PhD thesis?

Google provides you the right to employ a Google Maps map on your thesis. See Permission Guidelines for Google Maps and Google Earth (first two points of The basics and Using maps in print).

However, they ask you to provide correct attribution for those pictures. It will be something like “Map data ©20xx Google, Sanborn”. As they write, you have to find the correct copyright statement on the map you would like to reproduce in your thesis.

Alternatively, it may be possible for you to use  OpenStreetMap which is Open Data material and has more permissive licensing.


Is this plagiarism? - Copy paste with reference

As already stated in the comments, this is indeed plagiarism. The additional information provided in the comments makes it more interesting, however.

Plagiarism is a form of scientific misconduct. Being accused of this is quite serious, as it covers such diverse acts as fabricating data and as here, having bad referencing practices. There is a substantial difference between these, and while both practices should be dealt with, perhaps discretion is advisable in a case like this? After all, a reference was made, which makes it a less serious case of plagiarism. My experience with this is limited, but have you considered that reporting it may also reflect badly on you, as it is a comparatively minor malpractice? Perhaps you should run it by any form of local ethics committee you might have as an anonymous case?


Should I resubmit a rejected paper to the same journal?

It depends on the reason for rejection.

If a paper is rejected because it's off-topic, it's not really interesting, it's not really new, etc.: then perhaps you were too ambitious.  A paper may be perfectly written and the science may be very decent, but still rejected from Nature, because its impact is not really large enough.

However, if a paper is rejected with a motivation like this topic would fit our journal, but some major aspects are missing in the study, and they are so grave that we choose to reject, then you can start over and submit a fixed study.  In fact, I have the impression that some journals that have fixed deadlines for revisions, will reject if it is deemed unrealistic to submit the revision in time.  Otherwise, there could be a huge difference between the submission date and the publication date, and that isn't beneficial to anybody.


Is university allowed to refuse to confirm my masters theme due to lack of appropriate research staff?

See this from the point of the department: They are giving out diplomas saying "we have seen the work produced by this student and certify that it meets these requirements". If there are no specialists in a given topic, how can they certify that you meet those requirements? When you choose a department for doing your masters then it is up to you to determine that they are doing the things you are interested in. So yes they can and should refuse if they feel they don't have anyone with the expertise necessary to evaluate your work. You can always ask your money back, but in all likelihood they refuse.

You can always ask the university to cover different topics, but universities cannot cover all topics so choices have to made. Adding a topic typically means hiring one or more additional professors. That is a really big long term investment. They are not going to make that investment because a student (who is almost done anyhow) wants that topic.


Would it be allowable (or prudent) to resubmit a book proposal

Usually, Yes, provided the revisions are substantial and have materially changed the book for the better.

You will need to read the proposal submission terms if the specific press allows resubmission of a rejected book. If they expressively and univocally prohibit it, don't bother.

  If so, what elements should be different or included in the new proposal

Please read the initial rejection letter and see if the reviewers have left any criticism/reason for turning your book down and see if the reasons cited have been addressed in your recent revision.

If yes, do highlight these revisions and include them in the new proposal/covering letter.


Will a 3.8 GPA and 1 F with an explanation on transcript allow me to get into graduate school?

Don't overthink things -- these things happen, and the people who make the selection among graduate students know this as well. If the rest of your grades are good and you have a good explanation, then that's all that's necessary.


Is it acceptable to setup a survey online (but not send to human subjects) before getting IRB approval?

Yes, this is quite standard. There is nothing special about setting up the survey in Qualtrics that requires IRB approval. Just be prepared to make any changes the IRB requires/recommends during the approval process.

Note that you should not SEND your survey to human subjects using Qualtircs. But taking it yourself or working through the bugs with an RA would be fine. Think about it this way - if this was a "paper survey" you would be allowed to type your survey before handing it into IRB. But you wouldn't be allowed to mail it to any subjects.


Is it worth doing a self funded MPhil in Mechanical Engineering, from UK?

From what I understand, UK MPhils are 1 year research based degrees, equivalent to or slightly above a masters. I am not that familiar with Indian degrees, but I am guessing an MTech is a masters level degree. You say that it is from a good Indian university, so I am pretty sure that if you have some research experience from your previous graduate studies, coupled with your work experience, that you can land a funded PhD position elsewhere. I think doing an MPhil (unfunded) at this time would be somewhat of a sideways step and a costly one at that.

I am aware funded PhD degrees for international students are pretty scarce in the UK. Most students I know who completed their PhD studies there did so with their own external funding (governmental, third party, etc.). I would suggest targeting other places (continental Europe, North America etc.)

Also from what I recall, an MPhil is seen as a stepping stone between an MSc and a PhD, so I am not sure how much meaning it has on its own. In general I think an MPhil is earned on the way to a PhD or awarded to students who for some reason are unable to complete the PhD.


How much more work should I put to my master's thesis?

Having a paper published on your own work, while doing a Master's degree (i.e. in a relatively short time) sure is a good point of your application to any graduate program. Having a paper submitted for publication is always a plus, but having one already published is a strong plus for you.

Regarding your thesis: the quality of the thesis itself will probably not matter much in admission to a PhD program, unless it is visibly bad, in which case it will sure hurt. Otherwise, chances are noöne will read it through when you apply. Thus, if you are strongly confident that your thesis can be accepted/graded/defended (I don't know what the detailed requirements are for your program) in its current state, don't overdo it.

Don't get me wrong: you don't want to be seen as the guy who did the absolute bare minimum to get away with it. That looks bad, and may leave a stain when people ask for references. Otherwise, if you think your thesis is of good quality, just submit it. The extra work it requires to get it to “perfect” or “awesome” is probably not worth it. The only exceptions I can see are:

if your Master's program has a ranking system, and getting a good rank (or even 1st) can boost your future applications
if the writing will also be useful for new papers, in which case you might as well include it in the thesis


Non-English literature: should we check for prior work?

Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics?

I would try my best to not ignore. If you are citing a paper that has cited a non english journal, I would read the citation to see if its relevant to my paper. Translation tools, although not always accurate, would give you a sense what the paper is talking about.
Maybe this article can answer your question to an extent.

http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/12


Having a lot of papers published in unimportant conferences VS very few in good ones?

People do things for a variety of reasons. Even writing a paper for smaller workshops has some benefits for everyone (from a PHD student to a professor)

Good reason for the affiliation to cover expenses for the suggested trip. Usually CS workshops are co-located with important conferences and even a workshop paper may cover your expenses (not every time if you continuously abuse the system) to actually watch the entire conference.
Workshops have limited attendance but may still be organized by reputable professors / scientists close to your area of interest. So, they are very good for networking. In a major conference, it is easier to get "lost" inside the many participants.
Practise makes better. If you write 5 papers (even when some of them were for a workshop) writing your 6th paper is going to be easier, instead of trying to write your "seminal" paper.
Reviewers have the "strange" habit of sometimes rejecting your paper. In this case, sending your paper to a smaller workshop (after rejection in 1-2 major conferences) where it gets accepted, lessens the sense of rejection and still "patents" your results on which you can expand later.
Workshops sometimes have a "best paper award" which may even lead to journal publication, when the same paper might not had a chance in a bigger conference. In workshops the competition is smaller (usually 10-15 accepted papers), so you have something like 5-8% chance for something like that.
Sometimes when you work on a specific project you  might discover something that although is not good enough for a major conference or later expansion, is still a compact solid idea that may help others. So, a good workshop paper may disseminate this idea to a larger audience.
Unfortunately, although quality should beat quantity, this is not the usual case. In some research projects, grants applications it is better to state that "A is the author of more than 50 scientific papers with an h-index of ... " than "B is the author of 2 papers". Same when you look at the Google Scholar / DBLP record of an author. It is better to see 50 papers (which among them are 10 really seminal papers) instead of just 10 perfect papers that usually leave a gap in the author's bibliography (blank years).

In this sense, even workshop papers serve their purpose if you treat them as professionally as the rest of your papers (they are well written and still scientifically solid and correct).


How are letters of recommendation handled when they come from a member of the admissions committee?

I've seen this situation.  In our department all faculty vote on admission decisions (we don't have a separate committee that is delegated to make these decisions.)  The faculty who have written recommendations have typically argued in favor of admitting the students they've written recommendation letters for, but it would also not be surprising if a faculty member who recommended a student felt that other candidates were better qualified when it came time to make final decisions.

It's one thing to say "I think student A is well qualified for our graduate program and a TA." This is not inconsistent with "After reviewing all of the candidates, I feel that students B and C (with BS degrees from elsewhere) are the most deserving of the two available TA slots." or even "After discussion with other faculty members, and reading all of the recommendation letters, I've agreed that student A should not be admitted to the program."

It's important to understand that these are group decisions, and that faculty committees often operate by discussion and consensus rather than by simple vote counting- a lot can happen during such a discussion.

As an applicant, there really isn't anything that you can do about this- the faculty in the department will deal with it as they choose.


How do I reply to a professor's email who wants to chat with you?

He wants to know more about your background preparation and your research interests. He likely also wants to get a sense of how you would fit into his research program.

However, he may also just be interested in grad students generally and wants to think about whether some other prof would be good to work with you if he can't.

I expect that the chat will be entirely informal and give you a chance to look around the department and maybe meet a few people. I once asked a prof if he would be my advisor and he declined, but suggested another, who turned out to be a much better match. I don't think he actually introduced us (long time ago - poor memory) but think he just suggested I approach the other (more senior) prof.


Is it possible to have a healthy work-life balance as a professor?

To add to the existing answers:

  Can you be a (relatively) “lazy” professor and still hold a position?

Yes. Once you have a (tenured) position, you can probably be rather lazy and still hold onto it.

  So do you think that it is possible to have a healthy work-life balance as a professor or is that approach to a professorship, at least early on, not realistic for the modern market place of academia?

The part about "at least early on" is crucial here. While you can (and some do) gear back a bit once you have tenure, you don't generally get into this position by being lazy. Academia is very competitive (as other answers have indicated), and to end up on top of a hiring pile you will need to be considerably more accomplished than your peers. For most people, being more accomplished means that you will have to put in the hours (and even then there are no guarantees, of course).

Generally speaking, the description of how you envision the job indicates more interest in a teaching-focused, low-research position. This is perfectly appropriate. Competition for such jobs may be a bit lower than at the top research schools, but is (at least in most areas of the world) still high enough that a truly lazy person will not see any offers.

However, and this is important, it is my observation that professors at teaching-oriented schools do not actually work less than their counterparts at research schools. In teaching-oriented schools, the teaching load will evidently be (much) higher, and individual students may be weaker (meaning that they often need more time-consuming direct support). TAs are common in research schools, but often rare or completely unknown in teaching-oriented schools. All in all, from talking to colleagues at teaching-oriented schools, I got the impression that they are putting in at the very least comparable hours to me (often for lower status and salary). You should not fall into the trap of envisioning a teaching position as the same as a research-focused professorship, with the only difference being that nobody cares if you do research.

It is still possible to have a work-life balance (in both, research and teaching focused positions), but it will require some planning and working smart and dedicatedly. It is unlikely that you will manage to get tenure by actively being lazy.


When is it appropriate to close your office door when meeting with a student?

This is one of those topics for which different people have different opinions. Some professors (and some programs) have no issue with meeting with students one-on-one behind closed doors. Others will avoid it whenever possible. There are many, many factors that can affect the decision - including sensitive issues such as gender, power imbalances, tenure or job security, etc. It is impossible to give one-size-fits-all advice.

That being said, I think it is a fine practice to meet with your door open whenever possible, and simply lower your voice to avoid sharing private information such as grades.  For ordinary meetings, such as office hours, there is no serious reason to meet behind closed doors.

For situations where there are other concerns - such as concerns about of any kind of unprofessional behavior or claims about unprofessional behavior - it is often better to ask another faculty member to be present for the meeting. Even if they do not speak, their mere presence can genuinely help defuse tense situations by keeping you and the student more calm. Moreover, the other person is also able to recount their memory of the meeting should it be necessary, avoiding some issues that can arise when only two people were present for a conversation.


Can I apply to a PhD program if I will be graduating with my undergraduate degree in the summer term instead of the spring term?

(Assuming USA) Yes, you can apply if you are graduating in the summer.  No, I do not see any reason why you should not do this.  You should probably explain your plan and the reasons for it in your application.


Are MOOCs putting teaching professors out of a job?

No. From The Kernel, 2015:

  Just a few short years after promising higher education for anyone
  with an Internet connection, MOOCs have scaled back their ambitions,
  content to become job training for the tech sector and for students
  who already have college degrees.

  At what was arguably the peak of the hype about massive open online
  courses, the New York Times crowned 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC.”
  That was the year computer science professor Sebastian Thrun announced
  that, after an experiment teaching an online course that attracted
  100,000 enrollees, he could no longer teach at Stanford; he was
  founding an online education startup, Udacity. That same year, his
  colleagues in the department, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, founded a
  competing MOOC startup, Coursera. Harvard and MIT also launched their
  own (nonprofit) MOOC initiative, edX. And universities around the
  world scrambled to partner with one or more of these organizations,
  amidst claims from investors, entrepreneurs, and pundits that MOOCs
  were poised to bring about the end of the university as we know it.

  “In 50 years,” Thrun told Wired, “there will be only 10 institutions
  in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at
  being one of them.”...

  Yet despite these well-rehearsed and triumphant stories of MOOCs’
  global outreach, the notion that MOOCs could provide higher education
  to everyone quickly proved flawed. The success stories were the
  exception, rather than the rule. MOOCs were lambasted for having a
  high dropout rate; the average completion rate still hovers around 15
  percent, a level that would be unacceptable for a traditional
  face-to-face college class. And when the demographics of “successful”
  MOOC students were scrutinized in one University of Pennsylvania
  study, it was discovered that 80 percent already had college degrees.
  Rather than providing opportunities for the educational “have-nots,”
  MOOCs seem just as likely to further the opportunities of the
  educational “have-alreadys.”...

  Thrun has abandoned his prediction that there will only be 10
  universities in the future. What he’s retained is a story in which the
  only reason for post-secondary education is to fulfill the needs of
  employers—something colleges, he claims, do not do well.


What software do you use to keep up to date on literature, and if Google Scholar, how do you avoid information overload?

Some options, most of which are actually not software:

Subscribe to alerts for new papers published in your favorite journals via email or rss feed. (Be selective enough to not become inundated.)

Try a recommendation engine (and pay with your privacy) like Mendeley.

Subscribe to newsletters of relevant research associations and networks.

Ask colleagues what they've found interesting recently, or more specifically what literature they recommend on a given topic.


How to review a revised paper I have already rejected?

When you recommended rejection, you presumably listed a series of issues that made it unacceptable.  On the revision, you go back and repeat the list of issues and simply say for each one, "The revision has/has not corrected this problem".  If you reach the end of your list and all the issues have been corrected and no new issues have been introduced in the revision, then you say the paper is now suitable for publication. If the issues have not all been corrected, then you say "The paper is still not suitable for publication because the issues I noted previously have not been corrected."


How to enter graduate school in a social science discipline from a computer science background?

I am not totally familiar with how social science graduate programs work. But, in general, in order to have success with grad school applications after your undergraduate: (1) you should show you have the theoretical knowledge needed to succeed in your research and graduate studies (2) AND you should show some hands-on experience, at least tangentially, related to the area of research and study you want to pursue.
If you want to get into some interdisciplinary areas like computational social science, e.g. social network data analysis, your computer science background is a definite asset that definitely helps you both get into the program and get ahead in your studies. If a program of choice is interdisciplinary enough, they may not care about your lack of coursework in humanity or suggest you take prerequisites as part of their program.
However, if you don't want to "beat around the bush", so to speak, and get into more theoretical and pure social science fields, I think you need to take the essential coursework similar to what students with those majors take. Having research in social science beforehand also would work if you can allocate some time for that. It may require you to take an extra year to take all the extra credits but I argue that it also benefits you and increases your success in grad school, even considering the fact that you are a self-studied and well-versed person in social science. Grad school is not often a good place to catch up with fundamentals. I think it is important to take your time and build the foundations before starting your grad school studies.


My ex employer wants me to draft my own reference letter to the MSc program, is it unethical?

No, it is not. Your employer will get the letter and "tweak" it. When he uploads that letter, it means that he agrees with its content.

I had seen multiple professors do this to some colleagues of mine and there is nothing unethical about it.


Homework is to be submitted according to a guideline that is nowhere to be found

If you don't need to submit anything for 3 weeks and it's so early in the term that you don't even know who your TA is, I would wait until you do.  You can't be the only one who has no idea what your TA wants if you don't even know who it is.

There's a pretty good chance you'll get a short orientation in your section where the expectations will be explained and you can ask questions.


Which is better: to achieve my master degree in usual time or use extra time to prepare myself for a PhD?

I suppose it might vary between different countries, and I have no idea how things work in Brazil. Here in Europe, extra classes would probably have some value, while the fact that you finished earlier - not so much. If you could start some actual research activity it would also be quite helpful in your application.
Another aspect is that when applying for a PhD you might need reference letters from established academics, and maybe you could use this extra time to impress someone and make sure the letter you'll get will be stronger.
Of course, all this neglect the financial aspect of this decision, but since you mention you have a scholarship, maybe this won't be a problem for you.


Is there a problem with citing the original source instead of the source where the information was first found?

You are correctly citing the original source of the idea/quote (which you looked up and read in context, as you should).

You don't (usually) have to cite the paper that exposed you to that original source. The purpose of a citation is to

give credit to the originator of an idea/quote
tell readers where to look to verify your claims about that idea/quote

In this case, citing the original source satisfies both purposes and is sufficient.

An exception is a review paper, which doesn't add new research, but collects and comments on relevant sources on a subject. In this case, the curation of materials is the novel idea contributed by the review paper. If you then go on to use the collection of sources you found via that paper, it's often appropriate to cite the review paper also.

Similarly, if you use the interpretation of the original source found in the secondary source, you should also cite the secondary source.


Does "required reviews completed" mean good news or bad?

It doesn't even necessarily mean that all reviews are completed. Sometimes editors invite more reviewers than is required. This message only means that the configured lower bound has been reached.


Is it normal for universities to limit the number of PhD students a professor can supervise?

I checked the regulations at the places where I've worked.
Two out of three (UCL and The University of Plymouth) have limits of the type discussed; one (The University of Cambridge) doesn't.  That makes me lean towards "yes" as the answer to "is it accepted and widespread".


Checking the content of research statement

Yes, your PhD advisor should definitely go over your research statement. Getting you a job is part of his or her job.

The people writing your recommendation letters should also go over your research statement and give you feedback. It will also help them write letters.


First time being asked to review a conference paper

Yes. I don't know for conference paper, but with journal, they usually end the year with a thank you to all reviewers. This "thank you" is available online and is a proof you indeed reviewed. But I doubt that anyone will ever verify this.
I think it might be unusual, but it is a good thing. First, it means your undergraduate advisor think that you can do it (abilities but also he/she thinks you know this subject). Second, lots of people are talking about reviewer overload. Using qualified PhD student can reduce that overload.
Experience, increased self-confidence and yes, recognition from you ex-advisor...

I suggest you consult this great article to help you start:

Seals, D. R., & Tanaka, H. (2000). Manuscript peer review: A helpful checklist for students and novice referees. Adv Physiol Educ, 22, 52-58.

In my experience, doing my first review, I was a bit stressed but mostly excited. I wanted so much to do everything well. Thus, the authors got an honest and very complete review. If you try to be as thorough as you would like your own work to be revise, all should go well. Good luck.


If you did something relevant that relates to the PhD position you are applying to, then it should be fine to include it in the CV.


Is it okay for a lecturer to set an assignment about the products of a company he works for?

It would be ethically questionable if the person who assigns the question gets to benefit from the assignment, directly or indirectly. For example, if students had to buy a product and the lecturer gets a cut of the revenue from his employer. Or if the company later uses student reports to improve the product or its marketing, and the instructor benefits from this.

On the other hand, if it's just an exercise in evaluating articles and writing reports, then what the topic really is doesn't matter all that much. After all, we give homework on all sorts of completely made up and contrived topics; why not use a real-world testcase, in particular if the instructor is familiar with it and can give actual and informed feedback? You might learn more from this example than you might if the instructor made up the documents you have to evaluate, or if you had to evaluate things the instructor is only marginally familiar with.


What should I be doing now to get a good recommendation letter as a graduate student?

One suggestion is to get a good teaching reference if you're working as a TA.  Most departments have one or more faculty who supervise graduate student TA's.  If you're actually leading a recitation section or teaching a class, you should ask this person if they would be willing to write a recommendation letter addressing your teaching and you should invite them to observe you in the classroom environment.  A good letter of this support together with good student evaluations will make a strong case for your ability as an instructor.


Best template for Poster presentation :First time(Conference)

Definitely worthwhile looking at previous posters from your conferences and other plus hunting around for posters from your department and team. There are some good sites that go through the background and with more concrete suggestions.

For a more traditional style of poster - https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/

There has been a spate of new poster styles if you are feeling adventurous - London School of Economics

-


From a short comparison of the features listed on the website here is list of Mendeley features that ReadCube doesnt have:

In-text citation insertion and formation: Mendeley has Word and other plugins, ReadCube only exports to Endnote and "your favorite citation software"
Sharing and collaboration features
ReadCube is only a desktop app (no web app), and it doesn't work on Linux
Mendeley has an open API to query its huge database

On the other hand:

ReadCube is used as the online reader for a few publishers: Nature, Frontiers and Wiley.
ReadCube suggests personalized article recommendations (dont know if they're good, though)


Why are most scientific articles locked behind a paywall?

Once upon a time, before the internet existed, the only way to distribute scientific content to a worldwide audience was through print. There are obvious costs related to printed publications such as paper, ink, printing, distribution, etc. Commercial publishing houses were established, which took care of this task, as well as the editing, the type-setting, organizing the review process (mind that the reviewers are typically not paid, but they still have to be found, contacted, etc, and all of that also costs money in a pre-internet era).

Many of these commercial scientific journals gained a certain reputation over time, and it became attractive for scientists to try to publish in the highest valued journals. For the publishers it was (and is) attractive to maintain the journal's reputation (e.g. expressed in its impact factor, etc), in order to attract an abundance of high quality manuscripts, select the best ones, and keep a large audience.

This was (and to a large extent still is) the status quo when the internet arose. This is also basically the answer to your question.

Now with the internet, it is perfectly possible to reach a large worldwide audience without the costs of printed journals (e.g. ArXiv). Also, peer review could be organized in an alternative manner. However, the commercial publishers have a lot of interest in keeping the old business model alive, as it is the source of their revenue.

So why are things largely as they were 50 years ago? There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, there is the absence of a platform that fully replaces the ring of scientific journals, including a reliable peer review process (or accepted alternative). Furthermore, people tend to do what they are used to doing in the past, and senior researchers (the ones who take the decisions) are used to publish in the traditional venues, and teach the juniors to do the same. Lastly, many researchers are (at least partially) evaluated with respect to the reputation of the venues they publish in, which keeps the old and established journals alive.


Can non-PhDs or non-Masters be on an accredited college's faculty?

It depends on what you mean.  If you are asking a theoretical question about whether there are rules that forbid it, then the answer is that it is theoretically possible, at least at some universities.  For example, Andrew Gleason was a tenured professor of mathematics at Harvard from 1953 through his retirement in 1992, without ever having attended graduate school.  (Technically, Harvard awarded him an honorary master's degree when he became a faculty member, but he had no master's degree when he was hired and never received a Ph.D.)  The rules vary between universities, but I do not believe Harvard's have changed since Gleason was there.  For another example, if you invent the World Wide Web, you can become a professor with no master's degree.

On the other hand, it is impossible in practice.  Unless you have received some sort of major academic recognition (a big prize, universities specifically soliciting an application from you despite knowing you have no master's degree, etc.), it's not even worth thinking about, since the chances of being hired are almost indistinguishable from zero.  If you are aiming for an academic career, choosing not to go to graduate school means giving up on that career.

By the way, I'm assuming here that you are asking about fields in which there are very few famous practitioners without advanced degrees.  I can imagine that in certain fields (perhaps art, business, or politics), there might be more people who would be attractive to universities despite having only a bachelor's degree.  But even in those cases, it would require truly impressive achievements.


What is the difference between Elsevier's 'waterfall system' and 'cascading peer review'?

I managed to get some more information on this from William Gunn (@mrgunn), Director of Scholarly Communications at Elsevier. So not an official legal statement from a patent lawyer, as he notes himself, but a plain-English explanation from someone familiar with publishing and who has had a chance to ask the people involved, which is pretty much everything I could have wanted. Short Twitter-transcript follows (stripping out Twitter tags; otherwise as written); I'll probably try to come up with a better way to format this later.

@MrGunn: "The Elsevier legal team says this just covers our
implementation & is defensive."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/777989863748448256)
@MrGunn: "IOW [in other words], not to be used to sue anyone else, just to prevent us
from getting ripped off"
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/777990251667087360)
Me: "Thanks, that's helpful. So what makes system distinct? How do
you tell if ripped off?"
(https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778146459044745217)
@MrGunn: "(making room) It's common for software companies to patent
their implementations of a more general process. That's all this is."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/778269748236685312)
Me: "thanks - that helps. So it would only be enforced if someone
literally copied the Elsevier code and tried to pass it off as
theirs?" (https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778497951232618496)
Me: "Well, not necessarily line-for-line, but if you had reasonable
suspicion that they'd used the Elsevier system as a starting point?"
(https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778498336156418048)
@MrGunn: "Enforceability of software patents is not a subject I know
very much about, but I would guess so."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/778606526160175104)

So it's not intended to cover the general process of cascade reviewing, but only the specific implementation used by Elsevier.


What do legit journal/conference/review invitations look like?

The #1 criterion is: they come from someone whose name you recognize as a respected colleague in the field. Or, at least, a conference or a journal that you know already.

The #2 criterion is: they look like they are not written automatically. Compare

  Dear Arthur, I have seen your very interesting article on shiny rocks and I would like to invite you...

and

  Dear A.Uthor, I have seen your very interesting article Shiny rocks in South African Mines: a Case Study and I would like to invite you...

The second one seems auto-generated, since they copied over your name and title verbatim. The first one looks like someone went through the effort of paraphrasing the title into a real English sentence.

In my opinion also putting a lot of emphasis on proceedings, Scopus and ISI-indexed journals and impact factors is a red flag. This is something I would never mention if I were inviting a real person to a conference.


A time frame for a faculty position application application in UK

In my experience English[1] universities will notify all applicants shortly after the shortlist has been decided upon, either with a positive or negative response. Moreover, this decision is typically quite fast, around 2weeks - 2months.

[1] I have insufficient experience with Welsh and North-Irish universities, and have applied to Scottish universties and never received a response at all.


While six months is not unusual in computer science (where journals have little urgency), a year is too long to go without any response.  Write to the editor, and ask politely when you should expect a response.


Does anyone fund research in mathematical finance?

Ignoring the somewhat tendentious statements about mathematicians and funding mathematics, the National Science Foundation in the US is one example of an agency funding research in mathematical finance. In fact, all I did was type "nsf mathematical finance" into google and I got three awards listed in the top 10. I'm sure there are many more.


Why does the Statistics community publish in journals while the Machine Learning community presents at conferences?

This came up just the other day in a class - journal vs conference publications.

Background; pros and cons:

I came to CS from neuroscience, a field (like most?) in which journals were the primary currency and some of the larger conferences accepted posters / talks but with only a minor vetting process. Conferences were often used to present preliminary work and get feedback on methodology, journal articles were for the meat of the work. I had many conference posters (and one or two journal papers) on my CV when i applied to CS programs and was surprised at how professors were impressed by that - it seemed pretty common for people in neuro to have a good number of conference posters/talks.

Conference papers have low latency of acceptance/presentation. Typically deadlines are 4-7 months out from the conference, which tends to be quite a bit faster than journal article acceptances / publications. In my relatively short career, i've worked on papers (in neuroscience) that took 2+ years to publish, from intial submission to revision rounds to acceptance and publication. Conferences also tend to give your work more visibility - I recently presented my recent research at an SC15 workshop and had more feedback and potential collaborations come out of it than i ever did from my 1st-author journal article or from poster sessions in neuro conferences.

Journal articles allow for considerably greater depth and treatment of the topic at hand and are much more useful for reproducibility and understanding. Conference papers tend to have hard page limits and if the work is substantial enough, you can be forced to gloss over detail and have the potential to not ever publish follow up papers to explain the missing details.

A good issue around this, and this is what we discussed in class, was Google's Spanner paper, presented at OSDI. The paper is groundbreaking and incredibly impressive work, but due to the limitations of the format (short paper, again), much of the detail and nuance needed to understand the work is left out. The paper even mentions that a follow up paper would be forthcoming - three years later and it hasn't materialized. For such a huge piece of work that encompassed years of principle engineer time at an org like Google, it was probably better suited to a 30~ page journal article, but it may not have had the same impact as it did being presented at OSDI - one of the premier systems conferences.

your question

To answer the question at hand, (why is it like this), many people have written about it (at conferences and journals!). One longer discussion can be found here.

Perhaps it is as simple as "this is how it has been for a long time and change is hard" - not particularly satisfying, but might explain a great deal of the variance here.


The route for a 2nd year physics PhD student to have a career as a data scientist

If you compete in Kaggle competitions, or the physionet challenge (and win), that will do a lot to prove you are a credible data scientist, no matter what your degree is.


You can try setting up one or more GoogleScholar alerts. You will get a mail if a new paper from your area of interest is added to Scholar. So please keep in mind that this only works for papers that do end up on scholar.

The alerts are not specific to any journal, but you can specify a set of keyword to search for. If you do not find another way this might be a workaround if you put some time into crafting your alerts. I use this to keep track of a very small but specific field (in Computer Sciences), so I do not know how it will scale up for your problem.

As far as I know it is not possible to set an alert a specific journal, but I have not put much research into this. It might be possible.


Are you required to report audited courses when applying for graduate school?

Don't worry about it.

I don't believe I've ever heard of a school requiring that audited courses must be reported when applying for admission. Essentially, if you're not getting some sort of official recognition for having taken the course (credit or placement in some form), then you don't have to report it.

As far as "getting an (unfair) advantage" from it, you could get a similar advantage by getting the textbooks for your courses over the summer and reading them ahead of time. Nobody would expect you to report that or call it unethical, so why would it be any different just because you audited an online course?