I don't think people who review 10–20 papers per month are likely to be doing a good job.  They are probably just reading a paper once and writing a couple paragraphs (at most) based on superficial impressions.  I've certainly gotten reports on my own papers that seemed to be produced that way; and they were both frustrating and not very useful.
I personally review about 3–6 papers each month, and that is by far the most of anyone in my department; I have also received outstanding referee rewards from multiple journals, mostly just recognizing my high levels of work.  (This also represents a big part of the professional service work that is expected of me as a faculty member.)  It would certainly be possible for me to referee five times as many papers (although I would have to contact a lot of editors to volunteer my services), but that would turn refereeing into a the largest component portion of my total workload.  It would not be possible to do those reports properly and still be a productive researcher.


Is having a chapter in an open-access book valuable as a publication?

For the kind of book you seem to describe, I think citations would be to chapters of the book, hence to the authors.

But pretty much any reviewed and edited publication you have helps you, though some more than others. Since you have done the work, consider the relative merits of having this vs not having it, or someone else having a chapter in your place.

If you still had the work to do, you might consider where your time and efforts would be better spent, but with the work behind you, the writing effort should pay off over time. If no one else cites it, you certainly can in work that builds on what you did. It gives you visibility with the other authors as well, and can lead to future opportunities.

I don't see any negatives other than the time spent in writing. And, saying no to the editors might not be the wisest move.


Has anyone heard of the "Central Library of Medicine Foundation"?

After googling for the Central Library of Medicine Foundation, I found the following post on the University of Muenster site (note I used Google Translate to translate the piece from German to English):

  Recently, faculty members have received many article requests from a
  "Central Library of Medicine Foundation", which was apparently
  acting on behalf of South American doctors.

  While researchers are usually happy to accommodate private, direct inquiries
  from colleagues, there is naturally some skepticism, since we do not
  know if this service costs the requesting physician or how much
  the "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" receives.

  After some inquiries with South American and Spanish-speaking
  colleagues the following picture emerges: the website www.rima.org (The
  "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" aka "Fundación Biblioteca
  Central de Medicina" aka "Red Informática de Medicina Avanzada" (RIMA))
  is a non-library organization based in Buenos Aires that offers physicians
  and researchers to get an article for a given fee (the exact amount is unknown). RIMA neither
  buys the article from the publisher nor copies it from a local library (which
  presumably cannot afford journals), but services the requests by directly
  forwarding them to the authors, in many cases, Münster faculty members.
  This probably the name "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" is
  used to simulate the unselfish non-profit library.

  Everyone must of course know how to handle it themselves. To send a
  reprint by email costs only a push of a button and it helps indeed
  ultimately a colleague who is certainly not as well supplied with
  magazines as oneself. On the other hand, you will be benefiting a commercial (?)
  intermediary organization, which may not help you,
  either. But maybe it is just a clever business idea of 10 unemployed
  Argentine doctors, to help them earn a living. . . .

So it seems that this Central Library of Medicine Foundation is a business that charges a fee to its clients for obtaining a paper, via you. Although this is probably not really legal or moral, this fee is probably lower than what, say, Elsevier is asking for the same paper. I think this situation makes a good argument for open-access journals.


Should an application for a second postdoc position include a reference to PhD supervisor?

If you're afraid the relationship with your supervisor results in a negative reference for you, I suggest not to include him. However, based on the alternative options you have, you must be sure that they actually know you and are able to provide a reference for you.

Although the director of the institute potentially carries more weight (he's the director, after all), he must know about your work and your work ethic. If you worked closely with another professor in your project, it's more likely he is able to provide a better reference for you, and I would choose the professor over the director in that case.


How to "tailor" the statement of purpose for a particular grad school

I have been involved in graduate admissions for a quite a few years. Answer below is based on that experience.

This question about fit is a way to make sure that you know approximately what you are getting yourself into.

You do not have to stroke professors' egos by telling how great they are. It does not help your application. If you have interest or past experience in some area, mention it of course, but do not engage in gratuitous flattery. Instead we want to know why this school is suitable to you at all. For example, if you are interested in doing mostly algebraic geometry, but are applying to a department that has no algebraic geometers, this would be a poor fit. If there is a reason you like the location (e.g. a significant other working nearby, or cheap flights home), it does not hurt saying so either.

What we want to avoid is to have a 3rd or 4th year graduate student drop out because they cannot find an advisor in their preferred area, and are utterly unhappy because of location or because of something else.

In general, the statement of purpose is your opportunity to present evidence that you will make a good researcher one day. That includes your scientific background, various personal traits as demonstrated by your past, and your accomplishments. See an excellent answer to another question by JeffE for more details.


What are the moral and legal consequences of "not thanking" government for not providing viable grants?

Academic publications are in general not the right place for politics. And especially not for personal vendettas. Doing the latter is deeply unprofessional (though I'd wager some great scientists did this as well).

However, government officials and institutions are public not private actors and as such are in democratic societies put to more scrutiny (in their official function) than private actors. Addressing StrongBad's concern of people starting to "not thank" your publisher,supervisor etc, this is definitely a difference I would see.

For contemporary major moral discussions - like "should we start a genocide or not" - I'd say the bigger moral question can trump the professionality aspect by far though.

Now that we covered the general and extreme cases, back to the dirty middle ground.
Criticizing a political official or institution who acts in a researchers opinion damaging to science (or to society by his stance to science) or who likes to claim supporting science while his acts paint a different picture, I'd consider a borderline case.
It's a public body and it affects science, thus to some degree relevant for the audience and the author. Especially when there is no official body properly representing the scientific community in that country, such a statement may be a reasonable approach to inform the public about the opinion of the broader scientific community. But it comes off as petty easily if it's just general critic for a particular agenda that doesn't suit your own ideas or if it seems you are just angry because you in particular didn't get funding while others did.

So legally, it's irrelevant in most countries, as long as you don't include libel or insult (depending on country). It is, in general, unprofessional, but sometimes the bigger issue at stake may still validate it morally.

It's basically your individual choice to break with the professionality in order to further your political agenda. It may hinder your scientific career and cost you reputation, while helping your agenda. However, if you're unlucky it may also have the opposite effect and along with your own reputation loss, cost your political movement reputation with conservative people/voters/observers. In the end, it is very context depending - who are you criticizing, for what reasons, who is your audience and how receptive may they be to your message. Same for your career. If your scientific peers agree with your opinion they may ignore your breach with professionality - but does that also hold for international colleagues who may have no idea what you are ranting about?


I got a paper to review from a journal that had rejected my earlier works, how to respond?

These two issues are separate: if they reject your paper without comments, that's where you have to complain. They did not do a good job, reputable or not, and you are entitled to an explanatory review, especially since they wasted your time.

But you should not link the issues. If you think the journal is not as good as it used to be, you can decide not to review. If you think it is good, then, depending on how much time you have, you can offer to do the review. And if you do, do it with as much goodwill as you would for a journal that gave your astounding reviews.

But you should not link your rejection and your review - it is tempting to do so, but it is not a professional attitude. And you want to be just that: a professional.


Giving a talk on a paper whose authorship is not finalized

Z's name, I am sure, will be on the paper as an acknowledgement at least, even if not as an author. With that in mind, you could probably quite comfortably put Z's name up as a contributor without worrying about misleading the audience.

In some fields, this is made easier by a tradition of having an acknowledgements slide rather than putting up multiple names as authors on the first slide. In this model, only the speaker goes on the title slide, and everybody else worth mentioning goes in the acknowledgements slide (typically the last slide, which stays up during questions), with no particular distinction being made between levels of contribution. If this is accepted in your field it can give you a neat manner of sidestepping the question.


Is it Customary Under Certain Circumstances to Provide Personal Information on one's Academic Website?

In US academia, I have never felt there is any expectation that an academic website should contain any personal or family information, such as marital status.

Some people choose to post personal information; this is their choice and (within reason) considered to be fine. Some people choose not to; that is their choice and considered to be fine.

You won't find my marital status on my professional web page, as I happen to feel that it's irrelevant to anyone looking for professional information about me. Nobody has ever even suggested to me that I should change that.


How do you cite an image no longer found on the internet

If you can't find the source at all, you should choose a different image. You can't simply put a citation like:

  Image. Found on the internet, source unknown.

Even though it would be nice to be able to do that, that defeats the purpose of having a citation at all, which is so that people can see where you got it.

You might find the following questions useful:

This question that was pointed out in the comments seems to be a case similar to yours, with good advice. Basically you need to somehow track down the source; once you have tracked it down, the specific citation text is not such a big deal, as long as you are listing the source.
This question is also relevant. Unfortunately or not, the culture is extremely pervasive in academia to just go pasting images from the internet without citations (especially Google images, and especially in presentations rather than published papers). This is not completely ethical, but it is common practice.


Semi-solicited motivation letter for professorship

(My answer assumes that you are in the US, or another country with a similar tenure system.)

Summary: Ask your local experts.

Every reputable university should have written documentation of the policies, procedures, and standards for tenure-track faculty promotions. Here are the procedures for my university. Read yours. Today. Now.  Really, you should have read it before you accepted your current position.  These are the policies that explain what "tenure" and "full professor" means at your institution.

A standard component of most tenure/promotion processes is that the candidate submits statements summarizing their most important accomplishments, ongoing efforts, and future plans in research, teaching, and service.  The purpose of these statements is to answer the question "Why do you deserve this promotion?"  These statements are almost certainly what your dean meant by "motivating your candidature". The specific format and contents of these statements depend on your university's promotion expectations/standards/practices/priorities, which is why you must read those policies before you even think about applying for (or even working toward) a promotion.  In particular, research-intensive schools have different (not "higher" or "lower") expectations from more teaching-focused schools.

Another standard component is an evaluation of your tenure/promotion case by members of your promotions and tenure ("P&T") committee, which is almost certainly composed of senior faculty in your department, or larger unit if your department is small.  The purpose of their evaluation is to answer the question "Why does your colleague deserve this promotion?"  You should already know what they're going to write, because you've already discussed your case in detail with at least one senior faculty member who serves (or has served) on the P&T committee.  (If you don't already have a senior faculty mentor, march into your department chair's office today and demand one.)  Your faculty mentor knows the unwritten priorities/standards/politics that the committee will apply, and so they can effectively help you craft your pitch.

Another standard component is a letter from your department chair to the dean (or whatever titles your boss and their boss have), summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of your case and the deliberations of the P&T committee.  The purpose of this summary is to answer the question "Why does your faculty member deserve this promotion?" Aside from snippets from your recommendation letters (which haven't been written yet), you should already know what this letter will say, because you've already discussed your case in detail with your department chair. In fact, you've already had at least one discussion every year with your department chair about your evolving career and your progress toward a strong tenure/promotion case (if you have not had such a discussion with your chair, walk into their office today and demand one).  Your department chair knows the unwritten priorities/standards/politics that your upper administration will apply, and so they can effectively help you craft your pitch.

In particular, your university's promotion policies, your faculty mentor(s), and your department chair can tell you the expectations for a direct promotion from assistant professor to full professor. Such a promotion would be completely unheard of at my university---not impossible in principle, but never actually done in practice---but may be more acceptable at yours.

If your department chair and other senior faculty are not willing to have regular frank discussions about your potential for promotion, polish your CV and look for another job. At a rank commensurate with your accomplishments, of course.


How to gain admissions to graduate school with postgrad diploma, but no degree?

I can't vouch for the UK, but here on the other side of the puddle, once you've been out in the Real World (TM) for some number of years, your classes start mattering less and what you've done with them starts mattering more. A school's concern, if you're coming back for an advanced degree, is whether you have enough knowledge to cover the prerequisites and enough aptitude to complete the degree in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable grade. (In other words, whether you'll be a student whom they're good for and who makes them look good.)

For PhD there may be some bias toward folks who are already researchers, but "research" comes in many flavors, not all academic.

(I could have gotten into Columbia in NY for a MS simply on the basis of "you can't be an idiot or IBM wouldn't have hired you" -- plus having aced a few of their extension classes. Can't imagine things are very different there.)


Why do junior faculty serve on PhD admissions committees at American universities?

If junior faculty members aren't allowed to sit on an admissions committee, then  by the time they become senior faculty they won't have had any experience of sitting on admissions committees. The junior members need to learn how to become senior members and this is just one part of it!

I also don't think that graduate admissions decisions are quite so monumentally important (or tricky) as you imply; for top institutions such as Harvard you will already have a self-selected pool of very good appplicants to choose from, and I imagine it's difficult to make a bad pick.


How to state that you “rigorified” an existing paper without sounding arrogant or condescending?

It sounds to me like you are viewing the older paper through the lens of the type of paper you would have written in the first place and are finding it wanting.  It also sounds like you are viewing your own work as "fixing the flaws" of the older paper, almost as if you want to replace the older paper in your mind with your paper and pretend it had been written that way all along.  More quantitatively you have your eye on the mark that the older paper should have hit, you are filling in the gap between the actual old paper and your eyeballed mark, and since you are measuring from the eyeballed mark you are giving the difference a minus sign.  This framing seems to be behind most of your problems.  Try recasting the entire thing more positively in your own mind.

1) Someone else published an inspirational paper way back when.  This paper introduced some formalism and concentrated on its application to a physical problem.

2) Your paper gives much deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism, while also extending the formalism.  Since 1) showed that the formalism is interesting and useful, your work has evident value.

There are no "minus signs" in the above description: 1) + 2) = your eyeball mark.

Unless there are actual mathematical errors in the older paper, you don't need to say that you are fixing or "rigorifying" (not really a word, by the way) the older paper.  By the way, I don't know whether you've heard my rant about this use of the word "rigor" in mathematics and its applications.  As an adult mathematician I have become increasingly skeptical of mathematical "rigor": the other paper either made mistakes (which you will need to correct), made claims which were unjustified or insufficiently justified (in which case you make clear that what you are contributing is the justification and not the claims themselves) or they weren't doing mathematics at all (which is fine: that's what you're adding).  Adding rigor must mean one of the things above, right?  It is not some generic ingredient that you can sprinkle more or less liberally over a piece of "unrigorous mathematics" and make it rigorous.

In summary: unless there are some clear mistakes, you don't need to bill your work as fixing their mathematics.  You can bill it either as adding the math or adding more math.  Both of these are good things added to other good things: no problem.


What is meant by real-world scenario in research papers?

I can't speak to your specific review, but I can comment at the higher level and give an example.

When a reviewer is asking for a real-world scenario, they are typically asking for an actual situation when the proposed approach will apply and could improve existing work.

The idea behind this type of request is to avoid seeing a large number of papers published that do not make a significant contribution, but are just variants on existing ideas. In these situations the ideas are often relatively obvious within the assumptions being made. The problem is that we can make up all sorts of assumptions and write papers about them. But, if the assumptions have no correspondence to any known problem, this isn't really advancing scientific knowledge.

To give a concrete example, in one of my first papers I wrote about how certain upper bounds could be incorporated into an existing algorithm. In my context I had found an application that provided these upper bounds, and then I reasoned about how I could use them to improve performance.

I was later told that someone else had considered these same types of upper bounds (in a slightly different context) previously. But, their work hadn't been published at a prestigious venue because they had simply asked the question "what could you do if you have these bounds". They were unable to actually provide a problem (that is, a real world scenario) in which the upper bounds existed. My work, in contrast, was published because the bounds were motivated by the domain that provided them.

In your case they want to know if you can talk about a situation where SE-CRN matches some set of operational constraints in the world and will thus be useful (have better performance) in exactly that situation.

From a networking perspective if you, for instance, made up a new packet congestion model and designed an algorithm to handle that model, but couldn't show that the model was relevant in any known application, you would get this sort of comment about looking for a real-world application.

--

Addendum: When papers are evaluated, reviewers typically use several different metrics of evaluation. These include things like significance, clarity, novelty, correctness, etc. Some fields will include validation or experimental results. The question of a real-world scenario is primarily addressing significance. That is, what is the measure of the impact on other researchers and practitioners in the field? Things like simulations are evaluated in comments on validation/experiments. The editors of a journal then have to trade off strengths and weaknesses in different areas when making a decision.


Where I can post a supplementary video for my published paper?

Videos are among the file types accepted by Figshare, which is an online digital repository operated by Macmillan Publishers. You can create an account for free, and you will get a DOI when uploading files which you can then cite in your paper.


Order of authors in an engineering publication

You must discuss this issue with your advisor and all coauthors as soon as possible.  The right time to have the discussion would have been before the first draft is started, but unless you have a time machine, you have to have it now.  Since there are differing opinions, and the outcome matters, conflict is inevitable.  Welcome to adulthood.


Research activity conflicts with advisor

My PhD advisor somehow decided to start her own field research in the same region where I have been working on for a few years now.

Which could have been a win-win situation for both of you, but it seems that you and her have a communication problem.

  Even worse, once I told her that I wouldn't be able to help 'her' project (I'm busy with mine!), she started cutting me off from my resources, withholding information, etc.

So you did not have the idea to ask her how the two project can be aligned in a constructive way?

  When I consulted other professor, he said it was pretty normal that multiple researchers do similar researches at the same time in the same region. But is it common between advisor and her student as well?

Yes it is common. And in the best case groups the supervisor and the PhD student will align the research and will co-author papers on the subject in question.


What could be the title of a power point presentation for a PostDoc Interview?

I would use a somewhat standard talk title. If you're presenting primarily the results of a single paper, I don't know that it would be a problem to use the title of the paper as the title of the presentation.

For reference, the titles of some of my interview talks:

Adventures in Modeling for Policy
Harnessing the Counterfactual
Hospital Infection Control: Integrating Mathematical and Observational Epidemiology

All of these seemed to go over just fine.


How to deal with a nosy fellow graduate student?

In my experience, when it comes to dealing with people with boundary problems, you have to talk to them (in private).

This isn't nice (it might come off as unfriendly), this isn't fair (you just want to do your work, not deal with this issue), but it's the best course of action -- both for your job satisfaction and (in the long run) for the other person (if he can learn from feedback).

Framing the conversation is going to be difficult -- I'd suggest "I" statements ("I notice that you look at my material ...") and framing the issue as your perception ("I perceive this as nosy. I'd like to talk about my work, but I see this behavior as an intrusion of my privacy."). Given that probably most people would consider his behavior as "nosy", you might even point out that other people might regard this kind of behavior badly too. Hmm, just stick to describing the behavior and avoid making judgments about the person. You can change behavior, you can't (easily) change the person.

(Note: I might be biased here. I recently tried to solve a boundary problem via non-verbal communication, only to notice -- again -- that people with boundary problems don't notice non-verbal cues (correctly or at all). If they did, they would not have crossed boundaries in the first place. So non-verbal "cues" are either overlooked, ignored, or they react in the opposite direction of the desired effect. For example, they notice that a person is distancing himself from them, so they move in even closer. Addressing the issue verbally is anything but easy but I think it's the way to go.)


New author, independent research, scope of publishing

I think there are many questions here;

Independent Publishing? It is possible to publish your work as an independent researcher.  see this question "Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?". For further confirmation, I would suggest to directly contact the responsible personnel of the conference or journal.

Forums(Journal vs Conference)?  Journals are usually assumed to be of high standard. However, this might not be true always.Some conferences have equal or higher standard than journals; they only accept high quality works. However, you should be able to find many conferences with a track record of accepting publications with varying qualities.

How to find the quality of a forum? If you want to find out the quality of a forum, check their previous publications and try judging their quality. You can also look for people who have published there, if they are expert in your field then it could be a high quality journal or conference.

What forum suits my work? You know the quality of your work therefore aiming for forums inline with the quality of your work will save you a lot of time.
Otherwise, you can discuss with an expert (a professor or researcher in academia) who knows the forums and their qualities. If they can read your work that would make it easy to find the matching forum.

These are just my suggestions, rest you know what is best for you. Good luck!


In May, my professor agreed to write me letter of recommendation, but now I just graduated

Be friendly, normal, polite, and human and remember that your professors are (or at least should be) too.
If they offered to write the LORs, they want to help you out. It makes people feel good to help others especially with LORs, because you get to help someone and feel nice and authoritative.
I wouldn't even bother asking if the offer still stands. Just make sure that you tell them that you're grateful and appreciative that they made the offer, let them know if there are any deadlines that you have coming up which make the need for LORs more urgent, and you should be just fine.
Always offer supplemental documentation if they need it.


Producing a bibliography by chapter – have one reference in two chapters

I can't give you an authoritative source at the moment, but I can't recall ever having had to look up a reference in a chapter different from the one in which it has been cited. It would also be very impractical: How would the reader know in which chapter the reference has been cited first?


As an instructor, how to use the first day of class?

Students basically want to know if they should take your class.  To that end I would include

A short (10-15 minute) sales pitch explaining what exactly your class is about and why your topic is interesting.
Administrative details of the class (I would cover this after the sales pitch, so students who are late don't miss anything).
A presentation on the first topic in your syllabus.  This is important because hearing your first lecture will give them a good idea of the difficulty of the class, which prerequisites are required, and the style/quality of your lecturing. Also, if your entire first lecture is a sales pitch, students will feel like they wasted time coming to your class, or that your class is "easy"/not serious.


Personal cover letter for visa application for TV-L 13 PhD Position

I can only take an educated guess here, but the extra information that you are a PhD student can only be in your favour as it explains what you are doing with the other 50 % of your time and gives you additional good reason to reside in Germany. As this is a common situation (the vast majority of German PhD employments are like this), I doubt that anybody is going to bite your head off for telling the truth here.

That being said, the institution where you will do your PhD is likely to have some experts or other resources to assist you with this.


Professor didn't write a letter because I didn't waive my right to view it. How to let him know that I have changed this?

Just simply write down that it was your mistake not waiving your right to read LOR and ask him to write a letter. Don't wait too long to respond back to him, make your response succinct. Most importantly, do not explain to him why you wanted to see the letter in the email. Good luck.


Institution refuses reimbursement for grant awarded?

What you need to do is work it out locally. If necessary, the grant funder may need to make a judgement. But it seems like you were trying to get around a restriction by somewhat questionable means. Not necessarily ethically dubious means, but questionable. A pedantic interpretation of the statement in the grant, and ignoring its likely intent is what got you into the current situation. You need to argue that your interpretation is correct and you need to get others, who have some authority here, to agree with you.

I can't guess whether you will win this or not, but the situation is between you, the institution and the funding authority. Make your best argument there. And note that you can't impose your own will on this.

If this is PC level equipment, I doubt that it is going to be a serious setback to your finances. Maybe it is best to just absorb the cost and spend the funds on things that aren't so close to the margin of acceptability.


Is it okay to have an additional authors for majority of my work in my undergrad thesis?

Since you are not asking about the legalities of handing in such a thesis, I will assume that you have checked that there are no problems obtaining your qualifying degree after handing it in. My answer is contingent on that. I am not in CS, but I don't think the answer is field specific. (in fact it is probably not even specific to academia, but also holds for industry to some degree)
The main question I want answered when I look at PhD applications is:

Can this person independently perform high quality work? Or do I have a reasonable expectation that it will be easy to teach the person to do so?

Strong indicators for this are:

Consistently good performance in courses.
A well-written undergraduate thesis which reflects independent work.
A publication based on thesis work, where it is clear that the student was a driving force.
Independent projects performed at eg. summer schools.

Weaker, but still good, indicators are:

Recommendation letters highlighting the candidate's independence.
Publications where it is clear that everything was completely driven by a supervisor, and the student was just along for the ride.
Experience working with different supervisors.

Red flags:

A weak thesis, not reflecting independent work at all.
Poor performance in courses.

If I got an application from a person with essentially no undergraduate thesis, but a compilation of pre-prints with co-authors, my natural question would be if the person has actually done any of this work themselves. I am not hiring the full team who published these papers - I am hiring one student, who is likely the most junior person on those teams. I would need to be convinced that these papers are the product of your work. You could do that by:

Specifying your contribution to the individual papers in your application.
Actually writing a full thesis, and not a compilation, at mark the papers as "based on thesis X". This would come off very strong, especially if they eventually get published.
Having a supervisor write a recommendation letter saying that, yes, you did a lot of work.


Not reporting them does no one any good in a case like this. If they have a learning disability then they need to deal with that, and cheating isn't the proper way. If they don't really know the material then an employer will eventually catch on and they will be unemployed anyway. The PhD student has an ethical violation as do the people paid to do the homework.
If I were to beat up on you it would only be to suggest that they should have been referred to a professional when the learning issue became known.
But letting it go isn't a solution here.


How to cite a previous single-author paper by oneself?

In my field of psychology, it is normal to treat any previous citation as if it was another person. In a sense it is the article that presents the point. This convention is also related to the use of double blind review in many journals.

So you'd just write:

  Smith (2015) showed that ...

or

  Smith (2015) conducted a study and found that ...


How I can respond to this major revision?

I'm not really sure what the question is here. It seems like everyone agrees that the proper name is Y, so the only thing you can do is change it to Y and resubmit.

My guess is this will clear up the confusion of the second reviewer.  And if you don't change the name he will surely reject your paper, because after all it isn't about X.  But it's really irrelevant: you know what the right thing is to do, and you have to do it, even if the consequences turn out to be negative.

Yes, it's possible your paper will be rejected. That is always a possibility whenever you submit a paper for publication.  Get used to living with it.


Does papers under review/revision has any value for faculty application in mathematics?

Yes. It's an anecdote but I got a permanent position pretty much because I had a paper under revision at a very top journal. It still doesn't count as much as a published paper, though.

One thing you can do is ask the editor if she/he would be ok with you mentioning it in a job application and whether you can pass on contact details so that the job committee can ask for confirmation. You also have to take the reports into account, moreover; an extremely positive report with some minor modifications asked is not at all of the same value as a lukewarm report with a lot of major modifications asked.


Completing premed requirements after Bachelors

Yes. At many (most?) universities in the United States, you can take courses as a non-matriculating student to get your premed requirements.


Is there a way to ethically hire somebody to write "rough drafts"/"extended outlines" for your PhD dissertation?

Elizabeth asked Rose to write 30(!) pages of literature review -- a "rough draft" -- which Elizabeth will use to write her literature review.

Let us all acknowledge the elephant in the room. No, there is no ethical way to handle this, as Elizabeth does not want to handle this ethically. It seems painfully obvious to me that Elizabeth is outsourcing the writing of her dissertation, or at least parts of it, under a thin veil of "help" and "drafting". Given that Elizabeth is giving Rose clear length instructions and everything, I would be surprised if "draft" in this context is anything else than an euphemism for "please write this for me, and I will do some cosmetic changes and hand it in".

Any of the proposed solutions (publishing the material beforehand, claiming authorship of this chapter, ...) will not be accepted by Elizabeth, as it will not accomplish the goal she is rather evidently going for, which is getting her literature review without having to actually write it. Besides, it seems extremely dubious to me that any serious thesis committee will allow some of the proposed solutions (e.g., explicitly having a different author for chapters of a thesis - the reaction of any committee in any university I attended would be between bewilderment and anger if you proposed that).

As such, there are only two ways forward for Rose:

Tell Elizabeth friendly but in no uncertain terms that she cannot do this. She can get a little creative with the reason if she does not want to tell Elizabeth that she finds the proposal unethical, if she must.
Go forward with writing the literature review, but be aware that she is actively involved in a case of academic misconduct, and that there really isn't a way to rationalize this differently.


I these cases the direct approach is seldom constructive. It's tempting to start constructing logical examples that show they must be wrong, but this is much more a matter of psychology than of logic.

Basically, the stronger you argue, the harder they will dig their heels in. With your example you may actually force a situation where they have no other way out than to admit that they're wrong, but in most scenarios they'll find a way to stick to their guns, and the more you push the issue, the harder it becomes to admit they were wrong all along.

So the trick here is small commitments. Don't ask them to accept the whole thing in one go, but get them to accept a small part of it, something they can agree on without admitting defeat. Then just stand back and let them come round on their own.

My favourite example of this principle is trying to convince a rabid anti-Apple consumer to buy an apple laptop instead of a regular PC. If you argue on quality of hardware, or value for money, or user experience, it won't do you any good (regardless of whether those are valid arguments). What you should do is buy them something very cheap and tiny, like an iPod nano, for their birthday. Once they commit to that, the anti-Apple stance is no longer a point of principle, but they're somewhere in the grey area, free to move around.

It's all about breaking down the principled stance and the ties to their pride. Only once you've got rid of that should you come in with the logical arguments.


Software for tracking next manuscripts to submit

I've found that a carefully formatted spreadsheet (Excel or otherwise) is extremely useful and effective for managing my publication workflow.

To illustrate how I organize myself, here is a screenshot of a de-identified snapshot of my spreadsheet from late last year (there are also some removed columns, e.g., regarding internal processes):

In particular, this is organized as follows:

Each entry begins with the title, venue where it is submitted and type of publication (My type key is: J=Journal, C=Conference, W=Workshop, A=Abstract, BC=Book Chapter, TR=Tech Report, Tut = tutorial, E=Editorial, P=Patent)
I sort by date of initial submission, adding a new sheet each year. When a manuscript is rejected, revised, and resubmitted elsewhere, it gets a new entry.
The main workflow is submission, revision, final; each gets two columns, one for date and one to mark completion.  After that, I track when it appears and if I've put it where it needs to go.
For an easy "at a glance" understanding of the sheet, I color things green when complete, orange or yellow when I've got an impending action (depending on urgency), purple when I'm awaiting action from the other side, and blue for rejection.

All together, this lets me see at a glance where I stand in the publications process for a potentially large number of active manuscripts, and what I need to deal with most urgently at any given time.


What is a recommended strategy on exercises in a mathematical textbook at graduate level?

Disclaimer: My thoughts about this are somewhat unconventional, so keep that in mind.

I don't have a high opinion of the sausage-link structure of (advanced) mathematics courses, where you get a chunk of "material," and then exercises on that material, and then another chunk of material, and so on until the term ends. Since nearly all courses (and books) use this structure, I think the students who do well with it tend to be overrepresented among grad students due to survivorship bias, but I don't think it's well-correlated with any meaningful measure of mathematical talent. So my first observation is: Don't sweat it.

My second observation is: Some people just have innately less sequential, more integrated, and higher-context learning processes, which creates a mismatch with standard instruction. The bad news is that very few mathematics professors seem to be clued into this and/or have no intention of modifying their course structure to support a variety of learning styles.

However, if you're working from a book, you can reverse-engineer and restructure as you see fit. So skip around, use multiple references, work on what makes sense to you at any given time. Above all, don't feel constrained by the structure of the book and use the exercises as a check on your understanding rather than a goal in itself. You don't have to do the exercises from section 4 right after reading section 4. You might get more out of it if you come back to them after section 7.

This is going to take some experimentation and self-observation and not all books will be equally amenable to deconstruction. But we now live in an age where even fairly obscure topics will have multiple presentations that can be located with a few keystrokes. You just need to find what works best for you.


The review results for my journal paper submitted to the special issue of a reputed journal is 45 days overdue. Is it normal and what should I do?

Oftentimes, and that's valid esp. for academia, a call will be better than an email. It's really easy to oversee (deliberate or not) an email, but if you call, the editor (or a secretary) has to answer. And if you have someone on the line you can ask your questions directly and he has to answer or give you sme other sort of feedback.

It's annoying for a lot of us, since an email is easier, faster,  you can better oversee what you're writing and you don't have to call someone and speak to him personally. But from an efficency point of view, a call is in most of the cases the best approach.

Just ask polite, don't make some sort of accusation or preasure somthing, but that are the same rules that apply for emails.


Acknowledgment to a referee of a different journal who previously rejected an article

Yes, it's certainly regular: acknowledgements to referees are not uncommon. I'd formulate the acknowledgement in the following way or similarly:

  The author would like to thank the anonymous referee who provided
  useful and detailed comments on a previous/earlier version of the manuscript.

The qualifier earlier should be enough to disambiguate. In addition, once the paper is published, you can also write an email to the editor of the journal where you had once submitted the manuscript, asking them to pass your acknowledgement to the referee.


Is it appropriate to include actual maths in a mathematics personal statement?

Here's the thing about personal statements in math: a bad one can hurt you, but a good one doesn't help you all that much. Your grades and letters are what will get the committee's attention and convince them that you're smart. You don't have to use the personal statement to keep convincing them that you're smart. The goal is more to demonstrate that you know what grad school in math is generally all about. It's also good if your enthusiasm shines through, but don't try too hard. For example, talking about how much you loved math as a kid would just be trite.

To answer the question: yes, it's probably fine to include a formula that you really like, and talk a bit about how it captured your imagination. But it's better if you can relate this to your future plans, because that is what the statement should be focused on.

And again, don't formula-drop to look smart, especially not if the formula is something everyone learns in a first course in complex analysis (because knowing it doesn't set you apart from other applicants).

The above advice assumes you're applying for a graduate program. If you're applying for a summer REU or something similar, the same advice mostly applies, but there is less of an expectation that you know what your future plans are. But you can still tie your enthusiasm for Cool Identity X to your desire to learn more advanced math and get a taste of research through whatever program you're applying to.


After successfully publishing papers during my Post-Doc, why am I now having trouble publishing as a tenure track academic?

I feel for you.  I have been in the (pure math) game for a lot longer than you, and sometimes my work is still treated shabbily by editors and referees in a way that is hard to figure out.  I feel that the publication process has gotten more opaque in the dozen or so years I've been involved with it: at the beginning of my career, whenever a paper got rejected, I would come away with a clear reason for why.  I have had some truly head-scratching rejections in recent years...along with acceptances in prestigious journals, which is good for me but even more confusing in this regard.

I think that the best advice I can give to you is to find a trusted senior mentor -- someone who understands the content of your work and the sociology of your field -- and really go over your situation with them in minute detail.  I would certainly go over all of the referee reports in detail.  If any one rejection feels especially unexplained to you, please realize that you certainly can ask the editor for more information, if you do so extremely politely and while making clear in advance that you are not arguing but rather asking for more information.  (I have experienced the wildest of extremes in response to such inquiries: I have gotten no response at all, and I have also gotten "I'm so sorry, your paper was rejected by mistake!  Would you like to resubmit it?" Seriously.)

Without this specific information, we can just guess on top of your guesses.  But that's interesting to me, so I'll play along.  First, here is one piece of information that probably should have come before the end of your question:

  My goal is to just get these papers published; at my current institution, the publication of these two papers alone would be enough to satisfy all of the research requirement for tenure.

This is pretty key.  Before I read it, I was going to respond to your worries that you are publishing work in a very narrow field that is (perhaps!) being viewed by the same small set of people as unpublishable by suggesting that you make an effort to branch out a bit in your work.  This is what everyone eventually does anyway.  But if your goal really is to only publish the work you've already written up, that's quite different.  In particular you talk about how you have a very high teaching load (33 credits per year = more than five courses per semester?!?  I hope I got that calculation wrong) and thus don't have time to do research.  Well, you may have zero time for research during the academic year, but if you need two publications for tenure you can spend entire summers working on publishing these papers...and you probably should, if you think your tenure depends on it.  I note though that you said you needed only these two publications; you didn't say that you wanted to stop writing and publishing papers after that.

Okay, now to examine your reasons:

  They are just not up to shape, because I don't have the time to focus on polishing them.

As I said, I think you should make the time, but that doesn't invalidate the suggestion that a lack of polish is why the papers haven't been accepted as yet.  This is where you should get help from mentors and colleagues and look at the referee reports.  Based on the information given, this explanation sounds a bit unlikely to me: you've already published five papers in a very similar field, so you know what you're doing here.  Math research papers really should not be rejected for lack of polish; they should be rejected when the writing is so bad that the referees can't make sense of them, or when the writing is bad and the results are also not up to snuff.

  The referees hate me. This may seem silly, but...

Actually you sold that explanation pretty well to me: if you had a terrible falling out with a key person in a tiny field and one other known past referee has told you that you're going in a wrong direction (to weigh in on comments about that: yeah, I think that's a nasty thing to say to someone), then it may well be that your work is getting evaluated by the same small number of people again and again and they just don't like it.  If that is the case, I would again recommend branching out a bit...perhaps even without starting a new project.  Most mathematical work can be cast in various ways and in order to appeal to various people.  I find it hard to believe that there are really on the order of 4 people in the world who are interested, but even if that's true your job is then to interest other people.  You could try for instance rewriting one of your papers to be a lot more explanatory and appeal to a much more general mathematical audience, and then send it to a not-too-exalted generalist journal.  If you do this, there's a very good chance that an editor who is "out of the loop" is not going to send the paper to the same small, sour group of people.

  Chance. The reviewers of the first papers happened to be interested in those topics, and the reviewers of the current papers have not been interested.

Yes, it certainly could just be chance, and in my experience chance plays a distressingly large role in contemporary mathematical publishing.  However, even if it is just chance, you can still probably improve the situation by changing it in some way.

Good luck.


How to cite online-first published articles? Should you include link to earlier ArXiV version?

Here is an article about citing "advance online publication" in APA style.

Once an article is in the form of advanced online access at the publisher, you should generally cite this version, and not the ArXiv version. The online access is the final version of record. Page and volume numbers are cosmetic.

The exact form of the reference will depend on your citation style. But I agree that including the doi in the reference is helpful as this will not change. In contrast, the year of the reference may change.

Here is an example from the post above:

  Muldoon, K., Towse, J., Simms, V., Perra, O., & Menzies, V. (2012). A
           longitudinal analysis of estimation, counting skills, and
           mathematical ability across the first school year. Developmental
           Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/a0028240

So in general the reference really shows almost no difference to a standard reference. It's just that the volume and page numbers are missing. You might append some text to indicate that it is "advance online publication", but this is optional in many cases. And you should probably include the doi (either in doi:10.. form, or in http://dx.doi.org/10... form). The doi will be helpful especially where the paginated version comes out in a subsequent year.

Obviously, depending on your citation style, you'd need to adapt the above. But the basic concept is the same: Authors, year, title, journal, doi, optionally some indication that it is an advance online publication. Basically, follow your normal citation strategy but omit the volume and page details and include a doi.


How to properly cite other papers in my slides?

Well, in my field, it's certainly the habit to mention only the authors and the year, unless it's really old. So I would have

  Theorem [Doe, Soe, 2010; Smith 1997] There is ...

The reasons are:

If someone needs the full citation, he has the proceedings / book of abstracts.
The only interesting things in the citation are:

It's not your result, you borrow it from elsewhere
Which people did it -- quite likely you have some of them in the auditorium, they can get upset if you don't credit them, and they'll be pleased if you point them out.
How old is it -- is it something known for years, or is it a "hot result"?

If you publish the presentation online after the conference, it might be a good habit to add the whole bibliography of the proceedings as a last slide. It can be in a small font since it's only for people to read it on the computer.

The key of a talk is not to be precise, but to show the most relevant information!


Is it common to work as a visiting scholar at a company while employed as a postdoc in a university?

I doubt that it is common. It may even be impossible in many cases. If the postdoc is considered full-time employment then there may be contractual restrictions on other employment.

It might be somewhat common for companies to fund a short visit and pick up expenses for the visit, however.

It is probably also somewhat common that a postdoc will work in a joint arrangement between a university and a company, perhaps because the company provides full or partial funding for the position. But it would still be "one job" and not two. Perhaps that is what you meant by the question, of course.

Doctoral students, in the US, at least, are different than post docs since they are not considered full time employees. They may hold part time (TA, RA) positions, of course.

And, depending on the nature of the position, it might be possible to accept short term employment when the normally expected activities are suspended, such as between terms for example.


Approaching a company unsolicited for internship opportunities as an academic

I think it makes a difference whether you want to ask about a paid versus unpaid internship - companies may be more likely to agree to an unpaid internship. However, you could reach out to someone who would be in an authority position related to the job announcement you already found and ask if there are any opportunities to gain experience through an internship. The worst they can say is no.


Including own published proofs in PhD thesis

Regarding copyright: It depends on the agreement you signed when the papers were accepted for publication. All of the agreements I've signed stated that it was OK to include the paper in a thesis.

Regarding self-plagiarism: Talk to your advisor, but typically you include a statement in your thesis that some of the contents are taken from your papers, and include a list of those papers. Then you can include your papers (in whole or in part) without needing to rewrite them. However, unless you're doing a "stapler" or "sandwich" thesis, you'll probably need to do some rewriting just to make the story flow.


Chance Of Getting A Research Internship In US/Canada For Non-US Residents?

You should simply send an email to the supervisor you are interested in. Your best help to be accepted to any program is to have the support of a professor. In US/Canada you should just start by, Dear Mr/Mme, X.

Now, to convince the professor that you are a good fit, you need to convince him that you are have research potential. This is what the university will be looking for too.

You could talk to him about your interests, and how they recoup his (assuming they do by OP post). If you have done any research in that field you could mention it.

If you can find and read first a relevant paper he wrote and have questions about it, ask. I you can't because they are too complicated (which may really happen), or behind a paywall to which you don't have access, you could ask for a few classic references to get started.


Which areas have the most competition for tenure-track positions?

I do not know of any datasets that would empirically answer your entire question. However, several different datasources may provide insight into your question. First, the NSF has survey and reports that may help. These provide insight into overall employment:

The NSF Conducts a post-graduate survey for Science and Engineering. Data in here may be insightful to what happens to students post graduation.
The NSF includes funding rates in their annual report. Check out the appendices.

Also, this Inside Higher Ed has a table of job placements by broad fields.

I would add the following caveats to this data and other data you may use to answer your questions. In some fields most PhDs go the academy. But in others, most PhD holders go to industry or government jobs. Additionally, not all university jobs are the same (e.g., small school versus R1). I would highlight this difference to your students as well.

Finally, I would suggest checking out salaries for different departments. Many state schools make this public (or newspapers in their state though public data requests; e.g., the Texas Tribune's listing for the state of Texas). Presumably, departments that pay more have more trouble attracting and retaining faculty.

Edit to clarify the last sentence: Engineering and physics can be closely related disciplines. However, there is a much larger job market for engineers outside of universities. Therefore, one might expect universities to pay their faculty more to account for competition from the private sector. At the University of Texas, the median salary for the Department of Physics was $105,536. The median salary for the Department of Electrical Engineering was $118,143. Following the links, there are even better break downs of the data by position (e.g., professor vs postdoc). Comparatively, the Department of English had a median salary of $84,839.

Without speaking to the University Leadership, I can only speculate as to why some departments pay better. My guess would be the higher paying departments have more difficult recruiting and retaining because the private sector has more jobs, pays better, and often requires fewer hours.

I would also add a personal anecdote about competition for tenure track jobs. My own PhD is in Environmental Toxicology. Most of the people I knew in grad school (both at my school and others) went on to work for industry, consulting firms, or the government in roughly that order. Few went onto universities, but those that did only needed a short (1-2 year postdoc). Conversely, my friends who are ecologists often need 5-10 year postdocs to get university jobs. This is because the ecologists have much greater competition for their tenure track jobs.


Publishing with a Pseudonym that uses my legal first name as last name

I would not use your first name as a last name.  Especially in the West, a surname is a kind of "strong" identifier, and using one in publications that doesn't match what you use on a daily basis-- or worse, that matches the wrong daily name-- could lead to many strange situations.  People may address you incorrectly (Dr. First Name instead of Dr. Surname), enter your data in systems incorrectly (I've dealt with this personally many times, and it is universally hard to get databases updated), and so on.

You should also consider that it's relatively rare to look up an author only by their last name these days.  Once you build up a career in your field, people will remember you by your first and last names, or by your surname in combination with your co-authors.  I've also seen many people of Asian descent use both their English and Asian names in their publications (like, e.g., Xiaoye Sherry Li), which leads to a unique and searchable name overall.

If you really just want to get rid of your legal surname, you can look into changing it.
 This, of course, depends on laws and bureaucracy, but for people who are really disturbed by their names, it can bring life-long relief.


Should a teaching statement always be included in faculty job applications, even if not required?

I don't think you need to include a teaching statement if one is not explicitly requested.  However, you should be very clear in your application materials about what courses you want to teach and/or are willing to teach.  That is usually the information we are looking for when we ask for that document.

Including a teaching statement when one is not requested is probably not going to be a negative (most applications we get have just been sent out in bulk, and many places require one) unless someone on the committee is exceptionally nit-picky.  But if that is the case, do you really want that person as a colleague?


Who, and how to write when withdrawing a submission before notification?

You should contact the conference editor to withdraw/retract your paper.  They may not allow you to withdraw or retract without a valid research issue.

THINK LONG AND HARD BEFORE DOING THIS

Withdrawing or retracting a paper from a conference is usually done because of unethical or incompetent research practices.  Before withdrawing your paper, consider how this may hurt your academic career.

1) You may not be allowed to publish in the original conference again.  Many people will see the withdrawal as an indication of poor research acumen.  Your actual reason, to apply to a different conference, isn't much better.  The first conference has spent time and money finding peer reviewers and such.  You just wasted their time.

2) People may not believe you withdrew just to re-submit elsewhere.  A withdrawal is a big deal.  If this comes to light later on, you will likely get some very pointed questions about what "really happened," and the interviewer will not be pleased with this answer.

3) Others may choose not to work with you if they are concerned you'll withdraw and re-submit elsewhere, pulling their reputation down with yours.  Academia is smaller than you may think.  I would personally be very hesitant to work with someone I knew would attempt to do this, as I could get me black-balled by a conference as well.


Length of a master's thesis and its literature review?

I found 5 theses related to my master's thesis topic on the Open Access Theses and Dissertations website. All of them were 120 pgs - 150 pages, although this was for engineering. The literature review was (appx) 30% of each thesis. My suggestion is to check the OATD website, find theses in your field and closely related to your topic to get a pretty general idea of the length and breadth of literature review.


Tool to generate feedback based on test results

A possibility is to use a vlookup() in an Excel sheet.

Have a list with the q numbers and areas - every q number entered will return the area to a pre-set reporting area.

Put this together just for fun - you can edit and play as you wish:

Just enter the question numbers in cells E3:E12, leave un-needed ones blank and it sorts it out.


My new supervisor wanted to collaborate with my ex-supervisor who bullied and destroyed me

What will happen depends a lot (too much) on the good will of your new supervisor. But you have to avoid getting trapped again even if you aren't in a good will situation.

You will need to insist to your new supervisor that you cannot work with the old one based on past interactions that you found destructive. Also inform the supervisor that you find the actions and attitudes of the other student to be very unhelpful and that pressuring you isn't going to resolve anything.

Sadly, I can't predict that the outcome will be positive, since I don't know anyone involved here. But, you might also have to consider that you need to find a new situation altogether if the new supervisor turns out to be unsupportive.

But don't make a point of discussing your view of the competence of the other student. That is for others to judge and raising it won't help your case.

You need positive supervisor support and you need to not have to deal with social pressure. The pressure of research should be plenty.


Is it possible that a school only has one student enrolled in a particular undergraduate degree program?

Possible but uncommon.

The liberal-arts departments at MIT, for example, generally only have one or two students actually planning to get a degree in that area (usually, of course, as a double degree alongside something in the sciences or engineering.) Friend of a friend was the sole music major at one point. Small department since it isn't the school's primary focus, but I'm told the professors are excellent and of course you get a heck of a lot of attention from them. Of course first you need to get into MIT.


Is it normal for PhD students to do much "non research" work?

These all sound to me like usual activities for a PhD student (the "news articles and marketing material" bit sounds a bit odd to me, but that might be more field-dependent).

PhD programs are not typically designed only to allow you to do research, they are designed to teach you to do research, and furthermore to train you to be an independent researcher. That can include learning about all the other baggage that comes with research, such as finding funding, disseminating the research to the academic and sometimes lay community, mentoring junior researchers, etc.

However, like most things, balance is important. It's hard to specify some number of hours per week or something like that for you to contribute to these "other" activities, but the most important thing is that you are able to make progress in your research.

Since your advisor will be the person judging your satisfactory progress as well as being the person assigning you all these tasks, you should have regular conversations with them as a student regarding this balance. Have these conversations early and as often as necessary. It would be appropriate to approach this question directly as you have asked it here, too: tell your advisor "I am worried too much of my time is being spent on X/Y/Z and it will be difficult for me to make progress towards my thesis."


How to acknowledge a translator on a letter of recommendation?

Since this is merely a letter and not a full-fledged thesis, it is fine to write it the way you have indicated in your question.

If the translator has notable credentials pertaining to Spanish (e.g., a degree in the language or some sort), perhaps you may consider adding that too, after the person's name.


Is it okay to ask someone for an (electronic) copy of their PhD thesis if it is not available online?

Yes, it is completely fine to ask them, but before you do, it helps to be aware of a few things:

In many if not most fields and countries, PhD theses are somewhere between

a recompilation of previously published papers with an introduction and a conclusion and possibly with some additional content that did not fit into publications,
just a collection of published papers.

This is particularly likely to apply if the thesis is not to be found in a published form.
So, the more important results of a PhD work are likely to be published.

This doesn’t make it invalid to ask for the thesis, but it may be worth checking what that person published during their PhD time before asking.
This way you can establish whether you are actually interested in the thesis and what parts you are interested in.
Depending on the field, it is rather uncommon that somebody is really interested in an entire thesis, and not just a certain aspect.
Hence a more specific request including why you are interested in the thesis or what specific aspects you want to know about is more likely to gain you what you need.
Usually, the author can directly tell you, which chapters or sections are relevant to you.

For example, the most interesting content that is exclusive to my thesis is a brief review of the general topic in the introduction.
The requirement of publishing my thesis was waived because all essential parts were already published.
If somebody wrote me a mail just asking for my thesis, I would ask them what part or aspect they are interested in and then send them the corresponding paper(s).


Can I add my current supervisor name in a conference paper if he pay for me the conference fees without taking a consent from my ex-supervisor?

If someone has no input whatsoever on the content of a scientific publication, they should not be listed as a coauthor. In some fields, this input may be indirect, but merely paying money never establishes coauthorship. Based on your description, it seems that B should not have been listed as a coauthor at all.
Any submission for publication needs to be done with the consent of all coauthors. Adding a coauthor is a significant step, and should not be done without the agreement of the established coauthors: So if A is established as a coauthor, you should talk to A before adding B as a coauthor.
(Edit, as Nate Eldrige pointed out in the comments): One musn't list someone as a coauthor in a publication without their knowledge and consent! If B consented to being listed as a coauthor, and indeed had no input at all on the project, this is misconduct from his/her part, too.

If B did not know about this: The straight-forward course of action would be to apologize to A and B and then to contact the conference organisers to amend the conference proceedings accordingly.

If B knew about this: In addition to apologizing to A, you should seriously reconsider whether B is a suitable PhD advisor.


One solution that has often worked for me is to try to not work on the weekends.  If your weekdays are solid work times, then you can do more intense work on the weekdays and aim to have your weekend entirely free.  Even if you don't entirely succeed, you'll still be in a much better situation with respect to the things you need to do by Monday.  Then you can take real time off and have fun without guilt and actually recharge yourself for another solid week.


Breaking off a collaboration/project in science

I assume that the two other students were not "forced" on your project by some higher authority, so the call on whether or not to collaborate is yours to make.

If that is the case, you should as soon as possible sit down with the other two students and tell them that you are not going to work with them any longer. The major point here is be civil and professional. If their contribution is large enough, you can put them as co-authors or in the acknowledgements section. I say as soon as possible, because 3 weeks is not that much of time for them to get too seriously involved. For the purpose of other people, all three of you should assume a neutral stand point, i.e. something along the lines of "things didn't work out" without going into extensive details. Although, you should definitely bring your adviser up-to-date the real reasons for stopping the collaboration. It is never good to wash your dirty laundry in public, so badmouthing on either side just hurts all the involved parties (one reason more to keep the adviser in the loop).

Be adamant about your decision, as I guess that your colleagues and the adviser will try to smooth things out one way or the other (asking you to reconsider, for some more time, increasing their contribution, etc).


Can I publish a paper which 1) proposes an idea and 2) proves that the idea doesn't work?

What is wrong with proving some never existing idea is not a good idea?

Ideas are easy to produce, but unfortunately only a tiny fraction of them are really useful. If you pick an idea at random, it's likely to be not a good idea, and in most cases it would be relatively easy to check it and see it. So, your referees and your editor may wonder why is it so important to publish this random negative result, particularly in competition with other ideas, which actually lead to improvements and positive results.

  why-science-needs-to-publish-negative-results

Some negative results are indeed worth publishing. For example, when you consider not a random idea, but a mainstream direction, which is believed to be superior all the time, and demonstrate that for a particular class of problems, or in particular setting, it does not work. So, your negative result essentially is an important warning that some popular and blindly trusted method is not yet well understood and should not be used as a silver bullet. Publishing such result can help preventing serious mistakes and hopefully start important discussion, eventually leading to improvement (or ban) of existing methodology.

Even in this case, you will need to do a good job convincing your referees and editor that this negative result is worth publishing, particularly if they are stand behind the idea you prove to be not good. Academia is very much influenced by the modern culture of success. It's much easier to become successful in academia when you talk about your success (however marginal and simple), rather when you produce negative results (however important and difficult).


Should I retake GRE given my situation about university deadlines?

I don't have any strong opinion about which date is better for you.

I also don't mean to be unkind, but you should first address why it is that you make "silly mistakes". Your question here is full of them.

But I imagine that one cause might simply be that you rush through things without taking the necessary care. The solution is to slow down a bit and consider what you write or answer before reacting.

If someone is brilliant but sloppy they may have less of a future than someone else who is competent but methodical.

But, apologies. I'm not trying to be mean or insulting.


how to ask supervisor for a recommendation letter for scholarship?

In general, be polite but write as if you were talking to an actual, normal, nice person.

Your request should include some brief information about your motivation, the scholarship, its requirements, and how they apply to you. It should also help the recommender to recall who you are. And you should ask for a strong letter. If the recommender doesn't think they can write a strong letter, consider asking someone else instead of requesting a letter from them. I've highlighted those keywords in my example below.

Also, the supervisor is a good person to ask for a recommendation.

  Dear Dr. X,

  I am currently applying for the Donald Duck scholarship for graduate students in the field of comparative quackery.
  I am aware that you only know me from the course on boat programming, which I concluded with a paper on applied quackery, but I was wondering if you were able to write a strong recommendation letter for my application.

  As you may recall, I would like to continue my work on applied quackery in my MA thesis and include some comparative elements.

  The scholarship is quite competitive. It is only awarded to students who are expected to be part of the best 5% of a school's cohort. The Duck family's mission is to promote candidates with a rounded education, so it might be of interest that I am taking extracurriculars in ancient philosophy and volunteer as rugby coach at a school in my neighborhood.

  I would be extremely grateful if you could write a strong letter of recommendation until 15 January 2019. The letter must be submitted online at www.duck-quackery-studies.edu.

  Please let me know if you think this is possible, and if you have any questions.

  Yours sincerely,

  Nikki

Depending on the local culture and the relationship to your supervisor, you may want to be less formal than this. But a letter like this would work also in Germany, which has a rather more hierarchical and less easy-going culture than, say, the US.


Supervisor's feelings toward publishing prior work without him

Any work you did at a prior institution—particularly something you did before starting a PhD in a different field—before joining your present institution is not really any of your current advisor's concern, unless working on it involved a significant distraction from your assigned work. (That is, he was paying you to work on project A, and you spent all your time working for project B.) It doesn't sound like this is the case, so I wouldn't lose any sleep over this.


Does the length of an IPCC Scientific report imply anything about credibility or thoroughness?

Very hard to say in general.   A 600-page report could be 600 pages of garbage.  Obviously a super-short report couldn't be very thorough, or contain very much detail/depth.

If someone said "I have here a 600-page scientific report: is it any good?"  I would have no way to know.

If you want to make a claim for the credibility of IPCC reports specifically, I would quote the Union of Concerned Scientists:

  The IPCC’s technical reports derive their credibility principally from an extensive, transparent, and iterative peer review process that, as mentioned above, is considered far more exhaustive than that associated with a single peer-reviewed publication in a scientific journal. This is due to the number of reviewers, the breadth of their disciplinary backgrounds and scientific perspectives, and the inclusion of independent “review editors” who certify that all comments have been fairly considered and appropriately resolved by the authors.

Recursively, you would then have to support the credibility of UCS, which Wikipedia (which attempts to be neutral) calls a "nonprofit science advocacy organization".


Citations when mixing of factual evidence and interpretation in one sentence

Footnotes should be placed in connection to the material that they describe. There is literally no reason other than a style sheet that they can only be at the end of a sentence. If it belongs halfway through the sentence, before you begin interpretation, then put it there, where it makes the most logical sense.

Remember, your writing is what is paramount. Use the tools you have to make your arguments and narrative work, rather than the other way around.


Applying for PhD admission with a master's thesis written in Spanish

Maybe I'm confused by wording, but I think it is incorrect to think in terms of programs 'accepting' a thesis.

There might be cases where a program cares about the gritty details of your thesis, and so the short answer is to specifically ask the department you are applying to.

In the US, I highly doubt any PhD program would ask for your thesis, review it, then make a acceptance decision based on this.  Publishing your thesis is optional, and there is no expectation that you have to in order to be accepted into a PhD (generalization).  Also, a MS is not a requirement for a PhD program in the US, and so there's no rule about accepting an applicant's thesis.

When I applied to PhD programs in the US, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, no one asked to review my thesis, or discussed accepting my thesis.

What could be useful is to translate the thesis abstract.  Then, if someone asks for more details, you have something on hand to give them.


What is the highest degree held by Freeman Dyson?

According to both Freeman Dyson's homepage at the IAS and the accompanying C.V., he never earned another degree after his B.A. While unusual, this was much more possible at the time, since research in general was less well supported and organized.  A number of other notable contemporaneous researchers (e.g., Ed Fredkin) also never earned a doctorate.

In the modern world, this is much more difficult, though similar recognition can be obtained as, e.g., a Professor of Practice.


A thesis is generally a pretty big document, and it would not be surprising to have a number of mistakes even after several passes of editing.  If I were on your committee, I would be happy to see you submit such an erratum, because it would indicate that you are continuing to engage with the material and actually concerned about its quality, not just trying to graduate and leave.


Does PNAS allow authors to request referees who have not co-authored with them but work at the same university?

Though I have a letter published in PNAS, I don't know PNAS policy on recommending reviewers.  I suggest the following:

Recommend this professor/researcher, making clear that he/she is at your university and in a different department.
Make clear that you've have not co-authored a paper together and have no other common interests (e.g. funding).
Explicitly tell them that this is a potential conflict of interest in the reviewer role (bias in preference of the same university), and that you trust PNAS to make a judgment in this particular case.
Make other recommendations for reviewers so that the PNAS editors have other choices if they aren't comfortable with the controversial recommendation.

The main principle in these cases is to be open, forthcoming, and transparent.  Even if the PNAS editors do not take your recommendations, you shouldn't be hurt by making them.


Paid temporary job as research assistant

He will almost certainly agree to use your talents for the remaining time, and pay you the full sum. Take some additional time to check your work; speed and quality will matter. Then talk to him about your predicament, and request to be kept on for the agreed upon hours doing whatever it is you agree upon. He should be impressed that you do good work quickly. Do more, you may acquire an ongoing arrangement.

Note that this outcome is not guaranteed: humans can be strange creatures sometimes. That said, it is virtually guaranteed. If you have a good relationship, I suspect you can proceed without fear.


Should I retract an article published in a disreputable journal?

I don't know of any journal that one could expect to accept "I don't like your journal any more" as a legitimate reason for retraction: a good journal would probably just scoff at you, while a crappy or predatory journal is unlikely to meaningfully respond to any request for retraction, no matter how legitimate.
Therefore, I don't think you should try to retract it, but simply to drown out your early mistakes over time with subsequent good work.

As for whether to leave it on your CV:

If you have reason to believe that this journal is a sham that does not actually peer review, then I think that @NateEldredge is right: you can leave it off of your CV entirely or (better), move it to a section on published non-peer-reviewed work, much as you would list an arXiv publication.
If the journal is simply crappy, however, I think you're stuck with it.  You really did publish there, and no matter how crappy, it's still an archived journal publication.


What should I do if I uploaded my manuscript in arxiv and plan to pass it on a peer reviewed journal?

Based on your profile, I will assume this is a mathematics paper.  In that case, the answer is almost certainly: This is totally fine.  You don't need to do anything.  Just submit your paper to a journal whenever you are ready.

There are two main ways in which posting a preprint could interfere with publication, but neither of them is usually applicable in mathematics.

Double-blind review. In some fields, it is common for the journal to send the referee a copy of the paper with the author's name removed.  The theory is that this makes the review more impartial.  In this case, if you had a preprint on arXiv, the referee might find it by searching for the paper's title; then she would know your name and the review would no longer be double-blind.  This is the issue discussed by the question you linked.  However, I've never heard of any math journals that do double-blind review.
Prior publication. A nearly universal rule in academic publishing is that you cannot publish the same paper in two different journals.  This is a mechanism to keep the scientific record orderly (so that there is one unique place to find and cite the article); also, for subscription-based publishers, it helps ensure that people have to subscribe to their journal to read their content, and can't get it elsewhere.  So you might worry that if you had a paper on arXiv, a journal would reject it on the grounds that it was already published.  Fortunately, though, I've never heard of any mathematics journal that considers an arXiv preprint to constitute "prior publication".  arXiv is so widely used in math that publishers generally don't object to the paper being available there.  (But I have heard that in chemistry the opposite is true: posting a paper to arXiv can torpedo your chances of publishing in a journal.)

Of course, to be safe, you should check the policies of the journal where you are submitting.  Questions regarding preprint archival are usually addressed explicitly in these policies.

One thing to note: some publishers do not want you to update your preprint with any changes suggested by their editor or referee.  That way, only the journal can print the "final version", so there is still something that they have that the reader can't get any other way.  Other journals say it is fine to update the preprint, making the arXiv and journal versions identical.  Again, check the journal's policies.


What is known about the journal Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics?

I have never heard of this journal, but from the website it seems legitimate based on its publication history (extending back to 1995) and its institution of origin.
What your nephew should do now is just settle in and wait, and don't bother emailing the editors. As a commenter said, one month is not nearly enough time for a journal to process and review an article. It's usually more like 3-4 months and could possibly go longer than that. And the editors of these journals probably get so many emails from authors requesting status updates that usually those emails are simply ignored -- or if you have a nice editor there'll be an automated reply that says, in so many words, "Please stop emailing me."

The frequent emailing could even backfire. Recently I submitted an article to a journal, with a student co-author, and was told they'd get back with me in 9-12 weeks. Six months passed and I had heard nothing. I emailed the editor and asked to make sure she had everything she needed (= polite way of bugging her for an update). The editor said she would check with the reviewer. One day later I received the review -- a three-line rejection letter that indicated clearly that the reviewer had not even read the article. To me, there is a strong likelihood that the article was rejected directly because the reviewer was annoyed at being bugged. This is clear malpractice, but what are you going to do about it? Welcome to our wonderful academic publishing culture.

So, tell your nephew to move on to his next project and let this simmer on the back burner until the end of the summer.


How should I go about making CV as an undergraduate?

Before starting research, An undergraduate student really only has a résumé. A curriculum vitae is generally intended for someone who is intending to pursue a career in research, and has a somewhat "standardized" format (although there are still many variations).

But as a young student just beginning to do research, I would recommend that you focus on listing skills that you have that would make you appealing to someone interested in hiring you. If you have more than the standard training for someone at your level in university (more courses, have already done research projects, etc.), then you should list that information. Similarly, if you have special skills (programming languages, familiarity with specific techniques or tools, etc.), then those should also be listed.

Any jobs that you've held that might also prepare you for such an experience would also be of interest.


How to check whether a journal is still listed in Scopus?

The entry for this journal in Scopus lists "from 2009 to 2015" - it records 307 papers from 2015. The last issue they have indexed is vol. 10 issue 12, and they have not as yet indexed any 2016 papers.

The "to 2015" description seems to be standard for currently indexed journals; for example, Nature is listed as "1869 to 2015" despite being very much still alive. It doesn't automatically mean the journal has stopped being indexed - but the fact that Scopus does not list any 2016 papers yet does seem to suggest that it has stopped being indexed.

Note that Maxwell appears on Beall's list of potentially predatory publishers; while there are many caveats about Beall's work, it's certainly something to take note of.


How to find a new PhD advisor if relationship with current advisor is not working out?

If you feel you must change your adviser, it is essential that you speak to the adviser before discussing the possible change within anyone else in your department.  It is best to be as honest as possible, since usually advisers are experienced in working with students, and do not appreciate an explanation that might appear ingenuous.  Also, your request could reflect poorly on your adviser if you speak to someone else in your concentration.  I would sit down and carefully make a plan of action to use in bringing up the subject. In addition, try to learn as much about your adviser as a person. For example, is he or she vindictive, intolerant, considerate, etc.  That will help you frame the way you approach the subject.


Group Project Dynamics— how to present advanced ideas without offending others?

You don't have to do anything with this situation any more - your colleague is clearly feeling uncomfortable about it and as you said in comments, reaching out to her now might very easily come across as patronising.

For the next time, I'd advise going through the analysis with her before presenting to the group. Ideally, you'd do this a couple of times as your analysis progresses, and take her initial results as a starting point.

In analyses and presentations, you should never shy away from using complex methods if you feel they are necessary. However, you should also be able to explain them in such a way that your whole audience can understand what you are doing and why.


Is it better to apply to a less prestigeous PhD Program, or do research for a year and reapply?

Doing research for a year and reapplying would definitely be the better option IMO. Even though it's true that when it comes to performing research, it matters less where you do it, there are certainly undeniable positive effects from getting a degree in a prestigious university - from the peer group you'd be surrounded with to the visibility your work could get later on. After all, the research that you will do during the one year is not going to get wasted. Even if it doesn't get published, it only sharpens your ability to perform research.


Is there any requirement to cite recent literature in publications?

This question seems to be based on a common misconception about the role of citations (see this question for a related issue).  Citations aren't just there to list content your work builds on; they're also there to provide the reader with context and motivation.

The reason you should be citing recent work is to help the reader.  If you were familiar with various unsuccessful solutions, it's likely that some of them motivated the successful one, even if only by identifying things that couldn't work, and that merits a citation.  Even if not, many of your readers are likely to be people who've thought a lot about one or more of those unsuccessful approaches; you're in the best position to explain how your approach differs.

(I'm writing from the perspective of mathematics, by the way.)


Is it possible to get a PhD by writing only review and survey papers?

It is possible to get a PhD without writing any papers; the formal requirement is of writing a thesis, and many people do just that. So I think the formulation of your question is a bit misleading.
But cutting to what I think is the actual intent behind your question rather than the specific choice of words, the answer is almost certainly that you cannot get a PhD without doing original research. Just making expositions of research already done by others, no matter how detailed or how many citations you get for them, is not what a PhD is about and wouldn’t satisfy the requirements.


Whether to seek correction after my paper is published when the order of my first, middle, and last names is incorrect?

I can relate to the discomfort of having your name misspelled, however, I don't see how to completely resolve the issue.

First, if the mistake was already present in the proofs, then you're in fault for not noticing and there is nothing to be done. If the mistake was introduced after the proofs were accepted by the authors, then it's the publisher's mistake. But to my experience, there's little they can do to remedy the situation.

As anedoctal evidence to this, I recently had a very respected publisher re-order our list of authors after the proofs (second and third authors were switched in a four authored paper - order was initially alphabetical). The publisher offered to publish an errata, that is, a minor one liner in a forthcomng issue stating the correct author order of our paper.

Although not as reconforting as having a correction in the actual paper, it's not completely useless as you can prove (in your case) that it was actually a mistake and you are not simply claiming a random paper in your CV, but I don't think you will ever need to prove this. The issue is that your paper will still be published and cited with the incorrect name, and probably not correctly indexed e.g. in your Google Scholar profile.

TL;DR contact the publisher and ask for a correction, but expect no more than a published errata.


Does using GPL material in a paper make it impossible to transfer copyright to the publisher?

This would be a problem if you used GPL-licensed piece of software and decided to release your derived program in a GPL-incompatible way.

Other than this, you should be fine. The point of GPL is that if you improve the source code, then your improvements (in case you want to make them public) must also be licensed under GPL.

Certainly GPL does not "infect" your publications - you can e.g. cite a piece of code released under GPL, without any problems. (And you can write your paper on a Linux machine, thus running GPL'ed OS :-))


Can a bachelor of software engineering study masters of electrical engineering?

It depends on the program you apply for your masters degree. Some universities and educational systems accept changing fields for masters degrees and some others not. Some programs may require the applicant to study some more courses from the bachelors syllabus to help them be more prepared for their masters program.

I think you would better ask the program you want to apply to, to see whether they accept and consider applications with different bachelors degree or not.


Contacting Professors and Letters of Recommendation

You should absolutely follow up with her. At this point you have no idea why your email did not get answered. She could be at a conference. She could have missed it completely. Or she could have meant to write you back and simply forgot. I'm in my last year of grad school and none of these things are particularly uncommon for professors. Do not waste time wondering about why she did not write you back, simply reach out to her again. Your letter should say something like this: "Hi Professor So and So, I'm following up with you regarding the letter of recommendation for my graduate school applications..." When this has happened to me I almost always get an immediate response with a flood of apologies for the late reply.


14 months waiting for first review time to go elsewhere?

If you've been waiting for 14 months, and they are still not handling the paper, I think it's time for one last round of interaction.

State that you consider 14 months to be an unacceptably long time to have no response to reviews.
State that you intend to withdraw the paper and take it elsewhere unless they can give you a firm and near deadline (no more than approximately one more month) when you will receive a decision on your paper.

At this point, either they will make you a firm promise or they won't.  And if they make you a promise, either they'll fulfill it or they won't.  If they won't make a promise, or if they miss their promised response date by more than one week, withdraw the paper and send it elsewhere.


Citing a funding application in a student thesis

The rule with citation of “unusual” references is always something like that:

Make sure you really want to cite it. (In your case, it sounds okay, but most cases of students trying to cite “unusual” stuff end up with me telling them not to cite it)
Include just enough information that the cited item is uniquely identifiable.
If the item is not publicly available, include additional information that hints at its content (such as the title).

For example:

  John Aristotle (341 BC). Exploring the impact of introducing a fifth element in Empedocles’s classification of principles [Grant X1FH25 proposal to the Macedonian Science Fundation, Agency for Philosophical Research].