Can a PhD student transfer to another graduate school after advancing to candidacy?

Unfortunately, it's probably not feasible to start over elsewhere in the near future.  You can certainly try applying, and it might work out, especially if you have a really compelling explanation.  However, I think the chances are slim.

The basic question is how much progress towards a thesis you have made during your six years in grad school.  If you're close to finishing, then nobody will think it makes sense to start over from scratch in the same subfield (or even a related one).  At that point, you're not genuinely starting over, but just extending your time in grad school beyond six years.  In particular, continuing in a similar area will come across as a request for another school to provide the additional funding your current university won't give you, and that won't sound like a good use of money.  Most schools wouldn't give their own students a seventh year of funding, so why would they give it to a student from another university?

On the other hand, if you aren't close to finishing after six years, then starting over might make sense, but your track record will look bad.  You'll need to present a powerful argument for why you'll do much better the second time around.  In particular, there are people who have strong backgrounds and excellent grades but somehow don't end up succeeding at research, and the admissions committee will worry that you may fall into that category.  Taking a chance on a fresh graduate student will seem like a much better bet than admitting someone who has already spent six years in graduate school but been unable to finish.

So basically you're stuck.  Either you are too far along for starting over to make sense, or you have a track record of failure.

Of course it's difficult to say without knowing more about your specific situation, but I'd guess your best chances lie in two possibilities:

Even if you don't get admitted now, you might fare better in a few years.  As your previous time in graduate school fades into the past, you can try to make a case that you have increased perspective and maturity and a renewed desire to get a Ph.D. in math.  I don't know how likely this is to work, but at least it gives you a chance to explain that you have changed since your first attempt at grad school.
You could try radically changing your research area.  For example, from algebraic geometry to bioinformatics.  Of course this depends on being able to make a good argument for your change of interests.  You have to really demonstrate that you've finally figured out what you want to do, in the face of skepticism (many people will assume you are just flailing about looking for any chance to try something new).  However, it gives you a ready-made explanation for what went wrong the first time: you were trying to do something that in the end just wasn't suited to your interests and talents, but you've discovered that this new topic is a much better fit.

Whatever approach you take, I expect it will be difficult to get admitted.  It can't hurt to try, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.  My gut feeling is that it would be easier to try to finish your Ph.D. and then salvage your career (but of course I don't know enough about your situation to say that with any confidence).


Is there anything you can do when a professor discusses some of your personal concerns with other professors potentially mockingly?

I was going to vote to close because you're an undergraduate, but I checked the fine print and I think we're okay here -- this is a situation which could easily occur to a grad student.

If you still want to talk to the guy who canceled your appointment so rudely, I suppose you could visit his announced office hours and try pretending the whole thing didn't happen

However, if you don't mind being patient, the other approach would be to learn from this experience that your department is a gossip den, and be more circumspect in future; and trust that after some weeks or months, the good guys in your department will realize that you are a serious student worthy of helping.  This approach could be called taking the moral high ground and biding your time.


That's probably OK (hard to be sure without specifics). In several areas, it is quite common to post preprints (e.g. in the ArXiv https://arxiv.org/ ) and those do not prevent one from submitting it to a journal. Some areas (e.g. CS) are even OK with publishing preliminary versions in conference proceedings. What is not allowed is to submit a paper previously published in another journal or even submit a paper to more than one journal simultaneously. I think everyone frowns on that.


How do I tell the professor that I am burnt out and I want to move on

You are in a bad spot and it is difficult to diagnose the disease, much less the cure. It may be that your advisor is inexperienced - some things you say indicate that. But as commenters have implied, some problems worth solving are just hard - damn hard. I once worked on such a problem and had to abandon it, but the professor agreed and we found a better one.

However, it may be that your "best" solution is to find a different advisor. That can be difficult (or impossible) as there is department politics to consider. Some large departments even have factions. The radical solution is to change universities and thus find a different professor with different ideas.

But a student working on an extremely hard problem is itself a problem since it takes time and the student would like to actually graduate before the Sun goes nova. I also worked on problems that were too easy (mathematics) and hence had no real merit. The trick is to find the sweet spot of a sufficiently hard but do-able problem. Not all professors have the ability to to that regularly.

But you need to judge. If the problem is hard, but its solution would be a significant advance and you have the time and resources to pursue it, it can result in a big win. But the win isn't guaranteed.

However. It also sounds like your current advisor is truly invested in you. Two meetings a week shows commitment. You won't always find that in an advisor.

You might try two things. First is to have a conversation about the likelihood of actual success in a reasonable time frame. The other part of the conversation is to try to set a limit on attempts and explore alternative problems that don't completely ignore what you have done so far. If your advisor is, in fact, invested in you and not just in the problem itself, that conversation might be possible.

As a first year doctoral student it isn't yet time to panic, in fact. Significant things take time and focus.


Going to a lower-ranked school for better advisor fit

All of the schools that you are discussing are first-rank computer science schools with global leadership in their areas of specialty.  In this area at least, the only real difference between the "top" and "top of the top" schools that you are considering is the number of different areas in which the school is a global leader.  Thus, if you already have a clear, narrow focus that you know that you want to work in, and there are 1-2 people in that area at all of the schools you are choosing between, the distinction between "top" and "top of the top" is pretty much null.

Furthermore, your graduate career will be primarily determined by your advisor relationship rather than the school within which it will occur.  Beware of being misled by first impressions, but a good match with your Ph.D. advisor is worth much more than the incremental difference between schools.


If i am the first coauthor of the paper, is it possible to change the order of names on the paper in my resume?

Since you write that you are co-first author, I assume you are from a discipline where authorship order matters (e.g. life sciences), and then the answer is NO. In fact, this may be seen as purposeful misleading.

The authorship order is essentially part of the paper and how it is indexed.

And if authorship order in your field does not matter, why would you want to do this?


How to avoid plagiarism when working on an idea not developed from a student who quit the PhD program?

It is easy to discharge your ethical obligations here: you treat the unpublished paper like you would any other source, i.e., citing it carefully and making sure not to rewrite sentences or rehash ideas without explicit attribution (include direct quotes if necessary, and probably don't include too many of those without a very compelling reason).

As you point out, the more serious risk is that you are starting thesis work on a problem on which someone else did a substantial amount of work on (though you worked on it independently) and that you may come out with little which is essentially new.  You're right that this is a risk: it's a risk for all thesis work everywhere.  Again my advice is to not treat this any differently than work that has been published: clearly you need to go substantially beyond it, or you don't have a thesis.  Whether the prior work of this other person shows that this is a fruitful area for you to continue in or whether it is evidence that all the good stuff has already been done is one of those tough calls that your thesis advisor should help you with.

Finally, of course it is a shame if two people have done good work on something and neither of them publishes it.  If it turns out that you do your thesis work on something else, then as a separate project (or perhaps better: a later project), you may want to explore a publication which is a synthesis of your work and this other person's.  Offering him coauthorship would be appropriate, but if he is really out of academia then it becomes a service to the profession for you to publish the work, while accurately conveying its provenance.  It's just that that kind of publication would probably not meet the requirements for a PhD thesis (and even if it did, it would not be a good launching of your career).


How to efficiently proofread my own mathematical paper?

A general technique, applicable not only to mathematical papers, is to list common mistakes, such as the one you noted. Then, you do a revision of your paper for each item on the list: reading only to look at uniformity, reading only to look if you introduce all notations, etc.
I've picked up this tip in the following book and it has worked well so far.
The book also suggest to reduce the familiarity with your text, so you might be able to read it as a "new" reader and thus find mistakes or parts that are not clear. You could do that by putting away the manuscript for a few days/weeks, printing it, changing the font, etc.


I think you have a few important questions.  Foremost, I am assuming you know the language -- to what extent do you know Chinese culture?  The transition will be very steep if you do not understand the cultural nuances of all aspects of living and working in China.  Indeed, from a Western standpoint, the interactions between students and faculty are much different.  And, the interactions between faculty and staff are also different.  As you consider the options, I would find out what criteria are used for promotion, and whether you must publish in certain journals on certain lists.  I don't know where you have done your training.  If your training is in a Western university, you may experience a very steep transition if you are unfamiliar with Chinese culture, practices, and norms.


How to write a brief research statement for a postdoc application?

The best thing to do is to try finding examples of research statements written by people in similar positions. Many people put their research statement on their website. From these you can see the style and length that is typical in your field.

Your research statement should discuss both the work you have done and the work you want to do in the future. It should also discuss the bigger picture that links these together.

Generally, less is more. People instinctively write long research statements describing all their work in detail. This instinct must be fought, as no one will read a 10-page research statement. For a postdoc, I think 2-3 pages (not including bibliography) is typical, at least in my area of theoretical computer science. Faculty-level research statements will be a bit longer.

Keep your audience in mind. (I.e. does the person reading this know your area?) Proof read and polish meticulously. And definitely ask other people to look at your draft and give feedback.

Good luck!


University knowledge of student and/or staff viewing free online journal article databases

There easily could be, so don't do marginally legal things on your university's network. Mine doesn't appear to do more than shut down bot nets and torrent hosting, but it's not hard to track the rest. It's mostly only in the university's interest to stop crimes and copyright infringement committed on its network so that it doesn't have to deal with law enforcement and/or lawsuits (i.e. paperwork and cooperation). I don't think Sci-Hub and LibGen have risen to that level quite yet. You might get away with it for awhile, but if enough people start accessing scientific content that way, then the paperwork will start to flow in, and the accesses will start getting shut down.


Is it possible to co-finance a personal grant in Europe if it doesn't meet salary conditions of the country?

As usual, rules on this sort of thing will vary from country to country and from grant agency to agency.

However, all three options that you mention sound plausible to me. To go over them:

  Decline the grant (...)

Sure. Nobody can fault you for declining a grant that pays so much below standard salaries. Honestly, unless I had no other options, this is likely what I would do. I am not sure I would call it "wasteful" to decline a grant that, honestly, sounds like a terrible option to begin with.

  Convince the department to co-finance (...)

This is indeed not unheard of. Of course, whether you will be able to convince the department to do so largely depends on how much they want you to be there, what their regulations are, and if they have money to spare. I have seen this sort of co-financing mostly in cases where the department and the applicant were already in longer contact, and the public grant was mostly acquired as a way to make a move that was happening anyway cheaper for the department (that is, it was planned that the candidate joins them anyway, but now a part is paid via an external grant). If the department had no intentions to hire you without the grant it becomes substantially less likely that they will be willing or able to chip in.

  (...) obtain another grant (...)

This sounds like another plausible option, but check the regulations of both grant agencies. In many cases, full-time personal grants are exclusive - that is, you can have only one at a time, even if the stipend is very low. However, it may still be an option to apply not for a second personal grant, but for a regular research project that allows you to pay a salary supplement for yourself. Whether this is possible again depends on the grant agency. For instance, the SNF in Switzerland as a rule never allows to pay any money to yourself as part of a regular research project. The FWF in Austria, on the other hand, is perfectly fine with this as long as the rules of the host institution (regarding, for instance, maximum employment), are followed. That being said, with this option you should probably expect to live off the 60% stipend for a while, as the application procedure for grants tends to take a while.


Should I mark every glossary term, or only the first one?

A pattern that I have repeatedly seen and that seems reasonable is:

mark all occurrences (maybe excluding mere mentions of something that is not discussed or applicable at that location)
bold the page number of the "main" occurrence (e.g. definition, detailed description, etc., not necessarily the first one)


Is sci-hub also used in places having institutional access?

The only study that I'm aware of is the magazine article that Orion linked to in the comments. Anecdotally, however, my experience matches yours -- even in places with institutional access, some people prefer sci-hub as it's quicker and easier. No need for a lab-specific login or password, no need to check if the journal is actually one that your institution subscribes to; just paste in the DOI and go. In fact, there are even web browser extensions that automatically append the sci-hub URL to the page you're visiting, so with a few keypresses you can be automatically forwarded to sci-hub's cache of that page.


How to address the german “Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. X” in writing?

No, just "Dear Professor X" is correct and completely in line with the German conventions. The "Dr.-Ing. habil." part refers to certain qualifications (PhD in Engineering and a Habilitation -- a German qualification to teach at a University), but is only ever used on name cards and CVs etc.


Is it appropriate/accepted for a PhD student to organize/coordinate a special session at a conference?

I have done so, and the participants weren't troubled by it at all. As a PhD student you are supposed to become an expert on your (very narrow) topic, so near the end you are supposed to know more than most about that one topic than others in your field.

Susceptability to status differs quite a bit from country to country and discipline to discipline, so whether this works in your field depends. I am Dutch, but the conference was an international one, and my discipline is sociology.


How should I cite a tool or a library in my article?

A good citation has the following properties:

Gives credit where it is due for an (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) that is not your own.
Directs the reader of your paper where to look, if he/she wants to verify that your claims about the (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) are correct.

Any of the following can be used to cite a tool, as long as the above properties are satisfied:

If the authors of a tool explain how they would like it to be cited, follow those recommendations.
If there is a paper or tech report about the tool, cite that, because that is what the authors would probably want (if they didn't specify).
If there is no paper or TR, cite the website of the tool.

Of course, in most cases, you're not the first person to cite the tool - go search Google Scholar for the name of the tool, and find out how others cited it.


Infusing Graduate Studies with High Quality video content

Let me discuss two aspects of a good course that are most important to the student: Content, and Learning. There are others, of course, but I'll leave them out of this discussion.

I don't think that content and learning are independent, but they are quite different things. So, if you are asking if improving the content of a course would help improve a course, then sure, it would. But I think only at the margins.

But learning is much more than content. If it were only content, then you could go to the university bookstore, purchase 15 or so books and then carry them to the registrar's office to collect your MS degree. Um, no, I don't think it works that way.

Perhaps you are confusing education with entertainment, at least a bit. If you listen to a brilliant lecturer speak, in a classroom or (more likely) at a conference, you won't really learn a lot beyond what it will be important for you to study. It is the study, not the content or the brilliance that will result in learning.

For learning to occur the student needs to do a lot of work, solving problems, writing, getting and evaluating feedback. Then, more problems, feedback, etc.. Eventually some insight will emerge, we hope from the hard work. Learning involves changing the brain and developing long term memory and connections between ideas. Content alone, even brilliant content won't do that. Only hard work, usually involving repetition will.

Perhaps I'm a case in point. I'm probably just an average professor and I worked at mostly just average universities. But my students learned a lot and some of them have gone on to surpass me, getting their own doctorates and now teaching at top universities. Some others became leaders in industry and government. But I never relied on fancy videos. I just made them work hard on meaningful things and gave them a lot of feedback. I also let them improve on their mistakes by resubmitting old work. How the content was delivered mattered much less.

And, of course, you can't interrupt a video lecturer to ask them a question. So, if you miss some point, you are just stuck until the video ends (assuming it is delivered in a classroom situation, rather than offline in a "flipped" classroom). And then you get farther and farther behind the presenters ideas.

My philosophy of teaching is that it matters much less what I do in the classroom than what the students do. So, course design starts with the exercises and projects that the students will do to actually learn. Over the years I came to rely much less on lecture and much more on reinforcement of key ideas (not presentation, reinforcement).

But, I didn't always think that way, sadly. At one time I developed the absolutely perfect way to teach (hmmm, lecture on) statistical sampling. I created the absolutely perfect lecture. When I delivered it, brilliantly, I think, I noted that only about 5% of the students actually understood what I was talking about. OOPS..

On the other hand, I've had the experience, teach math and/or cs, as have many others, that when I stumble through a lecture and have to figure it out as I go along, backing up and moving forward.... that the students afterwards thank me for giving such a nice lecture. That is because that stumbling is how they often have to work and seeing a prof stuck in the same way is both reassuring and shows them how the "smart folks" really work.

And note, of course, that great content already exists. Great learning and great teaching is another thing altogether. And don't denigrate the "average" professor or the "average" university. A lot of deep learning goes on there. Likewise a lot of really incompetent people graduate from top schools. I've met some of them and some of them are public figures.


How to effectively e-mail a professor I met briefly about collaborative work?

I always suggest being a bit more succinct, and mentioning (but not delving into!) the technical aspects of your work. How about this:

Dear Professor XYZ,
This is [name]; we met at AAA conference in TTT a couple of days ago. As you may recall, I am working on [xxx] and you suggested that your post-doc could get me started in your testbed for my [yyy] project.
I'm very eager to pursue this. Could you please introduce me to your post-doc? I'd be happy to set up a call or provide any information you might need.
Thanks in advance; I really appreciate the opportunity,
Kashan


Is there a way to follow particular authors on arxiv?

Yes. Go to https://arxiv.org/search/ and search the author name (choose author name from the pull down menu on the right).

Original deprecated method:

Yes. It seems to be a link of the following form:

http://arxiv.org:443/find/math/1/au:+***AuthorIDHere***/0/1/0/all/0/1


How to scale grades to take into account how strong the students are?

are you asking about just converting everything into standardized scores?

In which case, you take the mean of relative performance (for example, if you are teaching a senior level course, you might take the major gpa distribution rather than overall gpa distribution) assign everyone a z-score based on their position in the calculated normal distribution.

you do the same for your test, standardize the score. For example, if your test average is a 50 with an SD of 10, a person who got a 70 has a z of 2 while a 45 has a z of -.5.

Now if you are planning on basing their recorded grade based on expected performance you are probably opening up a serious can of worms.  For example,  a student who consistently scores in the z score range of 1.8-2.1 and then only scores at a 1.5 is given an 75 (assuming mean 80 score, and 10 sd) while a student who consistently scores at a -.5 to -.8 range and scores a zero is given an 85 on the test.

If this is your plan, I would seriously rethink it. Not only will it upset students, it penalizes high performing students and rewards low performers.


No answer after 2 days in not unusual. Dont forget that they most likely don't have all the staff working full time on the summer school and questions like financial compensation may have to go by the responsible in the inviting institution, and not the company paid for handling the practical issues


Is it a good strategy to reproduce figures from related articles in NSF proposal?

I would strongly advise against doing this. Instead, create your own original work that illustrates the main points.

Sometimes I see figures reproduced from a journal article in a grant application. Usually, the figure doesn't work well in that setting. When the grant writer copies the image into the proposal, they typically shrink the image to save space, which makes the image hard to read and understand. Journal article figures are often very complex, making points that are not necessarily relevant to the proposal. It's usually best to create your own figure that says what YOU want to say - to make a point about the science you want to do. Also, I worry that reviewers may regard this as plagiarism.


I am looking for a way to remotely teach a class

For the video conferencing software, I recommend Discord.  It was started in the gaming community. When we all went online in March, several of the students in one of my classes suggested it, and I went with it.
It's very good for low-bandwidth voice channels, and also allows screen-sharing.  The only downside is that it only allows 25 people to see the screen share at once.
To get around that, a colleague of mine streams his video feed to Twitch (another gaming site).
As far as drawing, I use Microsoft's OneNote software. Its drawing allows my to use my Wacom tablet to write on top of PDFs that I upload into it.
Below is a still from one of my video lectures, showing my (awful) handwriting on top of a PDF in OneNote. This was streamed to YouTube for recording purposes, but most of the students were watching live.


No, it would not be advisable to create a Wikipedia page solely devoted to the new technique. If you are one of the sole people responsible for the technique and its development, you run the risk of creating a conflict of interest. Even without that issue, a new technique likely has few published sources to support it, so you will have difficulty establishing notability. Without additional support from reliable sources, your new page may be deleted.

Luckily, there are numerous other options for promoting your work in laymen-friendly ways. It may be feasible (and may even provide better visibility of your work, even to prospective employers) to write a few blog entries about the approach, produce a short Youtube video about it, or even a dedicated wiki, if you see the technique undergoing changes or optimizations in the near future.


Using my university email address as correspondence address to apply for PhD positions in the same university

I don't see any possible problem with using your current university email address in your application.

The university issued you this  address with the expectation that you would use it to communicate with people inside and outside the university. I can't imagine any way this would be considered "not rightful".


It is perfectly fine to say: "I am working on something, but I was told by my boss Dr Who to keep it confidential. You can ask Dr Who if you are interested."


Dealing with emails that could be interpreted as being endorsed by you

With a class of only 4 students, the email could be interpreted as being sent by the entire class. Normally in this case, the names of the 4 students would be listed in the email.

For a larger class where it is obvious that the email is form an isolated student the best thing to do is to drop it. Making an off hand comment about how crazy the student who sent the email will only put the professor in an awkward situation.

For a small class, a simple email, ideally just to the professor, but reasonably cc'd to everyone, would be to say that student B does not speak for you.


What is the difference between a college and a university?

Some colleges are universities: The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London; University College London; these award degrees in their own right.

Some colleges are listed bodies of collegiate universities: Merton College, University of Oxford; Churchill College, University of Cambridge. These do not award degrees in their own right; the parent university awards the degrees. Some teaching occurs in college. Some teaching and research staff are attached to a college, and to a university-wide department; others are attached only to a department. All undergraduates are members of a college, and of the parent university.

Some colleges are residential bodies of collegiate universities, e.g. Bowland College, University of Lancaster; Halifax College, University of York. Teaching does not occur in college, and the parent university awards the degrees.

Some colleges are independent and part of no university: Ruskin College, Oxford; Working Men's College, London. These tend to make awards other than traditional degrees.

This is the situation for England. Other anglophone countries may have different arrangements.


VG Wort – why would I agree to share with the publisher?

You would do this if you authored a publication with a small, independent publisher whom you want to protect from bankruptcy.

The decision of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) that publishers have to return the share of VG Wort royalties they received between 2012 and 2015 to their authors has cost publishers 20--200 percent of a yearly proceed (according to a science publishing association).

Most publishers can handle this, but some small publishers seem to struggle, and these are often houses that publish financially risky work beyond the mainstream, i.e. they may be run by patrons of the arts rather than business people. Some authors have a close and mutual relationship with those publishers and would relinquish what's now legally their share of royalties in favor of keeping their publishers in business.

See, for example, this excerpt from an open letter by a dozen authors who published with Verbrecher Verlag, Maroverlag and other independent houses:

  Nun wollen wir von dem für unsere Verlage schmerzhaften bis ruinösen
  Ausgang [des BGH-Urteils] auch nicht profitieren. Wir haben gewiss nichts zu
  verschenken, aber wir wollen uns auch nicht gegeneinander ausspielen
  lassen. Es sind die unabhängigen Verlage, die unsere eigensinnigen
  Bücher in einem nicht einfachen Umfeld durchgesetzt haben.

  Wir werden deshalb das Formular der VG Wort „Verzicht auf
  Rückabwicklung zugunsten von Verlagen“ vor dem 28.2.2017
  unterschreiben und bitten Euch, das ebenfalls zu erwägen.

Rough translation:

  We don't want to profit from the Court judgement, which is painful or
  even ruinous for our publishers. We certainly have nothing to donate, but we don't want to
  be played off against each other. It's the independent publishers that
  have made our idiosyncratic books possible in a difficult environment.

  Therefore we will sign the [pertinent VG Wort form] and thereby
  relinquish our royalties, and we also ask you to consider this option
  for yourself.

While this letter is about the redistribution of returns between 2012 and 2016, it illustrates the reasoning behind the decision of some (few) authors to share their VG Wort proceeds with the publisher also in the future.

The initiative "fair book market" lists further considerations for and against sharing. Those in favor are either based on notions of fairness, or on the strategical calculation that disgruntled publishers might leave the VG Wort in the long run to form a new entity in which author's interests are represented less well.

In sum, this is unlikely to be relevant for most authors of scientific literature, but it might be a consideration for authors of literary or philosophical works at the fringes, who want to support their indie label.
Strictly based on your assumption: there is no (strong) point in sharing your returns.


There is nothing you can do about this any more, so it's not worth your brain and emotional power to worry about. Spare your brain for things you can affect.

That said, having seen such mistakes many times in applications, they do seem to suggest a lack of attention to detail. I wouldn't say that we've ever rejected an application because of a mistake of this sort, but they do get noted if they fit into a bigger picture in the application. If you are convinced that your application is otherwise good, then you will not likely have to fear any detrimental effect.

(I'm going to add that everyone who sits on selection committees knows that applicants apply to many different universities. While these sort of mistakes should not happen, we understand that they do and why.)


Is getting a second masters in a different technical field worthwhile?

A Masters degree is fundamentally different than Ph.D.  Whereas a Ph.D. teaches the general skill of scientific investigation (in some context), as Masters degree focuses on acquisition of a particular set of skills and knowledge.  If it is just the skills and knowledge that you want, it is often possible to acquire them elsewhere as well.

The value of enrolling formally for a second Masters degree thus comes from one of several corollary benefits of formal rather than informal study:

You want to make a career shift to an area where a Masters in a particular field is a pre-requisite or of high salary value.
The formal program will allow you to focus more strongly on skill acquisition, either because of the expectations set by classes or because formal enrollment will provide financial benefits (e.g., some employers have degree program benefits).
The program will give you access to resources (e.g., high-end lab equipment, mentoring by professors) that are useful for acquiring the skills and difficult to get access to otherwise.

Whether the cost/benefit tradeoff is worth it in your particular case is something that only you can judge, but these are good metrics to use for analyzing that tradeoff.


How to encourage self-archiving of preprints in science?

From what I see, some organizations are solving this by making self-archiving mandatory. In the UK, research funding bodies are now starting to use only open-access publications to assess the quality of research. As a result, the universities are starting to require their academic staff to self-archive publications. Also, I've seen a conference organizers discussing whether they should require the authors to self-archive the accepted papers.


Students trying to negotiate away penalties for late submission of coursework

Adhere to the guidelines and syllabus you posted. If students can get around consequences of late submission by arguing, you have set a precedent, and they (and future generations of students) will argue again the next time. Don't go there. Consciously cultivate a reputation that pointless arguments don't work with you.

Next time, make it clear that "normal" IT problems like corrupted files or network lag is not your responsibility, and encourage students to upload their work sufficiently early so they won't run afoul of such problems. If possible, allow students to change their submissions, so they can upload whatever they have a week before the deadline, and keep on uploading polished versions, with the last successful submission before the deadline counting for the grade. This is the way most MOOC sites do it.

(Of course, if the university servers went down, you should take this into account.)

This earlier question seems to be similar: How to deal with failing a student? (And I gave the same recommendation there.)


Is obtaining a PhD from an Asian country really a career suicide?

Well, your question is broad, but to be on point, Asia needs PhDs, if you have the competent advisor and the relationship is not "master and servant", then you have high prospects to become a good independent scholar. Competition for the job is lower than in West.
About ranking, I really can't comment if it is beneficial in future employment, I think what is important is the ranking and the impact factor of the journals where you publish.

That being said, there are departments in obscure places in Iran, Thailand, Turkey, Taiwan that have higher H index than well know and regarded departments in West.

Also as far as I noticed, gender relationship and position of women in STEM is much better than in West.


Is it normal to feel like I bought my way into graduate school after being rejected and then accepted when I was awarded an external fellowship?

From what I've heard the NSF fellowship is not an easy one to get, and having one seems to carry some sort of prestige. Sure, the program may have accepted you on the ground that they don't have to pay you, but the fact that you have an NSF fellowship may have changed the admission committee's perception of your ability, which could be what tipped the balance in your favour. No matter what, there is no point in dwelling on the past. What matters is how you perform in the program now, not how you got in. Don't be the college freshman who keeps talking about his high school athletic achievement; truth be told, nobody cares.

As for your lack of passion for the subject, I want to point out that passion usually does not precede mastery of a subject. Rather, people usually develop passion after they become good at something. So I don't really think lacking passion at this point is a deal breaker. I'm sure astrophysics is large enough for you to find something that you are good at and can develop a passion for. Of course, if you can't see yourself doing research, teaching, or anything science-related in the future, you might want to rethink about your decision to go to graduate school in the first place.


How does a professor lose their tenure over a sex scandal which he was not involved in?

The Dean of the medical school is not being fired because he was involved in sexual crimes.

He is being fired because he poorly handled the Title IX investigation. He utterly failed to ensure the safety of student and patient safety, and he bears responsibility for that.

To characterize him as being "not involved in" the scandal is not accurate - the scandal is not only Nassar's actions, but that they were allowed to go on as long as they were without being addressed.


Former collaborator presenting joint research as his own

Short Answer

No, you should contact Prof Jim and request that he properly acknowledge the source of the work that he is presenting as being your dissertation research.

Longer Answer

You state the work is from your dissertation. You state that Prof Jim was a committee member, meaning he was not your primary advisor. Finally, you claim that Prof Jim is presenting your dissertation work as if it was his own. Let's leave aside how you know this.

First to the case of plagiarism. At its core, this will mean that Prof Jim is giving you absolutely no acknowledgement at all for the work AND that he is claiming explicitly that the work is his. This is plagiarism. What does absolutely mean? It means, not only do you not have any written notice on the presentation, you are not given any verbal acknowledgement during the presentation. Are you certain that Prof Jim does not start or end his talk with a verbal statement such as this: "All of the work that I am showing today was done by Vladhagen who was a graduate student at the time"? Alternatively, are you absolutely certain that Prof Jim is saying something such as this: "To explore this problem, I did this type of study". Absent such evidence, you cannot conclusively prove plagiarism. You can only state that Prof Jim is negligent and thereby potentially engaging in plagiarism.

In summary, your feelings aside, this is NOT a clear instance of plagiarism.

Your case is solely that Prof Jim gives no written acknowledgement anywhere in his written slides for your work. This borders on being dishonest to the extent that Prof Jim was not your primary advisor and the work was your dissertation research. But then, Prof Jim is co-author on a publication. So, Prof Jim does have a right during his presentation to demonstrate the work because it was done in collaboration and is already published as such.

Your case is therefore solely that Prof Jim is taking a negligent approach to acknowledge in writing in his slides that the work is your dissertation research.

At this point, your first approach must be to contact Prof Jim for clarification. You are at an equal footing here as a colleague. You need only state two things.

I know that you are presenting the research work that we did in collaboration for my dissertation during your interviews.
I am aware that my contributions to the work are being mis-represented because a written acknowledgment is not given on the slides to state that I was the principal contributor on the work.

You have already contacted Prof Jim by email and he has not responded. What does that mean? You have a responsibility now to contact him by phone or visit him directly. In addition, you might engage your primary dissertation advisor. He or she can apply a counter pressure to Prof Jim to drive the point home further. He or she should also be in the better position to inform the universities as needed when the contacts continue to go unanswered.

You are also within your bounds to ask for an official copy of the written presentation, since it represents work that you did.

Finally, as someone on the other side (responsible to do faculty interviews), I can say that faculty are not oblivious to cases such as this. When we interview, we have a CV that lists publications. We hear an oral presentation. We pay attention to whether the presentation fully acknowledges the records in the CV. When they do not, we ask questions. Specifically, when I hear an oral presentation that does not have a concluding list of students who contributed to the work, my alarm bells immediately start ringing. This is NOT NORMAL! In other words, rather than rushing to contact faculty for what you believe could be true, trust that WE will contact YOU should the case reach that level of seriousness (i.e. indications of plagiarism).


Is it okay to expect advisors to offer a word of condolence?

Expressions of emotional concern are a tricky balance for supervisors to find sometimes, and can also have a strong cultural or religious component to it. For example, some faiths have suggested that mourning should be confined to a very particular interval and not extend past that. (I’m aware of this in certain Muslim and Jewish denominations, for instance).

Also, the response of an individual to reminders of grief can be intense and unexpected, and advisors may not want to put you under any additional pressure or stress or cause an episode while you’re meeting that they can’t or don’t feel comfortable handling.

So it just might be that they don’t want to cross any boundaries that feel inappropriate.

All of that said, there does remain a finite possibility that they may view their advisees as labor input rather than complex human beings. Such advisors sadly do exist and are not particularly enjoyable to work for.

If it’s an important enough issue that you feel that it’s making you less interested in your work or the relationship with your advisors, you may want to consider having a discussion with them at the end of a meeting to discuss it.


How to avoid a hostile takeover of first authorship during medical leave?

I would send an email along the following lines to the supervisor and copied to the person doing the additional piece of work. While not complete protection, this approach provides evidence and also makes it clear that the supervisor should respond if he doesn't intend to wait.

The draft article attached to the email should have a version number and date.

  Dear ...

  As requested, I have attached the latest draft of our paper, TITLE.
  It is saved at LOCATION, together with the data and analysis code.
  Unfortunately, I was unable to submit the draft before taking leave as
  planned because the data concerning XYZ was not available.

  I understand that OTHER-RESEARCHER is intending to complete his/her part of the
  analysis while I am on leave. I will verify that analysis and
  integrate it with the existing paper as my first task on my return in
  a month. I understand that OTHER-RESEARCHER is willing to draft that section of
  the paper, but as lead author, I want to ensure that it is consistent
  with the existing message and style of the paper. I would therefore
  prefer that the analysis is prepared as a separate document and I will
  integrate it myself.

  Assuming that no additional questions are raised by this final
  analysis, I expect to be able to circulate the complete draft within a
  week of my return for submission shortly thereafter. As the analysis
  has already taken NN months, I don't expect this delay to create any
  difficulties, but please let me know if you are concerned about
  waiting until my return for the paper to be completed.

Depending on the reason for the medical leave, it may also be appropriate to add a final paragraph:

  If there are any questions about this work, I am contactable during my
  leave at EMAIL


Citation to well-known results and reference to user manuals

My first comment will be that it is better to add one reference too many than one too few. Reviewers or editors might suggest to remove references during the review process if they seem superfluous.

In some cases, it might be more useful to add references to quite basic concepts. One such instance is when papers are directed at least partially to people outside the field. In such cases it may be sufficient to point at a basic book in the field, as an example to point to a good book on statistics regarding the Poisson distribution (the book has to provide some good information on the topic of course). This can help people who may have a different background to get deeper into the topic.

In general there is of course a fine line where references are or are not needed and with time one learns to identify this line better. What you can do is to simply look at other papers that you have read and see where they place the line and try to follow their example. That will likely form a very good basis for finding the right level of referencing. But, be aware that the line is different depending on the audience of the publication where the paper is published and you should briefly check to see what is applicable in each journal where you publish.


Order of authors for a tenure-track assistant professor in the USA: second author after Ph.D. student or last author?

The answer for appropriate author order is very dependent on the culture of your (sub)field.  For example, if you are a computer engineer, you should probably be second author, while if you are a biological engineer, you should probably be last author.  Follow whatever you see others doing in the venues where you are submitting.

That said, these days it is often possible to make the contributions explicit so that there are no questions about contribution.  Many journals now request or require an "author contributions" section that attributes specific work to specific authors. Even if the venue that you are submitting to does not have such a requirement, you can still  add that information into the acknowledgements section.  Furthermore, the CRediT taxonomy provides a set of standard widely-recognized roles that are useful for describing such work.


Is your peer-reviewing service ever important for career advancement?

I do not believe simple refereeing activities have an impact on hiring or tenure, but it may have an positive effect in an annual report, to get “progress through the ranks” salary increases or bonuses, and other recognition at this level.

It could have an impact in exceptional circumstances, such as receiving a referee-of-the-year- type recognition, but it would be truly rare for a junior person to get such recognition and thus have weight in a hiring decision.  For a more senior person repeatedly getting such recogniztion might be useful in a promotion file.

Doing a good job at peer-review is usually a stepping stone to getting an associate editorship or a senior referee position in journals, and these are often considered in tenure/promotion decision as evidence of oustanding reputation beyond the institution.

Note that outside public recognition of work done as referee or on an editorial board, rather than the anonymous work usually done as a regular referee, is usually what is prized.

I do not have a Publon account: I am tenured and consider it part of my job to contribute to my field by refereeing the work of others, just like I expect others to review my work.  I do get the occasional accolade, which I will gladly take, but  I don’t do referee work (papers or grants) for recognition any more than I give to charity for recognition.


U.S. humanities professors: Can you get back into academia if you leave?

Speaking as humanistic social scientist at an R1 (but who has also taught at small liberal arts colleges), I would say it would be next to impossible.

There is an absolute surfeit of stellar recent PhDs in the humanities. Any position that opens up will get 200+ hungry applicants. Why hire at the associate or full level if you can get a stellar assistant at a quarter of the cost.

Furthermore, if a senior position did open up and a search committee were to look at your CV, I would think they might wonder whether you left academia because: 1) you were pushed out (sexual harassment? Title IX violation?); 2) were burnt out of teaching; or, 3) something else unmentionable. If you left because you hated academia, why are you trying to get back in? Academic hiring is risk adverse because of the stakes of tenure.

However, as an alternative, you might be a candidate for some peri-academic positions such as the director of an institute, dean of student affairs, etc.

tl;dr: Talk to your provost or dean or chair about taking an unpaid leave of absence that retains your tenured position.


As a self-learner, what to do with books providing exercises but not solutions?

An inability to confidently answer the questions in a text book in general is an indication of not having mastered the material.* If you are not 100% confident that you are solving the problems correctly, go back and read the material again. You will not be able to use the skills in research unless you know the material without an answer key.

*For a graduate class I used to teach there was a problem in the textbook that I could not solve. No matter how I thought about the problem, some information was always missing. I am friends with the author so emailed him for a solution set. I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't solve the problem and figured the answer key would be helpful anyways. The answer for the problem in question was "Not possible with supplied information."


Is my PhD programme a scam? Does my department only want to get PhD students as TAs for their recitation section?

The idea that there is some sort of dichotomy between academic mathematics "research" and "teaching" in the U.S. is an incorrect over-simplification. It is true that there is considerable PR hype about "research" being the fundamental goal/criterion/status-generator... It is true that almost all math grad students in the U.S. are supported as TAs, not RAs. It is also true that sometimes the TA workload is unreasonable, and, often, people seem to find the TA work more immediately gratifying than their research, and if done inefficiently certainly takes more than 20 hours per week.

It is also true that some grad students from abroad are happy enough to be in the U.S. that working conditions are not an issue...

While it may be that many academic math jobs, particularly those with lighter teaching duties, are filtered on research, faculty still inevitably spend quite a bit of time on teaching and service. If teaching is extremely unpalatable, then academic math will be unpalatable.

Some people might say that any situation in which the "apprentices" cannot expect to get as good a job as the "master" are scams... but it's hard to find a situation in real life which works differently, I think. It's only a scam if someone makes a stupid promise to you that you'll eventually have a job just like your advisor, since, based on numbers alone, that's unlikely.

In my opinion, the true goals of graduate education in math are several: learn how to be an effective undergrad teacher, learn some advanced mathematics, learn how mathematicians make new mathematics, and practice attempting that.

In particular, research in mathematics requires mastery of so much prior work that it's very unusual for grad students to have genuine publications prior to the award of the PhD. This is very unlike lab-oriented engineering or CompSci degrees. That fact is not a sign of failure. If anything, it might be a sign of substance, that faculty insist on graduate education and more genuine research accomplishment than "papers" per se.

Also, in particular, again, the purported dichtomy between "researcher" and "lecturer", and a perception that the "goal" of graduate programs is to produce one or the other, is inaccurate. Graduate programs teach advanced mathematics to the grad students, and show what research is. The likely fact that they'll be doing a lot of teaching in their subsequent career does not affect the advanced mathematics... and the TA practice is helpful in becoming efficient and effective as a teacher.

There is sometimes a subtler issue, of grad programs which recruit international grad students who won't complain ... about workloads or anything else. That's not a good sign... but "even" domestic students are often pessimistic about the possibilities of change, and don't want to speak up for fear of retribution, etc. In the range of "generally reasonable", there are extremes, and there are abuses, indeed. Nevertheless, even then, it's probably not really a "scam".


What does it mean when a paper gets rejected stating "poor typesetting" as one of the reasons?

Typesetting is everything that relates to the visual aspects of the paper's formatting, from spacing between individual letters / words / formulas to overall distribution of text / figures / tables etc.

LateX will take care of some that, but it's essential that you use the template provided by the journal your submitting to! If for no other reason then because the styles might be subject to copyright.

In general, rejecting a paper because of a poor writing or typesetting is perfectly valid. Your job as a researcher is to 1) produce a novel idea, 2) explore the heck out of it and 3) communicate it to the community succinctly and clearly. If #3 is done poorly, then #1 and #2 are pointless.

I recommend you to:

read at least a basic guide on visual design and typesetting,
observe the style of the existing papers published in your target journal, and
once you have a draft, ask one of your peers to proofread it to weed out as many issues as possible before you submit.


About email contact with prospective advisors who are yet to join the institute

I personally would be a little too concerned about a graduate student who keeps trying to "hard sell" themselves before I arrived. Partially this is because, if I were just starting a new position, I'd be worried about a million things, including winding down my previous employment situation, preparing for a move, figuring out all the different things that have to be done in the new position, and so on. Others may very well be different, though!

Note that I don't think it's wrong to be active when you sense a good opportunity, such as working with a scientist you hold in high regard as an advisor. However, being too aggressive may be just as damaging as being too passive. Steer clear of both extremes. For instance, have the advisors in question asked you to send them weekly updates? Have you asked them to  schedule a phone or Skype chat? Do you know if they are even "at home" or if they're on travel when they're not responding?

Advisors have their own personal styles, and your style should mesh with theirs. If it doesn't, it will likely be an unproductive and unhappy situation for both of you.


Assuming that the proceedings submission / permissions allow you to also submit your manuscript to arXiv, which presumably it will as there are other LIPIcs papers on arXiv, you can also provide the DOI and reference for the original publication in the arXiv record.

One such example is Periodic Pólya urns and an application to Young tableaux, which has the following publication information attached.

  Journal reference: Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), 29th International Conference on Probabilistic, Combinatorial and Asymptotic Methods for the Analysis of Algorithms (AofA 2018), pp.1-12

  DOI:   10.4230/LIPIcs.AofA.2018.11


Do postdoc/professor search committees read the files from all candidates?

In my department, postdoc applications are read first by the faculty in the applicant's research area. Each area chooses about five of its top applicants, and those chosen applications, from all areas, are then read by the department's executive committee, which decides what offers to make.

Applications for tenured and tenure-track positions are read by members of the department's personnel committee --- not all applications by all members. The best applications are then brought to the attention of the whole personnel committee. Also, faculty members who are not on the committee can and do read applications and bring particularly strong ones to the committee's attention.

So the answer to the question, as clarified in the comment "will they open the pdf?", is that all the applications get looked at by faculty who provide input into the search process, though not necessarily by the members of the search committee.


Are contributions to the American Political Science Review labeled "Letter" peer reviewed?

Yes, they are peer-reviewed.
See also their author instructions:

The American Political Science Review (APSR) publishes letters, or research notes. [...] Although letters are reviewed like manuscripts [my own emphasis], they are shorter, more focused, demonstrate a novel perspective on existing research, and encourage scholarly debate [...].


Where to get help when we can't understand something done in a paper?

Assuming that you've exhausted a reasonable degree of effort to try and understand what the author is doing, you can always just contact the author directly. There is usually contact information on the paper for the corresponding author.

There have been a number of papers that I have read and needed to reach out to the authors for to get a better understanding of what is going on in their paper. Professors are people too. As long as you have demonstrated a reasonable degree of effort prior to reaching out, asking for some clarification from them is a reasonable thing to do.

In the case of an author having passed away... then you will want to communicate this to your supervisor and explain why you need help to understand the paper. If you cannot figure it out for yourself, do not have any peers you can talk to, or are unable to contact the original author, then you have your supervisor as a work colleague.

If that all fails, then you will just have to try and drudge through understanding the computation. While I understand you want the answer quickly, all things worth while do not come quickly, and you'll need to cultivate and demonstrate resilience in the face of that struggle.


It sounds like it's on the low side for the sciences, but not unheard of.  For comparison, NIH NRSA postdoc stipends start at about $39k for people with no previous postdoctoral experience and go up from there.  Postdoc salaries can vary a lot by field, location, institution, etc.; if you have no other offers to compare with but want to know what's typical, I'd recommend searching online to find information that fits your background.

As Paul Garrett pointed out, you also need to consider the cost of living.  According to CNN Money's cost of living calculator, $35k in Nashville is the equivalent of nearly $70k if you were living in Brooklyn.  Of course these calculators are far from perfect, but they give you some indication of how prices and rents vary across the country.  If you are going to live on $34k, Nashville is a good place to do it, and I would expect typical salaries there to be lower than in more expensive locations.

Ultimately, unless you believe there is discrimination or bias involved, I wouldn't worry too much about abstract notions of fairness, or even comparisons with other people in different circumstances.  Instead, I would focus on three questions.  What do you need to live happily in the short term?  What are your long-term goals and prospects for achieving them?  And what other options do you have, including not just similar postdoctoral offers but also career changes?  Only you can weigh these considerations and decide whether a given offer is acceptable to you.


Is it common that the last author gets all the credits when the work becomes hugely successful?

There is no absolute way of assigning credit for a really groundbreaking project.  Depending on what is known of the laboratory dynamics where a discovery occurred and the roles of the specific individuals involved, sometimes graduate student contributors get a large part of the credit, sometimes not.  Here are a few examples of how things can play out, drawn from the list of Nobel Prizes for Physics:

The 1996 prize went to David Lee, Robert Richardson, and Douglas Osheroff for their discovery of superfluidity in He-3.  Osheroff was the graduate student who was doing most of the experimental work.  The original goal of the experiment was different, and Osheroff was the person who realized that they were seeing something very interesting and unexpected.  Because he was felt to have made a key intellectual contribution to the laboratory work, he shared in the Nobel Prize and other accolades.
The 1993 prize recognized the discovery of the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar, which could be used to measure orbital energy losses due to gravitational waves.  Russell Hulse shared the prize with Joseph Taylor, his dissertation advisor.
In contrast, when prizes are given to the work of very large collaborations, such as in the 2017 prize for LIGO's observation of gravitational waves, it is only possible to recognize the top individuals in the research collaboration—those who are felt to have made the key strategic decisions that led to the discovery.  Most of the junior contributors in such a large collaboration are doing work that, while it may be quite important, is only a relatively small and technical part of the project.  So the 2017 prize went to the three top (surviving) LIGO managers:  Rainier Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne.
Other times, even when the groups are smaller, sometimes it is felt that the driving force behind an important experimental accomplishment was the head of the laboratory.  This was the case for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001, given for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation, in two labs, one led by Wolfgang Ketterle, and the other by Carl Weiman and Eric Cornell.  Both groups had numerous graduate students, but the faculty leaders were felt to be predominantly responsible for the key design of the experiments, and so it was Ketterle, Weiman, and Cornell who got the Nobel Prize.

Moreover, the graduate students working on these projects, even when they are deemed by the scientific community to have been relatively minor contributors to the most groundbreaking results, can typically count on successful careers ahead of them.  Working a Nobel-Prize-winning (or otherwise widely recognized) project is a real advantage for one's academic reputation.  I personally knew most of the people in Wolfgang Ketterle's lab when he won the Nobel Prize, and they generally enjoyed very successful careers in either academia or industry.

Sometimes, however, there are still some recriminations afterward, in situations where graduate students may feel that their contributions have not been adequately recognized, and this can still be a real problem.  I think that for a long time, there has been a growing understanding of the importance of the contributions of the people actually performing the benchtop lab work that may lead to a discovery, but the situation is still by no means perfect.

For example, Cecil Powell was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for Physics on his own, for the discovery of pi mesons.  At the time, prior to 1960, the award was not given except to the heads of laboratories, meaning that the post-doc Cesar Lattes, who designed the photographic emulsion that observed the first pions, was left out of the prize.  He did, however, have a very distinguished subsequent career, and was one of the foremost members of the scientific community in his home country of Brazil.
Even more egregiously, Anthony Hewish claimed credit for the discovery of the first radio pulsar, even though he had initially dismissed the discovery by his student Jocelyn Bell Burnell.  Hewish got half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, but Bell Burnell was shut out.  However, her contribution (and Hewish's unethical behavior) did eventually come to be understood in the scientific community, and she has enjoyed a career as one of the most prominent astrophysicists in the world.


Why official transcripts should be directly posted to the employer?

There are a number of security concerns:

The postmark will match that of the university
Many universities' official transcripts contain authentication features
that can't be easily replicated -- deterring fakes.
The receiver can contact the university to verify that the transcript
was indeed sent on the date listed on the transcript and that the details inside are correct.
The transcript may contain a letter from the registrar with a signature.
As in responses 2 & 3 this can be used to make authentication possible while
deterring duplication.

The question I'm left with is why do you ask?


Asked to Provide a Submitted Manuscript that is not Published Yet

It's normal to show unpublished work to colleagues, sometimes for their input/advice/suggestions for edits, sometimes because they're working on similar work (whether collaborating or not), or, like in this situation, to demonstrate work for a job/grad school application.
I agree it's a little unusual to ask directly, but only a little, and in this situation it makes sense, especially if the publication is listed on a CV as "submitted". More typically it would come up if, say, you were having a conversation with someone at a conference or after a talk. You're discussing some topic, and Person A says: "Oh we have some recently submitted work on this! If you'd like, I can send you the manuscript."
If the field allows for preprints (that is, if journals will not consider preprints to be prior publication and accept them as original articles), it would be a good idea for someone applying for positions to make sure their latest work is out as a preprint if possible and to include these details with their application. (of course there are other benefits to preprints, as well) Since you say people use arXiv in your field, then assuming the specific journal doesn't have an unusual policy against preprints, that's how I would approach this: reply with "oh of course! the paper has been uploaded to arXiv here: ".
I think it would be a courtesy to other authors to make sure they don't have any issues with sending the paper to one outside person (and I'd double check with her advisor, just in case there are any weird politics - in that case it seems that advisor is you!), though I personally wouldn't be bothered at all if the first author of a paper I contributed to chose to share it with someone else. I think other authors should definitely agree before posting a preprint with their name on it (just like they would agree to a submission), but I wouldn't expect any opposition if the work is already in condition to submit to a journal.


when and how can I write a thank you letter for my professor?

The text you are writing here is perfect! It is personal, highlights the relevant aspects, and it is not overly enthusiastic.

I personally would send it after the exam was taken and graded.


What are the different roles between a program committee member and reviewer?

The responsibilities of a programme committee member and a mere reviewer could easily be the same, or differ. All depends on the particular conference/workshop setup. E.g., in computer science/AI there the difference is mainly a result of the venue size. Large first-tier conferences, such as e.g., IJCAI have a four layer programme committee structure. Here PC chairs, the top layer, govern the whole process from recruiting the various types of PC members, through conflict-of-interest handling, bidding on submissions, to notification and proceedings composition and publication. For such conferences the PC chairs recruit Senior PC members who are responsible for larger batches of submissions, or small sub-areas and report to PC chairs. For some conferences, the SPCs recruit regular PC members who in turn report to them and are responsible for the reviews. Regular PC members normally do the reviews themselves, but it's relatively common that they sometimes "subcontract" the job to other reviewers they recruit. These lowest level reviewers would do the review and get credit too, but the actual PC member is ultimately responsible for the review and the discussions among the PC members. Upon completing the review and discussion phases, SPCs give final recommendation for acceptance/rejection and possibly write meta-review summarizing discussion to each submission. The PC chairs would distribute the notifications and handle the proceedings and programme schedule composition.

Now, for mid-size conferences, or workshops the senior PC members layer is usually missing and regular PC members report directly to PC chairs and take over the tasks of SPCs for large conferences. The mechanics of sub-reviewing stays the same.

For small-size conferences and workshops, there are virtually no administrative tasks left for the PC members, so they do just the reviewing (possibly recruit sub-reviewers) and the PC chairs finally decide about acceptance and rejection of the individual submissions on the basis of the received recommendations.

What I describe above is regular scheme of things in "applied computer science".


I'm 2 months into my PhD. When can I ask my supervisor about the rejected candidates?

You can ask, but it's really none of your business.  Admissions committee deliberations are generally treated as confidential.  Asking about the other candidates and why they were rejected will almost certainly be seen as intrusive.  It's the kind of thing that's likely to cause them to wonder how they made the mistake of choosing you over all those other candidates who would likely have known better than to ask that question.


I am interested in doing a PhD from a third tier school in Electrical Engineering Ranked about in the 60's in North America.
In my field, companies will only hire from Top 20 schools.
I would like to stay in academia after graduating after being in industry for a few years.

Assuming all of the above are true, then clearly this is a bad idea, because if you go to this school then you won't be in the top 20 and won't get hired and have no chance of "being in industry for a few years".


Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas

My advice is that the dissertation, and therefore the proposal, are the student's work.  It is the student's responsibility to pick a topic and execute it.  Faculty are not usually trained in project management so the student may need to act to keep the faculty member on track.  For example, you can tell the faculty member that their ideas are very interesting, but you need to complete your current project first.

More specific to your situation, a fourth year student should know more than their advisor about the student's work.


Is it true that corporations influence the conclusions of research studies or papers?

There is always a possibility that an Industry funded project (meaning a company is funding it vs. the government) is influenced.  However, in academia, the idea is that peer reviewed work looks at the methodology and results to decide if it makes sense.  There are also different types of 'research'.

In the media 'A new study...' does not necessarily mean academic publication  (in the case of your link, it was).  Anything is possible, and if an upcoming researcher who needs funding tries to find meaning that benefits a company to get more funding later, than yes, it is possible for research to be 'manipulated'.  In the case that it was a company producing the research themselves, such as a coffee company posting its own research, most likely it is biased.  An example is the bing challenge, which says that research shows people choose bing over google, but that was Microsoft's research.
A company can fund academic research that leads to a publication.  In this situation, there is an acknowledgement of who funded the research.  There are often conflict of interest statements that are included in the publication.


How to denote the contribution of a co-author who did not do any experiments or analyses?

This does not sound like a special case at all, but rather like a typical contribution of a supervisor.
When describing such a co-author’s contributions, I would let myself be inspired by other similar descriptions for supervisors.
The definite answer may depend on the particular style of this section and details of the contribution, but one suggestion would be:

  X designed the study, supervised the research, and wrote the manuscript.


I would write in to the conference, explaining your situation and that this is - as you far as you are concerned - a case of force majeure.

First, you could ask for the registration payment back if they still decide not to publish it (not many chances you'll get it, but if you ask in a professional and nonagressive way, who knows).

Second, you confirm with them (in writing) that your understanding is that this means the paper is now free and can be resubmitted elsewhere (i.e. a confirmation that the copyright transfer is void under the given circumstances).

They cannot get the money,  remove the paper from the proceedings and also expect you not to submit it somewhere else.


What are the pros and cons to writing the same paper in two languages?

so that the people closer to me can also read it

is one of the best reasons I can think of for doing two versions.

Occasionally I write two versions of a letter, in my role as a bilingual volunteer advocate for a child with special needs.  I've noticed that after writing the letter in language A, and then writing it in language B, I am then able to go back to language A and make some improvements that I am sure would not have occurred to me through the normal single-language editing process.

I would just caution you, if it starts to be more trouble than it's worth, to keep both versions chugging along strongly, don't get frustrated with yourself if you decide not to keep going with the French version.


Where to find easy research topics any student could write about?

When I have taught research methods for undergraduate work, I find that it is best to give the students a lot of freedom while still requiring acceptance for the topics. I do not think giving a list of acceptable topics is the way to pique the interest of students.

It is better in my experience to guide them and let them know that they know their field better than anyone outside of that field, so they are capable of finding a suitable topic by themselves.

I have had students who choose "I want to study the effect of someone smiling at you." It could be an interesting topic but, since my students are all business majors, I give them the restriction is that it must be related to business. When they submit this topic, I hand it back and ask them "How does this relate to business as I said all research in this module must?"

I guess I could provide them a list but I really think that will just end up limiting them. Better to coax them out of their shell and get them to really start thinking and choosing and living with the consequences of their decisions.


How to evaluate students? Resources on educational assessment for higher education

A good place to start to fill gaps due to lack of teacher training is with a general book or two on the topic. I was surprised when I read these at how different current attitudes and approaches are compared to when I was a student.  Consider:

John Biggs and Catherine Tangs' Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student does
Paul Ramsden's Learning to Teach in Higher Education.

One of the key issues these books talk about regarding assessment is the notion of constructive alignment, which is ensuring that the assessment aligns appropriately with the learning outcomes of the course. In these books (and others) plenty of advice is given to help you better align your assessment.

Another important issue is that assessment guides the approach to learning. If students know that they only need to learn a whole bunch of facts, perhaps based on their examination of past exams, then they will adopt a shallow approach to learning and not really understand the material. Trying to encourage students to adopt a deep approach to learning is extremely important and is strongly influenced by the approach taken to assessment. These books also focus on this issue.

After reading those,
I recommend the following books, which both focus on assessment. They have given me plenty of ideas:

Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches edited by Sally Brown and Angela Glasner, Open University Press, 1999.
Developing Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide
Sue Bloxham (Author), Pete Boyd, Open University Press, 2007.

They both written in the context of British universities, but I'm sure the ideas are fairly universally applicable.

There are also plenty of journals of higher education, if you want to get access to cutting edge research in higher education. Some are devoted to assessment, and others are more general:

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation
The Journal of Higher Education
The Review of Higher Education
The Journal of General Education
The Journal of Excellence in College Teaching

I'm pretty sure that this only scrapes the surface.

Finally, the Google returned some resources, which lead to more detailed resources:

http://www.aacu.org/resources/assessment/index.cfm
http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/upa/assmt/resource.htm


I really think that you are looking at things the wrong way.  The key fact -- your paper has not been rejected! -- was left unsaid in the question itself but got pulled out of you in the comments.  What makes an editor "tough" or not has virtually nothing to do with the words he uses to describe your paper.  A truly tough editor will reject your paper based on flaws that you disagree with or feel are very minor.  A moderately tough editor will require drastic revisions (perhaps in multiple rounds) that take up your time and delay the acceptance and/or publication of your paper.  That's about it.

You don't sound very well informed about the process.  What you received were not "revisions" but "reports" or "reviews".  Moreover it is not for a referee/reviewer to accept or reject a paper.  That is up to the editorial board.  Rather, a referee/reviewer should recommend acceptance or rejection -- I have just learned that in some journals and fields this recommendation is made confidentially to the editor; that is certainly not the case in mathematics, and I think it is a poor idea to keep this information from the author, but let me not digress -- and then the majority of the report / review should contain support for that recommendation.  (So if a report is thorough and well written, the author should be able guess immediately and accurately what the recommendation will be.  Thus hiding the recommendation seems pointless.)  A report which just says "Accept" is worthless, and many editors would just discard it.

  He is questioning the originality of the proposed method and also saying the paper is not very much in the scope of journal. If so, why did you hand it to reviewers?!!!

The alternative would be to reject the paper immediately.  Obviously the editor's reservations about the paper did not rise to that level.  It doesn't make much sense that you are complaining about that.

  Any idea to answer him/her?

Yes.  Your answer should come in the form of a revised paper that at least addresses all of his suggestions (which, by the way, can probably be addressed with relatively superficial changes, mostly to the introduction and the conclusion, if present).  If you don't understand a suggestion, you can write for clarification, but I would be careful about that since the editor's impression of your willingness and ability to make the changes is part of his assessment of the paper.  If you are really new at this (it sounds like you are, honestly) then I highly recommend that you consult at least one advisor, mentor or senior colleague about how to perform these revisions.

The one worrisome part of what the editor said is

  The present form does not have sufficient results to justify the novelty of a high quality journal paper.

If the editor (or the editorial board) really feels that the results are not strong enough to merit publication in that journal, they can and probably will reject your paper, no matter what any number of referees says.  I have seen this happen as a referee: I wrote a quite positive report, but the editor (a former mentor of mine) called me up on the phone to tell me that the paper was not going to be accepted.  However, it is a bit strange to say that while still asking for a revision.  Reading between the lines, the implication is that he finds the work of the paper a bit borderline, so he really wants the presentation to be otherwise impeccable.

Of course you always have the option of not revising the paper, and starting fresh with a different journal.  But I don't recommend that: when you are asked to revise, revise.  The vast majority of time, that means "accepted with some penance".


Publish work extending on PhD with supervisor

I would suggest to mask your question by asking for advice, e.g.

  I recently wrote this paper (attach paper) and as I am still relatively new to the academic world and the basic idea for this paper originated during my PhD (see pages X,Y of my thesis), I would like to ask if I should put you as a second author.

If you already send a finished paper, they will most likely understand that you are politely asking for the ok to publish it as sole author, but you are not burning any bridges this way.


Is it appropriate to include class presentations in CV?

I feel your CV is already quite strong based on the fact that you have topped in both the mentioned bachelor and masters degree. Adding this detail in the achievement section would be sufficient to make the CV look strong.

However, I feel that presentation and discussions are integral part of the degree in Arts itself. So, by adding these details (which are trivial in some sense) would not help much. However, you could probably mention something in your strength section of CV under "Presentation skills", "Discussion skills". You don't have to mention the topics that you have presented, as these would look like junk to some people.


API, EULA, and scraping for Google Scholar

Not too sure if you are looking for this.

See One policy, one Google experience released by Google

  On March 1, 2012, we changed our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
  We got rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and
  replaced them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. The
  new policy and terms cover multiple products and features, reflecting
  our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience
  across Google.

That means all of the Google services have the same ToS, which is available here : Google Terms of Service

Here's a quote from that page

  Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our
  Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface
  and the instructions that we provide.


Research interests Vs Statement of Purpose(SOP)

The intent of both types of response is similar enough to be identical, but there's perhaps a more important distinction here: this is part of a job application. The audience for this application is interested in what you have already researched, why you studied it, what you plan to research next (ideally as your PhD research), and how your past experience will aid your research plans. It's an opportunity to connect some of the material already listed on your CV, especially as CV's generally don't include much detail about the future.

This previous question ("Unclear terms: Statement of Purpose, Academic Statement and Personal Statement") touches on similar issues though it appears that the poster never received an answer they liked.


Would citing a political book be considered credible?

I could be misinterpreting your question, but I believe you are running into a difference in the popular (non-academic/scientific) definition of what a citation is for, the journalistic/communicative use of citation, and the scholarly purpose of citation.

In the popular idea of citation, you are citing something to add credibility or "proof" to your argument. For instance, "a medical publication from researchers at Harvard said eating tomatoes increases cancer risk [citation here], so you should stop eating tomatoes." You are citing to be persuasive, by borrowing legitimacy and authority from those that have it and seeking to use it to support your agenda.

The journalistic use of citation, in theory, is to communicate the source of some statement or argument that you are reporting. Done right, this allows people you are communicating with to more easily locate the relevant materials they can investigate further on their own, if they are so interested, as well as to help ensure that the journalist is being honest by making it easy to check their work.

The scholarly purpose of citation is to indicate the source of ideas and work that is not your own, to make it distinct from your own contributions. This exposes your assumptions, directs researchers to closely related works, and can be used to indicate whether what you are doing is normal (by showing other researchers who've done or found the same thing), or if you need to justify your comparatively unusual practice or findings. It is also used to externalize support - so if you want to use a method because some other researcher's work said that method was useful for the problem you are working on, you just cite that research to support your use of the method. This effectively "includes" their work into yours, without the need for reproduction (copy-paste).

So with that said, let's take your example from a scholarly perspective.

If you make the statement that a US president supports fracking, especially for the purpose of job creation, you should cite why you think that is so - and citing their own book would certainly be a good way of supporting such an assertion. In indicates the source of data from which you draw your assertion.

On the other hand, lets say you want to state that fracking will create more jobs in the United States. While you could certainly cite a political/popular book, the response to that from an academic perspective is simple: the book you cited is just another persons unsupported opinion, and does not indicate scientific or otherwise scholarly support for your statement. The citation does not include research, novel methods, an analysis of an existing data-set nor the collection of new data. In short, it does not support your statement in a scholarly way, and would further make a listener/reader wonder if you know what you are doing at all.

So in the end, what you should cite, and how you should cite it, will depend on what the role of your presentation is and the nature of the argument you are making. If you are quoting something, cite the source of the quote. If you state that so-and-so supports a certain policy, cite the source that establishes that that person indeed does support that certain policy.


How can unaffilitated individuals sign up for Web of Knowledge / Science?

First, as @Anyon suggested in a comment, email their contact form to see if they have a practical solution for you.

If that doesn't help, then I don't have a definitive solution to your very real problem, but I can point you to some possibilities that come from the fantastic article, "You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do?":

Go to your closest local university library. Their onsite wifi network might give you the online access you need. (I suspect from your related question [Meta-analysis using Google Scholar - are all years equally complete? that you might want to scrape the site, so you might need wifi guest access within the building to do that.)
If there is no nearby university library, try the largest nearby local library and see if they have access.
Try to get some sort of research affiliate status with a university, perhaps by finding an academic coauthor.

Sorry, but I cannot recommend the options in that article of questionable legality.

Best wishes; I feel your pain and hope you work something out! Please update your question with an epilogue if you do find a solution; I'm sure it will help a lot of people in your situation!


Should I index all the specific terms which are included in appendix?

Institutions that I am aware of generally do not require an index because building a good, useful index is very difficult.  Also, these days people will typically just search for terms in a document rather than looking them up in an index.

The question that I would ask instead is: what is the value that you are trying to get from an index, and is there a better way to get it?  In heavily mathematical documents, I find it very valuable when the author includes somewhere a table of symbols and/or terms, which I can refer to when I'm wading through equations and trying to remember what on Earth v-prime-double-hat and w-double-prime actually mean.  I especially appreciate this when I am the author, and I need to look back at the document a few months later after my brain has flushed its cache.

So if you want your thesis to be accessible to readers, I strongly recommend adding tables of symbols/etc.  As to where: you can put them anywhere you want.  I personally prefer sticking the table right at the beginning of the first place where the symbols start to show up in earnest, both as being most proximate to the need and as a warning sign to the reader indicating heavy going ahead.


Who gets corresponding authorship in the biological sciences and what does it mean?

The corresponding author serves as the point of access for readers to inquire about a paper. This does not imply it should be any particular author, though particularly common choices seem to be first or last author.

The corresponding author should be the author that is least likely to change institutions. Changing institutions generally implies losing your contact details where you left (including email). The corresponding author should be the one that is most likely to remain a consistent point of communication.

This is often the last author because that is the common spot for the supervising PI (typically tenured). This is not always true, for example some domains like maths and theoretical computer science organise authors alphabetically.


Block-quoting a list: where to put the citation?

No matter whether you quote the list verbatim or paraphrase it, I'm quite sure you don't need to make it a big deal. Quoting a list of bullets isn't really quoting long pieces of text that would need a note about being a verbatim quote; I would say it's more like quoting a theorem in maths. I would therefore go for one of the following:

Jones [Jon15] categorizes things as follows: LIST
Jones categorizes things as follows [Jon15]: LIST
(Jones, 2015) categorizes things as follows: LIST
etc.

Use the one that is consistent with your citation habits.


Can an advisor use part of an unpublished paper in a project deliverable without your consent?

Questions of ethicality usually don't have a clear-cut answer, and this is no exception. Fundamentally, you should of course retain a say in what happens to the research that you produced as a grad student. On the other hand, it also seems completely fair and natural to include your work in reports to the funding agency that sponsored your work. Objecting against this may be an ethical violation in and of itself. Strictly speaking, and I am definitely not a lawyer, not reporting work that has been done in the context and using the money of an EU project may be a breach of the contract that your home institution has with the European Union (one would need to know the terms of the framework programme that the institution needs to sign when joining a project).

However, your main problem seems to be (from a comment):

  EU Project deliverables are usually published and a citable piece of work and they are different from NSF progress report. If it was a progress report or a poster it was totally fine with me, but when a major part of the paper now is published in the report I cannot submit my manuscript to a venue anymore unless I make a major revision.

Based on my experience in 3 EU projects, this is, in the generality you describe, just not true. Deliverables per themselves can be public or confidential, which is described in your Description of Work. Even if they are public, that usually just means that they are uploaded to your project's website (and maybe some third-party project result aggregator, depending on what clusters and collaborations your project is part of). While these deliverables do get the occasional citation, they are not formally published and should really not preempt further publication, even in verbatim. I would see this in the same way as a preprint - for most journals, uploading a preprint to arXiv or PeerJ does not mean that you can't submit to a journal, so why would your text appearing in an un-reviewed project report?

It is also my practical experience that most scientific reports consist largely, or at least to a significant part, of copied papers, some of them published and some unpublished at the time of submission. Hence, your ex-advisor's behavior is at least completely in line with what other PIs do and expect in such projects.

That all being said, I have once worked in a project that, by default, published a book volume once a year with Springer which collected all reports of the project. This would indeed count as formal publication. However, even if this or a similar arrangement is the case for you, a compromise could be found that your work appears in the "official" report to the EU and is retracted from the resulting book publication.


Interested in development sector but unsure about Ph.D

I would consider the following:

1) Do the jobs you want require a PhD? You may be able to have a satisfying career and a choice of many interesting and well-paid jobs (you define both of those terms for yourself) with a M.Sc. and on-the-ground experience.

2) Are you likely to succeed in a PhD? There is little point to pursuing a PhD if you fail out of the program. So, you need to assess your preparation and whether you are likely to be able to complete the PhD. If you are not sure, talk to some of your mentors who have PhDs.

3) Are you competitive for fully-funded PhD positions at respected universities? To make the time, effort, and opportunity costs involved in pursuing a PhD worthwhile, you should pursue programs that are fully-funded and that maximize the value of your degree post-gradation. These types of programs are more competitive, so you should assess (with mentor's help, if needed) your academic record and other factors to determine if you are a good candidate for such programs.


Can I call a professor to ask for a letter of recommendation if I can't show up in person?

In general you should not call a professor unless they are expecting your call, or have a very close relationship with you (if they did, you would know).  The social convention is to send him a followup email reminding him of your request.