How can a PhD student seeking to transfer to another PhD program prove his/her research skills when his job is mostly teaching?

"What can Alice do to prove that she can be a way more better researcher given time and opportunity? "

How do you know? From your description, Alice pines to do research but has absolutely nothing to prove that she is a better researcher. Teaching and research are entirely different skill sets; being good at one does not mean being good at the other! She has allowed herself to be stuck in a mainly teaching role, rather than a research focused role. Universities don't just want researchers, they want sharks; people that know exactly what they want and go after it. Alice making excuses will not make her appear to be a shark.

If Charles is interested in hiring a researcher, why would he ever choose someone who has, from your description, absolutely no experience in research versus Bob who presumably has a track record? That said, if Bob isn't a shark either but just kind of drifted from lab to lab and acquired the 15th name on a couple of papers along the way, I can guarantee that they aren't going to be too interested in Bob either.

If Alice wants to do research, then she needs to make some fundamental changes in her life. Her best bet is probably to carefully read her contract with regard to responsibility hours then go to her department and demand a change in her schedule to allow her greater time for research. Then she needs to buckle down and produce and publish.

Alternatively, she can try applying for places and say that she is looking to break away in order to do research, but again research is expensive and she will really need to sell whatever experience she has in order to convince them that they should take the risk on her.

I'm genuinely sorry to have to be blunt like this, but I see no other way. I think there should be far more appreciation for teaching oriented professors in a learning institution. Instead they get some lip service and little else. But you came here for truth, and this is the truth as I know it. Nobody will care about what Alice might do if they see absolutely no background that supports such assertions.

On a personal level as an example: when going for the NSF graduate fellowship, I didn't receive one even though the reviewers stated that the idea was great, the proposal well written, and the research seemed reasonable and doable, because I hadn't published enough papers. As an undergrad, I had published three. That wasn't enough though, apparently. Nonetheless, it hammers home the point that it didn't matter how bright I made the future sound given that my past wasn't up to snuff.


How do project supervisors address the "freeloading" problem in group projects?

From your experience, what is commonly done for a supervisor to spot freeloaders in a group project and how are penalties handed down? How can I work with my supervisor now (who maybe completely unaware of the situation) to effectively put these people back to work?

As somebody who taught many courses with a similar structure to what you described: the common approach for supervisors to handle this situation is to do nothing (at least not on their own initiative). You are likely not aware of it, but you are in the middle of learning something that will presumably be more valuable to you than the hard technical skills of the project. You are learning how to handle team work that isn't going smoothly.

There is a good chance your supervisor is already aware that things are not working out in your project (your team mates have been reporting that things are "under research" for half a year while you have been delivering results - any half-decent supervisor knows what that means). He does not step in because one of the main learning outcomes of such a project is that he expects you to learn how to handle such issues.

So far, you are not handling it well. You are clearly very annoyed by the situation, but you do not mention any clear steps to resolve the issue. You cover their asses by taking over their work, and have as far as I can tell not formally escalated the problem. Instead, you are hoping that the "higher-ups" will figure it out on their own, and step in without you having to take responsibility. This is exactly how you should also not handle this situation in the real world.

And, I should add, do not hope that this situation will not come up when you work in industry. Replace "we don't have time for this because of other courses" with "we don't have time for this because of other projects", and you will have the exact same problem in the real world. Only in industry, the stakes for failing will be higher. As usual, university gives you a comparatively low-risk environment to train working on the same kinds of problems that you will also routinely face later on.

To end this with a practical remark: stop focusing so much on what they do, and what your supervisor should do. Start thinking of your environment as a context that you can't (directly) change, at least not without effort. Your task is to figure out what you can do to work in the environment you are given. This may include taking more responsibility for managing the group, or getting into a big, potentially productive fight with your team. This may also include formally escalating the problem.


Assuming you're in a field with a quicker response time (e.g., not mathematics), I would email the Editor-in-Chief directly (outside of the journal's system) an tell her or him that your article has been in review for 19 months and if you do not hear back from her or him within a set deadline (1 or 2 weeks) you pulling your manuscript from that journal.

I had a similar experience where a manuscript of mine sat in "under-review" for 12 months. The Editor-in-Chief apologized for the delay and promised me the review would be completed within a set deadline. In my case, the Editor-in-Chief was clearly unhappy with the Associate Editor I was assigned.

As long as you are polite, but firm, there is nothing wrong with being assertive.


Can external examiners be from research institutes?

Yes.  For universities that use external PhD examiners, typically the examiner can be from a university, non-university nonprofit/government research institution, or an industrial research laboratory.  Typically the examiner has a PhD.
University faculty are most commonly selected.


Double blind review allowing arXiv submissions

Wouldn't that effectively constitute a violation of the double-blind
  review policy?

Clearly not, as they state that it doesn't violate the policy.

Does it break double-blinding? Yes. But the intent is clearly to allow those who submit preprints, are in fields where conference proceedings are a thing, etc. to still be able to submit. It's essentially a compromise position of "Double Blind where possible, but we're not going to kick you out if you've broken it through the standard course of research."


What to do when I’m not affiliated with an academic institution and submitting a manuscript?

Just list your affiliation as "independent researcher" and use a valid email address that you expect to maintain. You should be fine. Scholarship isn't for employed academics only. It is the quality of the work that matters most.
The only block I could see is if your research requires Ethics Board (such as IRB in the US) prior approval.
For the submission process any physical address will probably do if it is required. But for final versions to be published I would seek advice from the editor. Perhaps a post box would be preferred to a residence.


Is there a standard to understand what plagiarism is exactly?

The most commonly understood definition of plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own.
When writing general background for a thesis or article, it's possible that you present common facts and methodologies without citing every single detail, but even then it should be clear that this is not your contribution.
When whole sentences start to resemble previous work, you need to take a step back and look at what you are saying.
Are you briefly mentioning Pythagoras' theorem? Maybe throw the word "commonly" in there.
Are you presenting someone else's findings? Cite them.
For example "The equation is given by Smith et al. as ..." or "The dates are canonically given as 450BC to 430BC [1][14][22]."
When in doubt, cite. I've yet to see someone told off for providing references to their claims.


Undergrad overwhelmed by a graduate math class

Mathematician here: We've all been in a similar situation when transitioning from undergrad to grad classes. You write that you are "embarrassed" due to your lack of understanding; don't worry, others probably are having issues also. But if you do think you aren't getting basics, then it is more, not less important that you talk to your fellow students and the professor.

However, the main thing you should realize is that this is a pretty regular experience. What matters is how you react to it; don't get demoralized but put the effort in. And don't hesitate to ask questions, even in class; your fellow students are likely confused about some of the same things you are.


'Etiquette' of including course lecturer as author in a paper

Authorship is reserved for people who contribute to the scientific output of the article. It is not clear to me that the cases you mention qualify although they could. The Vancouver Protocol (here as given by the ICMJE) provide a good basis for assessing authorship. If your course lecturer fulfil these criteria and thus actively participate in the creation of the article then all is fine. If the lecturer takes no active part then the appropriate way would be to place a note in the acknowledgement of the contribution.


Should exploratory and incomplete work be part of a thesis?

That may be something to add in a "further work" section as part of the conclusion.


Is it useful to add excerpts from teaching evaluations in a teaching statement?

Here is an article that surveys how teaching is evaluated in a mathematics faculty search (YMMV in different fields). Based on this, in general, teaching evaluations are valued, even if they are not asked for. This leads me to think that including information from evaluations (e.g. comments but also summarized numerical ratings) is a good practice.

http://www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001308p.pdf


Point of weakness for tenure track postions

I believe that your actual answer doesn't matter that much.

These "open" questions are often asked, in my experience, to get you to talk. Unless the content of your answer raises a big red flag, the relevant part will be how you react to it, how you pose your answer, etc. It's a "starter", depending on your answer you might get interesting follow-ups that lead to somewhere interesting, or maybe just move on with the conversation.

Don't try to force it back to your pre-defined talking points, and never push shop talk during social events, like during the meals with the committee. If they steer the conversation that way, sure, but be yourself, with more interests than research/teaching, etc...

Beyond all else, don't overthink it. Nobody solid is going to get discarded over this (again, except red flags), and nobody "unprepared" will get picked because of this. Use your energy to be very sharp on your teaching statement, research ideas, etc. That's what actually makes a difference.


How to effectively respond to harsh suggestions from the faculty of review committee?

I don't know what is the norm in your institution, but I would characterize comments 1-3 as highly inappropriate and unprofessional. The committee should not comment on a student's work and social habits, their eating habits (this would be considered taboo in many places), or offer dismal views on their prospects after a PhD. In my department, making comments like this towards a student will, at the very least, be cause for a very unpleasant talk with the department head, and will require a written apology to the student.

Criticism on your progress or your understanding is definitely acceptable, but can be conveyed in a more conducive manner (e.g. by not comparing your understanding to that of undergraduates - offensive to both you and to undergrads).

That said, if you receive these kinds of comments, you should speak with your advisor and see what you can do to make things work better. Comments 4-5 are simply a rude way of saying that you aren't making sufficient progress.

If you feel comfortable with your advisor, and assuming a culture of abuse is not prevalent in your department, you may raise this issue with them. I for one would be furious to hear this and would probably confront the offending committee member myself. If not - try to contact student affairs.

Abuse towards students should not be tolerated.


What designation should be assigned to a teacher's trainer who is also teaching in the same school?

You seem to have multiple roles. For teaching responsibilities with respect to students you are "instructor" or whatever other designation your institution uses for that.

But part of your duties are "Instructional Designer" or maybe "Curriculum Designer".

And the third role is "mentor" to the instructional staff or another term with the same intent. In my world, the word "shepherd" would apply, but some would find it odd, perhaps. "Supervisor" only applies if you have some power other than giving advice and counsel.

But an overall term might just be "Curriculum Consultant" or similar.


How common is it for tenured professors to retire?

Under US law, since 1993, there is no mandatory retirement age for college faculty.  They can keep working as long as they are physically able to work, and many faculty are choosing to work into their 70's and 80's.  See this recent article from Inside Higher Education that gives some statistics:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-shows-difficulty-encouraging-professors-retire


Is it ethical to purchase someone else's work and submit an edited version for assignments?

If he would cite it and then get the marks only for the added value of his own work, then it would be ethical.
If he submits it to get credit for it all, this is highly unethical, in fact in my personal opinion even worse than plagiarism, as it is far harder to prove the misconduct and demonstrates an elevated level of (academia-level) criminal energy beyond the usual misdeeds.


How can I export my Google Scholar Library as a BibTeX format?

As of August 31, 2016, this functionality has been added! See this blog post: https://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2016/08/organizing-your-scholar-library.html


Where should I place my figure if it will break essay layout?

Because this is a question about style and layout, it could be opinion based, but from what I have read:

It is generally considered better to place a figure before the text that refers to it. This allows the reader to find the figure more easily. Because you state "figure 1 below" (well done!) this is not a problem in your case.

Professional editors sometimes shorten/rephrase prior sentences to solve the problem you are describing. Obviously there is no point to do this before the text is in its final form.

Your observation that a reader may want to see the figure and paragraph referring to it on the same page is correct, but the best way to solve the problem depends on the details of your manuscript. Typesetting and getting a perfect layout can be really hard. There is no "one size fits all" solution to your problem, and there are no strict rules about what is best.

Finally, and most importantly: don't worry too much. Perfectionism is a good trait (especially for a scientist), but most people will judge the content, not the layout.


What to expect from an HR interview for a postdoc position?

If your technical interviews went well, I would bet the HR meeting will focus on a combination of the following:

Verifying that you meet formal job requirements. They need to make sure they can actually employ you; you are authorized to work in the country (e.g., are a citizen or have/can apply for an appropriate work permit). They may ask you to confirm that you have a PhD, a common requirement for a postdoc position. Depending on how it is funded, there may be more specific requirements, like having a degree in a certain field or conferred within a certain time period. If you will need some sort of background check, they will go over that process too.
Selling you on the job. If they offer you a job, they want you to take it! They may use this meeting to describe your (potential) position and how you would fit into the organization. There might be a specific discussion of the offer you'd be receiving (e.g., salary, vacation, benefits) or just a more general pitch about how this is a great place to work, etc. Some organizations do this even before the final candidate is actually selected.
Checking for fit/compatibility/etc. Pretty self-explanatory. The impressions of the people you with whom you would work should carry more weight, but nevertheless....

In any case, I would take it as a promising sign that you've been asked back. Good luck!


Is an ungraded pass going to affect my PhD applications?

I have doubts that it will matter. The reasons for taking a pass might be obvious to a reader. Letting the numbers fall where they may might seem more honest.
But also consider that few (if any) programs will automatically exclude you for GPA alone. People are admitted into doctoral programs based on many things, none of which (other than dishonesty, perhaps) are determinative alone. People on an admissions committee will want to make a prediction about your likely success in the program and thereafter as well as your readiness to do research.
I also suspect that most committees will be a bit generous in the age of coronavirus, though that doesn't lessen the competition that every student faces. Make your best case for admission no matter which way you choose to jump on this (minor) issue.


About a problem with finding potential referee for my manuscript

This kind of decision is always a balancing act with no obvious answer.

If you do not withdraw: Do note that the editor might not invite all the reviewers you suggested. That's the lazy thing to do, but they might also be doing their own checks, e.g. did you coauthor a paper in the last five years? Did you work at the same institution in the past five years? Et cetera. Remember there're systemic differences between author-suggested and editor-suggested reviewers; you cannot expect the editor to rely entirely on the reviewers you suggest.

If you do not withdraw, there's no way to tell how long it'll be before this journal finds reviewers.

If you withdraw: in this case you'll probably wind up submitting to a different journal, which means you start from square zero, which means they are also going to be looking for reviewers. It's possible the new journal handles things quicker. Perhaps their editor is more motivated and/or has greater connections, perhaps they invite more reviewers, perhaps they send more reminders ... but it's also possible the new journal handles things worse. They might not even respond to your queries.

Ultimately nobody can tell you the answer, because nobody can predict the future. You'll have to make the decision yourself. Are you willing to give up what you've already reached in this journal for the uncertain prospects at another journal? Expressed differently, is a bird in hand worth two in the bush for you? It's a question only you can answer.


Identifying a bad advisor (before applying)

There is probably no issue here and the careers of his students are determined primarily by their actions, not his. It might be a function of the popularity of the subfield in which they work.
But if the professor is listed in the Mathematics Genealogy Project you can find the titles of the dissertations of the students and check for yourself whether their work was significant as students. You can also find out whether they "produced" any mathematical heirs.


Can you apply for a PhD that requires an MSc when only 2/3 of MSc grades will be in by application time?

Yes.  When a degree is required prior to starting a program, that degree is needed in order to enrol, but not to apply.


Concurrent commitment to 2 Masters degrees, One of them is online

Depending on the intricate details of how you are provided funding, you might be prohibited from taking the second Masters program. They usually have a good reason for that: suppose you are funded to work full-time in your research thesis-based Masters program. If you will be working on a second degree at the same time, it will inevitably drain your energy, so you'll likely be less productive to do what you are paid for.

Consult with the coordinators of your research Masters program to learn their stance on taking external education / work.

For a personal example, my university asks me to inform if I am receiving a funding from other sources and generally cuts the base funding depending on how much work time I spend on working for those other sources.

As a final note, you could take two Masters program covertly, without informing the two universities. They are unlikely to discover this, but it doesn't mean it's a good practice.


Opportunities in the private sector for a theoretical PhD in physics still interested in physics

There are employers our there that hire PhDs to do something that looks more or less like research. However, research positions for a single small topic of research are incredibly rare, and will usually be filled by hunting high-profile established researchers; a typical example would be computer security departments of big IT names. This happens when a company calculates that throwing large amounts of money at a big problem (or multiple related problems) is rational because the value of solving it is very large. In that case it is worth paying top salaries even for a small increase in the probability of success. If you are a PhD student, not on a "hot subject", and nobody contacted you (or one of your colleagues) after reading publications to fill such a position, your chances of finding one are basically zero.
The bulk of after-PhD industry R&D positions, from my experience (job-hunting and working in such for 2-3 years), require you to be somewhat flexible in your research topic. Of course this is extreme in smaller companies, where the "R&D department" can be one or two persons. Even in large companies you need some flexibility: my current employer has >100k employees, including ~3000 in entities dedicated solely to R&D, and my job title is "thermal transfer researcher"; yet, I regularly have to do material science, mechanics, electrical engineering, statistics, sometimes algorithms and even chemistry (yuck!). The ability to pick up quickly a basic understanding of a new topic is one of the big reasons the industry hires PhDs; if you do not you have the willingness to use that skill, I would avoid industry positions.
I expect this aspect of my experience to be quite universal due to the financial incentives at work. Both in industry and in academia, you get funding if someone who holds the purse is convinced that you spent well the previous round. In academia, funding committees care essentially about how many citations your papers get and in which journals you publish (maybe they should care about other things but that is another debate); they do not care about what your research is about. Working on topics where you are the best or the most interested in is often a near-optimal strategy under those incentives.
In the industry, good output means you solved someone's problem. The ability to do so is somewhat correlated to domain-specific technical skills but many considerations take precedence:

sometimes, the actual solution to the problem is very different from the solution that was considered when funding occured, which determined who the task would be assigned to; yet re-assigning the task once the new solution is identified would be too expensive (in money, delay, or human resources)
sometimes, someone close-by in the flowchart died or was run over by a bus, and managers cannot be too picky about who will finish the job they left;
sometimes, the funder already worked with you, and your skillset is close enough that you are a safer bet than a top-notch technical expert that might be impossible to work with; or there is no such technical expert that the funder knows of.


Should I report a labmate who is into drugs?

Are you just talking about marijuana? This is (mostly) legal in Washington and Colorado currently, decriminalized in New York (in practice it's similar to  a parking ticket), and on ballot measures in many other states (so give it two weeks). In short, the American public (or more than half of it) has shown signs of moving past marijuana as a moral issue.

Here you write:

  I find that one of the senior PhD students in my lab is into drugs big league.

Which makes me think he's running a meth lab out of your school. But here:

  sometimes the smell in the lab during the late hours is horrible, and he moans incongruously and loudly at times without taking others' presence into consideration

That sounds more like marijuana. (Not sure what you mean by moaning though).

And here:

  Talking to the supervisor may not be of use, because he takes it coolly and I have heard the two joke about drug use in casual conversations.

It makes me think it's a drug that's just actually accepted for use. Which raises the question: Is it possible you are being very judgmental here and are in the wrong?

Normally I would discuss the smell and "moaning" in their own right. You generally have a right to an odor-free work environment. But I also don't know if these are grievances you only have because you have a vendetta against his marijuana use in the first place, and yes, there is a pretty realistic chance that anyone you raise this grievance to will have the same thought. If you portray recreational drug use to his supervisor or anyone else the way you did in your post, you're going to be laughed at and lose trust.

You probably want to entirely let this go. See if you can lessen the vendetta against the drug. It's possible the student has some awful behavior but I don't even have enough information in your OP to seriously advise on this.


What makes a research paper low-quality?

Kind of a broad question, but I'll play along.

It is easier to say what makes a paper high quality: I learn something new and interesting by reading it.  A twinge of jealousy -- as in, "Gosh, I wish I had thought of / done this" -- is a good sign there.  The absence of all this makes the quality of the paper not too high.

There are some papers that don't teach me anything new and interesting that I nevertheless feel are of medium (publishable) quality: sometimes I don't really understand the value of a result but can't claim (or can't justify a claim) that the results will not be of value to someone else or someone in the future.  Sometimes the results are known to me in some form but don't appear in the literature.  Sometimes the results are novel when viewed from the knowledge base and comfort zone of one subfield but less so from another (or perhaps from the vantage point of a true expert -- in a field where true expertise is rare), and these can be worth publishing.

Probably what remains is low quality.  I am inclined to object a bit to the framing of the question in terms of "obvious signs": as a referee, I aspire to read a paper carefully enough to be confident in my evaluation of its quality.  Obvious signs may inform my preliminary impression, but I will read further to confirm.  But here are some things that would make me evaluate a paper as of low quality: as I go down the list, the quality decreases:

The results of the paper already exist in the literature. Usually this means the author was not aware of them.
The results of the paper already exist in the literature, in a better form than in the author's paper.  Thus publishing the paper could actually be a step backwards.
Same as the above, but the current paper omits a key technique or perspective that is part of the contemporary understanding of the topic.  For instance, there are some expository papers, and these do not need to contain new results or even the sharpest possible form of the old results it exposes, but the author needs to have at least the level of mastery of the topics being exposed as an advanced student in the area, or the exposition could have a negative effect.
The results are faulty, either in ways that are not easily corrigible, or are easily corrigible but when corrected yield absolutely nothing new.
The results look fishy, but the exposition is so obscure that it is a chore to tell right from wrong from basically-right-but-highly-garbled from totally absent.
The author cannot or will not make a clear distinction between what is attained in the paper and what is desired to be attained.  For me and many others in my field (mathematics), this is certainly the worst.  I saw an especially good example of this recently: a paper posted this month on the arxiv begins (immediately following an abstract which is at turns obscure and vacuous) by stating "Registration contains colored markers:" A red dot stands for "a fact which is not proven at present or an assumption". A yellow dot stands for "the statement which requires additional attention". A green dot stands for "statement which is proved earlier or clearly
undestandable [sic]".  And then immediately following that, still on page 1, there is a "THEOREM",
which is a statement of the Riemann Hypothesis (for those who don't know, this is arguably the single most important unsolved problem in all of mathematics; inarguably solving it will get you $1 million)...marked with a red dot.  Then we have "PROOF", followed by 28 more pages of colored-dotted mathematics, which I spent a minute flipping through out of sheer morbid curiosity.  But if I were a referee then, rather exceptionally, this first page would have been all the sign I needed to be confident of the low quality of the paper.


Professor will agree to be my thesis advisor but only if I can find a co adviser, what does this really mean?

As Peter Shor indicates, one cannot uniquely decode the professor's intent from this response.  You'll have to get more information from him to be confident of his motivations.

Let me say that taking on a coadvisor could show a lack of confidence in the student, but more commonly it shows an advisor's lack of confidence in her own experience or is done for a good, subject-oriented reason (i.e., to bring in specific expertise).  My first PhD student -- taken on when I was not yet tenured -- was coadvised with a more senior faculty member.  This was because I was nervous about myself, not about him (he was really great), but independently of my own gingerness it turned out to be a very good idea because his second adviser imparted some key technical knowledge that got used in his thesis in a very nice way.  Now (I am tenured and) I have four students who are solely advised by me: I got a little older is the main difference.  So I can understand this faculty member's perspective.

On the other hand, at least in my field (mathematics) advising a master's student is much easier than advising a PhD student: they stay for 1/3 to 1/2 of the time and the whole experience is not as intense.  Because of this, "splitting" a master's student is less common (and no examples spring to mind, but then again in mathematics, a master's degree is more likely to be done rather casually en route to greater things or as a terminal degree).

From a neutral (read: uninformed) outsider's perspective, I would say that if you're already sitting in this guy's research group then that's pretty close to taking you on as a master's student.  One thing you could try is just to organically increase your interactions without "putting a label on it".  In other words, instead of sitting in on the group, can you actually do some work for the group?  If so, you basically are this guy's master's student, and after a couple of months of work it will be much easier for all involved to call it that.  If on the other hand you express an interest in doing work for his group and he tells you why you can't at the moment....then there's your answer.

Another tack to take would be to ask the professor for a specific suggestion of who could co-advise you.  Then you can take it up with that person...who of course may suggest single-handedly advising you.  I think the suggestion to co-advise without a specific person in mind to do the other half of the advising shows that he is not very enthusiastic about advising you.

Good luck.


Is it accepted to cite an entire issue of a journal?

It seems tempting to cite only the issue of a journal when it contains several articles that you want to refer to from your introduction. Especially so if it is a special issue directly related to your paper. As to your question whether it is an accepted practice, I haven't seen so, but it could depend on the field of research of course.

Personally, I would advise against using such citations for two main reasons:

You should always try to cite as specific as possible. If you support a stated fact with a citation, the reader should be directed to this fact as directly as possible. In your example of the giant molecules, a reader may be more interested in application A than in giant molecules in general, so it will be helpful if you cite more specifically.
Citations are the basis for many measures of academic impact, and I doubt that citations to journal issues are counted in these measures. The authors of the articles that you intend to cite with a reference to a whole journal issue will certainly not be pleased with this, because you restrain a source of academic reputation for them.


How to address a military officer with Ph.D?

Everything I've seen suggests that "General John Doe" without any "Dr." is correct (you've never heard of "General Doctor David Petraeus" right?); for example, military doctors are usually addressed using their rank, not as "Doctor." In part it just sounds clunky to try to use both titles.  Similarly at Virginia Military Academy (bizarrely, in my opinion) all of the faculty are officers in the Virginia state militia, and are listed on the website with military titles (http://www.vmi.edu/Content.aspx?id=4294974313), not with the title "Professor" or "Doctor."  I think "General John Doe, Ph.D." is more common, though discouraged in some sources I read.  I think it's hard to go wrong just addressing someone in the military by their rank.

EDIT: I should probably say that isn't to say that you never combine Doctor with another title:  "Herr Professor Doktor" is standard in Germany, (though I'm not allowed to call myself that, since I have a doctorate from the US) and "Reverend Doctor" (or even "Most/Right Reverend Doctor") are established titles, though more common in Britain than the US.  Just in the specific context of military titles in the US, it's not standard to mix them with other titles.


How to apply for a research funding for companies?

In  the US through our National Science Foundation, you'd need to partner with a university who would, at least in name, lead the project. All NSF programs have eligibility requirements, and those don't usually include private non-educational entities as leads. Also, you'd need to openly publish your results. In the end, due to the Bayh-Dole Act, the university probably has the right to patent and license for sale the results, but your company would probably not be able to do so itself.

I assume that the EU and Germany have similar constraints on government grant funding, but I'm not 100% sure. It would be worth looking at some prior EU and German grants and see if they do.

You could also look at trying to satisfy government contracts in the defense industry. There are whole multi-billion dollar defense contractors in the US (Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, etc.) that do research on behalf of the military here to deliver much more than guns and planes and such. The government frequently wants algorithms (e.g., weather prediction, signal processing), etc. to satisfy our defense needs. I suspect that yours do, too.


Web Crawl Dataset - Legal & Practical feedback

There seem to me to be two issues here: copyright and reproducibility of research. You pose them as being in conflict, but I don't think that is the case.

First, in most jurisdictions, publishing someone's copyright work is a violation. "Just for research purposes" probably won't save you in these times, though once it might have done so.

However, the reproducibility issue isn't quite as you pose it here. Suppose I publish an algorithm (I'm assuming it is an algorithm, actually - deterministic). Suppose I also publish the data set on which it is run. If someone else runs my algorithm on my data set does anyone expect that it won't produce the same result. Even a randomized "algorithm" should produce the same results within statistical limits when run on the same data set.

But that isn't really the meaning of reproducible. I make an hypothesis about what should occur in a situation. I test it. Others should be able to test it under similar constraints. But I doubt that my hypothesis was "X happens in Y dataset with Z methodology". More likely Y here is treated as a category of datasets, not a specific one.

So, if you publish the mechanism by which you gather the dataset, rather than the dataset itself (along with Z), then others can test your work and the results will be more meaningful than if you publish the dataset itself. Thus you avoid the copyright problem altogether.

One reason that authors don't want to publish some datasets is to avoid stepping in quagmires such as copyright. Others involve human subject privacy, etc. But, that shouldn't matter if the hypothesis isn't overly tied to a specific dataset, but to a category of similarly gathered datasets.


What happens if a department runs out of space?

There is no "usually". There isn't a worldwide academic rulebook that states what happens when a department runs out of space. This is extremely dependent on the university, the department, who runs each, the current power balance between the different departments and the university, the university's budget, the culture of the research field and the country... Academia isn't different from the rest of the world, how would you even start to answer a question as vague as "what happens when a company's department runs out of space"?!


Hard to say as the process can be unpredictable. But generally spoken, being worried will not alter any situation in this case. So don’t!

The most likely scenario seems to be that the editor send your work after minor revision to the referee who was asking for it. Then it will take probably one month to get your work accepted.

Unfortunately new referees can be invited by an editor when an old referee drops out by just not responding. For that reason, I hope that referees always finish the task they accepted.

Another reason for inviting new referees might be that an editor is just not sure about certain aspects of your work. Maybe because one of the referees indicated this in the ‘message to editor section’.

A third reason for inviting new referees might be a reject from the final reviewer after your minor revision (assuming the editor had send it out again).

It is just guessing. From my own experience I once reveiced in a row major revision, minor revision, major revision. Two referees accepted, one referee dropped out and the new referee kept raising issues over and over again. After having addressed five extensive review reports we contacted the journal and asked for an editorial decision because the last reviewer showed no intention to finalize the process. We were lucky. ‘Do not try this at home’.

A respectable colleague of mine (and excellent scientist and author) received two fresh reviews after major revision. You can review a paper to garbage if you want. Insecure or too busy editors are also not helping.

Publishing can be very frustrating. Reviewers and associate editors are volunteers and there seems to be a persistent believe among scientists that although not perfect, this is the best possible system to maintain scientific quality.

An eye opener for me was an editor telling me that it is an autors’ duty to defend his/her work against low quality review reports (scientific integrity). However, it is risky. This editor also told me that even non constructive review reports have a potential to improve your work. We can learn from everyone. I do agree with that and it helps me in being more patient.


Can I submit an abstract for an unwritten paper which will form part of my PhD?

I think norms probably vary by field.  In my experience, this would be totally fine.

I work in a business school, and the expectation is that various parts of the dissertation will be published both while and after you work on the PhD.  Doctoral students also present intermediate results from their dissertation work at conferences to get feedback.

However, do be sure that the conference does not take copyright for the work presented, or you may tie your hands in terms of publication later.


For academic jobs, I think that an external committee member is a good referee. They have read through your thesis, so they are one of the few people able to offer an opinion on the quality of your research.
For non-academic jobs, I think Christiaan's answer makes sense, they aren't going to be as interested in your research but more your work-related skills.

Personally, I (UK-based) have used the external examiner of my PhD as a referee in the application for my first postdoc and in a successful fellowship application.
Not being from the same institution probably looks good.


Can I decline a PhD program I have already accepted?

Can I accept a PhD offer and later withdraw from the program before it even starts?

Yes, of course you can. They won't force you to enroll and they won't come after you legally. It's certainly not worth anyone's time. However, it does harm the department's planning because they might not be able to fill your spot. For more discussion, see the comments on this answer.

  Is there an etiquette for that?

Yes, the etiquette is to not do that. It's rude and you will burn bridges. A spot that could have been offered to another student may be lost. But if you're quitting to move to industry, you probably don't care anyway.


As far as I can tell, he has neither accepted you nor rejected you. Depending on your department's system, he will probably read only the applications that mention his name, so he wants you to mention his name so that he'll remember to read your files. If those are good compared to the other files, he might accept you. Otherwise he might not. It's too early to tell.


Is it polite to ask for your potential supervisors to help get the scholarship?

It might be a bit risky and it is impossible to know what the reaction would be. However, if you actually need the scholarship in order to be able to accept any bid, then it would be appropriate for the supervisors to be told that.

If they really, really, want to accept you then it would be to your advantage that they know that you have financial constraints. However, if they are a bit ambivalent toward your acceptance, then it might be easier for them to invite someone else.

But, since you know one of them, and think he would support you, you could ask him to make your needs known to the other, rather than doing it directly yourself.

And it does no-one any good for you to hide the fact of your need.


What is the difference between credit hours carried and hours earned?

If you want an authoritative answer, contact your university's registrar office.  Terms like this are not completely standard around the world, so we can only guess as to what they mean at your institution.

I would guess "carried" counts all the classes you have taken, but "earned" counts only those which you have passed.  So on the first line, the extra 8 hours might represent some classes that you failed, or that you are currently taking and have not yet completed.  "LSU" probably counts only those hours corresponding to classes taken at LSU, while "Cum" (presumably standing for "cumulative") might also count classes transferred from other institutions.


Is it frowned upon to go to office hours as a graduate student?

Grad students who come to office hours with good questions that show serious engagement with the material (e.g. attempts to solve the problem themself) are generally seen as mature, hard-working students.

It is also a good way to get to know faculty in your department, which can be useful e.g. if you are looking for a research assistantship, or recommendation letters, etc.

Personally, when I teach, I like when students come to office hours with good questions - it helps me see how students are understanding the lesson, where common points of friction are, and thereby improves the quality of my instruction. It also helps them do better in the course, which is of course a goal we have in common. But, I enjoy teaching and engaging with students. Some faculty in my department don't like teaching, and don't like office hours - but even those faculty members don't look down on students who make (good) use of them.


What is "technology in the classroom" that so many job applications ask for?

It's hard to guess exactly what the authors of the advertisement meant.  However, there are lots of technologies that the advertisement could be referring to, including

Graphing calculators.
Numerical and symbolic computation software (MATLAB, Maple, Mathematica, etc.)
"Clicker" audience response systems.
Lecture capture recordings.
Prepared video clips for students to view outside of class.
Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Canvas, etc.
Systems for online discussion of the course such as Piazza.
Computer based homework systems like WebWork, Maple TA, etc.

In evaluating candidates, I want to know what experience they've had with these technologies and how they've decided to incorporate them into their teaching.

Most experienced instructors will have used at least some of these and have opinions about how best to use them.  A candidate who can't talk intelligently about these technologies is probably lacking teaching experience.  Someone who claims experience with these technologies and has the "wrong" opinions about how to use them will likely be seen as a poor fit for the position.

Before you go for an on-campus interview (or even for a telephone or skype screening interview), it would be a good idea to see what technologies have been adopted at the campus you're visiting so you can be prepared to discuss this during your interview.


How to interpret Italian grades for a grad school application

Does this rank the student as being the top of their year or do many people get 100% in an Italian university?

110/110 cum laude is the maximum obtainable result for a graduation in Italy. To achieve this result a student should pass most of the exams with a grade equivalent to that of US A/A+ and produce a very good dissertation. Take into account that in Italy, typically, exams are not graded on a curve.

More specifically, exam pass grades in Italy range from 18 to 30. To have the possibility to get a final grade of 110/110, a student should typically average about 28 or more along the 3 years of the BsC degree or along the 2 years of the MsC degree.

However, the relative number of students who achieve this result can depend on the field and can vary between universities (this is a major source of problems when comparing grades). Unfortunately statistical data about grades are not easily found on universities web sites (e.g. I couldn't find these data for my university). Maybe the consortium Alma Laurea might provide general statistical information.

Edit I: I've found some statistical data: this pdf file from Alma Laurea contains a report on the 2013 graduates (unfortunately, it is in Italian only). On p. 120 there is a graph which shows grade classes vs field. For the engineering field (ingegneria), 16% of the students achieved the maximum result of 110/110 cum laude.

Edit II: As Aubrey noted in his answer, the Alma Laurea web site contains also a searchable database of graduates' profiles. For example, for the year 2013, for the Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering (Information Technology probably belongs to that Department) at the University of Catania, the database reports these data. The average grade for the MsC degree is 107.5/110 (110/110 cum laude is considered as 113/110 for the calculation of the average).

For comparison, and to show that there can be a large spread on the averages, for the same year and the same kind of Department, graduates from the Politecnico di Torino (my university) have an average grade of 99.6/110 and those from the University of Rome an average grade of 101.8.

Edit III: Last but not least, students can ask to their universities the so called Diploma Supplement, a document which should help the international recognition of the qualifications. This document provides information on the Italian grading system and reports the corresponding student's grades in the ECTS grading scale. So, in case of doubts, better ask foreigner students to attach this document to the application documentation.


How much does a FAIL grade in thesis credits affect PhD admission chances?

To be successful in applying for PhD programmes, you need to demonstrate your ability to perform research.

Unfortunately, failing a thesis research course says rather the opposite to the admissions committee. By the sounds of it, your lukewarm recommendation letter from your supervisor will have done nothing to help matters either.

To improve your chances if you are planning to apply again, I would suggest trying to publish your work (you hint in your question that this may be possible) and, if you can, finding someone else who can write you a much stronger letter of recommendation.


Professor Lost Assignment Grade, But So Did I

What you should do, in the unlikely event he does that is just go see him and work it out. There are easy ways to compensate, but your next step should not be an escalation or claim unfairness. Just go to the office and have a talk.

The easiest way to compensate is just to assume that those grades are about the same as the typical grades you get otherwise in the course and compute averages or totals or whatever on that basis. If that satisfies both of you, then there is no issue.

But if either expects something different, you just need to discuss it. Perhaps he asked a few questions about what you did on the assignment.

Or, in case that you have the recorded grades, but not the assignments, just take the printed spreadsheet to show how you record things. He will accept it or not. And if you remember anything from feedback written on the assignment, say what it was, to refresh his memory.

But if all the grades, not just yours, are lost, then he needs a general solution that isn't punitive.


Journal submission cover letter: length and references

Shouldn't "explaining the purpose of the research and why it's important" be in the paper's abstract and introduction rather than in the cover letter? I'm accustomed to cover letters of the form "Dear [Editor's name], I would like to submit the [enclosed in the old days / attached nowadays] paper, [title of paper], for publication in [name of journal].  Sincerely, [name of author]".


How to restore trust in a toxic lab environment?

Institute heads seems like overkill at this point.  How about the group leaders for starters?

Your friend might find it helpful to schedule his lab time when his groupmates will be present.


Whether to get different letter of recommendation when supervisor's letter is bad?

As I see it, the adviser's reply is in order. He openly stated what the contents would be and emphasized the option to choose another letter, if it suits you more, without any implication that that act could be taken in a negative connotation.

Further, the contents seem to align with the story you told here, i.e. you started a PhD, but finished with a master's degree. He states you strengths and weaknesses, which is to be expected. What is more important, he intends to accentuate you growth during your studies. This is a powerful statement from his side. As I see it, his response is objective.

Additionally, given the fact that your adviser was extremely helpful during your graduation ("day and night"), which I understand him to have taken on extra effort to see you graduate, I see no evidence that he would sabotage your attempts.

My opinion is that you should use this adviser as reference, as I seriously doubt that you could get a stronger letter from someone else (unless you neglected to mention that you had other collaborations where you fared better). Although other persons may not say anything bad about you, they can probably say also nothing positive, and luke-warm letters are not good. I would always opt for a strong letter, from someone who knows you and can attest to your journey through grad school. It is nothing unusual to have a bad start, but the fact that you saw it through and earned praise towards the end is a very good thing.

Finally, you should probably menage your expectations. You shouldn't expect that you'll find anyone willing to lie for you in a letter of recommendation. From your post, your adviser is a good guy, so, again, I think you have the best chances going with him. Or, put another way, your adviser said nothing that wasn't true, so this truth might or might not hinder your way into some institution, but that state was not induced by your adviser, he simply reports what he observed.


What Plagiarism level of master thesis is acceptable?

The turnitin tool is saying that it thinks 32% of the text of your thesis could have been taken from other sources.

The software is a very blunt tool, and often has difficulty recognizing common turns of phrase and specialized terminology (e.g. I've seen "Without loss of generality we can assume that"  and "Traveling Salesman's Problem" flagged.)  It also doesn't recognize situations where there's a direct quote (properly delineated and cited) from another source.

Thus it's necessary for a human to review the report generated by the software to see what's going on.  Without seeing that report, no one can give you an authoritative answer to your question.  However, in my experience, I've never seen a paper with this high a score that didn't have significant problems.

To directly answer your question, no amount of plagiarism is acceptable in a master's thesis.


Courses to take in Machine Learning for applying for PhD in ML?

Can anybody tell me a detailed idea about the courses that I need to take so that I can apply for PhD in US or Europe ?

PhD programmes in the US and Europe are significantly different. While a PhD in Europe expects you to have a fair idea of what you intend to research, the US universities allow you to take courses to learn - quite similar to what the IITs follow.

What courses to take largely depends on where you are studying, right? You cannot take a course if it is not offered.

An example Data Analytics course is at https://volgenau.gmu.edu/program/view/20521

Basically, you want to learn a couple of programming languages - Python (with scikit-learn) is good, take a course on statistics (and learn R programming). A core course in Machine Learning (teaching decision trees, neural networks, clustering etc.) and few courses on database systems. You need to know SQL and also NoSQL systems. Try MySQL and MongoDB, for example. These should generally give you the pre-requisites.

Also, just learning theory is not enough - one needs to also do practical work. For that, I would suggest learning Linux and having the ability to spin up VMs and setup a system with Hadoop etc. Cloudera provides a VM to get started, and so does MapR. Virtualbox is a good free virtualisation software.

You also need to decide what field of ML you want to go in further. This would depend on whay you want to learn ML - the reasons would be your own. Of teh sub-fields one could look at pattern recognition, audio recognition, predictive analytics, classification systems etc. You should then do your Masters work on that. IMHO, it would make sense to look at small, real world problems and try to solve them with ML to build a portfolio, then tackling something huge. If you are able to solve small but significant real-world issues, you would have a much better chance of landing the paid scholarship.

To get an idea about opportunities available in the UK, you can join the BIG-DATA@jiscmail.ac.uk mailing list. Social media researchers can join mailing lists of the  Association of Internet Researchers at http://aoir.org

Note: Before or after down-voting this answer please leave some rationale as to why you do not think this is appropriate advice.


Etiquette and guidelines for asking someone if they might be doing work potentially similar to yours?

I'd recommend against sending such an e-mail to someone you don't know well.  If you've got serious reason to fear there may be competition that neither of you wants, then perhaps a mutual friend could help sort it out; if you don't, then I wouldn't worry about it.

One danger is that the e-mail can come across as aggressively staking out territory.  Even just asking whether someone is working on this topic can be read as "speak now or forever hold your peace", with the implication that unless they announce it now, you'll be seriously offended if they end up competing with you on this topic.  This is not a fair position to put someone in, since research can be unpredictable and their work may end up having consequences for these topics that they do not yet foresee.

Collaboration can also be a touchy issue.  It's sometimes a mutually beneficial way to resolve this sort of situation, but not always.  It can be awkward when someone you don't know well suggests a collaboration, since no matter what excuses you offer, it's hard to avoid the appearance that declining a collaboration request is a negative judgement on the person making the request.

If you know someone well, you may be able to avoid these difficulties, but I wouldn't try it otherwise.

If you're a graduate student, then your advisor should help with situations like this.  For example, they should make sure potential competitors are aware of your thesis project (at least in mathematics, it's considered extremely bad form to compete with a grad student, and part of the advisor's role is to minimize the chances of accidental competition).


Should I warn new/prospective PhD Student that supervisor is terrible?

You should. As you mentioned yourself, you would have loved it if someone had warned you about things before you went, and "do unto others as you would they do unto you" is a good maxim to live by.

Having said that, you should also take steps to protect yourself. Talk to the student in private, and ask for confidentiality. Do it face-to-face or via telephone/Skype if you can; if you must use email, avoid using your institutional email address. You've already acknowledged you might be biased, so tell the student the facts only and don't add anything that you inferred from the facts. For example, instead of "He does not help or even provide feedback", say how many times you meet him or attempt to contact him a week. Describe how those meetings went - what did you say, what did he say, what did you do next? Try not to say "he does not help" as though it's a bad thing: it's actually possible he is expecting you to work independently for various reasons (e.g. you were so good he doesn't think you need close supervision).


When to offer co-authorship vs asking for feedback

I'd ask for help. If said help turns out relevant, add a footnote thanking for it. If the help is in some way crucial (found and fixed a fatal flaw, suggested a (better) way to compute the results, suggested a relevant extension, ...) ask the helper if they want to be coauthors or just be thanked as above.


Is it bad form to ask someone to be my advisor over email?

I would first send her an email asking when she might next be around campus and able to meet.  If she responds that she's traveling (which is entirely possible now that the academic year is over), I think you can send a polite follow up asking her to be your official advisor.


Write 'According to Wikipedia' in a PhD thesis

"According to some unknown guy on the Internet, I can say that according to Wikipedia..."

No, you should avoid that. Wikipedia is open, so it can be changed by (almost) everyone and you have no guarantee that the given information there is correct. While many articles are very informative, it might be better to take the actual source (given on the Wikipedia page) and make sure that this source is credible (e.g. published in a good, peer reviewed journal).


What if MS advisor pad his wife's name into my conference and journal publications?

This sort of "guest" authorship is not unheard of. For instance, that may be why Chinese universities primarily give credit to the first or corresponding authors of papers (as opposed to other authors, who may be "guest" authors).
Assuming your description of the situation is correct, including another PhD student who had little to no contribution as the second author, especially one with a personal connection to the advisor, is definitely ethically questionable. It's good that you noticed and disagree with it.
Practically speaking, it's much easier to raise this issue after you have graduated and received any recommendation letters you need from your advisor. For instance, if indeed you are submitting in a few months, you could delay submission of the papers until afterwards. Alternatively, even if you submit a paper with a non-contributing second author, as the first author you will still receive the primary credit from any applications of your CV.


Is listener's fees in a conference justified?

The main reason for fees is that there is a cost for renting the auditoriums and perhaps other services (refreshments, facilities etc.). Under such circumstances all participants need to pay to support the conference. Exactly how the pricing is done differs widely but in most cases it is based on costs divided by a certain number of projected participants in different categories. There are conferences which I have attended that seem horrendously expensive and are held in luxurious places with organizing services and then there are those run by a smaller society where making a cheap efficient meeting for the members by the members is a priority. In all cases you pay just to get in.

So pricing will vary depending on venue and organiser. Depending on how the conference is organized you may be able to gain some insights into how the costs come about and then make constructive comments to the organisers on how it should change; particularly if the organisers are a membership organisation where you are a member.


Ask your supervisor.

This will basically come down to your supervisor's wishes. However, it is usually OK. The majority of my papers during PhD were with other coauthors and not my advisor and he was very supportive of this. Personally, I would consider it very poor form for a supervisor to be so possessive of their students' time.

If your supervisor says it's OK, then go for it. If your supervisor objects, then you have to decide what to do. Personally, I would consider finding a better supervisor if my current one won't let me broaden my collaboration network, but it depends on your situation.


Where can I find industry postdoc hiring statistics for Canada?

Mitacs provides information (data will need to be compiled) about number of fellowships, participating institutions, expenditures, and so forth on its reports page.

However, I do not believe that Mitacs has historically been the only source of grants. See this article in Science (2005) and this notice from the NSERC.


how to deal with incorrect speaker introduction at conference

In case your name is pronounced wrong, just let it slip. You cannot expect someone to know all of the correct pronunciations of strangers' names.

As for the title, I would recommend to only speak up when you are introduced with a status higher than your real one. A side remark like "Oh, and I do not actually hold a PhD" should be enough to clear the confusion and to show people you are not adorning yourself with borrowed plumes (taking false credit). Any further would probably unnecessarily embarrass the speaker.


Why might only some papers from a conference be included in Google Scholar?

Doing a little bit of poking around, I found most articles on BlackHat 2015 not listed in Google Scholar, and all of the articles that I did find listed were cited by other papers.

It seems to me then likely that this is among the "grey area" sites that Google Scholar is not indexing (BlackHat's status as an academic conference is murky), and thus that any material that you find is being added to the Google Scholar index through other routes.


Should I Wait for a Journal's Decision Before Revising Authorship?

You have been given the answer by the editor: That it doesn't matter yet.

Tell the other author of the paper that you asked, and the editor said to deal with it if/when you're asked to revise the paper.

Then move along with your life and work and wait for a reply. You absolutely shouldn't withdraw the paper for something like that when you've already been told how to handle it by the editor.


How should I give a talk about my paper if I know it has a significant weakness?

How should you talk about the weakness? Honestly.

This doesn't mean you need to dwell on it or undermine all the rest of this talk around your point.  But if you know about a serious weakness, you shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge it when necessary.

Yes, your work will appear less awesome as a result.  But which of these two scenarios would you rather have?

You show the work you did, acknowledge the weakness, and discuss how you think it would be best to improve the work in the future in order to achieve the overall goals.  You haven't solved the problem, but you've taken a useful step.
You claim your work has no weaknesses, and when people inevitably notice, they think that you are either too foolish to notice the weakness or too insecure and self-important to acknowledge it.

Your paper was accepted, despite the reviewers pointing out the weakness, and that means people must find something of value in it.  Focus on the value that is still there despite the weakness, and let that be the point on which you build.


How do search committees judge the publication list?

First of all, you should not presume that a committee member spends just "a few minutes". Even for large volume searches, a huge number of applications fail some very basic filters (Do you have a PhD or equiv.? Did your cover letter show some flicker of recognition as to what you were applying for?, etc.) that affords the committee more time on the actual applications that may or may not make the short list. In my experience, searches are massive expenditures of time on the part of the committee and are taken pretty seriously - after all, they're talking about spending potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars and having to work with someone for 5+ years.

And while search committee members may not be experts in the exact subfield in question, there's good odds one of them has a notion of the broad strokes of what's a good journal and what's not. It's also possible to look these journals up if it's unclear - or to ask colleagues closer to the field in question "Hey, have you ever heard of the International Journal of Epidemiology, and is it any good?" (For reference, the answer is 'Yes, and Yes').


Should bad prior work be ignored, or cited and criticised?

Negative citations is what you describe. It is something of a fallacy of the system that a paper may get many citations and therefore seems important when it is clearly sub-par and is referenced in a negative connotation.

Seen objectively, one should give credit where it is due. If someone was first to realize something then that is the origin of the idea (in official terms), how good or bad the paper is, is irrelevant. In some cases first discoveries may just be gut feelings and not well-founded.

I sometimes have to bite my lip when I reference some papers because I really do not think they deserve it (because I know the background) but realize there are no two ways about it. You can of course chose not to reference it, as you have the freedom to chose what we cite, but you may end up getting reviews asking you to add it (if it is something key).

In some cases it is possible to provide objective criticism of a paper. The problem is that the shortcomings will have to be clear.


Ultimately this is a personal decision, but I'll offer a few things to consider. Depending on your field and your specific research, taking time out might be a large set-back, or not. The world of research won't stand still while you are away and you might get pre-empted by a delay that might wind up to be longer than you first plan for.

Your advisor should also be able to give good advice on this as s/he likely knows the field and what are the prospects of returning smoothly. Your advisor might, also, be willing to wait for you, or not, so it is good to check.

Finally, what do you really want to do with your life? If it is to be an academic, primarily, think harder about finishing. If it is to be an entrepreneur, then the degree may not mean as much to you as taking advantage of the new opportunity. The industry experience might have some, but not likely a lot, of advantage in seeking an academic position later. Not a "slam dunk", anyway.

Finally, make sure that you understand what the conditions would be if you join up with these investors. Are you a full partner, or are you being used? Either is possible in the somewhat messy real world.


Is there any difference between theoretical and mathematical?

Theoretical and mathematical: They're different. Mathematical aspects are the mathematical parts, whereas theoretical aspects are the fundamental computer science parts. E.g., computational complexity is theoretical computer science, whereas statistical analysis is mathematical.
That said, it may depend on the context. Ask your advisor for clarity.
Ask your advisor for clarity whenever you don't understand, or, at least, mention that you don't understand and that you'll look into the details later, possibly asking for direction on where to look.


The archive with all the LaTeX material as a camera ready version

I've notice this becoming increasingly common in CS. It's annoying, but if the conference is well known, it shouldn't be an issue.


What do the abbreviations 2:2, 2:1, or 3:2:3 mean in terms of teaching loads?

They refer to the number of classes you teach in each semester. ie 2:1 would mean two classes one semester and one the other.

Three numbers (like 3:2:3) refer to the number of classes in each quarter for schools on the quarter system (i.e., three terms per academic year). [Thanks to Mark Meckes]

Not all courses are the same size, although I suspect that the vast majority are the standard "3 credit hour" size. A minority but reasonable number of courses, though, are 4 credit hours (particularly in my area, math). A few courses are even 5 credit hours at some institutions. It depends on the field to a great extent. Nevertheless, the number of courses is still very important. Teaching a four-hour and a five-hour course for a 2-course load is less work, usually, than teaching three different 3-hour courses. [Thanks to Oswald Veblen]


Should recommendation letters be from the home university of a student?

Yes, they could write letters for you.  In fact, strong letters from faculty outside your home department or university will likely help your application.

One caveat, though: A strong recommendation letter must praise your potential for research in applied mathematics, not just in the writer's native discipline, in specific and credible detail.  Moreover, it must be clear that the writer has the expertise to judge that potential; that expertise may not be clear from their departmental affiliation alone.  So you should consider asking your references to include a short paragraph in their letter, explaining their own applied math background (either as a researcher themselves or as a reference for past successful grad students).


This is out of my field as I’m male, but think of the temperature, so next be respectful (not suggesting you wouldn’t...) but a lightweight business suit may be the order of the day.

Any images of last years conference available - may give you a hint...

I don’t think you will be required to wear a sari ... Mind you a colleague went to a conference abroad and made some friends and they went shopping to get her some national dress as a memento .... and some light fun of course.


Do certificates for "Outstanding Reviewer Contribution" matter?

There is little significance, if any, attached to “good reviewer” commendations. You’re generally being hired for your research or teaching contributions, not service. The only thing that such an award shows is that you do make significant contributions in service, which demonstrates you might be a “good neighbor.” But that’s all that it shows, and not mentioning it will certainly not hurt you.


PhD Advisor is Inexperienced Junior Faculty, Possible Bully, Who do I Tell?

I believe properly answering your question depends on providing more specific detail, e.g. which is the country. Institutional structure and the corporate culture can be very different between, say, Mexico and China.

I believe you have a broken relationship with your current advisor. I will not attempt to judge a reason for why she did what you describe, or whether your account is precise and complete.

This means you should primarily focus on getting away from this person while trying to find yourself another PhD advisor. Accomplishing this will do most of the "official communication" for you. The department will know there is a problem, and you both will be moving towards a healthier relationship.

So my answer to you is: the person you should talk to is whoever is responsible for shifting advisors in your institution. If you cannot change advisors for whatever reason, then it is the person responsible for smoothly terminating your contract locally so you can get better training elsewhere. The conflict itself becomes self-evident as you move to a better stand.

Good luck!


How to work effectively with unengaging labmates as a graduate student?

From your question, I get that you feel like the big fish in the small pond. It does happen, but you might be able improve your situation and your environment. Here's a few ideas:

If your lab doesn't do it, propose weekly lab meetings or a journal club where science is discussed. Yes, it means more work for you, especially if no one else is interested in leading some of those meetings. But it will bring some science discussion to the group, and might excite their curiosity.
Seek scientific fulfillment in other groups: open the journal club to other related labs at your university, or join a professional organization linked to your discipline. There's plenty of opportunity for grad students to get involved.
Twitter is full of grad students like you. You will find that you can engage in science conversations and get support from fellow graduate students.

In any case, you have a great opportunity to act as a leader in your group. In the best case scenario, your example will motivate the other students and you will create a better environment. If not, your involvement will be noticed and it will be good for your own career.


Information in my Thesis incorrectly represented in another publication

No, there really isn't any value in you trying to pursue a correction here, given how sloppy the presentation of the articles is, and how poorly presented the linked article in particular appears to be.

Basically, it would be much ado about nothing; very few people, as the commenters have pointed out, will try to take the published work seriously; even fewer will bother to check the references and dig through them to figure out that they've apparently been grossly mischaracterized by the authors of the paper in question. So, I don't think there's any besmirching of your scientific reputation to worry about.

Moreover, trying to go after these authors or the publisher to make them make changes will most likely prove equally fruitless. There is no quality control or standards involved with the production of the articles, so it seems unlikely that any request for an editorial correction would be honored in a timely manner (or at all).


Differences among Doctoral Degrees/titles

An EngD is a different degree to a PhD. If you've got a PhD you can't put EngD after your name, and vice-versa. Both can give you the title "doctor", but they are different doctorates.

If your degree diploma says "Doctor of Engineering", it's very very likely that you can put Eng.D. after your name. But not PhD. (and I've never seen D.Eng after a name, only Eng.D. - but maybe that's UK-specific. I have seen Dr.-Ing. from Germany)


Combining 2 sections according to the reviewer’s comment

"The material from sections B and G of the previous version have been incorporated into the new Section H of this version".
That should be plenty. Just point to the place where the material now sits as suggested above.


How formal should the dedication section in a master thesis be?

You could wander to your department library and check the dedication page of several master's theses to see what other students have done.

In my case the department keeps a copy of every MSc and PhD thesis ever produced by students in the department, and they are available in the department library. I looked at a couple dozen. Most of them had some happy little thing like a line of poetry or something. A student who finished during my course work put the following on his dedication page.

One and One make Three

That's because he and his wife had a child during his grad work. On my PhD thesis dedication page I first gave a gushy thanks to my supervisor. Then I included a quote from Yoda, and a quote from a song by the music group Queen.

I think as long as it's generally not nasty it will be OK.

You can also get some general ideas about format, writing style, citations, etc.  Maybe the people who did the binding will have left little notes in the cover so you can find out where to get that done.

And, hey, the content might even be interesting.


If the conference uses the Easychair system for organizing the reviewing process for conferences, then you can check if you can still upload an updated version. This often works, as many conference organizers choose to manually disable the submission of updated versions after the deadline has passed. So if Easychair allows you to still upload an updated version, you can use this functionality. This is because in this case, the assignment of papers to reviewers hasn't been triggered, so nobody should have had a close look at your paper already.

When you cannot upload updated version anymore, the best course of action is to send a new version to the PC chair, asking her/him to update the paper on Easychair manually. Accompany the new version with a list of changes and an apology. If this change list really short and lists easy to recognize problems with the paper (such as a missing figure), the PC chair is likely to forward your updated paper to all reviewers, so that they can do the review on the updated version. They may choose not to, though, because your updated version is late. But if a reviewer hasn't even started looking into your paper (and printing it), they will normally not mind.


Do I need to explain or justify sources that I use to build an argument? (Academic Philosophy)

Your citing standards are not just defined by the standard procedures of your journal or the literacy level of your audience, but also by whether the source you cite argues the point, assumes the point, entertains the point as one of many possibilities, or even whether the source exists solely to address the point you are making.

If you wish to quote Douglas Adams to argue that life is meaningless, very little summary is required. As we see in Douglas Adams's parable of the supercomputer and the meaning of life, "meaning" is not a property of life, and requesting a calculation of "meaning" results in meaningless answers, such as "42".

This is a summary not of a book or a story, but of a paragraph of a book. It is a tiny story within a larger story. Those who have read it will appreciate a chance to chuckle, but everyone will see the connection whether they've read it or not, and there will be no need to summarize further.

But if you need to challenge the straightforward interpretation, for example if you're disagreeing with another author who cited the source, more detail is required.

"The anti-meaning school of thought emphasizes the results of Douglas Adams's supercomputer", - summarize opposition,
"which was asked to calculate the meaning of life, and which concluded that life is meaningless." - summarize opposition's summary,
"But in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" it was understood that meaning can exist even when it cannot be calculated, which is why the story called for an organic invention (earth) to discover the meaning of life" - re-interpret the source,
"indeed, what is "meaning" if not "value which defies quantification"?" - summarize your interpretation of the source.

Your style and level of detail should walk a delicate balance between risk and rigor.

If you publish a correlation between lung cancer and smoking, hardly anyone will care what the more rigorous points of your argument are; the established topic lacks the risk to be interesting. You won't get published unless your writing breathes new fascination into the old question.

Don't worry about being fascinating or risky if you're presenting a correlation between chocolate consumption and IQ though; a fifth of your audience will label you a clown or classist before they read your work, so everyone will have plenty of energy to read every sentence and citation you write as they scan for technical mistakes. Just focus on accuracy and rigor, that'll be your bottleneck to even being published.

So my final answer is, if you justify too much, you'll be boring. If you justify too little, you'll be stupid.


What is the purpose of the presentations section in the CV?

The list of presentations in your CV is an indication of your direct, face-to-face engagement with your research community.  All else being equal, researchers who give more talks are more visible/known/familiar to the community, which means their research has more impact.

Further, a list of invited talks gives an indication of your reputation within the research community.  Again, all else being equal, researchers who are invited to give more talks are generally held in higher esteem, which means their research has (and will continue to have) more impact.

Giving lots of talks—especially invited talks—suggests strong communication skills, which correlate with well-written papers (which, all else being equal, have more impact), good teaching, successful grant applications, and effective public advocacy.

Finally, especially for younger researchers, a long list of presentations indicates that you know how "the game is played".  Departments only want to hire junior faculty who show strong potential for earning tenure, which requires not only high-quality research but highly visible research.  A list of talks in your CV signals that you know that your job is not just to sit in a cave and emit papers, but to sell your research and to make yourself a face in your research community.

Of course, these are all merely correlations and grace notes, and all else is never equal.  A stronger publication record almost always trumps a stronger presentation record, so your CV should include your publications first.

[I'm also in computer science.]


Canadian PhD application process for international students

You should visit website of universities that you are interested in. Most universities provide detailed information about their application process and scholarships in their website. The application procedure may be different for different universities or even for different departments within a university. For example, as I know and at the moment, Department of Computer Science in Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto  and University of Western Ontario offer entry-level scholarships for applicants that receive an offer of admission. On the other hand, as a part of the application process, Carleton University asks applicants if they are willing to finance their own studies or like to be considered to scholarship knowing that the university will not offer admission if it cannot offer/afford funds. Many professors encourage applicants to contact them before applying but I have seen CS professors at University of Toronto that encourage applicants to apply without contacting them before applying.

So the advice that I can give is to visit the website of the universities of your interest. I know that this is a very general advice and that it can be a cumbersome and time-consuming process but in my experience, it is the most accurate one.


I am in a very similar situation. I'm at my undergrad school for PhD. I would say that it's more important to be in a place where you feel you are going to be happy and productive. There's no point going to a new place if you're not convinced you'll be able to get a good PhD out of it. If you are productive and publish good research it won't matter where you did your undergrad. I would also suggest looking for internships in industry or applying for travel grants to visit collaborators in other institutions to get some diversity on your CV. Hope that helps!


Include personal link to poster in Graduate School CV

In general, anything that can help folks access your works easier from your CV is a good thing.  I include links in mine for any articles that are in open-access journals or conference papers that are in public archives.  For the poster, though, make sure it's well proofread and up to date research, I think - I wouldn't go back and put all your posters online, maybe just your most recent ones?


Does an engineering paper have to improve on the state of the art quantitatively in order to be publishable?

In order to be publishable, a scientific work needs to provide evidence that it advances the state of human knowledge.

Direct quantitative comparison to the state of the art is a relatively straightforward way of doing this, but there are many other alternatives.  For example, one might also provide mathematical proof of a difference in expected scaling or demonstrate a qualitative property that is not present in current systems.

The key in every case, however, is that there should be clear evidence provided of some sort of value that other investigators are likely to find to be of interest.


Job application: What are "scientific highlights"?

Here are some interpretations:

What are your top academic achievements?

If we ask a random person in your community, what will they know you for?

What are your selected publications (ones you’re most proud of)?

Did you win any awards or fellowships? What for?

The department wants to hire people whose work is outstanding in some way- they want to know how you are outstanding.


What is the academic value of a white paper?

Some of the things that I have seen white-papers be useful for:

Position papers, manifestos, and other intellectual opinion statements.
Disseminating protocols, techniques, standards proposals, and other things that are useful but "below the threshold" of a normal publication
Seeding discussions with program managers and other potential funders and collaborators.
Date-stamping a piece of work so you can get it out of your queue and move on.  Much better a white paper in an informal repository than a disreputable journal.

Sometimes white papers end up "upgrading" into proposals or publications of various types---sometimes very high impact publications.  Sometimes they even draw a surprising amount of citations.  Mostly, though, they are for the less formal side of scientific life.  A well-regarded white paper sort of statement can change the course of an entire field.

One thing that I think is very important is, for any white paper that you are disseminating publicly, to get it into some archival location.  There are a number of methods for this, from arXiv to standards RFCs to institutional technical report collections.  If do this, it will be much easier for people to cite your white paper, pass it around, and generally disseminate it.  And if it's persistent, you can feel much more comfortable adding it you your C.V...


How can the choice of "where to publish" affect the potential number of citations?

A prior question would be why you care about the number of citations. There are valid career-related reasons, and I assume that you know that citation-gathering businesses do not always include "self-publication" and conference proceedings. That applies both to the article being cited, and the citing article. So there is a difference between actual citations in the abstract sense, and enumerated citations. That could support the refereed respected journal approach, depending on your motivation. Also, there are numerous open-access respectable peer-reviewed journals, so since you are looking for non-overlapping categories, I assume you specifically mean unrefereed repositories of various kinds, in referring to "open access".

I would be surprised if there is any evidence that open-access results in an increase in citations, because in the subset of people in the world publishing academic papers, I doubt that the factor of having to pay to read an article has a significant effect on whether a researcher can actually read the paper. Via my university, I get to read articles in any arbitrary journal, and request a free copy if they don't subscribe. An opposite expected trend is that an article in a large, open repository may more easily be missed, if say they get a hundred submissions a week, and if authors are unaware of your work, they won't cite it.

In my field (linguistics), conference proceedings were traditionally just a minor notch below peer-reviewed journals in stature, due to there being few journals and a major publication lag, but now conference proceedings are in third place (behind book chapters). But in some sub-areas (computational), conference proceedings are a major publication venue. Correspondingly, CL conference proceedings go through a serious wringer.

So your basic distinction centered around peer-review is correct, it's just that peer-review standards vary considerably for journals and conference proceedings. It may be that more people will have access to your paper if it is in an open repository, but they will also have access to thousands of other papers, and to generate a citation by the subset of the public that writes scientific papers, you would need to do something extra to draw attention to your paper.

I suggest you first scrutinize the notion of "citation", to determine what citation engine(s) you care about, and whether they scoop up citations of un-reviewed works that appear in other un-reviewed works.


What are committees looking for in a cover letter for a faculty application?

(1) For the cover letter, should it end by saying something,

In my experience (~10 years on hiring committees, starting my second year as hiring committee chair), almost nobody will read your cover letter.  If you have something to say about your research, say it in your research statement.  If you have something to say about your teaching, say it in your teaching statement.  If you have something to say about your personal life, don't.

If the department doesn't acknowledge receipt (typically by email), it's reasonable to call or email the department to double-check.  But "waiting for your call" is unreasonably optimistic.  Each department you're applying to probably gets hundreds of applications for each faculty position.

  (2) Should the cover letter contain qualifications and skills like highly-motivated, fast learner etc?

Absolutely not!  "Motivated" and "fast learner" are neither skills nor qualifications; they're useless boilerplate.  Of course you're motivated and a fast learner; otherwise, you wouldn't have a PhD and a publication record consistent with a tenure-track faculty position.  Your actual skills and qualifications should be apparent from your CV, your research and teaching statements, and your recommendation letters.

  (3) Some recommends to mention potential drs from the department that the applicant can work with. Is this a good idea? If Dr. A is working on topic T, and I want to work on topic T, then should I say that I would like to collaborate with Dr. A? If yes, what is a good way to say it?!

Don't just say it; make a convincing case.  Just dropping a few names into your research statement will be written off immediately as meaningless boilerplate.  If your research goals really do converge with Dr. A's research interests, that should be obvious from your larger research narrative, and it should be easy for you to draw specific, technical, and credible connections between your interests and Dr. A's.  Do not fake it.  We can tell.

  (4) For the research statement, should I use "I" or "we" for joint papers, assuming that I was the first author?

"We" or "my coauthors and I"; using "I" for joint work is dishonest.  But this is a relatively minor issue.


Advisor has stopped giving me research projects

Your advisor is right: a PhD student needs to take more and more ownership as the PhD progresses, as one of the main goals of attaining a PhD degree is to become an independent researcher. Taking ownership includes that a PhD student should develop the ability to formulate research hypotheses and a matching research plan (main milestones, methodology of investigation, time plan) on his/her own, and your supervisor should merely provide feedback on your plan, but not have to write it in main parts anymore. For a "normal" PhD project I would expect that after about half to two-thirds of the allocated time the student has shown strong signs of taking ownership.

As Captain Emacs said in one of the comments, it is indeed high time for you to do your own stocktake of your PhD project and develop your precise research questions / main hypotheses for the remaining PhD, including a draft of the research plan (as above: main steps / milestones, indicative time budget, being clear on the research question addressed in each step, and defining a methodology that can indeed answer the research question, make an analysis of the risks involved [do you have all the equipment / data / source code / ... you need]). Ask your supervisor for feedback, but do not ask for his/her "approval". You are the lead on your PhD project and have all the responsibility for it, and you merely ask your supervisor for expert advice, not for any decisions or his/her blessing.

And if you still find that you do not get a handle on taking ownership, and if you were my PhD student, I would ask you to seriously consider the question whether a PhD is the right thing for you and whether other options (e.g. exiting with a master degree) would make sense.


Will tutoring calculus be worthwhile experience?

I am not an academician and I have little idea as to what to look for when hiring a lecturer, though I had the opportunity to sit through a few of those demonstration lectures from prospective candidates and also go through their feedback forms given to other lecturers.
From this little insight, I believe that any experience is better than no experience. After all, you would be teaching the same students a few years later in college if you become a lecturer.
More importantly, leaving aside what your PhD committee or the hiring committee feels about you it would be a good experience and I feel that you will learn a great deal in teaching. Teaching is an art and you are honing it at a level when it matters the most.
As for leveraging it in your career as an academician, in your future interviews do not just mention that you had experience teaching high school students. Instead, focus on the challenging scenarios which arose while teaching and how you managed it. And then explain how that experience would be useful for you as a lecturer.
A good lecturer has his or own style which is inherited from their senior colleagues and gets mutated through experiences. You are doing good by being proactive and training yourself beforehand.
Finally, if there is a competition for the position of TA in your school, I am sure this experience will benefit you.