What are the available postdoctoral fellowships in Europe that non-European can apply for?

To answer your second question first, the Marie Curie fellowships require evidence of mobility - specifically, that you haven't worked in the proposed host country for more than 12 months total in the past three years. So if you join a lab in, say, France, after one year you will no longer be able to apply for a MSCA fellowship in France.
However, you'd still be eligible to apply for one hosted in any other EU country where you had not worked for more than 12 months in the past three years.
So, if you're happy and able to move labs, then you would still be eligible to apply for a MSCA fellowship. The full eligibility documents are on the call website if you want to read in more detail.
I don't think there's a short answer to your first question - the EU contains dozens of large scientific funders and probably hundreds of fellowship schemes, with differing requirements. There are likely search tools for specific countries/opportunities which would give a better answer.


How do grad schools train grad students to be teaching assistants?

How do grad schools train teaching assistants?
Some graduate programs offer specific workshops to teach the fundamentals of teaching. However, being a good TA usually comes down to 3 things:

Proper understanding of the material
Experience in teaching beforehand (I am a much better TA now compared to a few years ago)
Preparation (this is necessary even if you are experienced)

Nonetheless, the content of your actual question (and corresponding comments) is quite worrisome. It is absolutely not the responsibility of a TA to be prepared to answer any question from students of every lab, especially without previous preparation. I would dare to say this is not even the responsibility of the professor teaching the course. I have yet to meet a professor who doesn't feel the need for previous preparation when teaching a course for the tenth time, nevermind teaching new courses for the first time.


What does it mean to have figures included in conference abstract?

Unless the submission guidelines/instructions suggest otherwise, they're not asking for a graphical abstract. They're asking for a figure(s) that illustrate the key results of the presentation (for instance, if your talk is "Correlations between A and B under Conditions X", you could include a graph of a against b).

Here's an example of a conference abstract with figures, taken entirely at random from the online programme of a recent ACS meeting.


How should I manage my relationship with a sneaky academic?

Until you know a bit more, I'd start with a generous interpretation. Academics can be forgetful. They (we) can lose things like contact information. This interpretation may not be warranted, of course, but it is usually worth starting as if it is. It may be that what you were thinking of as fairly firm commitments, he was just musing about. It doesn't reflect well on him, of course, but your best way forward is to assume it is benign (for now).
Send him an email reminding him of past conversations and suggest that you are interested in collaboration. Send whatever support information you think useful. Go visit in person if that is feasible. Remind him of those conversations and your memory of them, but without being accusatory.
You will learn a lot from the response. In particular, you should learn if the generous interpretation is the valid one. I don't know that you have a lot of recourse, however, if he is a bad actor. But if not, you may be able to get the ball rolling on this or a similar project.
If he is a bad actor, you should probably have a conversation with your collaborators about how he treats them and try to figure out if you are treated differently. You and your collaborators can, perhaps, come to some understanding and even create a support group.

On Forgetfulness
One of my mentors, great person, great teacher, used to know when he was "working hard enough" when he would lose his car. You would find him wandering through the university parking lots looking for it when it was time to go home. Not a bad actor, but not always dependable.


Why did journal subscription prices increase by 25% between 2013 and 2017? (vs. 5% for US inflation)

The direct answer is "because they can". Demand for journals is pretty inelastic - increasing the price doesn't cause much of a fall in demand. Can you imagine your university not subscribing to a journal like The Lancet or Science?

Behind that answer however is a storm of interlinked factors. Here're some of them:

Publishers are under pressure from their shareholders to show revenue and income growth. This is no different from university administrators pressuring their faculty to show research output growth, university ranking growth, and so on.
The total number of academic papers being published worldwide is increasing quickly. To shareholders this sounds like an excellent opportunity for growth! But not all these papers can be published in top journals, so a lot of them end up in not-so-good journals.
Most of the papers in these not-so-good journals are actually very seldom used. For example take the Elsevier journal Wave Motion. It's got an impact factor of 1.575, which is pretty medium. I picked a random paper, "An elastodynamic computational time-reversal method for shape reconstruction of traction-free scatterers", Vol 72, page 23-40, July 2017. Then I went to Web of Science, found the paper, and checked the usage statistics. Guess how many times it's been used in the past 180 days - three times (!).
Since the usage is so low, libraries are incentivized not to subscribe (and remember, this is a solidly middle-of-the-road journal - imagine what it's like for the bottom-tier ones). But if libraries don't subscribe, the journal makes a loss. What is the publisher to do?
Let's take the obvious thing to do, and one commonly argued for, which is to close the journal. If publishers did this en masse, there'd suddenly be no more journals except the few top-tier ones. Remember that the papers published in these not-so-good journals aren't necessarily bad - they're usually just rather boring, low-novelty papers: the backbone of science. Without the journals, these papers would never be published.
Another thing about these not-so-good journals is that they're crucial to researchers from developing countries. It's true that these researchers might be slightly less capable than those in developed countries, but it's also probable that they simply have fewer resources. If one is not able to access the Large Hadron Collider, one is also not likely to make breakthroughs in particle physics. Hence one ends up with boring, low-novelty papers that won't make it to top journals.
On top of all that, let's add the fact that some academics think that they write papers, they edit journals, they serve as reviewers, they deserve to be paid for it. I'm not saying that they're wrong, but you can see the tension this belief causes.

And then there's open access. Most forms of OA ties the revenue to the number of papers published (there are other models, but those journals are loss-making and only stay afloat because of an external source of funding). This means there's an immediate conflict of interest for the publisher, which is why there's predatory OA publishing, and in turn is why there's a backlash against OA. Also consider what it's like from the publisher's and library's points of view.

Publisher. If you convert a journal to OA, you're giving up subscription revenue. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Further, many academics prefer to publish in subscription journals even if they have access to OA funding, since if they publish OA they have to jump through some administrative hoops. There're also lots of academics in developing countries that simply cannot pay for OA. There's no guarantee that your 100-papers/year journal will still be 100-papers/year after you convert to OA. Do you dare? Remember your job is on the line (see comment above about shareholders).
Library. OA costs money. You need to free up funds somewhere to fund OA. In theory you should be able to use subscription money to pay for OA, but in practice, you're either subscribed to a journal or not. You can't just pay $3000 less for a subscription and use that for OA for a single article. The only way is to unsubscribe, which effectively removes access to every paper in the journal.

Finally, let's not forget that publishing is a notoriously poorly-paid job, and the publisher also has to keep its employees happy.

tl; dr: it's a difficult world out there. If you have a solution, you'd be in contention to win the Nobel Prize in Publishing.


avoid auto-plagiarism in publishing results from PhD thesis

It would be better to cite your thesis as you would another work. You can list it in the bibliography as you would any other work, but mark it (unpublished). This is similar to citing the unpublished work of other people, and marking it as (private communication) just to make it clear.

Of course, if your thesis is in (will be in) some publicly visible repository, then clearly you should cite it there.

On the other hand, if you don't intend to publish your thesis, then the work you derive from it are original/first works and  you could, in theory, treat the thesis as a draft, in which case citation isn't really needed. But it could give the wrong impression if someone finds the thesis somewhere, such as a library repository.

Note that the reason for avoiding self plagiarism is to let a future reader visit the complete context of a work. Simply reusing, rather than citing, your own words short circuits this.


How to work with a RA unwilling to work with me?

Have an honest conversation with RA, bring the CI and perhaps have a group meeting. Be straightforward. If there is just one thing I learned in my years of not only academics, but life, it is to be truthful and straightforward. Although it may come across as harsh, it needs to be done.


How to make a connection with academics on Linkedin that they would accept?

I consider LinkedIn to be pretty low-stakes interaction, so I merely want to avoid being linked to spammers and frauds.  My own policy, then, is that I will accept LinkedIn invitations from anybody who I actually know who they are, either by a) having had a non-trivial interaction with them (including by phone or electronically) or b) indirect interactions such as reading their papers.

Other people may have more stringent policies, but in my opinion, it's reasonable to request a connection with anybody you have a relationship with: the worst that will happen is that they will ignore it.


What would happen if I don't have a published research paper during my education?

Apply to lower level journals (not conferences, avoids the issue of travel).  Just do some solid basic work to get your confidence up.  Not "home runs" or "triples" but singles or bunts.  Anything other than a strikeout.

Story:  I had a girlfriend who was hired to sell huge enterprise level deals for a packaging company (not software, the boxes, but also box systems, services, etc.)  She was hating life because she hadn't sold anything and didn't feel she was getting support to sell these huge deals and all the other salesmen would drop a price list and make little sales (not systems).  I advised her to (counterintiutively) go ahead and sell some simple stuff like the Cro Magnon salesmen had advised her.  The problem was that she basically had ZERO for a score and hadn't even learned how to use the systems (order entry to cash, credit checks for new customers, etc.)  And her confidence was in the dumpster.  She took my advice, felt WAY better after making a little sale and eventually got one enterprise deal done.

You need to get your confidence up.  Just go to some decent journal.  Not a fly by night predatory thing.  But second tier decent, looking for datapoint papers.  And don't try to claim you've invented hydrogen. Simple, simple, simple.  And short ("least publishable unit").

P.s. When asking questions here, it helps if you tell us the field.  There are huge differences by field.  It's good if we/you can generalize as well (not requiring answers to be field specific), but if you give us the field as well, you will get some targeted answers from practitioners.  I'm assuming it is computer science based on "stack exchange" and the comment about conferences, and I am not as familiar with that field, but many others here are.


Are there publicly agreed-on standards or definitions of what constitutes peer review?

No, there isn't. Different journals/publishers will have different guidelines.

Here're some examples of publicly-published reviewer guidelines:

Wiley
Elsevier
PLOS One

To illustrate the differences, Wiley's guidelines say "What is the main question addressed by the research? Is it relevant and interesting?" (emphasis mine). Meanwhile PLOS One doesn't care about "interesting". To quote a testimonial: "I published with PLOS ONE because I love the idea that acceptance is based on quality of the work, not whether it's trendy or important in the eyes of a few editors."


Sharing paper after it has been submitted to journal?

I strongly recommend that you share your paper, not only with your friends and family but also with the entire academic community.  Upload your paper as a preprint to arXiv.  This is the major way for papers to be shared before publication (and after), so that other researchers can learn about your results without waiting for the peer review process (which in mathematics is particularly slow).

(Of course, you'll need to make sure your co-authors agree before you do this.)

See Why upload to academic preprint sites like arXiv?

You may want to double-check that your intended journal will still publish papers when their preprints are on arXiv, but I've never heard of any reputable publisher in mathematics having a problem with this.

  If you share a paper before it has been submitted, it is theoretically possible that other people could steal your work, etc, before you submit it. What about after you have submitted your paper?

I would not worry about it.  The journal has a record that you submitted it, which would be powerful evidence in case of a priority dispute.  Posting to arXiv is an even stronger form of evidence, since it's automatically visible to the public.

In most cases, "stealing work" is a minimal risk, compared to the much larger risk of not getting sufficient attention for your work.  It's usually best to err to the side of sharing.


Do I cite introductory material in a subject that helped me indirectly?

You don't typically cite material that helps you understand a topic. You cite material that you explicitly use in a paper. So source books like a C++ book don't need to be cited unless you're using an unusual and explicit construction mentioned in one of those books. For example, there's a technique to draw a geometric object using GPUs that was first mentioned in an graphics programming textbook: people using the technique will cite that textbook.

Wikipedia is not supposed to be a repository of original material, so if you found something on wikipedia then there's likely to be an original source that Wikipedia should cite and that you should as well (once you verify it).

For a website it's a similar principle. If the website contains code that you're using, then cite it (or better yet, cite the associated material that the code authors might suggest you cite instead). But if the website merely contains expository material that helps understanding, then you don't cite it.


Disclaimer: I'm in STEM, not the humanities, and I'm in the UK. But the idea of "research questions" (or, alternatively, research aims) comes up in all our student theses.
I usually define a project as having three parts:

Find a problem (or ask a question)
Propose (or find) a solution (or find an answer)
Evaluate your solution (how "correct" is the answer?)

But there is another way a thesis can be structured:

Find a solution
Propose a potential problem
Evaluate the extent of the problem and propose/highlight new research directions to solve it.

My thesis is describing the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan, including a survey in which teachers and students were asked whether those missing aspects should be included in the curriculum or whether they find them irrelevant.

This is good. It sounds like you've found a solution and have identified a potential problem with it. And it sounds like you've evaluated that problem, too. So, your research question might be something like "Is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan problematic for users of the educational services?". Or, if you want to avoid a closed question: "How problematic to service users is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan?". Defining it as a question makes your research suitably cautious. Maybe there isn't a problem at all, and your research saves someone else from proposing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the problem is massive and obvious and everyone knows about it but no one has written it down.
You have your research question at the start of your thesis, then at the end, you reflect on it. What is the answer to your research question? How well have you answered it? Everything in your thesis should be driven towards answering your research question (or questions), and that will help to avoid going off topic.
----- Edit -----
Just editing to add: it already sounds like you have a research question (even if you didn't know it), and it sounds like your thesis is written on topic to support your research question. A huge re-write is possibly not necessary, but at least top and tail the whole thing and each individual chapter with sections on what this means for your research question. At the start, say why this chapter relates to your question, at the end say how this partially answers your question. It'll give the document more focus and it'll keep the reader on track, too.


Why use version control systems for writing a paper?

tl;dr: Version control is harder to set up, but makes it safe to work on the same file, and makes it easy to track history (i.e. previous versions).

Pros and cons of syncing files

Yes, the biggest advantage of things like Dropbox (I use it as well for backuping and synchronizing my files) and SugarSync is their easiness.

They may work for collaboration on files, but:

they are not meant for two people editing the same file at once (no merge functionalities - so one guy changing a file can overwrite changes made by other guy, even without knowing that),
you get no history, i.e.:

did anyone worked on that file I want to work know?
did anyone added or modified any other files?
which changes were made?
can I go to a previous version, the one I sent to my supervisor?

Depending what you do, it may not be an issue. For example, if only one is editing tex file, while others are only reading or uploading figures - it's perfectly fine.

And also, look at my answer on Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript? with a not technically-inclined collaborators.

Version control

Version control systems require some technical skills.

Two the most common version control systems are Git and Mercurial (with the second one being more Windows-friendly and, arguably, easier to start).

Both by standard comes only with command line access, but there are some graphical interfaces as well (I really recommend starting with SourceTree).

So, if the collaborators are techie, just teach them how to use it. If not - there is a way around.

You can keep track of version control by yourself, without engaging others (I'm doing it just now with 2 collaborators).

Just you start a repository inside folder you share (the examples are with Git):

cd ~/path/to/the/folder
git init                    // start git repository inside this folder
git add .                   // say git to track all files inside it

Now, every time you or your collaborator make some changes (e.g. add some files, correct typos, revise a chapter, ...) you do:

git commit -a -m "Fixed typos in Seciton 3"

Later, you will be able to go back to this version; and also compare, e.g. the current version of your file with the previous one (by default - by line, here - by words):

git diff HEAD~1 --color-words my_file.tex

See also:

Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?
git + LaTeX workflow at StackOverflow
Writing the PhD thesis: the tools Part I
Collaborating with LaTeX and git at ShareLaTeX blog - a great and comprehensive tutorial
What are the advantages of using version control (git, CVS etc) in LaTeX documents - TeX.SE
https://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=version+control

And real world example from using diff (it makes my life so much easier :)); commit messages in Polish, but I guess you get the idea:

Otherwise (a strip from PhD Comics):


How to judge the reputation of a potential advisor or research group for good quality research for PhD?

How can I judge the quality of research of a group?

This is the wrong question.

What you should be asking is "How can I judge which research group will best support my educational and career goals?"  And yes, this is a very different question.  And while lab productivity may be correlated with the future career prospects of its members, the two are not identical.  Some great researchers are terrible advisors.

Are the lab's students happy?
Do the lab's students have a consistent strong track record of publishing new results?
Are the lab's students strongly represented at conferences, workshops, and the like?  In particular: Are the lab's students given ample opportunity to present their research outside their home department?
Are the lab's students given ample mentoring and support, both in developing their own research agendas and in applying for external fellowships, lab exchanges, internships, postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, and so on?
Are the lab's students given ample opportunity for substantial intellectual contributions to the lab's published research, or are they just lab/code monkeys?
Does the lab's research agenda closely match your own research interests and abilities?
Most importantly: Where do the lab's former students work now?  (The worst possible answer is "We don't know.")

Almost none of these questions can be answered accurately without physically visiting the lab and talking directly to the students without the PI present.  If travel is impractical, use Skype / Google hangout / Facetime / whatever.  Or telephone.  Or, if all else fails, email.


What should I do if professor grades unfairly?

Two steps:

Ask her for a meeting in her office where you can talk in peace and
phrase your concerns in a friendly but clear way. First say that
your feeling is that there is a problem but you are not exactly sure
what it is and why it is there. Then ask what you can do to improve
the situation. Don't make any accusations ("You grade my papers
worse!!") and dont get personal  ("You don't like me!") that will just make her defensive. Rather say
things like "I feel that something in our communication is not quite
optimal and I am here today to ask what I could do to improve the
situation.".
If this meeting does not improve the situtation then you will need
to go higher up in the food chain and talk to whoever this is.


Why are the number of reported sex crimes so high at Ivy League Schools?

Via NBC, these numbers may reflect higher levels of reporting, rather than more crime:

  Experts do not think the reason is because more sex crimes are actually occurring on Ivy campuses.

  "I think higher numbers of students reporting sexual offenses suggests there is a process in place that students feel comfortable going to," said Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia law professor who helped write the university's policy on gender based misconduct.

  Goldberg says recording more sex complaints is not necessarily a bad thing.

  "I think actually all the data suggests that sexual violence including rape, including sexual harassment, including sexual exploitation and domestic violence, takes place fairly evenly across the population at universities."

Inside Higher Ed similarly reports:

  While it makes for good headlines, researchers and advocates say using federal reporting data to assess the prevalence of campus sexual assault or to rank the relative safeness of individual colleges is ill advised and even irresponsible.

  “It is really misguided to use sexual assault reports as rankings, because schools with higher rates are actually doing a better job of encouraging reporting and addressing the issue,” Laura Dunn, founder and executive director of the victims' advocacy organization SurvJustice, said. “By ranking schools with higher rates as unsafe, the media's uninformed coverage is actually discouraging schools from better addressing campus sexual assault. We don't want to push reports into the shadows; we want [assaults] to be reported and dealt with appropriately.”

and

  Clery data should not be used as a tool for comparing or ranking institutions, said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona and a pioneering researcher on the prevalence of campus sexual assault.

  “It is a completely, totally invalid assumption,” Koss said. “In some respects, high numbers can be good. If you’re revamping your approach to sexual assault, you would actually expect the number of reports to go up. But even those high rates are not credible, as they are just the number of reports, not actual assaults. The bigger story is looking at those numbers in the context of how many rapes are being identified by climate surveys.”


What Math Courses are required for pursuing Economics Phd in US?

To answer the general question of how to find graduate admissions required or recommended coursework, you can typically visit target program admissions pages.

If there are official requirements, they will be listed in the prospective applicants section, providing you course types and expected credits/periods of knowledge. If they are recommendations, this gives you a guideline for what you should aim to complete.

For example, UMD asks for:

  In general, our admitted students have GPA's well above a "B" average, particularly in economics and mathematics; very high GRE's (particularly quantitative); math preparation that includes at a minimum three semesters of calculus, a semester of linear algebra, and a semester of differential equations;

I would assume that alternative similar classes, or classes above this level, are also accepted (verify with admissions department, as always).

If this list is not available online or you need help, calling the admissions department is a great way to get info as well. You can provide your list of current and potential mathematics courses and see if you're missing anything.


What's my professional title while working full time on my PhD?

Your professional title is Ph.D. student, or doctoral student, or just student.


Falsely Accused of Cheating on a College Final

Most universities will have some sort of quasi-judicial appeal process.  You can try to navigate it yourself, but I would strongly suggest that you find an expert to help you.  Some universities may have an ombudsman or some sort of "public defender" service that provides trained students you can work with.  You could also talk to students or faculty who have experience with the process, or even consider hiring a lawyer.

Part of what you'll want to know is who will judge such a case, what sort of evidence  you can present, and what "standard of proof" is expected.

Some evidence that you could consider trying to present, if possible:

Expert testimony from an impartial person familiar with the online system, to explain that a logged access does not necessarily prove that you actually looked at the information, and to explain how it could happen without your knowledge.  For instance, you might be able to get someone from the university's IT office to testify, or a computer science professor.  (People who work in technical fields are often pretty sensitive to cases where a poor understanding of technology by those in authority results in an injustice, so I think you might not have too hard a time recruiting someone.)
Testimony from other students that they did not see you look at your phone or any other device during the exam
Testimony from the professor as to whether she saw you look at your phone, etc

As for your classes for next quarter, it would be worth it to talk to the instructors of those classes.  You can tell them that you were charged with dishonesty and you are appealing, but that in any case you have learned the course material.  They will typically have the authority to waive the prerequisite requirement, so that you can take their course despite not having passed the previous course, and they might be willing to agree that it serves no purpose to delay your progress through the program by making you retake a course whose material you already learned.  This way you can continue to move through your courses even if your appeal is not resolved before the next term starts.


Why would the editor in chief add a new reviewer after the first round of revision?

While this is rare, it's not necessarily bad, and probably reflects more on the associate editor or the reviewers than you.

One of the jobs of an editor is to ensure that reviewers are sufficiently well qualified, objective, and thorough in their evaluation of a manuscript. Likewise, an editor-in-chief needs to ensure the handling editor is doing their job well as well.

It's hard to say without more details, but my guess on the most likely cause of this situation is that there was some issue with the original set of reviewers, such as:

Too many were your recommended reviewers
There was a critical missing perspective
One or more of the reviewers turned in a low-quality review (which the editor might have forced them to improve before it got to you)
The journal usually requires more than three reviews

This could be caused by bad choices by the handling editor or by having more than three reviewers originally assigned but some failing to return reviews.

Whatever the case may be, I would recommend not worrying about it too much. You can inquire with the editor if you wish, but don't be surprised if you don't get a particularly informative response (especially if the reason is a mistake they might feel embarrassed by).

Bottom line: it's not so strange, and your paper is probably still in good shape, though its fate is never certain until accepted.


Why doesn't citation of a book give specific pages?

It's always good practice to cite as closely as possible, especially in a book. LaTeX makes it easy to do this with the \cite[]{} form. For a paper, it's often not necessary since one typically cites the main result of a paper. But even with a paper, if what you're citing is a lemma buried inside (and that is not obvious from the abstract) it's good to say [23, Lemma 3.1] or something like that.

As to why people don't do it, AnonymousMathematician already answered that above.


How to include unfruitful attempts to use software that were not explored much?

I would have to disagree with the previous answers.  I would consider documenting what did not work.  I am not saying that I would definitely do it, but I am saying that ruling out the idea, out of hand, is not good advice.  I have 27 years of experience in software development and project management, and I would very seriously think about at least a short section where I would lay out what I tried.  Sounds like there are some serious holes in your knowledge of those libraries and your attempts to use them, which might make it difficult to document what you did, but I encourage you to give it a shot and run it by your advisor.
In the end, you could take the section out if it ends up detracting from the finished thesis.  But I find that kind of honest appraisal of failed attempts to be often more informative than the success stories.  I find it to be counterproductive to the community and the researcher when academia is reluctant or completely unable to admit when something did not work or the researcher had a knowledge gap.  I find the disarming honesty of "I tried and it did not work" elevates my opinion of a researcher.  But there is so little of it, that I find myself going to non-academic sources much more often than not, when I want to find answers that are real and practical.
Be careful in how you write it, and how you make the final decision to include it or not.  If you can say, I tried this library.  This is what it gave me.  This is why it was not suitable.  I tried to find relevant documentation to resolve the issues, but no such documentation could be found.  And in the end, the ability of this project to integrate a proper library is demonstrated in the use of X library, which worked.  If you can frame it like that, informative, honest, yet demonstrating your competence by highlighting, once again, that you did successfully integrate a library that worked, you could add some real value to your thesis.
The main reason for not including such an admission, in my opinion, would only be if your ability to integrate the third library was more luck than real skill, if it did not demonstrate a concerted effort aided by much better features and documentation.  If that is the case, then forget what I have said and go with the other answers' advice.


Finding some errors in my "IEEE conference paper" after presentation but before publication

I would say it's worthy to try, there's no shame in doing it.

Contact them and tell that you have found some typos which you would like to correct before publication. Attach to the email the corrected version and another pdf with the highlighted changes, where they will be able to easily spot the minor issues you found.


Is a general GRE score of X sufficient for entry to postgraduate degree Y?

Preliminary remark: There are differing opinions on the important of the GRE in admissions to postgraduate programs, and its weight largely depends on the preferences of the academics making admission decisions.  Some regard the GRE general test as useful information, and take it into account, and some regard it as unimportant.  Meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the GRE can be found in Kuncel et al (2001).  Nothing in this answer should be read as implying that the GRE is determinative of entry, but if you are going to submit scores on this test, or if you are required to do this, it is good if your scores compare favourably to your cohort of applicants.

Assessing your score relative to your field of study: Assessing your score on the general GRE test can be done by comparing your score to data on the scores of test-takers, broken down by their intended graduate major.  Unsurprisingly, different fields have applicants with different levels of ability in the three sections of the GRE general test.  A score that would be considered good in some fields will be considered weak in other fields, depending on the average standard of applicants to that field.  Hence, it is important to look at your scores relative to the cohort of test-takers with your intended graduate major.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) have published test data for test-takers (seniors and non-enrolled college graduates) who undertook the general GRE test in Financial Years 2014-17.  This data shows score outcomes for each group, based on their intended graduate major.  This data can be used as a reference to check how your score compares to other students who are intending to pursue the same graduate major as you.  It can also be used by academics to help them to interpret your score.  (ETS also produce annual 'snapshots' of score outcomes that give information on the scores across demographics and majors.)

If you would like to get a good idea of whether your GRE score compares favourably with your cohort (students seeking admission to study the same postgraduate major), the simplest thing to do is to compare your result to the published data for students in that cohort.  The data gives score frequencies in bins, so it is not usually possible to obtain your exact percentile in the cohort, but it should be possible to see roughly where you fall in that cohort.  The data also give means and standard deviations for the scores, so it is possible to obtain a standardised score relative to the cohort.

Example: In this related question the test-taker was seeking entry to an applied maths graduate program, with GRE general test scores of VR 167 (98%), QR 161 (78%) and AW 5.0 (93%).  This can be compared with histograms of scores from this cohort taken from the aforementioned data (means and standard deviations are also given in the data):

If we place the scores of this student into the data for the cohort of test-takers seeking entry to an applied mathematics graduate program we see that his quantitative reasoning score is actually below average for this cohort, despite being substantially above average relative to all test-takers.  The standardised scores for this student (standard deviations above/below the mean) relative to this cohort is VR 1.875, QR -0.500, AW 1.875.

This result shows that this particular student has a lower quantitative reasoning score than the majority of the cohort, and so this is likely to be a weakness of the application (to the extent that GRE is considered).  This is unsurprising when considering the fact that applicants for mathematics programs tend to have extremely high levels of quantitative reasoning ability.


I just submitted my PhD applications. What do I do now?

Is there anything I can do during the wait to help my application?

I'll answer assuming you are applying to programs that work like most U.S. math graduate programs.  In other words, programs where admissions are decided by a departmental committee, rather than by individual professors, and where there are no interviews or other direct involvement of the applicant after the application is submitted.  For other sorts of systems, I'm not competent to offer any advice.

To a first approximation, there's nothing you can do during the wait to help your application.  It's best to find a distraction and try not to worry about it.  That being said, there are several things to keep in mind:

You should make sure your letter writers actually submit their letters.  Every year, a few letter writers are many weeks late, and this can cause real damage.  Even once you have submitted everything you are responsible for, the application is not complete until enough letters are received.
Getting in touch with potential advisors might help, but it should be done exceedingly sparingly.  If the content of your e-mail amounts to "please look at my application" or "see how great I am", it will only annoy people.  "Please estimate my chances of admission" is even worse.  I'd recommend restricting pre-admission e-mails to cases where you have something genuinely substantive to say.  For example, if you have intellectually serious comments or ideas related to the person's research, then that's always worth an e-mail.  Same thing if you would like to bring their attention to a paper of yours that is closely connected with their work.  A good test is whether you would still send the e-mail even if you weren't applying to their university.  I don't recommend manufacturing a contrived reason to send e-mail, but if you never got in touch with someone whose research you extended, now would be a good time to do so.
It's usually possible to add information to your file if something important comes up (e.g., a paper acceptance or a prize).  This is not worth even trying unless it's a real improvement in your file, and you certainly shouldn't make repeated changes in an attempt to draw attention to your file (any additional attention will be negative).  However, if you get good news you should consider sharing it.  The best news is often financial: if you get a fellowship that would pay for one or more years of grad school, then you should definitely add this information to your file.  It's both a serious vote of confidence from another organization and a real savings to the department.


What is special about the MDPI special issues?

There really isn't a fundamental difference between their special issues and other publishers' special issues—it's just a "themed" issue.

As for publishing papers before the deadline, that's a relative feature of digital publishing—there's no need to wait for a deadline if a paper is ready to go earlier. The collection can be "built" as papers are ready, rather than presenting everything as a single fait accompli.


Referring to paper from some other school when writing Statement of Purpose for Grad School

If the paper was influential for your development, by all means talk about it and cite it.


Reivsion in ScholarOne: Where to upload the response to reviewers as a attached file?

It should be uploaded as your response to the decision letter.


Letter of recommendation from employer for MS in U.S. universities

Nothing in particular is required for a company letter of recommendation.  Pretty much any established company will have some sort of letterhead, though, and your recommender using it will feel more "professional."  Likewise with corporate vs. personal email addresses.


Do Universities go through old assignmnets to check for plagiarism?

Don’t worry,

Just don’t do it or anything like it again.

You were punished for that infraction and they expect better of you now. As a lecturer I don’t go back through all old submissions as I don’t have time..

Just do your best from now on and don’t give up.

Best wishes.


Referencing Android, using the word 'Android' in a paper

Your thesis or paper is in this respect similar to a newspaper article about the product ("Independent coverage"). Do newspapers use the "TM" symbol if they write about products? No. (At least no newspapers or magazine I know does.)

It is used by people who have an agreement, are cooperating with the proprietor of the brand name in question, to show exactly that.

These "guidelines" (same as e.g. Microsofts EULAs etc.) are not even a binding contract in many legislations, because they try to force them on you after you have already paid for the product.


How to ignore a presenter's bad english?

So I'm a native English speaker, and I used to be kind of a snob about people whose spoken English was poor. I got over it. I remember the exact instant that I got over it, in fact. Here it is:

I was an undergraduate, and I visited a seminar on a subject that interested me but that I didn't know very much about.  The speaker at the seminar had an impenetrable Chinese accent, and I wasn't able to focus on the talk at all because I could barely understand him. "This is terrible," I thought. "No one can possibly be getting anything from this."

The talk ended and the speaker took questions. The first question was long, thoughtful, and detailed: the questioner was trying to related something from a slide early in the presentation to a slide from late in the presentation.  I did not understand the question because the gentleman who asked it had an impenetrable Polish accent.

After some back and forth, it became clear that the speaker thought the question was interesting but didn't know the answer.  But someone else in the audience did: a long, thoughtful answer that I did not understand because the answerer had an impenetrable Russian accent.

Then it hit me: everyone in the seminar room had just learned something interesting, except me, because I was distracted by being an English-language snob.  That was my problem, not theirs.

I eventually figured out to concentrate on what's maybe called "active listening": constantly rephrasing what the other person is saying into my own words, and inquiring occasionally whether I'm summarizing things correctly.
You might not like to interrupt someone with clarifying questions during a presentation.  Within reasonable limits, you should get over that --- if you're flummoxed about something, chances are that other people in the audience are confused about the same thing.
Active listening has helped me to deal with native English speakers just as much as with speakers of broken English, in fact. For instance, when you argue with someone, they have a lot more respect for you if you can correctly state their position before you take issue with it.

(The happy ending of the story is that the Russian and the Pole both ended up on my PhD committee --- good people, both of them, from whom I learned a great deal. No recollection of who the original seminar speaker was, though.)


Will I be penalized if i give someone who hasn't taken a test my test so he could study for his?

You’re under no obligation to provide your friend with a copy of the test, particularly if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Just politely decline, and if pressed further, say that you don’t think it’s appropriate to ask the instructor to share the materials that way.

As for the possibility of a penalty, I would not share “active” materials like quizzes or exams that other classmates still have to take, because that could be viewed as an academic code violation. Sharing something that everyone has completed and received grades on may or may not be penalized, based on an instructor’s or program’s explicit rules.


What is a graduate research assistantship?

A graduate research assistant—regardless of field–is someone who is carrying out research, normally as part of studies that will ultimately lead to either a master's or a PhD (or degree of some other kind). In general, a "graduate research assistant" (or other similar terms) are administrative in origin—it's the name for the "job" that graduate students have while they progress toward their degrees.


Using a figure from a PhD thesis, but changed slightly. Copyright?

If you were using the figure only for presentation you could likely use it under "fair use". However, I suspect that you are planning on having this published (I assume yours is a field where conference paper=publication...mine is not), and if that is the case you cannot use the figure or any part of it without proper permissions. A modification of a figure does not revoke copyright. Indeed, it might be a violation in itself. You can't use any of it in your publication.

While I am not familiar with the terms of SpringerTheses, you may find that the person who wrote the dissertation actually retains the rights to the figures. It wouldn't be the first time that a publisher tried to charge for something that they don't actually have the rights to. Why not contact the person who wrote the thesis and ask for permission to use (and modify) the figure? If they still retain rights to it, they can grant you the ability to use it for free.


How to properly add "scientific reading" as personal interest in CV?

Just don't.

As an applicant to a scientific PhD program, if you weren't doing a lot of scientific reading, that would just be weird.

Thinking it's something special to be reading scientific literature every day, is a small warning sign in itself.

And the interests section is there to indicate some kind of balanced personality and the existence of a life away from narrow study.


How to ask a professor to supervise my undergraduate thesis research?

Just talk to them as if they were a human being. Give them the info you just gave us, ask if they are interested, keep the email short and to the point. Here is an example email, adapt as needed.

Dear Prof. XXX,

(or whatever is the appropriate salutation where you live)

I am a second year student in [field] at [university]. I am interested in [domain].
Soon I will start my undergraduate thesis research. Professor YYY, who teaches us [course], recommended that I contact you, and I would be interested in having you supervise my thesis. Would you be interested in supervising my undergraduate thesis research?
I am at your disposal if you need more information and/or would like to meet me. Thank you for your time.
Best regards,
ZZZ

(or whatever closing formula is appropriate where you live.)
I don't know if this is perfect (English isn't my native language), but you get the idea.


Good scientific research is anything that increases the knowledge of humanity.  Sometimes that involves creation of new things, sometimes that involves putting together existing things in a way that creates a new capability.

What you have described might or might not be scientific research, depending on the particulars of the work.

If there is an interesting reason why Android static analysis hasn't been done yet (e.g., something incompatible between Android's organization and typical static analysis approaches), then explaining that reason and how you overcame it can be the core of a good scientific paper.
If, on the other hand, it's just technical drudge work (e.g., like rewriting an application from C to Java), then even if it is difficult and valuable it will not be particularly scientifically interesting.

Even if the application itself turns out not to be scientifically interesting, however, what you learn once you start applying static analysis to Android programs might well be...


Rejected from conference on misunderstood claims

In good conferences (and I would certainly assume this to be the case in an A* conference) decisions are not made solely and directly by the PC Chairs, and definitely not only by looking at the scores. What usually happens is that after each assigned PC member submits their reviews, a discussion phase among the reviewers is triggered. In some conferences this happens in a long face-to-face meeting of the majority of the PC, in other conferences this is done offline through the reviewing system. All controversial papers (and a paper that gets two +2's and one -2 would certainly qualify as controversial) will be discussed - usually the PC chairs will ensure that both sides of the argument are heard, and then the reviewers and the PC chairs jointly arrive at a common decision (other PC members are also free to chime in, but in practice this only happens in face-to-face meetings in my experience).

Typically, there is little trace of this discussion in the reviews or notification letter, so it is difficult for you as an author to say if the two +2's did not have good arguments to fight for your paper, did not feel like they wanted to "champion" the paper despite their positive reviews, or were ultimately ignored because the reasoning of the -2 was more convincing. However, for a CORE A* conference I would assume that this discussion happened, that the PC chairs are quite aware of the difference in opinion regarding this paper, and made a conscious decision to reject the paper despite the positive reviews.

Hence, writing them is highly unlikely to change anything. For a large conference, PC chairs typically get multiple such requests each year, and I am not aware of even a single case in my community where the decision was retroactively changed. The standard answer for all questions on this site that fall into the category of "What can I do about this (from my perspective) unfair reject?" applies: move on, and try another conference and journal. Fundamentally, academic reviewing is a stochastic process, and even the best submissions can be rejected unfairly.

However, there still is something to learn from this experience. It's a difficult thing to do, but you should try to figure out why the -2 misunderstood your paper (and why apparently your paper did not give the +2's sufficient ammunition to fight for it effectively in the discussion phase):

Was the contribution not clearly enough described? Note that "we had a strong contribution" isn't sufficient for an A* conference, it also needs to be very obvious that you have a strong contribution. A paper can, in fact, be rejected if the detractor makes a convincing case that your paper can easily be misunderstood (even if the champions manage to convince them that they indeed misunderstood).
Did the paper get the wrong reviewers? One common source of unfair rejects is if the paper at first glance (e.g., from title and abstract) appeals to the wrong group of PC members (e.g., a paper looking like it has a strong theoretical contribution will primarily be reviewed by theory-minded folks - if it then turns out that the actual work is very practical, it will end very unfortunate, with reviewers misunderstanding the paper or simply not being interested enough to actually fight for the work).
Was there some other issue that may have led to a normally tempered, sane, and competent person to vote for -2 (and, apparently, fight for a rejection - because the more normal case when +2 +2 -2 reviews come in is that the -2 gives in quickly and the paper is accepted)? Scan their review for this - maybe there is something that you would consider a minor threat that they consider backbreaking, or maybe you missed some related work that they consider crucial.

However, after all is said and done, your paper has in fact convinced two thirds of its reviewers - resubmitting a slightly improved version of the paper to a similar (or even the same) conference has in fact a very high chance of success.


Do I have to mention that a dataset I use is present in another paper?

There is no rule of research ethics that tells you what papers you "must" cite in your own work --- this is a matter of using appropriate discretion to discern what literature is relevant to your paper, and what is not relevant.  Ultimately, you need to ask yourself whether the other paper is relevant to your own study.  Is it useful to your reader to know that these datasets were studied in this other paper?

It is generally desirable to draw a broad line here, and mention other papers that might assist the reader, even marginally, in understanding the data or research topic you are analysing.  However, if the other paper is using the data for a completely different purpose, you might legitimately decide that this is not relevant to your paper, and that it does not assist your reader.  In that case there is no reason to cite the other paper.


How do you advise an early career researcher who has an unrealistic opinion of their prospects?

Honestly, without putting down.

Explain the weaknesses of their approach or profile, explain what they would have to change in your opinion to get where they want and explain what they can do if it does not work this way. The point is not discouragement, but letting them understand what their options are. Some people are able to rise far above their original level, just as some never exploit their possibilities.

Whatever you do, you can not go wrong if you understand that the choice remains theirs and yours is only to show them the map.


The numbers you reported are exceedingly common in US higher Ed. What is strange is that you reported semester totals rather than weekly totals.

It is common in US higher ed that for every hour of class time a student will spend 2-3 hours studying and completing assignments outside of class. Therefore, if there is 45 hours of  lecture in a course there would be anywhere of 45*2=90 to 45*3 = 135 hours of individual study time for the same course.

The first example in your question requires 2 hours of study for every hour of lecture (45 lecture hours + (45 * 2 individual study)  = 135 total hours). The second example requires 180 hours of total time (45 lecture hours + (45 * 3 individual study)  = 180 total)


PhDc - how long can you use it if it has not been completed?

I'd guess that you need to spell it out more completely. PhDc isn't really recognized and it isn't a degree or anything like a degree.
In many institutions, you have a limited time to complete your degree unless you take some special actions. Seven years, perhaps, in the US, shorter elsewhere. After that time, you are no longer a candidate for anything. If they "cut you off" after five years, I doubt that the institution considers you a candidate and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
Perhaps there is some way you can get back in line for your degree. ABD is a descriptive term, not an honor. Perhaps you can use what you know to get in to a different program and complete it.


What books, biographies or survival guides are helpful for women in engineering in academia?

About a month ago, MIT published their most recent Report on the Status of Women Faculty in Science and Engineering, following up on previous reports from 1999 and 2002.  It's not exactly a "survival guide"—it's written for existing faculty and administrators more than for prospective academics—but it does clearly describe several barriers to gender inequality, both past and present.  The National Academies published a similar report in 2006.

Even more recently, Nancy Hopkins (one of the authors of the MIT reports) gave a fascinating talk about MIT's efforts to attract and retain female faculty.

(Hopefully someone else will suggest something more useful for prospective academics.)

Update: One of my female colleagues sent me the following reply, which I'm posting with her permission.  (I'll delete this update if she decides to post an answer herself.)

  My more recent reading has focused more on survival with children in
  academia, which is not quite the same thing.  However, some of the
  issues might be the same.  Two good books are Mama,
  PhD and Motherhood: the Elephant in the
  Library,
  both of which are essay-based, with women sharing their stories.  Both
  are available on Amazon, and are quite good.

  Some of the best survival guides these days are the blogs - there are
  a bunch of good ones which provided sanity and good advice along the
  way.  My two favorite aren't active anymore, but their archives are
  nice, and there are plenty of good ones still active:

  http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/
  http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/
  http://science-professor.blogspot.com/

  There are tons of research papers on the issue, but to be honest, at
  least for me, those tend to be more depressing than helpful.  For
  example, an interesting (but outdated) one:
  http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/EKNU.html There was a recent
  article that retention is going better among faculty (except in math,
  which surprised me):
  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6070/864.abstract


Myth or Reality: Employers will contact your academic supervisor and past collaborators to acquire information about you

In general, your supervisor will more likely be contacted if your graduate fellowship is listed as employment experience.  Background checkers will likely interpret your supervisor as a "boss" and contact them accordingly,  not to tease out the minutia of your research but to ensure such qualities as dependability, integrity, and punctuality.


Mentioning a published paper from a current team member in a PhD letter application

I think the content of the publication is more important than the author of the publication.  I would mention the paper as well as other similar papers that you have read that are by other authors.  Most likely, your  person "A" will know of the other authors in your field so it is not necessary to soley focus on mentioning person "A."  I think it is more important to show your interest in the specific research area rather than knowing where person "A" worked.


How can I know if my thesis has enough and good results for a PhD?

Programs vary in their requirements but I know of places where it takes a minimum of 4 years no matter who you are. If your fast, you sit and wait just because nobody can finish until they have been in the program x number of years.

I do not know if this is how things work at your institution. Given your track record and brisk publishing ability you might be moving too fast for your advisor and the tradition of the institution. His comment of taking 2-3 years might be an indirect way of saying "slow down" and "who do you think you are?"


Check plagiarism before submitting to journal

I'll answer question #1: No. Let us not worry about Turnitin specifically, but plagiarism is if you take someone else's text and present it as your own. That is not the case here: You wrote the manuscript, and you remain to be the person who came up with both the ideas and the actual text. It is not plagiarized, and Turnitin will show it as not plagiarized.

There is also no other issue: Since the paper was not accepted by the first journal, you continue to be the owner of the copyright in the paper, and are free to submit it again wherever you want.


How can I build a competitive application for a PhD?

The American Economics Association has compiled a list of professors’ blog entries and departmental advice pages on the topic of pursuing a PhD in Economics: https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/students/grad-prep/considerations

One you might find especially useful is Chris Blattman’s, whose work is at the intersection of politics and economics: https://chrisblattman.com/about/contact/gradschool/


What does it mean to be offered waived-fee OA publishing?

It is still an open question whether open access actually leads to more citations or not.  This is at least partly because the models and players in OA are still rapidly shifting, especially with the rapidly increasing influx of low quality or scam publishers who have embraced open access because it is an easier way to bilk money out of insecure early-career academics.

I will assume, however, that you have already vetted the journal and know that it is a significant and reputable one in your field.  Let us also assume that it really is just as you present: the article will still be published in exactly the same way, just not behind a paywall and this will cost you nothing.  In that case, the general wisdom is that, all else being equal, an article that's easier to find and read is likely to have higher impact than one hidden behind a paywall.

Free open access in a normally closed journal is actually less unusual than you might think.  For example:

Nature makes certain types of large community studies open by default.
Special issues and special collections in a journal are sometimes negotiated to be open access by their organizers.  If your article fits with such an upcoming collection, it would be natural for it to become included in the policy.
Certain types of information, particularly in biomedical research, are required to be published open access (either immediately or within certain timeframes) by some government funding agencies

The real question is: what is the reason in your particular case?  Ask the editor. If it's something that makes sense, like one of the cases above, then great!  Embrace it and get some extra citations.  If not, then ask yourself again whether you really trust this journal...


I am so stuck in the second year of my PhD. Should I leave?

I suggest first to ask your Prof-A explicitly for more meetings, particularly also for a time and date for the next one at the end of the previous meeting. Maybe Prof-A doesn't realise that you are in some kind of "crisis". You should also tell them clearly that you feel stuck and that something needs to happen to get you back on track. All else I'd let depend on how that goes.
As a supervisor I'll normally do meetings with students when they ask. If I haven't heard from them for some time I will try to find out what's going on, however professors are usually busy and may not necessarily chase up students who don't care for themselves. Your Prof-A may just believe, somewhat conveniently for them, that all is fine, unless you tell them explicitly otherwise.


Weight of undergraduate grades when applying for a Ph.D

There can't be any sort of general answer, as the criteria used by individual schools vary quite a bit. In the end, the decisions are taken by admission committees, who do look at numbers (i.e., GPA, grades in detail, ranking of undergraduate program, ...) but should (and will!) also look at more soft measures, be it grades in "selected" courses, strength of recommendation letters, ranking of high school of origin, evidence of not just academic interest (i.e., was part of the debate club, ...). But it is probably the case that a first filter is on "hard" data (specially if the school gets many more applications than places available).

This is a question only the current members of said committees at the schools that interest you could possibly answer, and probably will never do, not even in private.


Relearning how to work (becoming much more efficient). Is it even possible?

It is not possible to give you a satisfying answer. The best I can offer is two anecdotes a friend of mine told me today (and they are first hand and 100% legit).

First, he goes to the supervisor, for the second time, with a bunch of paper, asking whether he should study them. The supervisor takes the papers, throws them to the ground and walks over them. Then says: "Studying is useless."

Second, the supervisors asks him to do a computation by the next day. Friend comes back and shows the calculation. The advisor writes a line of code on the computer and presses enter. The computer shows the same answer of the computation which took several hours.

Bottom line: there is ample room for improvement in terms of speed. Achieving it might require, surprisingly, to understand less and to study less and to give up on many preconceived notions about the subject and about how research work as well as about how yourself.

If you feel like the subject is important and close to your heart, give it a try. Many people start a PhD in their 30ies. But don't be silly, do:

Ask for advice before making choices.
Think carefully when picking your advisor.
Lay out many plans B and be ready to execute them.


Is it worth publishing a paper rephrasing what past papers did with a different mathematical framework?

Here is my opinion and suggestion (I claim no authority).

Elegant derivations are of indisputable value, even if they are mathematically equivalent to existing results. Think of postgraduate students reading your paper and having an "aha" moment, for example. By contributing elegant results, you are promoting your sub-field, which could be appreciated by other researchers.
I won't be able to suggest a journal, unless we work in the same area. I doubt it is possible at all without knowing the details. There probably exists an applied mathematics / engineering journal dedicated to your topic, which leans towards mathematical aspects and has many non-experimental papers. If you want to submit a concise paper, perhaps, look for the word "communications".
If searching by keywords in Google Scholar or similar doesn't yield what I want, I try the following. Crawling citations from the most relevant papers or books / volumes / series / conferences. Checking publication lists of the most relevant researchers / labs. Reading theoretical chapters of doctoral theses, which can be a good source of carefully chosen references.


How do some institutions attract so many female computer scientists?

Carnegie Mellon gives an answer on their website:

  The steady climb of women enrolling in these fields at Carnegie Mellon highlights a combination of factors: a strong commitment by leaders at the university, college and department levels; influential pipeline programs for middle- and high-school students; targeted recruitment; closer scrutiny of applications; support and mentorship programs; and attention to diversifying the faculty.

A second, speculative answer:  Carnegie Mellon is wealthy.  Computer science is where they invest the most.  If they want to attract more women to their computer science department, they can use their money to do it.  Many of the factors they list cost money. They may be decreasing the diversity of other universities.


The editor asks me to wait couple of days

In general the editor makes choices as to how to best get a manuscript evaluated. If one reviewer did not return a review, it is only natural to ask for a new reviewer's opinion. The fact that the editor-in-Chief confers with another editor could mean that they confer whether or not the existing single review is sufficient.

As for time, I am not sure why you question a few days for a decision. Most editors do their work outside of normal departmental duties so finding time for discussing a particular manuscript can take some time and surely five days is not anything remarkable?

So from my view point, as Editor-in-Chief (of another journal), you seem to be very impatient and lacking insight in the everyday editorial business of a journal. I do not see anything strange about what has happened and I particularly do not see any reason for the editor to let you in to the internal work of the journal editorship.


Taking individual subjects not related to my career

As a faculty member of a German university that also offers a Biomedical Engineering program I can confirm that the admission rules can be quite strict.
However, in almost every study regulation is a clause that the program's examination board (Prüfungsausschuss) can overrule any formal requirement.
The keyword here is "equivalence". E.g., being a software developer can compensate missing software classes, etc. Additional certificates from courses at your home university (as you suggest), even if you take them outside a regular program, can help as well.

So my advice is to bypass the administration and contact directly the head of the program's examination board, or (if such person exists at your target university) the head of the study program (Studiengangsverantwortlicher, sometimes, s/he is the same as the study dean of the program, but not always) and ask what would be needed to prove equivalence.


As Fomite correctly stated, it is going to vary a lot by field and also individual circumstances.

In my experience, if the consulting work is roughly equivalent to what a non-academic in industry might be able to perform, then the rates will roughly be equivalent, too.  This happens a lot in the engineering disciplines, and especially often in computer science (i.e., many computer science professors can moonlight as software engineers).  In such disciplines, I have found that companies in industry often classify their engineers into five levels.  These go by different names at different companies, but they usually are along the lines of: associate, full engineer, senior, lead, and principal.  Associate is the level a freshly graduated undergrad would start at. Full engineer usually implies three to five years experience and/or a master's degree.  That is likely the level equivalent to a Ph.D. student.  A fresh Ph.D. just having defended would usually start at such a company at the senior level, so it is roughly equivalent to post-doc and junior faculty.  The lead level is usually achieved 7+ years after that, so it is roughly equivalent to tenured faculty.  Likewise, principal is equivalent to full professors.

Once you have an equivalent job title in mind, you can use websites like glassdoor to search for average salaries for that job title (e.g., "Senior Software Engineer", "Principal Electrical Engineer", etc.).  I find that typical hourly rates are in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% of the yearly salary of an equivalent professional, but once again this may vary by profession; my experience is in the world of software.

I have found that some companies will allow a slightly higher-end consulting rate if you can demonstrate that your abilities are above and beyond those of a non-academic alternative.  This is especially true if the nature of the consulting work is research-oriented and/or directly related to your research, or if you can reasonably argue that you could complete the task faster than a non-Ph.D or a full-time employee.

You can usually charge a slightly higher rate for short-term work.

Many academics I know often do consulting in the form of acting as expert witnesses at trial.  Rates for that type of work seem to be more standard across disciplines, and is more of a function of how unique and qualified you are for the job.  Prep work for trial is usually charged at a standard consulting rate, but then days at trial can be charged as much as two to four times that rate.


Because DOIs are often fairly predictable, and it's useful to have a single ID, many publishers assign them at an early stage of publication, well before the article is online. At this point, though, they're just a string of digits and don't really "become a DOI" until they're entered into the CrossRef system. I'm guessing this is what your publisher means by "activated".

When the publisher has submitted the metadata to CrossRef, the central system at dx.doi.org now knows that doi:10.1234/5678.910 should resolve to www.example.com/journal/article, and the link can start working. Once the metadata is submitted, the DOI should be active fairly quickly - within a day, if not sooner, is my experience. However, some publishers delay submitting this metadata for a while even after the article is first published online in an 'early view' status or similar - I have no idea why, but I've seen it done.

Right now, there is nothing technically stopping publishers submitting the metadata before making the article live, but it's recommended to do so at or shortly after publication - so your DOI probably won't work until shortly after the article is posted online.

It would be nice for DOIs (especially for high-profile material) to be live at the moment of publication... and it may happen fairly soon. CrossRef recently held a consultation on how best to do 'advance registration' of DOIs for unpublished material, and from comments I saw at the time I suspect the responses were fairly positive. This suggests we'll see a more robust approach to this in the near future, with DOIs that are live and resolve to something in advance of publication.


You can mention the name, and then reference the thesis.

I would write something like...

  Anderson [1] describes blah blah

Or something like that. But you don't have to mention the name so much as the concept or evidence, for example...

  Incentive salience explains a system of hedonic processing which draws  attention to rewarding stimuli based upon...etc [1]

*Incentive salience is theory developed by Robinson and Berridge, and is crucial to understanding hedonic processing. But I don't personally always refer to authors surnames in text. Appropriate citation to the references is more important. The writing style is up to you, but if you which to refer to a specific section you can add the page to the main text i.e.

  Chapter 4 of Morpheus's thesis found the Matrix to be all around us [1,
  p.15].

I wouldn't personally write like this, but it is acceptable for an undergraduate project, and as a comment on my answer mentioned, some people prefer reading the reference name.

Please see the linked pdf for some rules regarding referencing in the IEEE style. I also found this answer on the writers stack regarding IEEE referencing of thesis material, which could be of some use.

Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2008). The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3137–3146. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0093


What are the typical questions students are requested to respond during a teaching demonstration they attend during a faculty interview?

I'll have to speculate and extrapolate a bit here, but perhaps can give a bit of guidance.

Since the time is short, the student's can't be probed very deeply for the level of instruction you provided, unless you were given a topic beforehand and the students were primed to know what it was.

But if teaching is a big part of the job then the ones making the decision will want to know how you are perceived by the students. Are you friendly? Are you clear? Did you prepare? Can you respond to questions? Are you overly pedantic? Are you precise at the expense of clarity? Can you give any actual insight into the topic at hand, rather than just detail? Are you excited? Are you boring? Are you comfortable in front of them? Do you seem to know what you are talking about? Are you confident?

I doubt that those will be the actual questions, but that is most likely what the hiring committee will want to get an idea about. The actual questions might, in fact, be free form: "What do you think about the candidate?". But, hopefully, the answers will give a sense about the above issues.

You should try to get a sense beforehand about what the conditions are? How many students? What level(s)? Of course the hard part is that it is often the first meeting with a new class that is the hardest. That makes such things especially fraught.


Master's is an abbreviated form of master's degree, and it is considered an informal term by several dictionaries (e.g., Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary, MacMillan Dictionary).

Master is just an even more abbreviated form, which is usually not reported in the dictionaries with that meaning (but see note below).

In a formal letter I would use the full form master's degree, but should you choose to use one of the two abbreviated forms, try to be consistent and don't use both forms in the same text. Inconsistencies can be interpreted as a sign of sloppiness, and you don't want to give this impression while applying for a degree or a position.

Thus, I would write:

  I am writing this letter to apply for XXX Master's degree in XXXX.

and

  I am absolutely sure that I will complete the Master's degree program in XXX.

Check also what is the denomination used in the university documentation: how do they refer to their own programs?

Note: The Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary reports for master also the following meaning (meaning n. 5 in the linked definition):

  5 [count] : a person who has received a master's degree


PI wants to add a new author who I think doesn't deserve to be added

I understand what you are going through. Your best shot is to discuss this with your advisor! But, you need to consider the following;

I do not know your field (although you have used computer-scinece as a tag), but in some fields, conference papers are not that important. I'm not saying that adding a new author should be fine! All what I'm saying that as long as your name is 1st, or 2nd author, you should be fine. (Personally, I would not be fine if the new guy's name came before mine in this specific scenario). If conference papers are weighted heavily in your field (i.e., computer science), that is a different story and you may need to talk to your advisor for clarifications.
It also depends on the topic, if the topic is specific (i.e., cutting edge technology) rather than general (i.e., literature review), then adding an additional author may cause irritation on your part and this need to be addressed with the advisor (again).
You do not know the whole story! What is the point of adding a new guy? Why redo your experiments? If it is due to funding/proposal/politics, you need to consider the bigger picture.
In general, you need to learn to cooperate! The sooner the better. You do not end up working with the people you like or the same people over and over again! My advisor would make two students work on a topic that is remotely related to both of them just to teach them how to cooperate. Then, he publishes two papers (where he switches the students names between 1st and 2nd). For instance, one paper would be on an experimental approach to solve a problem where student A is the first author. the 2nd paper will be on analytical/numerical approach to be validated against the experimental work where student B is the first author.

P.S.
When I discussed collaboration in point 4, I do not mean that your advisor should add somebody in a paper you have been working on for sometime (or has an outcome of your direct research/thesis). But, rather for "networking", "motivation", "learning" and "brainstorming" aspects.


What to do when a good article is published in a predatory online journal that disappears?

This is a very important question, as even non-predatory publishers can have problems and face difficult times, eventually closing altogether (e.g. Heart Lung and Vessels).

As stated in the comment by FuzzyLeapfrog, it is very important to double check what you actually agreed upon by submitting your manuscript and when signing the copyright agreement (take notice that sometimes journals do not require you to sign anything but you actually accept their copyright conditions just by submitting your manuscript).

In addition, I would check whether the publisher is still viable, irrespective of the dead website, or not. I would also consider writing to the publisher to inquire on the best course of action.

If the copyright issue is solved, I would definitely consider posting your article in pdf on an open online repository. If no suitable reply has been obtained, you might still upload your article online, in good faith, remaining ready to remove it promptly if requested so by the actual copyright holder. ResearchGate also offers a good means to make selectively available the full texts of your publications.

Conversely, I believe it would no longer be possible to consider publishing it elsewhere in a standard journal (you might tentatively ask a journal of choice if they would be interested, but it is going to be a difficult sell unless your manuscript is really a stellar one...).

As a last resort, you could write a review or perspective on the topic, detailing your prior work with figures and tables (either the actual ones or slightly modified). This will ensure your findings remain always accessible in the mainstream scholarly literature.


How to efficiently engage undergraduate students in my research program?

What are the students getting in return for this?

Experience/interesting work? Then it's fun, but don't ever expect them to treat it as more than a hobby or fun project.
Money or course credit: Then it's their job to show up and work. The will show up, or you will fire them / fail them.
Publication: are your students credited on the publication? Will doing this work build their CV and make it easier for them to get jobs, or accepted into grad studies?

Anything else seems to fall dangerously into "how can I turn undergrads into unpaid interns". They have their own classes to work on and their own lives to run, and doing experiments probably isn't what gets them out of bed every day.

Does your university have a "Capita Selecta" or "Project Course" or "Individual Study" option? If so, you could give your students course credit for their involvement in your work, in which case they would be obligated to show up. They would get enough out of their contribution that it would be worth their time.

  It's generally accepted that this kind of behaviour/motivation can be expected from a Ph.D. student, but not so much from an undergrad.

Because the PhD student is being paid to be there, and the undergraduate isn't.

The takeaway

Being an undergraduate is hard. You've got 4-5 classes, all of whom want you to work like that class is the only one you're taking. You are probably having to work to pay your way through school, and you are trying to have enough leisure time that you don't go insane.

Your best way to get them interested is to take away one of these stressors: pay them (so they don't have to work), give them course credit (so they can take less classes), or treat it like leisure (so they can do something they enjoy casually).


Is it advisable to publish a paper in a Journal Issue edited by my PhD Supervisor? Or is it better to try to publish it somewhere else?

It's not surprising this might happen. That your advisor is on the board (or equivalent) for a journal you might submit to is a situation often encountered. If you want to make sure no conflicts exist, ask your advisor to recuse himself from all decisions regarding your particular contribution. He might already have planned to, given the obvious conflict.


Disclaimer in syllabus, a good or bad idea for instructor and students?

Unless there is an unusually rigid set of controls and policies in the instructor's department, it is generally always the case that the instructor can change the syllabus on the fly.  With any decent instructor, there is usually a good reason for doing so, such as incorporating an improvement the instructor has figured out partway through or adding extra emphasis on a section that people seem to be having trouble with.  With a poor instructor, on the other hand, I don't think that the situation can be rescued by making the syllabus more rigid.

As such, my interpretation of the disclaimer is that it's simply a way to insulate the professor from complaints of students who take a rigid interpretation.  From the students' side, I think it means little, only acknowledging a reality of instruction.


Why do some instructors care so much about attendance?

Let me start off by saying that it is very unlikely that attendance requirement is purely to protect the professor's ego, as one comment suggested. Any serious educator would understand that the goal of education is not so that the students become increasingly reliant upon the education system. Rather, the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning. If I were a professor, I would be glad that the student can succeed without my help, rather than the other way around. To punish a student for being able to succeed without the help of lectures is simply contradictory to the goal of education.

With that being said, here are some more plausible reasons:

The class is discussion based. This is quite straightforward: if you
don't attend the class, then you do not learn. The in-class learning
experience cannot be compensated by self-study, and exams may not be
an ideal measure of such experience.
The class meets very infrequently. There are certain classes that meet only once per week. Missing one class means missing a significant amount of work. A related example is science lab requirement. In my undergrad institute missing one lab (without advanced notice) means that you automatically fail the class.
The lectures contain information not otherwise (easily) available. This is more relevant for higher-level classes, where there are no standard textbook and the way the professor teaches the material may be unique. The professor may want to make sure that students attend lectures to get the information they need.
Culture. In some culture regular attendance is associated with deference to the system and/or the lecturer.

One finally note: contrary to what OP stated in the question, it is my personal experience (in the US) that very few professors would deduct a significant amount of points due to a lack of attendance. Instead the focus, if there is any, is usually on participation of class activity (which, of course, can only be fulfilled if you attend the class). What OP have described seems like rare exceptions rather than the rule.


Where do you place the link to open data in a manuscript?

I am sure there are many ways to do this, but I have recently started to end the paper with a specific (unnumbered) section Further Material (or something like this). For an example, you can check this preprint of mine.

Before, I primarily gave a link to the online material as a footnote somewhere in the Experiments section, or wherever else it made sense from the text flow. However, it happened to me more than once that a careless reviewer overlooked these footnotes, and complained that the data has not been made public.

Some journals will also allow you to upload accompanying material to their website. However, at least in my field this is so unusual that I would be afraid that potential readers will not even look for the material on the publisher's website.


What are the uses of an iPad for an academic staff?

I don't think that an iPad does anything magically different for academic personell than for anybody else. Some of my colleagues review papers on them, some use them as a very small laptop while travelling, and (I presume) most just use it to read the news, play games, or slack off otherwise while in the train or plane.

In summary - if you have no idea what you would use it for then you probably don't need it.


How important are undergraduate and masters studies transcripts in applying for a faculty position?

I do not know whether they need transcripts or not?

There are two slightly orthogonal aspects when you apply to faculty positions:

What the panel will use to determine if they will offer an interview,
What the administration requires for your application to be complete.

The announcement will focus on 1., but when actually applying, you may realize that 2. is a bit different.
If the application platform requires your transcripts, upload them, and don't think too much about them: they may or may not be reviewed by the panel, but what you did during your PhD and your cover letter will have a greater weight than those transcripts.
If the application platform does not require the transcripts, then I guess it's up to you. You can probably just upload them later on if the panel would like to have a look at it, but as Bill Barth noted in the comment, that is probably not a good idea to give the panel a possible reason to filter out your application before even looking at it.

Can a bad transcript have bad effect on applying for a a faculty position?

As I wrote, they can, but whether they will depends on multiple factors that are hard to assess. I believe it is reasonably safe to say that your PhD, cover letter, and possibly letter(s) of recommendation will have a greater weight, but that does not necessarily imply that your transcript will have a zero weight.
Good luck, I hope your application will receive favorable reviews!


An already poor career profile turned worse this year. Any hope left for an academic career?

Ask yourself why you feel that you need an academic career. I have met too many researchers who are wedded to the idea despite the reality that the years are passing and their pace of progression is slow, their security of tenure uncertain. Do you just like the intellectual atmosphere? Do you feel it is prestigious? Do you think jobs elsewhere lack intellectual satisfaction? If you answer yes to any of these, it is important to realise that atmosphere, prestige and satisfaction may also be found in industry, in civil service, in places other than academia. And often they will be better paid ...


How to react to a student who provides very critical comments about your teaching in a student evaluation survey?

You said,

  this sudden unfair comparison has gone on my nerve

It sounds like this negative feedback has provoked some strong emotion in you, and understandably so.

But asking for an explanation is not likely to be helpful at this point. This isn't a constructive comment that can potentially lead you to improve your teaching - it's just an insult. Students take out all kinds of frustration in their teaching evaluations. If you ask a frustrated student to explain a comment they made (most likely) out of frustration, you are unlikely to gain anything constructive. The most likely outcome is that she'll unload more frustration on you.

The best reaction to this kind of feedback (assuming it's an isolated incident, and the rest of your feedback was reasonable) is to re-read the positive feedback you've received, remind yourself that you're a dedicated teacher who works hard to help your students, and put the non-constructive feedback out of your mind.

If this is an isolated incident, I wouldn't worry about its effect on your ranking within your institution. All instructors will occasionally receive some negative reviews, no matter how good they are at teaching.


Professor asking me about my financial condition

Dear Professor X,

  Thanks for your email.  Regarding your question about financial support, I am planning to apply for a MEXT scholarship.  If I receive this scholarship, it will provide me with [explain the terms of the scholarship].  Would you be willing to support my application for this scholarship?  If so, I would need [explain what you would need from him].

  If I do not receive the MEXT scholarship, I would plan to finance my graduate education by [explain your backup plan].

  If you are aware of other funding opportunities, I would be glad to hear about them.

  Sincerely,

  [your name]


UK Postgraduate student loans for 2016-2017 intake

The UK rules on student loans are described here.
Basically, it says that those doing their second masters are not eligible.


Should I contact professors directly if a visitor's office exists?

I know people in Japan, have friends in Japan doing research, and traveled to Japan several times. One thing to remember: Obey the rules and hierarchy. Their system is based on respect for one another. Do not bypass a rule even though in your mind it sounds stupid/lame/waste of time.

So in your case, contact the center and wait for their response.


Is it normal to have a hard time comprehending academic papers?

Yes, yes it is. But it gets easier. What most people don't realize when starting out reading academic papers, is that not every paper is an island (to paraphrase...). Terminology and 'lingo' is something you learn over time, and suddenly you realize that you no longer have to look up every second concept you stumble upon in a paper - it simply references stuff that you already know.

This is of course also the reason that forcing new students to read papers, and even write a report about them to make sure that the papers have been properly digested, is a very good idea. The fact that members of faculty even take time out to grade these reports, tells me that you are probably in capable hands.


What major is beneficial for a long-term career goal in medical robotics/ robotics/ artificial intelligence?

Robotics in itself is an inter-disciplinary field, which I assume is why you are asking the question and have no just found it online.  There are some programs specializing in robotics, but the main question is what part of robotics you want to work on.  Control, Design, Theory, etc..  Humanoid robotics is different than nano robotics.

If your end goal is Nano electronics, look into schools that specialize in... Nano electronics.  In that field as well, you should figure out what aspect you are interested in.  Department of Physics will sometimes have these majors, or some inter-discipline schools may have a special Nano program.

Purdue has a Nanoelectronics field inside engineering: https://engineering.purdue.edu/NRL/Students/index.html

Carnegie Mellon Univ. has a Nanorobotics lab inside mechanical Engineering:
http://nanolab.me.cmu.edu/

Utah State has a bionanoelectronis lab in its Biological Engineering lab:
http://be.usu.edu/htm/research/research-labs

As you can see, "nano" is a hot topic, and can be approached by different fields.  First figure out what aspect your intersted in, and if you do not want to go directly to PHD, you can major is a more generalized aspect, either Mechanical engineering, Physics, Chemistry, or Electrical Engineering.

If your interested in Artificial Intelligence, then you may want to go into Computer Science.

If you want build medical robotics, it may be useful to have some medical training ontop of your EE background, which may make you attractive to interdisciplinary labs.  Or you can do Mechanical Engineering.

Saying your interested in Robotics, is a bit like saying you want to "Build Things".  You want to build Sculpture, Houses, Sky Scrappers, Bridges, Circuit Boards. Etc..


Should I include my converted GPA/final semester GPA on my CV?

Provide a copy of the original transcript(s) detailing all the grades.

Any university will convert the values according to their "rules" and evaluate your application as necessary.


Why conferences are the main venue for CS research?

There's a reason CS folks cite when we obsess about conferences. The claim is that the field moves so quickly that conferences are more effective than journal for fast turn-around, and so better reflect the speed of developments.

I think this statement is partly true (conferences do have faster turnaround than CS journals) but misses the point entirely (there's no reason journals CAN'T have faster turn around time).

The real reason is the usual one. We got used to having conferences be the primary source of dissemination, and have no pressing reason to change. Having said that, the arxiv is more and more becoming the first choice of reading material and "hot off the presses" material, so I suspect that your question will become more and more moot as time goes on.


Should I disclose gender, race, disabilities etc. in tenure track job applications?

I guess if I were Male, Caucasian, non-disabled etc I might lose an edge due to preference towards minority candidates; while if I were Female, Black, disabled etc I could gain an edge?

There are limits to how protected characteristics can be used in affirmative/positive action. By authorizing them to use this information, you can benefit from permitted affirmative/positive action if you qualify. If you do not authorize the use of the information, then you cannot benefit. In regards to permitted affirmative/positive action there is no benefit to withholding information.

There is also a possibility that this information would be used for un-permitted/illegal discrimination. In general, however, illegal affirmative action where minorities are given an advantage does not happen. Rather, there are all sorts of documented implicit and explicit biases that help white male applicants.

In my opinion, if you are not a minority (e.g., a heterosexual white christian male), there is no risk in making the information available. If you are a minority the choice is more difficult. You could benefit from affirmative/positive action, but you could also open yourself up to implicit and explicit biases.


Career prospects in theoretical physics after nightmare PhD

I think you should consider transferring to another grad school. Certainly prospects on the post-doc market won't be good without any publications, interesting work, or a strong letter of recommendation. On the other hand, your advisor's grant expiring and no one else being able to take you gives you a very good reason to want to change grad schools.

Your former advisor's letter will be crucial. If he confirms your story about the grant falling through and no one else being able to take you, you should be able to transfer no problem. If he hints that your conduct contributed to your situation, you could be in a pickle. Good luck!