Finding original research ideas/topics as an undergraduate student

To develop something that is both (1) new and (2) meaningful, you'd have to start by reading a lot of published research to find out what is already out there. After reading widely, you'd start to get a sense for what the trends are in the field, and possibly start to see some gaps that point to open research problems. You'd also start to see what you'd be expected to do and say in a similar paper, i.e. the standards and conventions in the field, what kind of contributions a new model is expected to make, etc.

This is very difficult and time consuming for someone working alone without a lot of experience in the field. (It would definitely take more than a month!) The best "shortcut" is to find one or more advisors (perhaps the advisor from your independent study?) who can help point you in a promising direction, and give you feedback on your work.


Asking professor about certainty of a new opportunity

I might consider a few other options rather than waiting for something.

That sounds like a good idea to me in any case! Probably nobody can give you a quantitative information concerning the probability to get the position (how would anyone know the probability that two other candidates decline an offer?). Moreover this information may not be very useful or verifiable (what do you do if they tell you "it's about 30%"?). If a tangible offer is presented to you; like a contract that is ready to sign, then you may have a reason to be congratulated. Until then I wouldn't give any importance to that email.

I suspect that this group wants to be sure to obtain a student within a certain time (else the funding may expire), but you're apparently not their first choice; so they might be trying to put you 'on hold' as they may fear that their preferred candidates take other offers, and that in the meantime you could have found another good opportunity, too, leaving them empty-handed. That does not sound very fair to me; even though it is understandable from their perspective. I think that the email should have contained information on a deadline, stating that the final decision will be made before a specific date.

Just my two cents: since I don't think that you will obtain any useful answer, I would probably not ask anything and look for other opportunities instead. Maybe in a few weeks they make you an offer; then you can still decide. But I wouldn't recommend to wait and hope.


The best source of advice on these issues are the journal editorial staff. Some journals may require you to list your last affiliation with the word "retired" added in parentheses; some journals may prefer you not to list an affiliation at all. Some others may not care.


Conditions valid for plagiarism and dishonesty

Once you have your degree, your university probably can't do anything, and would not bother with something like this anyway. If it were a thesis, it might be different, but not just one assignment. I give this information as the person who handles plagiarism, etc., in my department.

Anyway, the important thing is that you did not submit someone else's work. Getting help is fine as long as you submit your own work, and it sounds as if this is what happened.


Is it possible to make leaving a PhD look good on a CV / Resume?

In my discipline (computer science), almost all of the people I know who declined to finish the Ph.D kept it listed on their professional profiles with a "not complete" note under it.

They did list their experience though under "work experience", as "Research assistant" or similar and continue to keep their accomplishments listed.

Overall, I think keeping it there, even if unfinished, is better than having a long gap of 2-3 years, because big gaps of nothing are going to look worse than employment in that period that you decided (for varying reasons) to not complete. You can explain away "I decided not to do a Ph.D" in a phone screen but it's harder to tell someone "Well, I actually tried to get a Ph.D but didn't finish, sorry I didn't list it on my resume".


Does listing several research directions in SOP give the impression that I have a shallow research interest?

As I read your question, it seems to me that you have one area of interest: Machine learning applied to computer vision.  Consider revising to emphasize that.

You mention quoting papers.  Unless they're papers you wrote, consider leaving that out.  Admissions committees want to know your interests and accomplishments.


A single definitive paper, or an initial manuscript and a followup?

Regardless of your elaborate schemes, you will always need to take into consideration that you cannot "sell something" twice.

If the only novelty that you present in a second paper are additional experiments (and deriving conclusions from these), then you must never ever state something different as a contribution of the paper. And in many fields, this would be quite a weak contribution, basically only leaving your schemes 1 (conference+plus extended journal version) and 3 (single publication) as realistic, unless you want to settle for a very weak venue for the second paper.

Slicing your work is also frowned upon in academia, for several reasons. First of all it looks as if you are trying to inflate your CV. If it makes grasping your overall contribution harder, it should also be avoided. Also, there should always be some scientific reason for splitting up your work. For example, if the target audiences for the two parts of your work have a very very limited overlap, then splitting up your work may yield a better service to the community. If the parts of your work are mostly interesting in isolation, and actually only of interest to few people in their combination, then splitting up the work is also sometimes the best way to go. And finally, if the underlying techniques of the two parts of your work are so different that publishing the two parts together would lead to a paper that is only readable by the very few experts that have knowledge about all techniques, then the split may also be justified. In all cases, you have to reference your other work and explain the differences in contribution.

In some fields with published conference proceedings with page limits, it also became customary to to leave out some additional information in a conference paper and writing longer journal version later. This is ethically OK because the journal paper in some sense replaces the older paper. This seems to be precisely your "scheme 1".


Important qualities for Research Assistanship applicants

There are two issues here: what do advisors want, and what can they observe?  In principle, I think most would choose Person 1 over Person 2, if they knew all the facts.  However, this choice will not typically arise in practice, because they won't be able to verify the "thirst for knowledge and good grasping power".

Classroom performance, no matter how excellent, is generally not sufficient for admission to a strong graduate school.  The problem is that lots of students get excellent grades, and these grades are only loosely correlated with research ability.  The only way to stand out is to do something that's fundamentally more impressive than doing well in courses; this could be a research project, or a substantial exposition, or coding, or any number of other things.  Research has some advantages, since that's what you're aiming to do in grad school, but it's by no means necessary.  However, if you don't do any research, then you'd better have some other way of demonstrating your talent.

For example, if Person 1 has done no research, but wrote a beautiful, 80-page undergraduate thesis giving an exposition of forcing and the continuum hypothesis, then that might count for more than most undergraduate research projects.  On the other hand, if Person 1 can point to nothing concrete except course grades, then that will likely be a problem.


Can I (should I) change the name of this distribution?

Actually changing the name because someone might be offended by a sound that comes from a completely different domain and is completely separate from the history of racism would be condescending, in my view.
And, as you say, the term is in common use. Changing it would also confuse some people.
Leave it be.
There was no intention to do harm and the acronym is natural. The language police are unlikely to chase you down. It would be different of course if the acronym were chosen for racist purpose, but that is clearly not the case here.


Is there any advantage to request a in-person interview over a Skype one?

From my experience going in person is the better choice:

They will see you as very motivated and you show that you really want
that position and you are not just doing a quick skype interview (and
on the same day 3 other ones)
Personal empathy can develop much better in person than via skype
Your explanations will be much clearer e.g. using a white board etc
to explain

So, if you have the possibility then go in person!


Networking in a symposium as a "non-specialist"

Let me tell you first that I can sympathise - networking also does not at all come natural to me. However, like most things, networking can be trained. The best opportunity to train is while doing it (or at least trying to), so your symposium should give you ample opportunity to improve.

First, if possible, do as JeffE says - have your advisor or some other (maybe more senior) person introduce you to people. Don't be embarrassed to talk about your ideas or your papers, or just about what you have learned during the symposium. That you come from a slightly different field may actually be an advantage here - the most interesting conversations I had at conferences often started with somebody saying "I, as an XY, find many of the presentations here really interesting, but why is there so much focus on A and so little work on B?".

Second, don't discard "small talk". Networking is mostly about connecting on a personal level anyway - it really does not matter so much what you talk about with people, as long as you talk to them. Talk to them about whatever comes naturally. It does not have to be about their research, even if this clearly is a natural conversation starter among researchers. Other standard conference convo topics (especially among PhD students) are: (1) life as a grad student, (2) difficulty with course work, (3) estimated time to graduation, (4) the ups and downs of the student's relationship with their advisor (although the last two bullets may be a bit loaded on occasion).

Third, try to not fall into the trap of seeing networking as "work", i.e., something that you'd rather avoid, but you know you need to do. This will make it automatically appear unpleasant, and you may end up just going through the motions so that you can say to yourself that you "networked", without achieving much.

Fourth, talk to people that you like talking to, and avoid like the plague people whose company you do not enjoy (for whatever reason). This sounds like a given, but I have seen many people classify conference participants into "important" and "unimportant", and then make a point to always talk to the "important" ones despite not actually enjoying it. This is a bad idea on multiple levels, including the fact that the PhD students from today are the professors and grant co-authors from tomorrow, so there really are no unimportant people in a conference.

Fifth, don't be too hard on yourself. You don't need to spend every minute of a conference networking. Many people, myself included, need a considerable amount of quiet time to function. Give it to yourself. It is ok to spend a few hours per conference day alone in front of your work, or on your hotel room if you feel tired of networking.

In the end, networking is the part of your work where the most important part is really to enjoy yourself. If you find one friend in the symposium, who you stay in touch with over the years, and who you write a grant proposal with in a few years, you networked successfully even if you talked to literally nobody else all week.


How many class room hours does the typical university teacher teach per week?

There is no “typical” number in this matter. Let's take a few examples:

UK, lecturer: it's usually a full-time position, so you have to put in 35-40 hours per week. The ratio of lecture time over all the rest (preparation, departmental committees, etc.) depends on the contract, but I have rarely seen it pushed past 1:1 (which means roughly 20 hours of teaching, maybe 25 at most).
France, "PRAG": this is the position of a high-School teacher detached to a university, and the closest one to a lecturer position. Their nominal teaching load is 384 hours per year, with a weight of 1.5 for lectures and 1 for exercises sessions. But for one the year is very short, from about 23 to 26 weeks, so that means about 15 hours per week, and this is only the nominal amount. In any cases, they (voluntarily or not) have to teach additional hours, which are paid in addition (to a lower rate than nominal hours).
As a point of comparison: a French high-school teacher would have 18 teaching hours per week.

Other comparison points, less relevant to the question as they are for teaching+research positions:

France, associate professor (maître de conférences): junior-level position, supposed to be half teaching and half research. This has a fixed number of 192 teaching hours per year. If you consider that those are spread on 30 weeks, it gives 6.4 hours per week. Even considering it is not a teaching-only position, that number is lower than the one you quote.
France, full professor (professeur des universités): same number of hours in theory, but as you gain seniority you can do more full-class teaching (with bigger groups), of which every hour counts as 1.5 hour in your yearly total. Through this, and other mechanisms, senior professors usually have fewer hours to teach.


Co-authors ignore comments and submit revision anyway

I have had this kind of conflict before, and I believe the issue is much more common than reported. I believe most colleagues in your position would (i) not have offered a different interpretation from that of the PI; (ii) not protest in case others ignored their suggestions. This is generally what was suggested in this thread by "move on".

I however do not agree with this passive approach if you are truly an author involved in the manuscript. I think all co-authors should reach a logical agreement over the results. My suggestions in this case are based on a personal choice based on details I cannot evaluate:

(A) If you believe their interpretation might be right even though you (and reviewers) see facts in a different way, just let them have it their way. "Move on". You can make your different views public later on in a subsequent publication or even post-publication peer review discussion forum. Your career is longer than this study.

(B) If you believe there is an obvious flaw in the PI's thinking that will be ridiculed by your peers after publication, ask to be removed from the authors list of this manuscript. I believe once you make this decision known to the PI there will be a moment of crisis, especially since this person submitted a revised version without your consent. However it will be a lesson for everyone, you will be not doing anything harmful to anyone (your name can be moved to the acks section without major issues prior to final publication), and everyone's career is longer than this discussion.

By now you have probably made your decision, but I hope this answer helps others decide.


Is an automatic copyright transfer clause in publisher's instructions to authors typically enforced/enforceable?

A lawyer would be best suited to answer this, but as I have had several business law classes as part of my business education, I'll hold forth based on my understanding of intellectual property and contract law in an educational context.

The answer would be yes, that it should be generally enforceable.

Laws vary by state even in the United States, but in general, qualities that can make a contract unenforceable are:

Lack of capacity of the parties (legal age, sound minds, etc.)
Fraud or misrepresentation
Violation of public policy

None of the above apply to our situation (unless, for example, we have a precocious or senile scholar).

Enforceable contracts also require:

Consideration (exchange of something of value)
Meeting of the Minds (mutual agreement of terms)
Offer and Acceptance

Now let's analyze these requirements. Is there mutual exchange of value? The journal appears to offer that in exchange for copyright, the author gets to be published in a prestigious journal. Does the author agree at the time of offer and acceptance? Then we have an enforceable contract.

So this brings to light a strategy for attempting to retain copyrights of your work. Insist by striking through such language in a contract and make a statement that you, the author, retain copyright, and put your initials by the alteration. If the contract is in electronic form, communicate this through email just prior to and just after submitting your request electronically.

If they do not object, and rather, accept your submission, I would assert that you have established that any possible claim by them to your work is either completely unenforceable (certainly, in the case of a written contract) or (in either case) liable to cost them a great deal in legal fees to pursue.


Do I need to tell my rec letter provider that I have language disorder?

No, nobody needs to know. Your letter writers need to attest to your academic abilities, whereas your medical history is not something they need to know nor do they have any business telling anyone else about it.

As a matter of fact, all that ought to matter are your academic abilities. The fact that you're applying for graduate school implies to me that you must have been reasonably good in school/college -- in other words, that your disability has no implications for your academic performance. That's all the admissions committee wants to know: that you'll excel academically, and they will be able to see that from your transcripts and what your letter writers describe in their letters.


Who decide about a journals Impact Factor? What are the measurements?

The impact factor isn't necessarily a measure of usefulness or how much good a journal has done; it's calculated by a mathematical formula related to the number of citations and articles that journal has released. No one individual or organisation decides on the impact factor of a journal.


Preventing Verbatim Answers that Match Examples?

When teaching students...how do you prevent near verbatim answers that match your examples?

I ask questions that cannot be answered correctly by near-verbatim matches of my examples.


Ethics of spending research money on food and meetings

There are many events one might hold to benefit a particular research effort, for which it is usual to provide at least coffee, fruit, and pastries (at least at my school), sometimes more:

You invite a researcher to visit your university and give a talk about his latest work, which is directly related to, and will help bootstrap, your funded research.
A major goal defined in your grant is to publicize a particular bit of research. You hold an open house and invite visitors from industry and academia to disseminate the results of your research.
A goal of your research is to develop certain tools and methods and then publicize them. You hold a workshop or "summer camp" for grad students from other universities to teach them how to use the methods/tools you've developed for your research and get their feedback.
You have a collaborator at another location working on this research effort with you. He visits your university once a year for a project meeting, including lunch.

Depending on the nature of the project and the funding, one or more of these may be an  appropriate use of funds. Generally, to be permissible, it must be for an event that directly contributes to the goals of a specific research effort (not e.g. a department event). Sometimes, the grant is given explicitly to host such an event (such as a workshop or summer camp).

(Obviously: follow the rules from the university and the funding source about how the money may be spent. The NSF, for example, has very specific guidelines on the subject.)


How do I respond to an email from a potential PhD supervisor who was positive but short?

Ask for a phone/skype call to discuss research interests, and to see if the two of you would be a good fit.

  Hi Prof X., Would you be available for a phone/skype call next week to discuss research projects and to see if I would be a good fit to be your advisee? Thank you!


Quod vide, q.v. in short.
I agree with the other commenters though, its pretty obscure in English writing.


I'm not sure why you think you need to be subtle.

  "My savings and investments are sufficient to carry me through a long period of study if necessary."

That demonstrates some serious commitment on your part. I wouldn't put any financial details in it and doubt that it would be proper to ask for them.

Or add "with only minimal funding" if you want to not let them off the hook too easily.


Question:
Is there a preferable time of year when one should apply for a PhD in the UK?

Answer:
This very much depends on the university, programme, funding, etc. So it's hard to generalise a single "preferable time".
But, that being said, many STEM programmes (which are not on a rolling admission) and funding opportunities tend to have application deadlines between around mid-September and around mid-February.

Question:
Does one lessen one's chances of acceptance if applying nearer to the official early summer deadlines?

Answer:
Not unless it says somewhere that places may be filled before the application deadline.

Question:
Should you apply without the BA cert and just say it is in processing (without going into reasons why)?

Answer:
Typically, applicants are not required to submit proof of any qualifications in the early stages of the application process. They are required, however, to submit an official academic transcript.
It is only in the later stages of the application process, e.g. after receiving a conditional offer, that applicants have to provide supporting documentation as evidence for meeting each condition of the offer.

My advice is that you get in touch with the admissions office of the place you are applying to, and ask them directly about the details of the application process and your BA cert.


Wanting to return to university, but I have a Master's degree. Funding options?

The only thing I can add to jakebeal's answer is that, it is generally only true for STEM research masters. Most coursework degrees, even in STEM, are not funded. It was unclear from your question whether you were thinking about doing a second masters with a research component, or just looking to get a coursework masters.

That said, if you are looking for a research masters, I agree with jakebeal. However, I don't know of any school or organization that will fund a coursework masters.


Do professors discuss about grad students (not necessarily their students)?

Yes, faculty do this all the time. They talk about their progress, their attitude towards research, and actively seek advice on how to deal with some situations. This is a positive thing in my opinion, paraphrasing: it takes a village to raise a grad student!


Does two lines of copied code constitute plagiarism?

It appears strongly likely that you did plagiarise, and if this is the case you'd be better to proceed by recognising your mistake than continuing to argue.

Looking at your code, there is a great deal that appears to have been taken from the HashMap.java file. I strongly suspect that you began with this code and then modified it to produce your code, or closely followed it as a template when writing your own. The highlighted code sections have picked up some of this, but other sections closely resemble the other file too, although with slightly altered comments and ordering.

If this is the case, then the code you have shown us is not your own original work but actually a plagiarised version of HashMap.java. Leaving in the two lines which are unconnected is a smoking gun of the link that is likely to be conclusive to the panel. Your point that they are unnecessary will actually count against you because you will be unable to explain why they are there at all.  And whether this was your intent or not, it is likely that the panel (and your professor) will see your changed comments and ordering as an attempt to cover up your tracks and conceal your plagiarism from automated tools.

The panel is more likely to show leniency towards a student who appears to at least be contrite, and recognises that they've made a mistake, than a student who denies wrong-doing in the face of apparently very strong evidence.


What are the main factors driving popularity of US higher education among international students?

Abstract

Firstly, the answer will tackle the question's false assumption that the US is the most attractive destination for international students. Secondly, I will cite some of the factors making a country/region's education system attractive to international students. Finally, to tackle some of the comments, I will present a chart showing number of international students per capita in selected countries.

USA is not the most attractive destination for international students

According to the OECD Factbook 2011-2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, the number one destination of foreign students among OECD countries is Europe followed by Northern American region:

  European countries in the OECD were the destination for 38% of foreign students in 2009 followed by North American countries (23%). Despite the strong increase in absolute numbers, these proportions have remained stable during the last decade.

To put the numbers above to global perspective, observe also that

  Foreign students enrolled in G20 countries account for 83% of total foreign students, and students in the OECD area represent 77% of the total foreign students enrolled worldwide.

Factors driving attractiveness of higher education in OECD countries

Again, according to the same source (emphasis added):

  Language as well as cultural considerations, quality of programmes, geographic proximity and similarity of education systems are determining factors driving student mobility. The destinations of international students highlight the attractiveness of specific education systems, whether because of their academic reputation or because of subsequent immigration opportunities.

Commenters to the question cite the ratio of international students per capita as an indicator of attractiveness of education system for foreign students. While I do not see any direct correlation between attractiveness of an educational system and the ratio of foreign students per capita (countries can be arbitrarily protective, or non-protective w.r.t. their own citizens), I prepared the following chart from the OECD data (relevant to year 2009):

The chart was constructed by merging data from the OECD.Stat with OECD countries population data from OECD population 2009 as published in the corresponding section of the OECD Factbook 2001-2012. The computation is done on non-citizen students column for the year 2009, except for United States it is the number of non-resident students (due to lack of a non-citizen students datapoint).


Can I cite an old book in my research proposal without having read it?

You need to read the material you cite.  That does not mean you need to read an entire book if the relevant portion is in one or a few chapters, but just plopping in a citation without ever cracking the cover is reference padding and is academic misconduct.

You've been given good advice by J. Fabian Meier about also citing newer material, but you can't cite something you haven't read.


Does physics education research support the idea that answer keys are bad?

I won't have a hard answer, especially one specific to physics. I did find some papers that looked somewhat relevant though. Please take this with a grain of salt as I've mostly just skimmed them, and this isn't my academic area of expertise.

This paper found that comparing different methods of reaching an answer was more effective than looking at methods of solution sequentially. This says more about how students might best use an answer key than whether they should get one.

This 1992 paper found that practice examining worked problems or completing partially worked problems was more effective at transferring knowledge than conventional problem solving. In keeping with the first paper, this paper by the same author showed that variability in the examined worked problems was also important. This would indicate that for a subject that students generally have a hard time wrapping their head around, like physics, the ability to study completed problems at the same time may be a useful tool.

However this excellent article discusses how you can go too far the other way, with advanced learners fairing better without information they already know clogging up their study material. Overall this makes a mixed approach (some problems with worked answers for comparison, and some problems without available answers) seem best if the strength of the prior knowledge of students is unknown. (Assuming students gravitate to the type of material best for their individual needs.)

(opinion on practicality) However I'd note that in the context of a college class, giving a set of completed problems, rather than additional turned-in assignments, doesn't create a pretesting point-of-accountability to further incentivise study. Also your department policy may relate to things like professors who sometimes want to reuse questions from previous tests. So attempting to change may be resisted because you may unintentionally be asking other professors to take on more unwanted workload.

Some of the research terms I found that you might want to look at further include 'Cognitive Load Theory', 'Aptitude-Treatment Interactions', 'Expertise Reversal Effect', and 'Instructional Science'. You'd probably also be well served by skimming through a proper textbook on education techniques if you can find one that's suitably well cited.


A peculiar PhD situation, working full time in a government lab but getting my PhD from an unknown university because of formalities. Advice?

I think your stellar record speaks for itself (from my experience: 150 citations is something that is rarely encounered on a a PhD-level research).

And where would you like to put that justification? As an asterisk in your CV? THAT would be really weird.


Does maths research have anything inadmissible?

No, but trying to prove X without using Y is still a very useful concept even in research, because it can lead to interesting generalizations, or new proof techniques that can be applied to a larger set of problems.

For instance, in some sense the Lebesgue integral is "just" trying to prove the properties of integrals without using the continuity of f, or the theory of matroids is "just" trying to prove the properties of linearly independent vectors without using a lot of properties from the vector space structure.

So this is far from being a pointless exercise, if that's what you had in mind.


Should I get a master's in math before getting econ PhD?

The main problem with taking a course/major/degree in a subject like math, in the hopes of it improving your ability to perform at some other field, is that the math program will most typically not have been designed to cater the curriculum to the tools that will be most helpful to you in your future career. So effectively a 2 year degree program in math might be equivalent to 3-6 months of "math for Economists", or whatever degree program you might seek. While math is useful in many fields, exactly what specific kind of math is useful varies tremendously!

A simple example of this is statistics. Most math programs may only require 1-2 classes in any kind of statistics (Northeastern's Applied Math program, for instance), and beyond introduction to statistics the methods used in one field are often very different than one taught in another. Depending on how you choose your electives, you could very well come out of the program with little more than the equivalent of "I took some extra math classes as an elective" during your undergraduate degree, as far as actual ability to perform useful research at a PhD level is concerned. I'm not going to say it's a total waste of time - but it's kind of a weird "side quest" to go on.

Its not that you wouldn't learn anything useful - it's just that the time would not be spent very efficiently if "being a great non-mathematician" is your end goal. In comparison, you might instead take advanced math classes or an independent study while still an undergraduate (especially if you can identify someone with advanced knowledge of math useful to economists).

You would also do well to look at prospective PhD programs and see how they handle classes. Many PhD programs in the US require you to take advanced classes catered towards your degree, while also allowing/requiring you to take some advanced classes in an area outside your key classes - and you could use those slots to work on improving your relevant mathematical knowledge.

I would only remind you that everyone contemplating high level research - even mathematicians - wishes they had a stronger background in math, because there's always more math to learn and you'll have long died of old age before you learned all that might be of potential use to you. But if you plan to use math as a tool to aid other goals, then you can expect to pick it up like any other tool as you progress in your work.


Motivation and presentation not explained in the paper

I agree with @gnometorule.  It looks like the reviewer wrote a sloppy comment.  I imagine the reviewer meant, "The presentation needs improvement, and the motivation should be explained better."  Presentation means how you present your ideas.  I suppose the reviewer felt that the ideas could be presented more clearly.  Motivation makes the reader care about your contribution.

Hopefully the reviewer also made some specific comments that will guide your revision process.


Is it possible to trade up during ones PhD in Mathematics?

Yes, it is a feasible plan. But it's not straightforward.

Things to keep in mind:

the PhD advisor in the first school might have different expectations. One might consider being open about the plan to get only a Masters's degree. Otherwise, it is both unfair to the advisor and can lead to many issues.
to get to a different PhD program, one will need good letters of recommendation. Thus, the relationships with your original PhD advisor are important.
expected prolonged graduation times: residency requirements, different courses schedule, and in general B.Sc. + Ph.D. usually (!) are faster than B.Sc.+M.Sc.+Ph.D, especially when different levels are completed in different educational institutions.
you might get better or worse financially but getting qualified or disqualified for some scholarships. This is strongly dependent on the individual factors and exact policies of educational institutions.
change (drastic/slight) of the research topic, which can be also a good thing or bad depending on the individual factors.
in case the PhD application to a new program fails, one might have already burned some bridges, and certainly did not help themselves in the pursuit of a PhD.


Firstly, "the verdict" should be something that happens after you have had a chance to hear the allegations and respond, not prior to you being summoned.  In any half-decent university misconduct process, there is no need for the student to guess in advance what the alleged misconduct might be; if the matter proceeds then you will be informed (in writing) of the nature of the alleged misconduct at an appropriate time, and you will then have a chance to respond after reading the allegation against you and having time to digest it.  Until then, you are not required to do anything.  Stay calm, and don't try to pre-empt the process by guessing --- for more advice, see detailed advice on dealing with misconduct allegations.


How to handle not having my PhD advisor as a reference?

I've personally seen a few careers survive this exact problem (caveat: I don't necessarily see the ones that don't), but it isn't easy.

The best way to surmount this problem is to be referred into a job in an industry/government/NGO lab - and have someone within the organization pulling for you. If you're doing an academic post-doc right now, that's fine, but you need to start connecting to people who work in the kinds of places you want to work. If you do another post-doc, do one for a company or a government lab. If you've got someone who can pull you into the fold at a company or lab, you've got no issue at all.

Here's my advice if you are sending out cold-call applications:

The issue won't come up in the application stage (don't mention anything negative about your experience in your cover letter, or your application will get trashed). The trick will be how to handle yourself during the interview stage.

You say here:

  "in retrospect I see that I could have avoided a breakdown in our
  relationship if I had been more deferential."

You're going to need a much better story than that. Because you are going to have to explain it at some point (probably when someone asks why you haven't listed your old PI as a reference), and that line will throw up red flags about your ability to handle being managed. You'll have to be prepared to talk about it in some detail, but focus everything on what you learned from it. How do you handle conflict better now? Have recent examples ready of your excellent interpersonal skills.

Avoid talking about this problem for more than a few minutes in an interview, but don't hide the fact that you've have this issue in the past. Employers will call your references, and chances are good that it will come up. Even if one of your references mentions it with you in the best possible light, if it's the first time the employer has heard of it they will feel like you've withheld information. While companies will generally not call someone you haven't listed as a reference, they will get in touch with everyone they know who may have also worked for your old boss, gotten a degree from your old department, collaborated with your old group. This may be an issue if your field of study is small. If you've changed your research focus somewhat since then, this is less likely to happen.

You can overcome this, but BE PREPARED. And once you get your first non-postdoc job, it'll all be downhill from there.


Is offering to work for free a bad idea for an undergrad researcher?

If you are a student who is getting something of (educational) value out of your research, and don't need the money, it's not necessarily a bad idea to do undergrad research without getting paid for it. (If you weren't a student, this would probably be a very bad idea, though.)

Personally, however, I will only supervise students who are either getting paid or getting some kind of independent study credit. (I'm not the only supervisor I know with this policy.) I don't want to put time and effort into supervising a student who is only very loosely committed to the research project.

I encourage you to consider that option - independent study or thesis credit - for undergraduate research.


Studies over how noisy is it to accept/reject submissions

There have been many studies on this. Here is a recent meta-analysis of 48(!) of them:

  Bornmann, Lutz, Rüdiger Mutz, and Hans-Dieter Daniel. "A reliability-generalization study of journal peer reviews: a multilevel meta-analysis of inter-rater reliability and its determinants." PLOS ONE 5.12 (2010): e14331.

Here's the abstract:

  Background

  This paper presents the first meta-analysis for the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of journal peer reviews. IRR is defined as the extent to which two or more independent reviews of the same scientific document agree.

  Methodology/Principal Findings

  Altogether, 70 reliability coefficients (Cohen's Kappa, intra-class correlation [ICC], and Pearson product-moment correlation [r]) from 48 studies were taken into account in the meta-analysis. The studies were based on a total of 19,443 manuscripts; on average, each study had a sample size of 311 manuscripts (minimum: 28, maximum: 1983). The results of the meta-analysis confirmed the findings of the narrative literature reviews published to date: The level of IRR (mean ICC/r2 = .34, mean Cohen's Kappa = .17) was low. To explain the study-to-study variation of the IRR coefficients, meta-regression analyses were calculated using seven covariates. Two covariates that emerged in the meta-regression analyses as statistically significant to gain an approximate homogeneity of the intra-class correlations indicated that, firstly, the more manuscripts that a study is based on, the smaller the reported IRR coefficients are. Secondly, if the information of the rating system for reviewers was reported in a study, then this was associated with a smaller IRR coefficient than if the information was not conveyed.

  Conclusions/Significance

  Studies that report a high level of IRR are to be considered less credible than those with a low level of IRR. According to our meta-analysis the IRR of peer assessments is quite limited and needs improvement (e.g., reader system).

This meta-analysis includes studies of peer review agreement in economics/law, natural sciences, medical sciences, and social sciences.

Here is another paper, which includes a section on the reliability of peer review (i.e. agreement between reviewers) in which a number of other studies are summarized:

  Bornmann, Lutz. "Scientific peer review." Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 45.1 (2011): 197-245.

Specifically in computer science, there's this:

  Ragone, Azzurra, et al. "On peer review in computer science: analysis of its effectiveness and suggestions for improvement." Scientometrics 97.2 (2013): 317-356.

They measured inter-reviewer agreement in

  a large reviews data set from ten different conferences in computer science for a total of ca. 9,000 reviews on ca. 2,800 submitted contributions.

and found

  in our case we have six conferences with ICC > 0.6, i.e. with significant correlation, 3 conferences with a fair correlation (0.4 < ICC < 0.59) and one conference with poor correlation among raters (ICC < 0.4).

They also found that agreement on "strong reject" papers was much higher than agreement on other papers. More precisely,

  A more detailed analysis shows that if somebody gives a mark from the
  "strong reject" band, this increases the probability of giving marks not only from strong and weak reject bands (by 14 and 63% correspondingly) but also from borderline band (by 11%). In the "strong accept" set the probability of others giving a "weak accept" mark is 20% higher than the overall probability, but the
  probability of giving marks from other bands are almost the same as the overall probabilities.

  Therefore, we can say that we have marks skewed towards the "weak accept" and
  reviewers still agree on very bad contributions while disagree on very good.


My paper was rejected following a lengthy delay during which an editor published a similar paper

I would suggest submitting your paper to a different journal, but as a counter to the charge that "it's already published in journal X," include the correspondence you had with journal X.

This should alert a responsible editor to the fact that something wasn't right at the other journal, and may be willing to give your paper a fair shake.

I'd also consider lodging a complaint with the publisher of the journal. This sounds like an ethical lapse somewhere: another paper got published, but yours was out of scope?


Presenting half-baked results in a department seminar

Caveat: The following applies to venues where presenting work in progress is accepted, such as workshops or (as in this case) an internal department seminar. Of course, a high-ranking conference is not the right place for anything half-baked.

The idea is to explain at least those aspects very clearly that are not (as) "half-baked", while being honest about those that are half-baked.

Make your research question very clear and explain why it matters. In the worst case, your audience can't comment on any of your half-baked findings, but then they can at least think with you about your research problem.
Describe very clearly your analytical approach. Which methods/models/concepts/theories did you use to attack your problem? Help your audience to think about whether your analytical choices are useful and how they can be used to attack your problem.
When it comes to your findings and their formalization, try to do a good job in their informal ("natural language") presentation. Perhaps you can already break down the finding analytically without going "fully formal". Then explicitly state that your current challenge is to formalize those findings. Show the audience briefly some angles that you have tried and where you got stuck. Explicitly and politely invite your audience to comment on the formalization.

The easier it is for your audience to understand your work, the easier it will be for them to help you with its formalization. This makes their comments more useful. At the same time, the better job you do at explaining clearly what you have done, what you know, and what you don't know, the more professional you come across.

Your goal is to make the audience think: "Hey, this guy has a very interesting and important puzzle. I think he also has a great model that explains it. I guess I should work with him on its formalization."


Masters in computer science vs masters in cyber security

I've been working in the field of software security for over 4 years and had multiple interactions with security analysts working in cyber security labs. From their collective opinion, a computer science degree is just as effective as a more "specialist" cyber security degree. This is because they both have roughly the same CS foundation and the few extra security-oriented classes won't make a huge difference after 1-2 years of industry experience. In fact, I have encountered multiple CS graduates who are more successfull in the security industry than the cyber security graduates. This is of course, anecdotal.


Sharing Course Material With Other Lecturers

Whether to share-or-not (assuming that you yourself, not your university, own the rights to what you've created) is strongly a matter of personal preference... I don't see a universal mandate.
Many years ago, I did pay careful attention to copyright control, and so on, but eventually I got the impression that it was simply not the case that people were clamoring to get their hands on stuff I'd written. :)
So, for some years now, I've put everything on-line with a Creative Commons license, and whenever anyone is polite enough to ask permission for use, I give it, without any negotiations. In fact, if one of my goals were to maximize the impact I have on ... for example, graduate curriculum in mathematics... unrestricted dissemination seems the obvious choice. True, I may not "get all the credit I deserve", but I already have "enough credit" to survive, so that'd not be a tragedy.
A situation where one should be more careful is when one's institution attempts to use-and-discard people who develop course material. In such cases, "getting credit" probably matters much more. Luckily, till now anyway, that kind of thing has not been toooooo much of an issue at my university, although arising sporadically over the years. (I'm not optimistic about the future...)
In summary: if you don't want to share the fruits of your labors, don't. You may change your mind later, and that's fine, too.


Is having a job that you love an advantage or disadvantage when applying for a Masters?

If it is a full time master, I strongly advise you against having a job, especially a full-time one, at the same time. I don't know what the degree you're applying for looks like, but a master's course is usually pretty demanding and requires a lot of personal work. By pursuing two full-time activities at the same time, I think you put both of them at risk.


Quitting research halfway -- how unprofessional/irresponsible?

From a mathematician's point of view (I think the situation is fairly similar in CS): It should suffice to leave your research in a state where others can pick it up. For example:

Any preprints that are sufficiently presentable (if not necessarily polished enough for a referee's tastes) can be posted on a preprint repository, if necessary with comments about what parts need changes. If a refereeing process is already underway, and if you really want it out of your eyes, you can ask your coauthors or perhaps even other colleagues familiar with the project to take over the necessary correspondence and editing (although the latter arrangement is unusual). Otherwise, I suggest that you handle communication with referees for all papers you have already submitted.
Any work that hasn't progressed far enough to have presentable results can be handed over to some academics you trust, with explicit guidance as to what can be done with it (e.g., can they assign it to students? finish it on their own? send it to others?) and what sort of attribution you expect (e.g., coauthorship or acknowledgments).

People won't mind you stopping to do research (at least not in math and CS; it's different in other disciplines where you have labs and collaborators heavily relying on one another); but they will mind if you leave a mess of unfinished work behind that they can neither use nor redo, like leaving your clothes in a shared dryer for hours.


Is it okay to use source code from another paper in thesis?

It depends on the licensing terms of their code. If it's under an open source license, then you might probably be able to use the same by giving due credits to the authors of the same. It would also be better if you could try to contact the author of the paper and ask their permission before using the same if you're not able to find any specific licensing terms.


Advice - MS in mathematics to increase competitiveness for PhD programs?

If you have a thin B.S. background in math, it is definitely very helpful to get a M.S. in math before (re-) applying to Ph.D. programs. (I say this having been on the Grad Admissions cte, and having been Dir Grad Studies in two different incarnations...) In the U.S., many undergrad programs are really very thin, due to the requirement (otherwise wholesome) of "breadth".

The "undergrad research" episodes in summers, and during the academic year, are good for generating enthusiasm and camaraderie, and especially for getting outside the rigid classroom/textbook atmosphere, but (apart from very broad features) are not at all good indicators of what serious research is or will be like. Those programs are designed to be fun (pizza parties, etc), so "doing research" in that sense is fun for nearly everyone.

So, apply to MS/PhD programs at the top 30-50 schools, and do the best job you can in the standard/required PhD curriculum (usually, there is no distinction between PhD curriculum and MS, except that the latter is designed to accommodate, if necessary, weaker students, perhaps weak enough so that the MS will be their last degree in Mathematics... don't be misled into taking an "easy route"). And, in the course of doing the coursework, don't be a stranger to the instructors of those courses, who will be your letter-writers for either re-application to "better" schools in a year or two, or will be your letter writers if you need to re-apply to that institution itself for the PhD program, for bureaucratic reasons.

Grades in non-math courses, and grades in calculus and lower-division courses don't matter much, although obviously good grades are a not a bad thing. Admissions committees are well-acquainted with the changes people go through around age 20 and so on. The question is not so much what silly things one has done a few years back, but where one is heading now, and what documentable evidence there is for this.

In particular, although self-learning is the most significant long-term way to develop scholarship, it is obviously hard to document. Perhaps the best way is to sign up for courses that appear to re-iterate (serious) content you've already studied. Presumably, you absolutely ace the material and draw the instructor's attention... since self-study beyond "requirements" is, strangely-or-not, extremely rare. Evidence of non-passivity is excellent, if it really proves to be what you feel it is (rather than, say, mere obsessiveness).

So, again, yes, think about "proving yourself" during a year or two of "MS work". No downside, really.


Applying for a PhD in Engineering. Crappy Undergrad GPA, Good Masters GPA. Help!

I would find the second Master's Degree very helpful. First, because its shows that the 3.6 GPA on the first Master's was not a "fluke," and second, because it is actually higher than your first Master's, showing "improvement." And the first Master's shows improvement over your last two years of Bachelor's which is an improvement over your first two years.

In your shoes, I would send people the last six (or five and a half) years of grades. That is your two Master's years of grades. plus the last two of your undergraduate. That's also the equivalent of what someone with four year's of Bachelor's, and one and half year of Master's work will show.

But the most encouraging thing about your record is your steady improvement. Many schools would be willing to overlook a lot of C's in your first two years of Bachelor work, as a result. They're more interested in the last four years of "A" level Master's work, as well as the 3.5 "bridge" in your junior and senior years.


It is alright to include students' first names in a teaching statement?

I think you should avoid giving their full names, as opposed to just their first names unless they give permission for it. Better, using an alias for the students protects their privacy but doesn't cost you any thing in the telling of the stories. Alice and Bob, as usual.

But some readers might actually wonder whether you were too personal with the students, not keeping a proper "academic distance". I often tell a story about two students who succeeded after failure. It is a great story, and it works without names. If they heard my story they would recognize themselves, I think. But no one else would. Not even their classmates at the time.


While I’m a big believer in “ask your adviser” about many questions, it’s useful to remember (and to remind yourself occasionally) that this is your thesis. You are the author. With that status comes the freedom (in a technical sense, at least) to write literally whatever you want in the thesis. That’s what it means to be the author of something.

So yes, you don’t want to annoy your adviser and other readers of your thesis too much, but remember: it is your thesis. If it makes you happy to discuss Einstein’s metaphysical beliefs (or lack thereof), there’s no need to overthink the issue. You worked very hard for several years to come up with interesting things to say, the least that people can do to respect that monumental effort is to humor you by putting up with a few not-very-relevant side remarks.


An interesting one, although I wouldn't jump straight to plagiarism.

Sometimes, if the authors are all in the same research group/university/project (this could easily be across countries) they'll use bits of colleagues work with less rigorous citing than they would normally. This is especially the case if the first paper was mostly just a positioning or introductory piece.

It's not a great thing to do, but I've seen it happen on a number of occasions. However, I'd definitely get in contact with the journal of the second paper, and then if you don't hear anything constructive back then get in contact with the journal of the first paper. Definitely don't contact the authors directly unless you don't hear anything from either journal - if that's the case, get in contact with the authors of the first paper.


Think of being a PhD student as a job.  If you think there’s another job you’d prefer, then switch jobs.  It’s no more of a waste than spending two years at another job that you end up leaving.

That said if you already have some substantial work finished you might ask your advisor if you can just graduate this year with a weak thesis.


What do I do when I can't find the source of this chapter of a book so I can cite it APA style?

The book your looking for seems to be:

Modern Database Management

By Jeffrey A. Hoffer, Fred R. McFadden, Mary B. Prescott

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Modern_Database_Management.html?id=cYfDQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en


I think is to a certain degree possible. One can potentially put the dataset in a data repository that assigns DOIs to the dataset. Then the dataset can includes the links to the published article as references. DataCite DOIs have a mechanism to do this. One can look at the documentation in  their website.
edit: Full disclosure, I work at DataCite as a developer.


What should we do when an abstract gets accepted for a conference, but the material is not ready?

I suppose that standards differ, but in my experience (CS) posters don't need to be all that refined. Unless your standards are different, I suspect that you could put enough together to inform people about your project, its current state, and its direction, if not the conclusions that aren't yet ready.
Many posters are "work in progress", rather than completed.
Alternatively you can withdraw if it is impossible to do enough to meet your own standards.


Is "cum laude with honors" meaningful or a tautology in the US?

There is no doubt in my mind the person in question earned two different distinctions, and used them correctly. Here are some examples at how they might be used throughout the US.

At my undergraduate institution, "Latin honors" (cum laude) were solely a function of your overall GPA. The minimum to earn each distinction was a percentile determined from the previous year's distribution. (so the 90th percentile in 2020 becomes the minimum for cum laude in 2021). At that school, it was by college, not department, e.g. College of Arts and Sciences or College of Engineering.

cum laude was the 90th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.79 (Arts and Sciences)
magna cum laude was the 97th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.89.
summa cum laude was the 99.5th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.97.

At my graduate institution, you have to complete an extra thesis to be eligible. At Aliden's, you had to be enrolled in the honors program to earn Latin Honors at all.

My undergrad had various "Honors." I graduated "cum laude with College Honors," it says so on my diploma. I was just about 0.01 GPA point shy of magna, sigh.

"with Honors" was a distinction earned by taking classwork in the Honors College, which you had to be admitted into.

"with Departmental Honors" was earned based on departmental requirements, often a thesis, where one wasn't required.

"with College Honors" was completing both college and departmental programs.

Finally, there is also "with (high) distinction," which is also often based on GPA.

Likely the person in your question completed some sort of honors curriculum or thesis (hard to tell what) as well as had a high GPA.


Address on cover letter for PhD application

Yes, what you have written already is perfectly fine.


Can post-doc researchers write a recommendation letter for someone applying for a PhD program?

Academic rank varies by country.  But I would expect in most places a letter written by a postdoc would be considered.  Selecting letter writers is often a compromise between getting a letter writer who is highly ranked and well known and getting a letter writer who is well informed.  Typically one gets both when a postdoc assists a senior faculty member in writing a letter.


As a graduate, is creating a log-in in the university online campus considered an acceptance of their offer?

For any normal and reputable University, no - logging into an online system is not a "got you now, sucker!" moment.

The only way to accept an offer is to formally respond to your offer of admission to the graduate coordinator or graduate school, usually in the form of a signed document - or otherwise unequivocally answering "yes" in a digital form, such as an e-signature.


Where to define a symbol that also has an abbreviation

If you actually have significant explanation beyond just expanding the abbreviation, I recommend putting that in the list of abbreviations and using a cross-reference from the list of symbols.  Just like an index can have "attenuation coefficient, linear -- see linear attenuation coefficient", your lists of abbreviations and symbols could have, respectively,

LAC, linear attenuation coefficient, symbol \mu.  The linear attenuation coefficient applies to materials where absorbance dominates scattering as an attenuation mechanism, and total transmission energy follows Lambert's Law.
\mu, symbol for linear attenuation coefficient.  See also \hyperlink{LAC}

If there's no additional explanation, then both entries can be complete and short and a hyperlink would be pointless.

LAC, linear attenuation coefficient, symbol \mu
\mu, linear attenuation coefficient, abbreviated LAC


How do math PhD admission committees view reading courses when your university doesn't offer graduate classes?

Admissions committees in math departments know that a "small liberal arts college most people haven't heard of" might not offer the sort of advanced math courses that are available elsewhere.  If your REUs and Math in Moscow lead to strong letters of recommendation, you should be OK.  I'd suggest that you also get a letter from one (or maybe more) of the professors who are supervising your reading courses.  Even if (s)he has to write before the reading course ends, it would be good for the admissions committee to have some idea of the level of the course (e.g., what book(s) are you reading) and how well you're doing.


I just submitted my PhD application, how should I write an email informing the Professor about my application?

It is typical in the US that a student chooses a dissertation research advisor only after admission. Often it comes after a few years of advanced coursework that prepares the student to take comprehensive exams (qualifiers). Up until then, you may have an academic advisor (for advice) but without the fixed expectation that they will guide your dissertation.

So, you have hope that this person will find a slot after you arrive. You should do what you can to get close to the person, though, through their coursework and (especially) seminars. Maybe something will open up for you.

But you can also keep your eyes and ears open for others who would be good to guide your work during this initial period.

Note that students entering with an MS and having already done sufficient coursework that they can take comps early have a shortened time scale, but probably still an opportunity after you arrive. It isn't essential, here, to have the final advisor on board at admission.

Other places little of the above applies and one often enters the specific research group at admission.

If you want to write the professor, pretty much anything will do if it just expresses your hope that you get a chance to work together in future. The emails you have received are entirely typical it the US.


When writing a "response article" what's the appropriate way to refer to plots from the original paper?

First, use citation to avoid any charge of plagiarism/stealing. This is true for plots as well as for quoted words.
Second, it would depend on how much of the work you would be including. If you want to include all or most of the plots in the original you would be on shaky ground just as if you over-quoted the article even with citation.
Third, there might be a question of how "essential" the plots are to the original paper. If they are in some sense the "heart" of the original, you are better off pointing to them (citation) rather than copying. But that can be a judgement call.
Fourth, if a plot stands alone in some way without the rest of the paper, it might be considered a "complete work" on its own. Then you need permission to copy it just as you would to copy any complete work, no matter how small.
You could also ask the original authors for guidance, of course.


How to interview a candidate for a university teaching position?

You'll want to ask some standard questions that any experienced educator would ask a potential teacher:

Request to see a model lesson. It doesn't have to be a full lecture, just something to see their style. Ideally the entire committee should be there for this part.
Ask to see a university-level lesson plan of their creation.
Ask how they would approach creating a semester-long curriculum for an advanced "special topics" course. I suggest the "special topics" idea because this lets you see whether they can do it for themselves or whether they are only able to follow pre-set curricula.
Ask how they'll ensure that the top students are being adequately challenged while the weaker students aren't being left behind.
Ask how they handle unruly students. Even though this is fairly rare at the university level, they should have a ready answer.
Have them explain some concepts to you and make sure for yourself that you are comfortable with how they explain them. (Similar to model lesson, but for specific topics.)

You may also want to mention things like office hours requirements, whether they'll get a TA, and related administrative stuff.


Citing StackExchange vs. Account Privacy?

The post you reference has the solution to your doubt. Just cite when you encounter an original contribution or thank for helpful critics.


How much would I have to publish to get an entry-level job?

I'm the faculty search chair for a top-5 American computer science department.

  How many publications, and of what quality would be required to get a job...?

This is simply the wrong question. To be considered for a position, you must have an independent research record among the very best in the world in your age cohort and subfield. The number of publications really doesn't matter, for the same reason grades don't matter for admission to a top PhD program; there are enough applicants with enough publications that we can afford to focus on more important features.

What matters more is the quality, visibility, impact, and reputation of your research.  You must have a coherent and compelling research vision and agenda. You must have letters from the very best people in your field—people that the search committee already know by reputation, preferably not at your home institution. Those letters must say things like "major impact on the field" and "strongest student on the market this year", with specific, technical, and credible details to back up their opinions.

Moreover, the search committee must agree with the assessment in the reference letters.  Without a champion on the search committee, you will not get an interview; there are simply too many strong applicants.  Yes, we do read your statements, your papers, and other papers that cite your papers ourselves. We also call up colleagues in your field who didn't write you letters and ask them who the best people are in your field; they'd better mention you.

That gets you to the short list of people we are willing to interview.  Unless it's a dry year, there are more people on this list than interview slots, so the recruiting committee has long discussions comparing the merits of various candidates and arguing about departmental needs/strategy. Sometimes enough clear winners emerge; more often, we just have to vote.

Once you are invited to an interview, your performance at the interview often becomes more important than your past record.  Your talk must be compelling and polished. You must impress the faculty and students you meet with your breadth of expertise, your research agenda/vision, your likely success as an advisor, as a collaborator, as an instructor, and as an intellectual leader.

In short, it must be clear that you will get tenure.

Inevitably, more people will "pass" the interview than we have positions to offer. So there is another long and wide-ranging discussion among the faculty, comparing the merits of the various top candidates and arguing about departmental needs. Sometimes clear winners emerge; other times the faculty deadlock and the department head has to make the call.

I have seen candidates with 2 or 3 groundbreaking papers get hired (and later get tenure). I have also seen fresh PhDs with 20+ papers in top venues that were not even considered for an interview, because their work was judged incremental or narrow. The number of papers is simply not the right metric to care about.


Elsevier open-access fee waived for subscribers?

@Stephan Kolassa has given the technically correct answer.  I will add that all of this is irrelevant to the vast majority of universities, since they don't pay individual journal prices.  They pay for an Elsevier bundle, and Elsevier forces them to keep the amount paid secret.  It seems clear that bundle prices are determined based on what Elsevier believes a university can afford (i.e., will submit to) and are not based on any formula involving numbers of articles.  Thus Elsevier is double-dipping.  The only way they could prove otherwise would be to have a transparent pricing scheme and to allow universities to make public the actual prices paid.

Note that Elsevier has gone far beyond this and even charged for access to articles whose authors paid an OA fee in some cases.


To what extent does the wealth, connections and alumni donation of a parent help their children be accepted into a college in the US?

This is an important question for understanding the system of American higher education. (I do not read it as being an off-topic request for "How do I improve chances of admission to college?" especially since changing a family's wealth is a much more difficult course of action than, say, paying for tutoring.)

There has been some quantitative study of "legacy admissions," with Hurwitz (2011) estimating that the odds of admission are multiplied by 3 for students with a parent who attended the school, after controlling for other factors. (For instance, legacy students in his data tend to have higher SAT scores than non-legacy students.)

He explains that favoring students whose parents attended has benefits similar to favoring those who apply early or sports stars:

  Highly selective colleges face the challenge of maximizing the academic profile of their student bodies, with the understanding that sacrificing some academic talent now will enable the college to preserve or improve its selectivity in the future. In other words, from the college's perspective, an exclusive focus on academics in the admissions process is not sustainable. ... Other tradeoffs might include relaxing admissions standards for early decision applicants to decrease acceptance rates and increase yield rates, and consequently to appear more selective (Jensen & Wu, 2010). Or they might involve admitting academically lackluster star athletes to maintain the successful sports teams that encourage alumni giving (Holmes, 2009; Meer & Rosen, 2009). Relatives of alumni (legacies) offer enthusiasm and familiarity to colleges, and the special treatment awarded to them in the admissions process helps to preserve generational ties that also are intended to motivate financial generosity. (from section 2.1)

His data do not include parents' giving rates, but they compare the same student's admissions across multiple colleges, showing an advantage at a parent's alma mater.

For some historical background, in a legal review of legacy admissions, Lamb (1992) explains how legacy admissions policies came about. Harvard and Yale kept out most public school students with a Latin requirement through the end of the 19th century, and only had to deal with selective admissions upon dropping that requirement. Their (at least somewhat) meritocratic process that followed let in "too many" Jewish and Catholic applicants. Columbia started asking for family information (religious affiliation, father's name and place of birth) in 1919, and other elite schools followed. In 1926, Harvard announced it was taking things like "personality" into account in admissions and started requiring photographs with applications; they used the photos and the discretion to make it harder for Jews, Catholics, and (likely) black students to gain admission, while increasing the proportion of legacy students. (p. 494)

So, the example of John F. Kennedy's 1935 Harvard application is an interesting one. He had famous parentage and family background at Harvard (and by WWII 1/4 of Harvard students were legacies, according to Lamb p. 495). In his case, his Catholicism was probably not held against him.

Lamb also reviews data from a Department of Education Office of Civil Rights inquiry into Harvard admissions. Circa 1992, the Harvard admissions process benefited legacies, and gave additional weight to children of alumni who served on the "Schools and Scholarship Committee" (p. 502), which is apparently a group of alumni interviewers. (My guess would be those who give time are more likely to also give money, but I do not know that donations would change the odds of being accepted as an alumni interviewer.)

In the graduate realm, my guess would be that graduate programs that charge admission (especially for professional training) are much more likely to have legacy preferences than academic programs. However, in subjective processes where a department is hoping to get a good yield of applicants or hire a faculty member who will choose them, I'm sure that there is some benefit in being able to say in an interview, "It's great to be back at this university! My parents met here..."

As a backdrop to this question, there is a longstanding literature that admission into selective colleges, attendance at any college, and graduation rates from college, depend strongly on family socioeconomic status, including level of parent education and family income.

For instance, Duncan, Kalil, and Ziol-Guest (2017) find:

  Across 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high- and low-income children account for approximately three-quarters of the increasing gap in completed schooling, one-half of the gap in college attendance, and one-fifth of the gap in college graduation.

Controlling for family structure does not explain much of the difference they find, but some of it is related to maternal age; the "maternal age gap" between higher-income and lower-income families increased over the time period they're looking at. (It is not clear whether maternal age is causal or a marker of other family differences.)

Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, and Yagan (2017) look at intergenerational mobility by parent wealth, finding that children from rich families are much more likely to attend college--and fancier colleges--than their poorer counterparts.

Family connections and legacy admissions will not shape these overall enrollment statistics, because the kind of students whose families have that pull are very unlikely to be on the margin of not attending any college.

Instead, sociologist Annette Lareau's idea of "concerted cultivation" is probably much more relevant. Middle- and upper-class parents know the pathways for success and train their children into the attitudes and behaviors that prepare them for success in this society. The example aeismail gives of volunteering to work in a lab runs along these lines.


recommended and reliable proofreading services

Have you tried getting the proofreading done within your own university?  This is not made explicit in your question, but my guess is that you are not a native speaker of English and you are writing in English.  If you are attending an anglophone university there will probably be places where you can just show up and get help on proofreading your paper (the humanities version of drop-in tutoring).  So I'm assuming that you are not attending an anglophone university.  But at (almost?) any university there should be faculty and students who are working on English writing specifically. Can you find a student who is willing to help you?  Perhaps you may even be able to offer some other academic service to the student in exchange.


What is the possibility of being rejected by Graduate school if a professor has already acclaimed to give me a RA offer

If the Graduate School has the final say, then you will have to wait for their decision - we cannot guess their response, and probably neither can the professor.

However, if the professor has the final say and the Grad School just processes his acceptance then you should be fine, assuming there are no hidden things...


Who holds intellectual property rights on a thesis?

Your institution almost certainly has a policy on this, and an office dedicated to administering it.  You should consult them.  If you really think this is serious, you should also consult an intellectual property attorney rather than relying on the babblings of some goofball from the Internet (e.g. me).

In the US, employees of a university are commonly required to sign an agreement that the university has an interest in any patent or other profitable invention that they develop in the course of their work.  The agreement usually specifies that the royalties and other profits are to be split between the university and the inventor.

I have not heard of this being required of students, and if you had signed one, you would presumably know.  However, if your advisor had a significant part in the project, he or she may have some rights in it as a matter of law (and the university in turn would get a share of your advisor's, per their agreement).

Note that it may be relevant where the funding for the project came from, and what if any financial support you received from the university.


How to respond to allegations of misconduct in authorship dispute?

You should gather all your materials related to this project into one place (emails, codes, lab notebooks, etc) and talk to an attorney immediately. Presumably you can be dismissed from your job for research misconduct if they find against you. Only an attorney can help you navigate the related employment laws of your country, state, or region, your university's regulations and rules, and whatever granting agency's rules and regulations that you are operating under.

I would not respond until you've had an attorney competent in this area at least evaluate your case and your options.


Is the syntax used in this tex.stackexchange answer valid?

Yes


Emailing HOD to enhance faculty application

To stand out from the rest of the applicants and to bring to attention the application to the head of the department (HOD), would emailing the HOD enhance my application or would it affect it negatively.

Realistically, it does not affect your application at all. Firstly, this does not make you "stand out" nearly as much as you think it does, because quite a few people have the idea that writing some sort of personal letter to the head of the hiring committee improves their chances. Secondly, what do you expect will realistically happen? That the HoD thinks "gee, nxkryptor certainly shows initiative, better put them on the shortlist"? This is really not how academic hiring works.

The most realistic effect is that the HoD sees your email among the >100 mails of the day, exhales a short sigh, and then either directly moves it to "read" or writes you a polite "thanks for letting me know". 120 seconds later they have forgotten your name again, and it won't impact the evaluation of your package in any noticeable way.


How to properly cite (and write a paragraph) that a paper is based upon another paper but proposes different contribution?

I think using the data isn't an issue and you can just simply cite the paper. As far as anonymity goes, just citing and using that data doesn't disclose the anonymity. Unless there is a rule where an experiment in paper A can not be carry forwarded in another paper, you should be good to go.
To write it properly, refer to some other paper in your domain which does the same. In CS, there are multiple papers churning out solutions for the same data.
Re-using images is something I would suggest not to do, newer examples of potential edge cases in the previous paper would hold better. It generally is allowed unless mentioned explicitly.


Resume writing guideline for applying a PhD position

I've never heard of a University admitting students based on a resume.  Universities use transcripts, standardized test, statements of purpose, and letters of recommendation to admit students.

The statement of purpose is probably the closest to a resume, but this is meant to be more of a narrative of why you're pursuing a PhD, not a sales pitch about how awesome you are (which is what a resume is).

From your question it sounds like you may not have much experience with graduate research.  This is fine, but it sounds like you're approaching the PhD as another job, which is wrongheaded.  A PhD gets you out of the trenches of customer demands and allows you to focus on "pie in the sky" problems.  If you want to remain business focused, a PhD may not be for you.

If you do want a PhD, you should speak with your profs. from your MS degree.  They will be able to guide you towards universities and programs that will appreciate your industry experience.  Is there a reason you don't want to apply in the US (using the word resume suggest you're American).


Is it better for a mathematical paper to have a citation or a nice theorem + another coauthor?

I think it is not important which option makes your paper look good, but the best question here is "what is the right thing to do?"
If you are such a talented and hardworking undergraduate student who can write a publishable paper, you will certainly have a very bright future in grad school and later as a researcher. So, don't worry how your first paper is going to be evaluated or cited. Hopefully you will write better papers and you can prove yourself in the future. Regarding publishing research papers, the right thing to do is that you publish your paper as perfect as it is possible for you at the moment, which means it is better you add the solution (and one more co-author) to your paper.


Is there such thing as "paper dump conference"? If yes, what actually is it?

I think there are two different but related kinds of conferences.

First are the conferences which are essentially bogus and shady. They do exist and run but the associations and quality they claim is fake. These are borderline fraud conferences but hard to prove so because they will come up with some bare minimum genuine-ness criteria if called out. People I know usually avoid them and their CFPs go to spam mail.

Second are the conferences which are genuine but fairly low on popularity and quality. Such conferences are often easy targets if you want to get something out in some catalog and want a speaking experience. As an anecdote, my professors used to call these second type of conferences the "paper dump" venues.


How should I email a group member from an international group in my area that I previously worked with?

Young students are expected to move around for any number of reasons, so I don't think there is any particular need to explain your reasons for changing groups unless the other person asks.  Instead, I would recommend getting back in touch with a simple greeting and a focus on the new collaboration that you are aiming to establish.  An example of an email along these lines might be:

  Hello, Dr. X:

  You may remember me from our previous work when I was studying under Prof. Mysterio.  I am now pursuing my Ph.D. under Prof. Moriarty, working on the same subject of penguin wrangling.  As before, your work on penguin tracking devices would be very useful; would you be interested in continuing our collaboration?

Adjust as appropriate for your particulars.


Email etiquette for requesting a meeting with a professor who one won't do research with or take a class from?

I'm assuming that you are a graduate student.

Simply send a short, polite email expressing that you are interested in his/her research and that you would like to talk about it. If you share a coffee machine, lounge, canteen, etc, you could suggest to talk over coffee. Certainly, say who you are and what you do in the email, and indicate why you are interested.

Don't ramble on in the email. No one has time to read long emails.

Showing interest in research and showing that you won't be wasting his/her time are main points to observe. Most researchers (unless they are ridiculously famous and super busy) would be happy to explain their work and create new avenues for future exploration.


What to do when majority of the students do not bother to do peer grading assignment?

You seem to have the grading scheme mis-targeted.

When you make peer review part of your grading scheme you grade the review not the paper reviewed. Failure to do the review should be reflected in the reviewer's grade not in the author's grade.

The criteria I use for grading reviews are along the lines of

Does the review correctly identify strengths and weakness of the submitted material?
Does it communicate problems clearly and helpfully to the author?
Are the criticisms couched in constructive language? (I know, this is not actually necessary or honored in the real world, but I want my classroom to be a comfortable learning environment so I insist.)
Does the review identify what parts of the paper are the source of particular complaints. ("Section 3.2 is unclear because..." as opposed to "Some parts of the paper are unclear").

Note that this means I have to read and review the paper myself and then read and grade the reviews. It's painfully time-consuming.

The positive aspects of this kind of assignment is that it engages the students at the "evaluation" tier of Bloom's taxonomy, and exposes them to a range of different quality of work so they get a chance to understand for themselves that some writing is just plain better than other samples.

The negative aspects include the amount of time used, the somewhat subjective nature of the grading criteria, and a tendency for students to tell each other how very well they are all doing (it requires a certain expertise to do a good—and especially a critical—job of evaluating the work of others; if your students aren't at that level yet they won't set high standards for their peers).

Addendum

Over the weekend I saw a talk on a system called calibrated peer review, which provides a framework for using peer review as part of the grading scheme for student essays. I have no personal experience with the system.

The whole system is mediated over the internet. Assignments proceed in several phases.

Student receive the prompt, do any necessary research, then write and submit their response.
Students then receive a rubric for assessing responses to the same assignment and apply it to three sample responses provided by the instructor (designed to mimic poor, adequate and good student responses).

Success in this stage is defined by having a rating close to that assigned by the instructor. They are allowed a second chance on any where they deviate excessively.

The weight of a students review in the third stage is determined by their performance in this stage (students whose use of the rubric does not match the instructor's will have less impact then student whose application of the rubric matches the instructor's).
Students then read and rate three anonymous responses from their peers (and possibly from the instructor who can provide a 'student' response as well as the three used for calibration). These responses are factored into the author's grade on the assignment using the weights established in stage 2.

Finally, students read and rate their own response. Success here defined by matching the consensus.

Disputes and special cases are resolved by the instructor.

Clearly there is a lot going on there. The anonymity, the use of the calibration stage, and the weighting of student evaluations by their success in rating the calibration responses all work to prevent the worst failure modes of just asking students to grade each other's work directly. Even so, you need that rule that the instructor can overrule the system in exceptional case.

When all is said and done a student's grade on the assignment can be based more on their rating (of samples, of their peers's responses, and of their own submission) than on their own writing. The speaker showed a grading scheme he used in which the essay itself was only worth 20% of the assignment grade with the rest coming from various parts of the review sequence.

This is a lengthy process and is used more on short writing assignment than on substantial papers. It also requires considerable prep, as the instructor must provide the prompt, the rubric, three calibration responses and possibly a fake 'student' response.


Is it a bad thing if my Personal History Statement reveals my intention to immigrate?

People who get a Ph.D. and also try to immigrate are generally quite welcome in US academia.  The problem you may run into is that some people who just want to immigrate sometimes try to use a Ph.D. program as a visa source without having any real interest in a Ph.D., and then drop out when they find a company that can hire them.  This is understandably annoying to professors, who may have spent quite a bit of time, energy, and money on such a student, only to find the student has been disingenuous all along.  Thus, if you "smell" like such a student, you may find difficulty getting admitted.

If this is your intention, don't do it.

If you truly want a Ph.D., however, and the immigration is a separate desire, then I would advise you to just focus on the things that are about getting a Ph.D. Let your passion and your focus shine through, so that's the main thing that the professors notice.  Don't worry about trying to hide your desire to immigrate: if it comes out naturally as a small part of your statement, that's OK, since the professors reading it will likely be guessing you want to immigrate unless you explicitly say otherwise.


advantages in applying early to PhD programs

The only likely advantage to applying early is that you won't run into unexpected events that make it difficult to meet the deadline, and that this could improve the quality of your application (especially the written/essay portions) as well as avoid simply failing to meet the deadline at all.

That said, this can be a very valuable advantage. You'll find a lot of other questions here from people panicking about having missed application deadlines, having deadlines approaching too quickly, being unable to reach their writers for recommendation letters, etc.

I would not recommend applying extremely early (as-in, months in advance) - in that case, you'll instead be regretting having missed your most recent accomplishments. Give yourself some cushion against the deadline, and don't worry about gaming the system beyond that. No one cares (or probably even knows) if your application is officially submitted 0.01 or 1 or 2 or 3 weeks before the deadline: the deadline is there so that the admissions committee has a known day to start the job of reviewing while being fair to everyone. That's the only game.


How will Phd guides treat students who are pursuing PHD under scholarships other than institute one?

The answer is based on my experience as faculty at a UK university (engineering).

Officially: There is no discrimination between institute or externally funded PhD students (either from the UK or their home country). There are strict rules and a logging and management system that ensures all students get the same number of guaranteed supervision hours.

Reality: Our school management actually is biased to support more students with international scholarships. The reason is that they bring a lot of money into the school directly through the huge amount of fees their scholarship pays.

Other info: Supervisors (incl. myself) tend to bias towards stronger students in the long-term (no matter their scholarship). When a student generates a lot of results and writes many high-quality papers, then I am inclined to support the student more than the minimum required (review papers, have more meetings, work more closely, etc.).

The first 1-1.5 year I support weaker students slightly more than the “guaranteed” to give them a chance to catch up. If a student is weak after the first 1-1.5 year, then I tend to provide them with the minimum required supervision while spending more time with the stronger students.

The reasoning is that spending 100 hours extra with a strong student might lead to 3 strong journal publications while with a weak student 100 hours extra might lead to an average journal at best. Since my progression is heavily based on academic track record, it’s natural to bias towards the most beneficial use of my time. Note that these are extra hours in addition to the “guaranteed” by the regulations supervision.


Does any scholarship require the benefiting student to make open access any research paper they wrote during the scholarship period?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds scholarships and has an open access policy:

  [...] We have adopted an Open Access policy that enables the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation, including any underlying data sets. [...]

The Max Planck Society in Germany funds scholarships and has an open access policy.

These are the two examples I remembered directly.


Should I send an email to the author of a book/paper asking for clarification?

If a work (book or otherwise) is assuming you know a concept, yet you can't find information about them elsewhere, then it's likely that either you're missing something fundamental or else the concept may itself be problematic.  I had an experience of the latter sort once reading a book about "holons" that all sounded very nice if you were just sort of reading causally but ultimately turned out to be basically pointless handwaving.

In either case, it's always OK to write to the author of a scientific work to ask about their work.  Don't expect them to teach you a course, however.  Instead, you can say something like:

  I'm reading your book "Weasel-Taming in but a Single Fortnite", and although I find it very interesting, I'm not familiar with some of the things it assumes as background. Would you be willing to give me some pointers on where to learn about the Voight-Kampff test or how to temper chocolate?

substituting the appropriate nouns, of course.  If your email doesn't get lost in their inbox, most authors will be more than happy to at least give you a hint for where to go learn about their favorite subjects.


Conditional acceptance then rejection – worthy of appeal?

I believe you have misunderstood what the first "acceptance" meant (which could have been worded better to prevent this).

A journal generally has many editors and an editorial board.

The typical journal review structure has your paper go to a single editor, who decides if the paper passes first muster and assigns reviewers if so.  Once the review process is complete, that editor then decides if the paper is to be rejected, revised, or advanced to the full editorial board. Your "conditional acceptance" seems to be the first editor advancing the paper to the full editorial board.  The board then made the final decision to reject the paper.  Note that some journals (in some fields) can have a high rejection rate from the editorial board. So while that initial "acceptance" can feel like a victory you're not actually out of the woods yet.

I expect your chances for a successful appeal to be small.  The decision seems only slightly based on your paper and mostly on the technical details of how the journal selects publications.  They're unlikely to bend those to your benefit.


Is it odd to contact past graduate student?

In regards to your question what you should write I have but a few hints:

Students may be dependent for a very long time on their former advisor. Therefore, they may not want to badmouth their advisor to a stranger and answer some questions untruthfully (or ignore your request). So you should (if you want to get honest answers) formulate questions in a way such that no answer is negative. I. e. if it's very important to you that your advisor helps you a lot, you should not ask "Does the advisor helps a lot?" but rather sth. like "Is the advisor more hands-on or hands-off"? Also, of course ask as detailed as possible. The same things go for the "future career".

Since I would consider it rather impolite to start an email with many questions, you should ask by writing "Is it okay to ask you a few questions about your advisor and your future career"? Maybe you should also clarify what you mean by "future career".

If this is at all possible, you may ask to meet the students in person (of course in the way which is most comfortable to them). In a personal meeting, people are more likely to tell you true negative things (if they got a good impression of you) since their is no written trail.