How should I interpret the result of AMS annual survey

Academic job prospects are an important consideration, but the AMS survey results are too coarse-grained for that.  They average together people from very different circumstances, which means they aren't representative of any individual job applicant.  Some people have much better chances that one would guess from these numbers, while others have much worse chances.

Instead, I'd recommend estimating your chances based on your advisor's previous students and others who have graduated recently from your department.  These are both much more highly correlated with your own chances than your broad subfield is.  You could view the subfield as a lower-order correction factor, but I'm not convinced it really matters (I'd bet it disappears in the noise).  I'd also recommend having a detailed discussion with your advisor about the job market and how to position yourself to do well.

Aside from averaging together students at many different sorts of departments, the field-based numbers conflate several issues: how many people were forced to take a nonacademic job unwillingly, how many people chose one over academic offers, and how many people never particularly wanted to work in academia in the first place.  These are all correlated with the field, sometimes obviously (e.g., statistics) and sometimes less so.  For example, my impression is that some fields are more likely to attract unambitious students who aren't really on track for academic jobs.  I don't have any statistical evidence for this, but I think such students are more likely to choose algebra than geometry, say, because they probably took an algebra course but not a geometry course in their undergraduate studies.  If you aren't one of these students, then their existence says nothing about your chances.

In any case, the take-home message is that it's difficult or impossible to extract useful predictions for your own case from this data.


Supervisor appears to have a different scientific attitude

I think you may be attempting perfection (though you may
 not define it as such), but the reality of research is that it is constantly evolving, and may never mature into perfection.

Conflict, rejection and skepticism are all indeed 'part of the game'. If not your guide, then an editor, a reviewer or a fellow-researcher will (almost certainly) at some point refute your ideas. Many times they will not (and may not need to) justify themselves, which will add to the discomfort.

If an idea is wrong, it will be pointed out at some stage, maybe before submission, or during review (and sometimes after publication). Even if this happens, it will not blot your career as a researcher (unless the mistake is very fundamental, targets other researchers wrongly or involves some kind of trickery). So you should do your due diligence and rest assured after. By due diligence, I mean being thorough, verifying and re-verifying until you are satisfied that your work is technically and logically sound, in all aspects.

Also, never forget that the work is a partnership between you and your guide. Any responsibility for mistakes is held jointly between both. The more junior you are, the greater is the guide's responsibility.


How to automatize the making and sending of event's attendance certificates?

I suggested in my comment that you could search on Stack Overflow for a mailmerge or vba solution.

This is one example of printing sheets that you could adapt to your situation:
https://stackoverflow.com/q/46332953/4961700


There is no reason to panic.

A 1.x grade in Bachelor is good. Master's programs in Germany in Electrical Engineering tend to be less mathematically heavy that Bachelor's. They also tend to leave you enough free time, which some students use to work for money and you can use it to revise the basics in Mathematics and Physics.

You do not need to start from scratch. If you got good grades in those courses, you will be able to pick up the content quickly again.

It is normal not to fully understand every single idea and have to "accept" some things at the beginning. Intuition comes with time.

26 is not too old. Many students (especially international students) get a job for a few years between Bachelor's and Master's. Starting a Master with 26 is not the most common thing but it is not rare.

You seem to be worried about the switch from Fachhochschule to university. Don't be. Mathematics and Physics are the same everywhere. From what you write, you seem to believe you performed well in your Bachelor's. Your professor also thinks you are ready: listen to them.


Wildly Varying Scores on GMAT and GRE - Should I Send Both?

Since the fields you mentioned (quantitative marketing and finance) are both heavily based on mathematics, I would think that the quantitative score is by far the most important. If you can possibly avoid it, you don't want to be in a position of having to explain away a weakness, especially where the weakness is at a very important criterion.

Thus, I recommend that you submit only the GRE score and make no mention of the GMAT. Although your verbal score in GMAT was quite good, it isn't quite as important for those fields you are applying for, and the mediocre quantitative results would probably outweigh anything positive you might otherwise have.

That said, you could simply call the schools you want to apply to and ask them directly; since each school might have different preferences for GMAT and GRE and their respective scores, one blanket answer might not be suitable for all the schools you are applying to.

Specifically, you could try to talk to the department chair or to the graduate program director (just call the department office and ask to be transferred to the right person). You don't have to identify yourself; just say that you want to anonymously ask a question related to admissions.

I know that that last suggestion might sound wild, but believe it or not, it often works surprisingly well--I recently used that kind of strategy to receive anonymous answers from a research ethics office concerning a grey research ethics question I was faced with, and I quickly got the exact clarity that I needed for my situation. Never underestimate the power of picking up the phone and calling.


Marie Curie IF, can secondments be hosted by my PhD institution?

As far as I understand from the official documentation, the secondment stage is meant to increase the impact of the fellowship in the host institution. From a cursory reading I don't see any reason why it couldn't take place in the PhD institution, as long as there is a solid motivation for it.

As I mentioned in another question about MSC:

  Some EU institutions have a specialized office to help applicants write good applications. If the target host institution does it's a really good idea to contact them and ask them for advice, it can drastically increase your chances.


What are the rules of authorship when posting a reply to a discussion?

This sounds like a question best settled by first reviewing how common changing the authorship order is in the relevant journal/field and then having a conversation with your professor. Ultimately, it is up to the two of you to decide.


Is it feasible to pursue PhD with BE Degree/16+ years of experience, and is it worth it?

Your assumption depends on your location. If you are interested in obtaining a PhD in Computer Science at a school in the US, then in fact many programs do not expect you to have a Master's degree prior to beginning your doctoral studies. However, if you've been in industry for 16 years, it may be difficult to secure the letters of recommendation required for entry. Certainly letters from employers are accepted, especially in your case, but if they do not show a strong desire and aptitude for research, they will not be worth as much. However, don't let that dissuade you. Apply anyway, if that's what you want to do.


Short answer: No.

I have judged science fairs in the Southern US for many years. The "negative result" is not going to affect how highly you are ranked. I once supervised high school students who won the local science fair competition and went on to be semi-finalists in the Siemens competition. Their project was mostly comprised of "negative" data suggesting that a newly reported finding in the scientific literature might be wrong: link to their project. Their "negative" data was later used in a major scientific paper link (Notice how the title contains two instances of NOT; basically a paper entirely made up of "negative" data).

Science fair projects are mainly judged on:

Clarity of presentation
Adherence to the scientific method
Logical conclusions based on the data
Coming across as professional, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and personable during the interview

What you should do:

Emphasize why it was important to test your hypothesis in the first place.
Critically analyze why the results did not support your hypothesis. Of course, the hypothesis could have been wrong, but could you have tested it in other ways? Is a technical problem a possibility (it always is)? Could you tweak your hypothesis in a way that it would explain the experimental results?
Think about alternative hypotheses and how those could be tested. Be prepared to discuss these during your presentation.
Focus on preparing an awesome looking poster,
Do not be negative or unenthusiastic during your presentation. This cannot be emphasized enough. Keep in mind that 95% of the experiments that a scientist performs "fail". And most science fair judges know this!

Good luck!


Changing colleges for international graduate student

Yes, it is possible to transfer to another graduate program but often not very easy.  It's typical for graduate programs to limit the number of credits that they'll transfer (no more than 12 at my institution), and you may end up having to retake courses that you've already taken.

A much bigger issue can be getting admitted to another program.  If you have not done well in your courses (say a GPA of at least 3.5 or so), then you could find it very hard to be admitted to another graduate program.    It is also very important to have at least one positive letter of recommendation from a faculty member at the institution you're currently attending.


Importance of undergraduate institution in grad-school admissions (math)

I predict that you will be fine. The admission to a grad/doctoral program depends much (much) more on what you do than on the ranking of the institution you attend. Rankings can be deceiving and no one sorts candidates by the rankings of, for example, news magazines.

If you do well and impress people so that you get good letters of recommendation then you will be in contention.

That said, the competition for slots in top programs is very fierce.

The effect of mere college rankings would be small. But the effect of good grades in hard courses with good letters is large.

In particular, an A student from a state school (almost any of them) would be in better shape than a C student from a school in anyone's top five.

Work hard. Take advantage of opportunities. Work closely with a few professors.


References for Ph.D. admission application

You will certainly want to track down old professors. It might be helpful to get letters from professional colleagues, depending on your field. (I am in mathematics, and in pure math this would not be helpful. But maybe, e.g. CS would be different.)

It would be very helpful if you could get a newer recommendation from a professor in the field in which you would like to study. There are a couple of ways to do this:

If you live near a research university, find a graduate course that looks interesting and ask the professor's permission to sit in on the course. Do all the work assigned for the course, and do it damn well. Ask the professor if he/she would be willing to give occasional feedback, and/or grade your homework. If all goes well, you can ask for a letter of recommendation.
If this is not feasible (perhaps you live further away, or your working hours are not flexible), plan to do a lot of self-study and find some research university which is semi-close. Ask a couple of professors if you could make appointments with them, and solicit their advice on self-study and preparing for grad school.

If one is especially friendly or helpful, ask if he/she could later evaluate the results of your self-study. Go work your butt off, then return and talk to the professor, demonstrate that you've learned a lot, and let the professor teach you some more. Repeat if there's time. Eventually, ask for a letter.

Both of these depend on having the time to informally begin your studies early in a serious way -- but if you want to get a Ph.D. this is a good idea anyway. These ideas also depend on the generosity of professors -- this will likely be forthcoming if you demonstrate that you are serious, and also that you intend to be very respectful of their time.

Good luck to you!


Should conference papers in computer science contain full proofs, and should these be checked by reviewers?

"Rigour" is a nice sounding word. I like the way it feels when I say it. But aside from making nice sounds, it has some issues:

  ... which are then typically subjected to a rigorous peer-review process which can often take several years.

Let's forget about how nice the word sounds and take a stab at a pros and cons analysis of having fast-to-write, fast-to-review, fast-to-publish, not-so-rigorous conference papers.

Pros:

Time-to-publish is reduced (moving from a couple of years to a couple of months), meaning that results can have impact faster.
Other authors will become aware that there are results in this area, rather than trying to prove results that have already been proven but are stuck in a multi-year peer-review process.
Reviewers have to expend less effort reviewing less rigorous papers in a less rigorous way. They can use that excess effort elsewhere.
Authors have to expend less effort to write less rigorous papers. They can use that excess effort elsewhere.
The ability to write less rigorous papers does not preclude the possibility of writing a follow-up paper that is more rigorous.
Authors have something to lose by publishing incorrect non-rigorous results: their reputation. (Not really a pro, rather more of a check-and-balance.)

Cons:

Less rigorous papers may be more prone to being incorrect. This may lead to incorrect papers building on these results.
Once a lack of rigour seeps in, one is on a slippery slope. Without any rigour, one is not proving anything. The whole thing become pointless.

I do not believe in some absolute notion of "rigour" for any non-trivial proof. I believe it's a relative term. One writes proofs for one's audience. The notion of "rigour" is thus community dependent. It is up to a community to decide what level of "rigour" is most appropriate for that community. If the "rigour" drops too low and incorrect results become a problem, the community should adjust. If the "rigour" becomes too high and reviewers have to spend months checking the dotted i's and crossed t's on long proofs for results that are simply not worth that effort, then that will carry its own costs, particularly in terms of the capacity of the community to do work, where diversity of work will inevitably become the first victim (the trend will be towards safe incremental papers).

Applying the standards of rigour from one community to another is, in my mind, thus inappropriate in and of itself. Rigour is, in my mind, not the goal. The goal, in my mind, is that the community be "productive" in whatever notions they and society deem productive (in the sense that society, after all, is funding this cost, and will not continue to fund this cost if the community is expending its capacity in pursuing rigour for rigour's sake).

tl;dr: I believe that "rigour" is a means, not an ends. I think if you really want to take exception to the lack of rigour in a community, you should show that the cons are outweighing the pros, which is to say you should highlight incorrect results and the time wasted by the community on following-up those incorrect results. Simply arguing that community A chooses to have less rigour than community B and thus community A is doing something wrong, is, in my mind, insufficient as an argument. You need to argue that the perceived lack of rigour is a problem.


Including publications on CV if none are peer-reviewed

I would put all of the non-academic writing you've done under a heading like "Other Writing for a Popular Audience". Beware that such publications won't count for much in applying for faculty jobs, or at least, that they won't replace peer-reviewed academic research. However, they might be a "value-add" at some places.

You never list in the CV where you've been cited. (At least not that I've ever seen). Instead, what I see people do is mention their citations as a single line in the cover letter. "My work has been cited in prestigious venues like The Journal of X Studies and X Studies Review."


What features does Adobe Illustrator lack compared to Microsoft PowerPoint for making posters?

I believe that Adobe Illustrator has many more features that MS PowerPoint for graphic design and image processing.

The key question is: what will you use those features to accomplish when creating your poster?

I created sever posters in MS PowerPoint and found that it had sufficient features and was easy to use.  The only issues came when trying to print it out, because the output of Mac PowerPoint wasn't compatible with the Windows PowerPoint that the printer used.

In my view, extra-fancy graphic design will not result in better posters.  Instead, what most posters need is bigger fonts, less text, bigger/simpler graphics and images, and headlines + call-outs that guide the viewer through the story.  You can accomplish all these goals using PowerPoint.


How to tell my advisor I stopped sending him weekly reports on my results because he was not answering my emails?

I would say that, like others, you should tell him honestly.
Something to the effect of:

"My apologies for the lack of communication in the past few weeks. I was under the false impression that you only desired my reports in urgent cases, as there were several that you did not reply to. It was my mistake to make that supposition without explicitly asking you. In the future, I very much would like to continue working from home but I also would like to find the best way for both of us to communicate. We can certainly continue a report every two weeks but, in that case, it would be very helpful to me if you would be able to offer me a little bit of feedback for the report. I understand how busy your schedule is but I would truly appreciate it. Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks,
[Your name]"


Why patents are not cited in papers as that of journal papers?

There are certainly papers citing patents, mostly in engineering fields. So, yes it is certainly OK to cite a patent.

Now patents have an entirely different purpose than scientific articles. They usually contain detailed descriptions of methods and devices and (sometimes wild) speculations about practical applications of these. Useful to protect potential commercial use, but not really to scientists wanting to build on existing knowledge.

More specifically, what they typically don't contain are original experimental data, or other means of scientifically evaluating the described methods or devices.

Very often, if the development of the patented method or device has led to scientific discoveries, these have been published separately as articles (or conference proceedings for the fields where that applies). Those will be much more scientifically informative, and hence more likely to be cited in academic articles.


Since it's your first paper, you can in general assume that your supervisor knows better than you if it is worthwhile publishing. There are many publications out there - in math and other fields - that takes an idea or formalism from one paper, and applies it to a slightly different area. This is how progress in research works.

And yes, you should definitely cite the other paper. The fact that you've been inspired by something else does not disqualify your paper. In fact, quite the opposite can be the case, if it is not obvious that the idea from the other paper can be applied to a new area.


I have agreed to do undergraduate research in a lab, but then I found another lab that seems more appealing. What are my obligations?

Unless you have formally signed some sort of agreement to work in the lab of Prof. X, you do not have what amounts to an actual obligation to work in that lab. If you so choose, you could say that you've found a better offer and work in the lab of Prof. Y.

Now, it should be pointed out that even though you've made a commitment to Prof. X's lab, if you choose to honor it (and personally, I would lean toward doing so), it should also be noted that such a promise does not mean you are committed to work in Prof. X's lab exclusively. It is entirely common for undergraduates to bounce around between different positions until they find something they like. Most faculty understand this, and so it shouldn't be a big deal in the long run if you decide to work in Prof. X's lab for six months to a year before trying out Prof. Y's lab.


How soon after the application deadline do search committees start looking at the applications?

The actual timeline for filling a faculty position is often almost entirely decoupled from the stated deadline.  The stated deadline is often set through interaction with an HR department or other formal process, and may or may not reflect the hiring committee's actual expectations of when they will get the applications in which they are most interested.

In the case of applicants who are likely to be seriously considered, the committee will often have effectively begun considering their application before they ever submitted it, based on interactions at conferences and other forms of networking.  Other applicants are likely to be triaged as they come in, with likely prospects given serious consideration quickly and unlikely prospects.
In the end, however, every faculty has its own process and expectations, which may vary widely: in some cases, they may be closely tied to the deadline, and in other cases they may have little or nothing to do with.


Is there any difference between journals and conferences which charge money vs those which don't?

I must disagree with the CS folks in the comments†. Whether a journal charges or not is immaterial to the quality of the journal. You can only gauge its quality by being an active researcher in that field, not by silly metrics (this is an order of magnitude worse than impact factor).

Different journals from the same publishing house might also charge different rates for publications. For instance, AIP publishes both the Phys. Rev. series (+ PRL) and the J. Acoustical Society of America. While there are no charges for the former set, JASA has "voluntary" charges for publishing.

Such "voluntary" charges are very common (some flagship and top-of-the-line IEEE journals come to mind) and serves primarily as an opt-out for researchers from low income countries in Asia/Africa/S. America. Researchers in N. America, Europe and Australia/NZ are expected to pay the publishing charges, since with the way grants are structured in these countries, there is almost always a specific budget earmarked for publishing costs. Of course, if a researcher has no budget or is publishing in his spare time or as a secondary interest, then they're also welcome to not pay the charges, but I've never seen anyone that's on a grant decline to pay charges.

† Opinions on this site seem to be overrun by CS folks, who generally state them as facts of life. From my years of experience in a variety of fields, I've found their customs to be more of an outlier than the norm (perhaps only mathematics has something in common).


Will a research proposal of looking into applications of current technologies be frowned upon because it does not deal with fundamental research?

I can't say anything about your particular topic or area, but what you need to do is find the right advisor.  The right advisor will not necessarily be doing something very closely aligned with your idea, but will support you in pursuing your idea.  You need to be in an institution that will support interdisciplinary research.  Thus, your home department might not be a robotics program.  But you might take some coursework in robotics.  Make sure the institution you choose to study in has the key academic elements you need in order to learn what you need to learn, and will support your getting the lab space and time you'll need.

I think the key is to find the right advisor.  It might be someone with a joint appointment in two departments.  I imagine most large institutions would probably satisfy the other requirements.


Oral presentation or poster presentation, is it always our choice? (paper submission)

That would depend on the conference itself. You need to read the fine print or ask the program committee. Some will either just accept or reject a paper (as corrected, of course). Some have separate poster sessions with separate committees and a different criteria for acceptance. There is too much variability to make a clear answer.

However, you should not depend on that happening at any conference. It is possible that if your paper is rejected, one of the reviewers might suggest submitting it as a poster. That of course would depend on due dates.


Transitioning from bioinformatics to wet lab?

Learning wet lab techniques takes time and practice. I was a slice electrophysiologist in my "past life", and even now I expect it would take me several months to a year or two to get anywhere near my peak productivity as a graduate student. Maybe not every wet lab experience is as fickle as that, but I feel my colleagues in molecular biology have similar views.
Anyone who hires you as a post doc is taking on an unusual project for a post doc. Whereas a post doc is typically someone who comes in with a lot of expertise and is able to run things on their own, in your situation you'll likely need just as much supervision as an early grad student. Post docs are usually short-term, temporary positions. You may not be able to be productive on techniques you are learning during that window.
Computational skills are in high demand in biology, especially among those who have domain-specific expertise as well. Your best bet may be to find a quid-pro-quo where you can both contribute your computational skills (whether or not these fall under a "bioinformatics" umbrella or not) as a "give", and receiving some further wet-lab training as a "take". I am very confident that these opportunities exist, but they will be harder to find than a more traditional path. However, I think you may have more luck searching for this particular circumstance rather than applying to positions that are solely looking for a wet lab candidate. You'll have to decide for yourself whether this balance is worth it for you.
Good luck!


How can I prepare well for a MSc in the UK?

Here are a few tips if you want to be proactive:

Find out what topics will be covered in the course, and start reading some of the topics which interest you.  See if there are any websites on the university that list the topics offered, and if you can access any of the learning materials.
Reach out to some the professors and start talking to them.  (This will also be helpful later when you select a thesis)
Reach out to previous students; ask for previous years' books and materials.  (Tip: There will probably a facebook group for everybody that does the course for a given year, ask someone to add you to the previous year's group)

But remember, as I mentioned in the comments, in the UK the independent 1-year master's degrees are set up primarily for foreign students as an income stream.  I saw this first hand when I did a master's degree in Oxford.  It is not good for business for them to fail students, so there will be a lot of support available.  So while there is no need to become complacent, I wouldn't worry too much.


Should I add a short-term visiting scholar affiliation in paper submissions?

It's conventional in my field (electrical engineering) to use the home affiliation in the "regular" affiliation field, then note the visiting affiliation in a footnote.

e.g. in footnote,

  Jane Doe conducted this research while she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Basket Weaving.


Posthumous authorship or acknowledgement

There may be laws that govern this, though laws vary from place to place. Normally he would have to give permission and that "right" may legally have passed to his heirs. You would do well to contact someone responsible for his estate and take up the question with them.
But since he never gave permission, you don't have permission, yet, to include him. You have an obligation to acknowledge his contribution and probably cite some of the specifics as well, even though they haven't been published.
Dedicating the book to his memory would be a nice touch also.


Should I write a recommendation letter for a student at a previous job/institution?

When you change job, you don’t erase your memory (well, not in all jobs), nor do you all your responsibilities related to this previous job vanish. It is true that leaving a position creates certain obligations in the data you can retain, and how you can use non-publicly available information pertaining to your older institution. However, in the particular case of a reference letter, I don't think it should cause trouble. Moreover, reference letters are confidential.

Actually, I'd go further than saying it should not be a problem. In fact, I think if you can honestly write him a good recommendation letter, it is part of your responsibility to do it. This responsibility is not to your former institution, but to the student and the academic system as a whole.


Applying to PhD programs - One reference just quit his job

The first thing you need to do is check if your reference is still willing to act as a reference even though they have changed jobs. In general, they will, but if they have retired or left the field completely maybe they do not want to. Potentially, a reference who works in industry has signed some sort of non-compete agreement or an NDA that does not allow them to write a reference any longer. Once you either get the referee's new contact information, or a new reference, you need to email your potential supervisors.

In the email, you need to tell the potential supervisor what happened. A job change is pretty typical and does not look bad in any way. Having to change referees is a little more problematic, but just explain briefly what happened.


I don't know if it's 100% necessary for computational cosmology but I would highly recommend studying General Relativity if you can, especially if the course includes some cosmology as well (fairly common for undergraduate and graduate courses in GR).

Fluency in differential geometry is (I think) an essential skill for a cosmologist, computational or otherwise. Studying GR and cosmology will also greatly help your understanding of the bigger picture, for example, the FLRW background, the Friedmann and continuity equations etc.

Plus GR is a really beautiful theory! I would recommend that any physicist study it if they have the chance.


Literature review both by keywords in title and sorting by publishing date

Have you tried Scopus or Web of Science? Both feature extensive searching filter and sorting options for all fields of science.


Can I write a thesis without any help from others? If I can, how?

A degree is awarded by a university. So you can't get a degree while completely ignoring the university. The problem for us is that the exact rules differ substantially between countries and universities within countries. So we cannot give you any concrete advice.

However, there are typically student advisors at a university whose job is to help you. These are typically people who help students with all the formalities, help with study specific choices, help students who want to go a semester abroad, for bigger problems help the student find the appropriate person in the university, etc. So that would be the first step for you to take. Find that student advisor, and talk to her or him. (S)he will probably tell you that you need to enroll again, and the steps you need to take to find a thesis advisor and write the thesis.

You seem to have had a bad experience at that university, so maybe you want to consider another university. Again talk to the student advisor at that new university and see if they can recognize (some of) the courses you finished from your original university.


Why do some publication venues add the degree type next to the author name?

It depends completely on the journal's editorial criteria.  Some journals will expect that the degrees are included (see JAMA) and some will not (see Research in the Teaching of English).  Professional ego will not come into it -- the journal will want to maintain uniformity from article to article.

Academic cultures differ as to whether degrees are typically appended to names.  In the academic culture in which I spent 30 years of my professional life, use of the "Ph.D." was seen as unnecessary -- if one identified oneself as "Associate Professor of English" or "Professor of English," the Ph.D. was assumed.


How should I split my code and data between an open repository and the article's supplementary files?

A good way to think about the distinction is this:

Code and/or data in a supplementary is static, providing a snapshot that was guaranteed to work in a particular time and place.  Archival presentation is assured, but it cannot be maintained and thus is likely to eventually become obsolete.
Code and/or data in an open repository is maintainable, and thus can be a "live" project that is updated and continues to be executable.  For the same reason, however, it is also subject to possible destruction through a variety of means, including corrupting updates, deletion, and death of the repository.  It will likely be fine for at least a few years, but multi-decade preservation is much more questionable.

However, as @Davidmh points out in the comments, there is generally no reason that you can't put everything in both places.  Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing that prevents code from being distributed under more than one license.  This is particularly true if you first post it in the open repository, then place a snapshot ("fork") of that repository in the supplementary information.  Giving the journal control of a fork does not affect the original repository.

In many cases, however, the open license and the journal's copyright will not even interact with one another.  Many journals will not claim any copyright over the code or data as code or data.  Instead, the journal will claim only the right to distribute the bundle as a supplementary publication, which does not restrict the use of the information in that supplementary as data or code.

Bottom line: first put it in an open repository, then give the journal a snapshot as supplementary.  In the extremely unlikely case that the journal won't take it, the open repository is still a fine place for it to stay.


How to revoke my old paper from a fake journal (waset.org)?

I think there is something you can do to help yourself in this situation.

You could contact Google and ask if they would remove this particular search hit from their cache. As a result your paper will not come up when people search your name in Google. Of course your paper will still exist in their server but I think that a major part of the potential damage can be avoided since I would believe that people do not intentionally go the predator publishers website to search anyones articles.

Here are the instructions to contact Google: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?hl=en


Chances of admission for a PhD program with high WAM (GPA) for masters but an average GPA for undergraduates (A unique case)

I have seen people get into harvard within 3.20 range and I have seen people get rejected with perfect 4.00 from "lesser" schools. From what I have seen it is more about what a transcript / application tells rather than whatever the GPA is. Espcially, you having a masters degree, there are many stories an application could / should tell. I fear no one here would reliably be able to tell you your odds with this amount of information. Even if you disclose every information you have available to yourself, the recommendation letters written about you will have significant implications.

I personally would ask a question like this to my proffesors (with whom I had academical interractions). Your thesis advisor or references would be a good place to start.


Can I apply for a "potential" deferred admission

You can always ask, but as a committee member I would probably vote against such an application unless the candidate is exceptionally good. When departments evaluate openings for PhD programs, they have needs they seek to fill: For teaching assistant positions, to keep the strength of a program, to spend money they might have, to have enough students in graduate classes, etc. All of these needs are timely: They need to be satisfied in the upcoming academic year. So the department is looking for people for next year, not the year after: There will be another crop of applicants to consider for the year after. So unless there are really compelling reasons to admit someone now knowing that they may or may not show up only a year later, departments will generally want to admit people they know will actually come.


What’s the current state of the art in searching for journal articles?

Web of Science is a subscription-based citation database that came out shortly after Google Scholar. I can't compare it to other services such as JSTOR and Galileo (which I have never tried) but at least anecdotally I find it to be better in some respects compared to Google Scholar (better UI and more trustworthy citation counts, at least in my field). However it is subscription-based so whether or not you have access will depend on your employer/institution.
Edit -- There is another citation tool that I feel is criminally underutilized so I feel compelled to promote it. The arXiv has a fantastic browser add-on called the arXiv Bibliographic Explorer which provides detailed information about citations for nearly every article on the arXiv. Even though this is not directly related to your question, I have found it to be an extremely useful tool that not many people know about, so it deserves mention.


How does the PhD thesis examination result impact academic job success?

At least in the US context, I've never heard of such a report being asked for.

In fact, in the case of my own PhD (at MIT) no report ever existed. In the major US research universities I've been at, PhDs are  ungraded. You either get one or you don't.

For sure, the outcomes on your list are all possible. Where I've been though, there is a sheet of paper that has to be signed by the faculty committee members saying that the thesis was successfully defended and accepted. The details of what needed to happen to convince the faculty that the thesis or its defense was good enough were the criteria that the committee used to decided when to sign the sheet (your cases #1-4) or when to tell a student that they never would (your case #5) but they were never part of a formal report.

Perhaps in countries where the specifics of the examination process are more clear, this might be asked for? It's still hard for me to imagine.

If you're going into academic jobs, the letters from the committee members, and the dissertation itself, will tell folks much more than any formal report on the first draft of a dissertation will. If you're heading into academia, you will be asked for those things.


No reply from the professor after the follow up email

My answer will be general -- not specific to the particular institution you want to apply to.

You could contact the department and ask, "I sent my CV to Prof. X, as suggested at the application instructions page (provide link), on [date], but have not heard back yet.  May I go ahead and submit my application, or do I need to wait for a response from the professor?"
Note that four days is not very long.  Depending on the application deadline, you may want to give this a bit more patience.
You have submitted your CV as instructed; unless the instructions say you must hear back from the professor before submitting your application, I suppose you could go ahead and submit your application.


Is the rise of pre-prints lowering the quality and credibility of researcher and increasing the pressure to publish?

The people churning out garbage preprints are also churning out garbage papers in predatory journals which are "peer reviewed".
The preprints aren't why these people are doing it. Being shit scientists driven by perverse incentives is why they're doing it.
Also I cite preprints all the time from people I know (either directly or by reputation) and it's not a problem because I don't need reviewers to tell me if a paper is good. I can read.


What is the most effective way to publish as much of your PhD thesis as you can?

This depends on the dissertation and the field. Publishers want to publish significant results, not chapters. If you have several independently important results you can publish a lot of papers. If you have a dissertation with many results building to a main result, then maybe yes or maybe no, depending on the importance of those intermediate results.

But it is up to the editors and reviewers to make a judgement about publishing.

In some cases, a journal will be willing to publish a long article that contains all of your important results in a single paper. This gets the essence out without trying to salami slice the dissertation.


In-class, allowing students to address professor informally ('tutoyer' / 'tutear')

Your question is completely subjective and context dependent. It adresses the balance between formal and informal, which depends on culture, personality traits, position in the academic hierarchy, etc. It's like asking, which are the pros and cons of teaching in full business suit vs Hawaiian shirt?

Some students will feel more confident if the class environment is informal. Some won't. Some won't see the difference. You (assuming you are the Professor) may feel at ease being talked in an informal tone, or maybe not. If you are in a new country or university and need to figure out your way, attend some classes and check which is the standard. Nonetheless, whatever you chose, don't withdraw your authority as Professor.


Who does a university answer to if their staff and academic advisors make mistakes that cost you time and money?

Every University has a Grievances Redressal Mechanism. Usually, it is a form online that you fill where different types of grievances/reports/complaints are handled by different committees/bodies. e.g. Sexual harassment, Discrimination based on race, etc

Information on how to ask for support or file a complaint and the escalation process is usually detailed in the Student Handbook and on the University Website.

Try having a look at your handbook or search online. And if it is no secret, you can let us know the University name, and somebody here might be able to help locate the right office you can approach for help.

Edit: Although writing directly to the Provost/Vice Chancellor/President, etc or airing your grievance online on social media is frowned upon without exhausting established avenues of help, since you mentioned 'online program', you might want to try to write a polite email asking for this precise information to your program coordinator.


In research paradigm's post-positivism can I prove the hypothesis instead of falsifying it?

In short, post-positivism takes the stance that answers will change with more data and therefore prefers to reject standing assumptions rather than accepting alternatives. Instead of accepting your can say failed to reject. This leaves it in the realm of tentative working belief until more data is presented.

In length, if you are viewing the world through the lens of post-positivism then you believe that though there is a Reality out there it is not perfectly knowable. An example of this is in the moment of this writing there were an exact number of grains of sand within a given radius of the center of the planet. The quantity however is unknowable. Though it is unknowable we can easily reject the hypothesis that there were exactly ten grains of sand within a thousand kilometers of the earth's center. We have rejected a hypothesis without accepting any alternative. Let us say that an alternative hypothesis was put forward that there were 1 * 10 ^ 15 grains of sand. This alternative though certainly not accurate is much less easy to dismiss. Though I imagine a few quick calculations would be sufficient to reject it as well. We allow to stand a hypothesis that we can not bring enough evidence against to reject but we do not ever say that it is the final and true answer.


Is there a setting to prevent Google Scholar from only showing the best matching result?

I think you got a single result because your search matched the title of the article exactly.

I replicated your search and removed "and" and "in" -- and my results were significantly different than yours.

Moral of the story: try removing articles, prepositions, and other function words that are frequently part of titles but offer little in the way of content.


Is a PhD from a developing country worth paying for?

I don't think it's possible to give an answer in the abstract.  In general I wouldn't recommend paying a lot for a Ph.D. program anywhere, but it depends on how much they charge and how much money you have.  Ph.D. programs in developing countries vary enormously in quality and reputation, and how useful they would be for getting an academic job in the U.S. or Europe varies accordingly.

However, you can try to estimate this for the programs you care about.  The key question is how many Ph.D. recipients from these programs get jobs you would like.  Typically you can find lists of former students on a potential advisor's website, and some web searches will reveal what became of them.  (If you can't find any information on someone online, then they probably didn't get an academic job.)  If very few former students have jobs you would like, then that's a bad sign, while it's a good sign if many of them do.  Of course there are no guarantees either way, but this will give some context for how plausible different outcomes are.


Will a PhD help me as a startup founder?

No.

Disclaimer: I am an academic. I have zero experience with startups.

A PhD can be a great way to develop cutting edge ideas, but a startup is not the place to conduct research, it's the place to translate proven research into a business. Major conceptual roadblocks should be sorted out and methods proven before you start a company. Consider the difference between Google as a startup and Theranos. Google had a working research artifact that they needed to develop into a commercial platform. Theranos is apparently going to implode because their basic concept has never been proven even after $400 million dollars of funding.
Startups generally aren't founded on an amazing technical idea. A well-motivated undergrad could build the basic technology platforms behind successful startups like Facebook (databases), WhatsApp (sockets programming), or SnapChat (databases plus sockets programming). There are definitely some startups that are successful because they have a great technical edge that no one else has figured out (see again Google for an example), but they're probably the exception. The bigger value of many tech startups is the fact that they serve an unrecognized need. Their future value comes from their mature systems engineering and user base. For example, Twitter serves about 350,000 tweets per minute, which is not a trivial system to create. WhatsApp and SnapChat have a user base that makes them incredibly valuable.
Research conducted in a PhD program tends to be "basic research". Research conducted for business purposes tends to be "translational research" or "development". They are related but different things.
A PhD program is probably not going to afford you the opportunity to work on a project of your choosing related to your business.
If you are able to work on business-related research there will be a minefield of legal questions over the ownership of the intellectual property when you want to monetize your venture. Unless very specific conditions are met and agreements are made before you start your program, it is guaranteed that the university or your adviser will have some claim to the intellectual property that results from your degree. This isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but it's probably beyond you if you don't currently have the resources to hire a lawyer. And you're not going to get the university to sign away its rights.
There are huge opportunity costs to getting a PhD. You will only have time for a business alongside a PhD if you are extremely dedicated. It is not uncommon for PhD students to work 50-60 hour weeks. If you work on federal research your stipend will be around $25,000-$30,000 per year, which you can easily double as an undergrad doing low-level CS stuff at a company. If you are a hard worker in the right place you could easily triple that number after the five or six years it would take you to get your degree.


When to apply for postdoc positions if papers will be submitted to journals after submitting the PhD thesis?

Get the applications going now.  After all, you will be finishing up SEP.  It's coming soon.  A lot of places are sort of geared to the academic calendar.  (Postdocs can be a little more come and go, but still things may move by the ac calendar.)

Try to dress the resume up by listing some papers as "in preparation".  Yes, it's not ideal that your pub list is so anemic, but it is what it is.  Waiting for it to get better makes no sense.  After all you can always hunt again in the fall, if needed, with the stronger resume.  But I wouldn't stop from looking for a gig now.

Also, it's not at all clear to me why you can't submit the papers now so you can list them as "in review".  This would be normal (publishing pre-thesis) in math, engineering, and hard and soft sciences.  But perhaps this is different in humanities if your thesis will be published as a real book.

Of course your research may be dependent on colleagues or shared apparatus time or the like.  But in that case, I would not be sanguine about hitting SEP thesis and fall paper timelines.  Things can always go wrong.  Try to carve off pieces you can publish now.


Their FAQs section states:

  10. Does submission to SSRN restrict in any way what I can do with my paper?
  No. And if at any time you wish to immediately remove a paper from SSRN, you may do it yourself through SSRN HQ, or contact us to remove it for you.

Contacting them is always an option to make sure though.


Is beautifying a dissertation looked upon unfavourably by the examiners?

In the end this is somewhat a matter of opinion. I personally do appreciate a nice  and professionally looking layout. I am not sure however if adding images that are unrelated to the thesis itself are that helpful. If you want to start each chapter with a quote or image (which can be a nice touch), I would recommend to at least try to find someting that is related to the content of the chapter.

Most important in the end however is of course the scientific content of the thesis. If the content itself is under par, no amount of beautification is going to help you. The last thing you would want to do is to give others the impression that you spent more time on the appearance of your thesis than on the scientific content.


I was a judge in a science competition, should I include that my resume

What is this resume for?

If it's for a job judging science competitions, put it on there.

If it's for a job herding goats in Peru, leave it off.

Anything in the middle, use your experience in judgement to decide if it's relevant.


Citation of Reports from Environmental Agency

Most citation styles follow the basic principle of: Who-When-What-Where, or Author-Date-Title-Source. Your "normal way" of citing follows a variant of this.
Based on this principle, the APA manual (to name but one example) shows how to cite a governmental report:

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people
with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf

The manual tells us: "The specific agency responsible for the report appears as the author. The names of parent agencies not present in the group author name appear in the source element as the publisher. This creates concise in-text citations and complete reference list entries."

Applied to your case, I would suggest your reference to be as the follolwing (in APA style, but you can change the format - such as the position of the year of publication - according to your needs):

Environmental Protection Agency. (2014). Guidance for Assessing Pesticide Risks to Bees. Federal Government of the United States. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/pollinator_risk_assessment_guidance_06_19_14.pdf

and:

European Food Safety Authority. (2018). Evaluation of the Data on Clothianidin, Imidacloprid and Thiamethoxam for the Updated Risk Assessment to Bees for Seed Treatments and Granules in the Eu. European Union. https://doi.org/10.2903/sp.efsa.2018.EN-1378


When reading papers, what's the most convenient way to check a citation without disrupting the reading process?

If you're using Adobe Acrobat Reader (which I suspect you are), you can press alt + left to jump back to where you were before clicking the link. I find it amazingly useful.


How do departments determine the optimal quantity of elective offerings?

Gradually converge to a number that works well, and adapt as things change, by adjusting upward or downward each semester if there were too few/too many the previous semester.

Most classes, including electives, are on a fixed schedule (e.g. "this class is taught in the Spring semester every other year") that is determined and then adjusted by the method described above.

Demand is not spread evenly across all electives; a course that is consistently underenrolled when offered every year might be moved to every two years, while a course that is overenrolled when offered once a year might change to every semester.

Demand does not usually change dramatically from one year to the next, so this works pretty well.


If boss is my PhD supervisor, is a wage negotiation inadequate?

Your post has the unusual feature that part of your first question actually answers your second question. Namely, you write:

  However, I want to avoid that he cancels the offer due to inadequate behavior from my side.

and then ask

  Comments about if the constellation boss=supervisor is problematic are also welcome!

Well, yes, it's indeed quite problematic, and that is precisely related to your worry about your boss/supervisor rescinding the offer. What's got you worried is that there is a huge, glaring conflict of interest here: one person is making decisions that two separate people should be making on behalf of two separate entities with very different interests. There might be some rare individuals who have the ability to separate their different interests and act objectively and without malice in a situation like this, but I fear that the mere fact this person has put himself in such a conflicted position already does not send out a very reassuring signal about his common sense and good judgment. Consider this: if I were in a similar situation and through some unlikely turn of events ended up as a dual boss/supervisor looking to employ and supervise the same person (something I'd be already very wary of doing and try my best to avoid), the first thing I would do is to bend over backwards to reassure my student/employee that I am taking every step imaginable to separate or manage my conflicted interests, for example by emphasizing repeatedly and vocally that the discussion of the student/employee's salary in the commercial employment will have no effect whatsoever on their graduate school funding or supervision, or by having the salary negotiation be done by a different person in my company, or taking various other measures to alleviate any concerns the prospective student/employee might have. From your question it sure doesn't sound like he has given you any such reassurances, which suggests he doesn't consider anything about the situation to be problematic -- not a good sign.

Now, I'm not saying such hybrid PhD/commercial employment arrangements never happen or cannot be made to work. Maybe his intentions are completely noble, and maybe in Germany there are cultural norms that make such behavior acceptable. But based on the details you've provided, and from my (U.S.-centric) point of view, this situation raises some serious red flags. Honestly, this whole arrangement doesn't sound like a good idea, which makes the question about salary negotiation a bit moot in my opinion. Before starting to talk about salary, I'd want to have a good long discussion with the prospective boss/supervisor about the viability of the arrangement, including discussing specific details about how you can make sure that he will not be incentivized to abuse his dual position of authority over you.


Motivating students to push their limits

The most important aspect is the teacher's attitude. It sounds as though your students are already benefiting from yours.

As @Cinco says above,

  motivation is not a static, unchangeable property of particular students... A good teacher arouses the motivation indirectly, by creating the right environment for learning.

Based on my experiences with some awesome professors, I will say DO

hold your students to high academic standards.
assume that the students are capable of doing more than they are currently doing.
show them how the subject you are teaching is relevant to them.
be enthusiastic.
recognize their great work, and always expect more and better in the future.

Perhaps most importantly, have fun! Enjoyment is contagious, and a good professor can make it fun to learn about anything. A great professor can make it fun to struggle and push against the limits of our abilities.

(Sorry, this is rather subjective...it is hard to quantify what makes a great teacher!)


How much the region you get your PhD is important to your career path?

It's difficult to answer your question with too few details.

You can look at the alumni of the lab/department that gives you the offer. What were their first jobs after leaving the lab? If none of them went to the west, then it is very unlikely that you will do :)

East Asia is very broad, which includes China, Japan, Korea etc... There are only a small set of universities that are known to the west. These are the one or two top universities in the most developed countries in the region, e.g. NUS in Singapore, KAIST and SNU in Korea, Todai in Japan, etc

If you obtain a PhD from a university outside this list, it will be significantly difficult for you to find a position in the west after PhD.

Theoretically, if you have a strong publication records, LoRs from big shots in the fields, you can get a good a position after PhD. But in reality, it is easier to achieve that (papers, LoRs etc) if you are in a top university.


Pure Mathematics: All authors are assumed to have contributed equally and are listed alphabetically.  The American Mathematical Society has put out a statement to this effect.


Using a figure from a journal article on a personal website

It's probably a copyright violation if you don't get permission. It's also probably covered under Fair Use laws in the US, but Fair Use is a defense against a lawsuit not a thing that prevents people from suing you, so you might be subject to a whole range of legal trouble starting with a DMCA takedown request and extending through a to lawsuit. You might win all these situations, but you might be out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you want to use it with permission, you should contact the copyright holder. Find the copyright statement on the first page of the journal article or in the front matter of the book, e.g. "©1995 Elsevier" or whoever, and contact them. If it's a big publisher, they probably have a use, licensing, or copyright clearance web page for requesting permission to reproduce small parts of works they own. In many if not most cases, the author is the wrong person to contact since they likely transferred the copyright to the publisher as part of their publication agreement. Usually, especially for academic works, the license to use a figure for academic/commentary purposes will be free.

If the copyright is held by a university or the author(s) personally, you might start with an author. They might be willing to give you permission directly if they can.


Send a question or thanks letter after receiving a notification of receipt of application?

Saying "thanks, I don't have any questions at the moment." Would be appropriate and it would also be appropriate and perhaps show more interest in the position if you did ask a question or two about the department or the position.  For example, you might ask if anyone from the department will be attending an upcoming conference that you are going to.  However, you don't want to be presumptuous, so detailed questions about salary, benefits, etc. are not appropriate at this early stage.


Are there any academic institutions operating on bodies of water?

The Semester At Sea program is an established and respected program run by the The Institute for Shipboard Education, which I think only does this Semester at Sea program, and Colorado State University, which obviously has a lot of land based activities. The program offers a range of classes, but does not offer a degree (as far as I can tell).


Is it possible to share an arXiv article before it is announced?

Until the article is announced, it does not have a publicly viewable URL.  It can only be accessed from the account of the submitter.  So you cannot effectively share your paper until it is announced in the regular arXiv mailing.  However, since that announcement should be within at most two business days (unless your paper gets flagged for special treatment, because of extensive evidence of plagiarism or some other problem), it should not hurt you too much to wait for the announcement.


Can Research Hypotheses be Contratictory Among Them?

From a statistical point of view, there is no reason you cannot have the
null hypothesis that X = Y and the alternative that X unequal to Y. Then when
you get data you can assess which is greater and by how much.

Before you start you should do a 'power computation' to find what the
sample sizes need to be in order to have a reasonable probability of detecting
a difference of a size that is of practical importance. (Technically,
'power' is the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis, at a particular
significance level, if the difference is at least D --- ideally, where D
is chosen to be a difference large enough to be worth talking about.)

If you fail to reject the null hypothesis, you will not have a "statictically significant" difference
to discuss, but you should be able to cite an updated version of the power
computation to say that the true difference, if any, is likely to be smaller
then D. If you reject the null hypothesis, you may want to present
confidence intervals (say 95% intervals) to give an idea how large the difference is and with
what margin of error.

From a political point of view, you may find your adviser or those who
are willing to support your work strongly on one side or the other of the
debate whether X < Y or X > Y. Then you can write your proposal in terms
of testing the null hypothesis (that X = Y) against whichever alternative
(research) hypothesis is favored. But if possible, make sure your methods,
sample sizes, types of data, and so on, have anticipated the possibility that the
truth is in the other direction from the popular view, so that you will
still have something to publish, even if the prevailing view is wrong.


Application requests experience or interest in professional/leadership programs

This is a bit speculative, but it may be that the university has an interest in running highly intensive non-degree programs for professionals. A number of universities to this and it can be an important source of funding for them. They are sometimes called Executive Programs or something similar.
I once had a couple of grants from companies that wanted specialized training (and guidance) for some of their professionals. But some programs are just open to applicants willing to pay for admission.
If that is the case, you can probably learn that online or by asking a department head. You can then format a reply.
Experience and desire may or may not be a requirement, but I suspect that it would be a consideration. Willingness to work with non-traditional students would probably, in the described circumstances, be as important as prior experience - at the assistant professor level, where it would be less likely to have happened.
This is much more likely to be the case in some fields than in others, of course. In my case it was modern software development practice that was of interest to local companies.


Format of the manuscript at the revision stage

Reviewers are concerned with the technical content of your paper, not the formatting.

Even if you're using a LaTeX-based style sheet, it's not necessary to worry about making sure everything fits within the margins. If the paper is accepted, the journal will probably work on your paper to make sure it follows their style guidelines when published.

So just worry that the content is correct, and submit a single-column paper for the reviewers to read. It'll make their lives easier, which will thus make your life easier. (And you won't waste time fiddling with LaTeX!)


Why is it disadvantageous in graduate admissions to have a higher degree?

Berkeley offers the following rationale for their policy:

  The Graduate Council views academic degrees as evidence of broad research training, not as vocational training certificates; therefore, applicants who already have academic graduate degrees should be able to take up new subject matter on a serious level without undertaking a graduate program, unless the fields are completely dissimilar.

Although this is rather vague, it does suggest that they believe that when one already has a PhD, it is pointless to enter another graduate program in a similar field, as one has already demonstrated "broad research training" and shouldn't need more.  And since PhD program spaces are a limited resource, and involve a considerable investment of faculty time and university resources, they don't want to spend it in ways that they consider pointless.

That's my interpretation, anyway.


Why is Google Scholar popular in some fields but not in others?

Math already has an excellent tool, MathSciNet.  And, more importantly, MathSciNet is much more accurate than Google Scholar.

If you are a mathematician, look up yourself in both places and compare!


How to deal with a student who insists on getting a higher grade?

There are multiple issues here.

The first is a student persisting, pushing for higher grades. For this, you should see the link scaaahu left What to do about "grade grubbers?" If you continue to entertain this student they will keep pushing. Why would they stop? There is no cost and a chance for a gain. However, you need to be strong and clear. "You got this grade because of your performance. You want a better grade then give a better performance."

Second issue, which I think you mentioned (but I might be mistaken here) is students needing a higher grade than they deserve. I just dealt with this issue (again) this past month. The student (and even an admin on behalf of the student) were practically pleading with me saying "I really need a higher grade, I know the semester is over, and I know I did not do a good job, and I know I misbehaved in class, but could you pleeeaaaase give me a higher grade?"

When you encounter this second kind of issue remember that you are acting as a judge. Because of this, your decision is going to set precedent which will be held against you (and perhaps others) in the future. So, if you really want what is best for all students (including the one asking) then you must hold steady and show that students must do the work for the grade they want. Otherwise, they will think there is a way they can avoid the work and still get good grades and that is clearly not the signal we, as educators, should be sending.

In short, tough love and make sure they respect the educational process (don't allow them to badger you).


Ethical reaction to fake academic degree claim. (Unfinished PhD)

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

In Germany, using a Dr. title without having earned it is illegal, and it is punished with imprisonment up to one year or with a monetary fine (this is a link to the relevant law in German).

The mechanism available to denounce this is to report the offending person to the police. Before doing this, I would suggest talking to a lawyer, as there might be consequences if the accusation turns out to be false. If the offending person is working as a medical doctor or some other regulated profession, the corresponding regulating association (for example, in the case of doctors, Bundesärztekammer or Medical Association of Germany) or other fair competition associations might sue the offender on the grounds of unfair competition (this has happened already several times).

The ethical thing to do depends on your particular sense of ethics. What you will do depends on what motivation you have to do it. The other person could sue you for false accusations, and going on a legal fight as a private person is very expensive, so there must be a good motivation. If the offender has been selected over you for some position and you feel that this is due to the fraudulent use of the title, you might as well just inform that particular employer of the situation. Going public is not recommended unless you have talked to a lawyer, as you could land in legal trouble if you make public accusations that turn out to be false.


Wrong proof in a research paper, will the paper be rejected?

First, notice that the question asked in the title has already been answered: your paper has not been rejected solely because an incorrect proof has been found.  So your real question seems to be "What do I do now?"

The obvious answer seems to be to do what you have been advised: resubmit the paper with the faulty proof removed.  To me an "unproved theorem" sounds a bit self-contradictory; although there are some things that you might want to informally describe that way, using that language in a paper seems to be asking for trouble.  Rather you should decide whether you want to include the statement that you now realize you cannot prove in some form, e.g. as a question or a conjecture.  If you think the work would be much more valuable if the statement was proved, you might want to delay resubmission while you make a more concerted effort to prove it.  Or you may decide that without the theorem you had, the paper is not in your opinion worth publishing.  All this is up to you.


What to do when my introductory sentence is taken from another author's paper?

I think some of the early advice on this question was really bad. It's easy to give casual attribution for a quote if you do it like this:

  Abstract : This paper is devoted to the study of K-algebras. It has
  long been known that 'All regular K-algebras are equivalent, but every
  irregular K-algebra is irregular in its own way.' (Tolstoy). We
  classify a new family of irregular K-algebras. This result has
  implications in algebra theory.

Then you can cite the paper properly in the body of your paper. Writing the abstract like this makes it very clear who the quote came from and you can deal with the where later.


Is it ok to add new details to the camera-ready version of the conference paper?

Usually not, but as Buffy said, ask.  I don't know your field, either, so this may be specific to my own.  However, accepted papers are almost never modified after they are peer reviewed, since even a "minor" change will need to be reviewed again.  Think of what it might mean if a mathematical proof were accepted, then slightly modified but those modifications introduced an error.  Without thorough review an erroneous paper would be published.
In many conferences I've been to the answer to that has been to address it at the podium, not the paper.  Papers are written sometimes months before the conference, so it is accepted that more work will be done.  Use your talk to introduce those changes, and then turn the work into another article.


Paper acceptance probability in case of Minor revision after a major revision

Minor revision means most likely your article will be accepted, but it's not a guarantee. I have an experience of getting two minor revisions and finally article was rejected, othe other hand another article was accepted after major revision.  Bottom line, it's all depends how well you respond to reviewer comments and how much reviewer and editor get satisfy with your revised version. Good Luck!


IEEE journals: how do I find articles published as letters?

First things first:

Unless you are searching for IEEE Letter papers in venues which only publish Letters (such as IEEE Communications Letters, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, IEEE Electron Device Letters, etc.), there is, unfortunately, no formal, efficient way to search exclusively for Letter papers in IEEE venues which publish multiple types of papers.

As you stated, your target venue (IEEE JMEMS) publishes multiple paper types, so it seems that some creativity is needed to generate some results which are relevant to you.

One way to get creative here: It is quite common for authors of IEEE Letter papers to refer to the paper as such within the text of the article, e.g., as "This letter ..." or "In this letter ..."

In this case you can use Google Scholar to search for keywords "letter", "this letter", or "in this letter" and restrict your search to your preferred IEEE venue (in your case, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems). You can further narrow down the results list in Google Scholar by also providing technical keywords relevant to the papers you are interested in.

While the above is not a silver bullet, I know of no other better way to accomplish what you aim to do.


Recommender used an online template for my recommendation

The problem isn't so much the plagiarism, but that the letter is generic. The best letters include examples of interactions between the student and letter writer. Consider this paragraph

  At a personal level, Jane is a well disciplined, industrious student with a pleasant personality. She went well beyond the course requirements in the quantity and quality of her project, putting in a lot of extra research and attending office hours every week. Throughout the course, Jane demonstrated great perseverance and initiative. She was not only interested in and motivated to learn the material, but put great work into assimilating it to her own experience and developing her own ideas about each ethical topic that we discussed.

Were are the personal details. How did Jane show that perseverance and initiative? Did she just come to office hours, or was their a memorable interaction about Ethical Relativism? The best letters are personal. The template is nice in that it touches upon the important topics for a letter, but it still lacks the details that readers want to see.


Literature review in thesis and research paper

A literature review in a thesis is there to put your own work into context. It should make it clear that you are familiar with what has been done in the field before, that there is a gap that your work will address, and that you have chosen your approach to the problem carefully in light of previous work.

A literature review section in an original research paper has a similar purpose, but should be much shorter. It should focus on making clear why your work is needed.

A stand-alone review paper has a very different purpose. A review paper should help readers to understand the state of the art in the field with respect to the review topic. It should cover important recent contributions to the field (and make clear why they are important). It should document recent trends and changes (for instance, if one theory or method seems to be falling out of favour while others are emerging). It should document important open challenges and problems.

In all types of literature review, it is important to show critical thinking: not just covering what has been done before, but thinking about how appropriate or successful that work was, or how relevant to current circumstances.


What is the difference between symposia and oral sessions?

This may very well depend on the conference in question, the field, etc.

In the conferences I go to, which are in the biomedical/public health realm, broadly:

Symposia are all talks addressing a unified subjection/question/theme. "Should we be using universal contact precautions to address MRSA?", "Are causal inference methods and agent-based modeling methods compatible with each other?", etc. These talks are often deliberately solicited by the organizer.
Oral Sessions are often just collections of interesting talks on a much broader subject - "Infectious Diseases", "Bayesian Methods", etc. The talks themselves are often unsolicited, and just happen to be the best/most interesting/best fitting talks selected by the organizer.


Job sites for applied/interdisciplinary jobs in Mathematics?

I know of:

The SIAM Job board
The NA-Digest list, ostensibly restricted to numerical analysis but in practice lists jobs in a wide range of math-related subjects


How do you present internal funding for facilities and staff in your record of secured funds?

Generally, what really only matters are awards and grants you receive through a competitive process. (Everything else is really only regular internal support of research.) If this is the case, whether it is monetary or through in-kind contributions is not really all that important. So I would say something like this in my CV:

Innovation Award XY-2015-05 from the College of Science, University of ABC; the award consisted of in-kind salary contributions to support a lab technician for my lab for 12 months. Innovation Awards are awards through a competitive process within the College of Science following a review of a peer committee.

In a case like this, it is not necessary to attach a dollar/pound/Deutschmark amount to it -- people can figure it out. The same is the case if you get access to expensive equipment beyond what one would ordinarily get. For example, getting one million CPU hours on a university supercomputing center's machine is not something special and there is no need to list it. Getting 100 million CPU hours on a state or national facility is special and would be worth listing. (Because 1 CPU hour is valued at around 10 US-cents these days.)


What are the benefits of having a rank based cut-off over a marks based cut-off in entrance exams (if any)?

When knowledge is measured by an exam, some students will naturally focus more on learning "how to do the exam" instead of the actual content. Others will be more interested by the content. In my opinion, whether the cut-off is rank-based or mark-based has little effect on this. For example, cut-offs for English language exams such as TOEFL are always mark-based, but most exam takers will be happy to practice using old exams. The best way to get students to "learn the content instead of the exam" is to design good exams that can only be passed if one knows the content well.
That aside, the following advantages of each type of cut-off come to mind:
 Rank-based cut-off
The most obvious advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that the number of students who pass the cut-off is fixed. If this is an entrance exam to some program for which there are limited seats, rank-based is the easiest way to go. It becomes easier to plan resources.
Another advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that they are less dependent on the fluctuations in the difficulty of each year's exam. The exam designers do not have to worry so much about making it "equally difficult" to previous years, because the N best students will pass anyway.
Mark-based cut-off
As you said, the main advantage of mark-based cut-off is that it actually evaluates how well the student knows the content, independently of what their peers know. It is less about competition (which may be good or bad, but that is not the question here) and more about actual knowledge. If the two "logistic" problems discussed above are mitigated (i.e., if the number of seats is unlimited and exams can be designed to be equally difficult every year), then mark-based cut-offs are probably a fairer evaluation of students' skills.


Is it possible to use my partially published previous work as a bachelor thesis?

Posting on SE or on your blog does not count as publishing in the traditional sense (the work has not yet appeared in a scientific journal or conference proceedings). This means that it is unlikely to be a problem. Just make sure you discuss it with your potential supervisor.


Is following an online tutorial plagiarism?

Are there any reasons not to make transparent that you used the tutorial as a source? Using sources alone is no problem. Not citing is a problem. So cite properly and you should have no problem with plagiarism.


In such issues, it pays to be ultra-clear about terminology. This is not a case of plagiarism, as the authors have (based on your description) not copied any existing published text from you. The term here is insufficient attribution.

That said, I see your situation to be in somewhat of a grey area. You have explicitly given them permission to use your work. You may have meant that they were to rewrite what you wrote and re-plot what you plotted, but it is not difficult for me to see that this may not have been what the authors understood. In all honesty, I would also not have assumed that this is what you expected to happen.

A general problem is that there really are no well-understood rules in academia how an author who has contributed significantly can recuse themselves from a collaboration — strictly speaking, the authors cannot publish without you (as you have contributed and need to be acknowledged), nor can they publish with you (as every author needs to agree to be listed as an author). The cleanest solution would have probably been if you could have written up your part in some sort of report (e.g., a preprint), which the authors could have then cited as usual, but it is evident that this is often not possible.

  What would you do in this situation? Anything? Suck it up and move on?

In all honesty, I would suggest seeing this as a learning opportunity and moving on. Your claim seems way too vague and unclear to justify retracting the paper (and, honestly, if you try to get this paper retracted after you explicitly said they can use your work, you'll probably have made enemies for life). There really is not much else that can be done if the paper is already accepted.


Making your code publicly available: Does it have to undergo review?

For computer science conferences recently ACM introduced Artifact Review and Badging which incorporates code review in the usual publication review process. As far as I know currently it is not mandatory to submit your code for review but it is recommended and their future direction is to make code review mandatory.

From the ACM website:

  ... there remain many circumstances in which such enhanced review will be either infeasible or not possible. As a result, such review processes are encouraged, but remain completely optional for ACM journals and conferences, and when they are made available, it is recommended that participation by authors also be made optional.

If the venue you are interested in publishing at has the option of code review I would highly recommend it. Having your code reviewed by the conference reviewers will give your work more credibility if it passes the review process as your experiments are reproducible. Also the code review will potentially prevent any missed logical errors if any in your code, its always a good idea to have someone revise your work.

From the ACM website:

  A variety of recent studies, primarily in the biomedical field, have revealed that an uncomfortably large number of research results found in the literature fail this test, because of sloppy experimental methods, flawed statistical analyses, or in rare cases, fraud.

In response to your addendum side note: the best you can do is posting your code to your website or a public code repository such as GitHub which gives you the option of choosing from several copyright licenses you can publicize your code under, the list includes but is not limited to (GNU v3.0, MIT, BSD). These licenses will not prevent someone malicious from stealing your code or work and claiming that it is theirs, but it will give you the bases to claim that someone tried to steal your work. Also a common practice I have seen is adding a summary or a paragraph in each file of your source code saying that the following code is protected by xyz license.


How to cope with a situation, when I withdrew from a job search, but now I regret it?

Two weeks sounds like a lot of time and it is likely the position was already offered to another candidate. If it was, you lose nothing by sending an email. If it was not, they probably do not have an appointable candidate and in this case they can be actually quite happy to offer the position to you. However, consider providing a brief explanation of why you have withdrawn and why you are now asking to reconsider you for the post. The appointing committee needs some reassurance that you will take the post if you are offered it.


How does one issue a call for papers on military history?

Some of your expectations fall within the norms and some may not. There may be some variation by field.

Having never organized a conference, but having attended and presented as several, these seem to be the norms I have encountered:

  Where would one publish a "call for papers" on specific areas of military history?

Anywhere and everywhere. Send emails (or snailmail) to the history departments at nearby colleges and universities. Pass the word along to other organizations with similar interests. Are you close to a military academy? Is there a military museum nearby? Those are other good places to find speakers.Make sure that all correspondence includes the soft deadline (i.e. about a week before your real cutoff) for submission, and the process by which an individual signs up to speak. Also, you need to make clear the type of talk you are expecting based on the audience. Should this be a talk for experts, for enthusiasts, or for the general public? These announcements also serve as advertising for your event.

  What would be expected to be provided for presenters who are accepted?

Generally, at large conferences with hundreds of talks, the travel costs are paid by the speakers. For a small conference, you may want to offer to reimburse some costs on a first-come-first-served basis, however, very few folks should be put out by lack of financial support. I would save honoraria for their true purpose: providing an award for someone and/or attracting a really big name.

  Would sample presentation videos be excessive?

Yes. The situation you describe is a known danger, but it is not normal to ask for videos. Your better bet is to send people to attend other talks by your speakers and evaluate them unofficially, but you should still let them speak. If you secure a big name in the field, you will attract an audience, even if said person is a horrible speaker. If you are attracting academic speakers and you have a nearby university, asks folks in the relevant departments if they know of good speakers and try to target those individuals.

You might get away with suggesting that individuals who wish to be considered for the keynote spot send in a short clip of them presenting elsewhere, but that would still be pushing it.

  How long a presentation would be acceptable from the speaker's perspective?

Depending on the number of speakers you hope to attract and the length of the conference, block off 30 minute or 60 minute blocks. 15 minutes is a little short, and you should only exceed one hour for keynotes/plenaries. Most academics would interpret a 30 minute block of time as 20 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of questions and answers, which sounds like what you want.


Is there a difference in perception between a UK and a US Masters?

I'll note that the UK masters degree starts (in mathematics at least, and probably other fields) starts with a deeper base, since the undergraduate degree in UK is much more specialized and focused than that in the US. So, it is possible to go farther, since you start farther along. This also explains why there is usually more research done in a UK masters than might be done in a typical (but not exceptional) US masters.

But the perception would depend on people knowing that. Some will and some will not. For academic advancement, I suspect that doctoral admissions systems understand it well. In the workplace probably not so much.

But seven years out, in industry, your best credential is yourself and your own work.


Is it allowed to ask for help in community for thesis?

Plagiarism is when you use other people's ideas and fail to give them credit.  So if you make it clear that an idea came from someone else, and credit them appropriately (with a formal acknowledgement or a citation), you will avoid plagiarism.

Of course, in order to be acceptable for a degree, your thesis will still have to contain a sufficient proportion of ideas that are your own.

Before discussing the details of your work with others online, you should ask your advisor whether it's a good idea to do so.  It's possible that your advisor specifically wants you to work out certain parts for yourself.  Another concern is that sharing your ideas increases the risk that someone else will carry out your research before you do - in most cases, this risk is outweighed by the benefits of sharing, but your advisor needs to agree.


Submitting manuscripts from a phd thesis when my supervisor is not available to review the final draft due to health issues

My suggestion is that you submit in the normal way, but several days (say a week) beforehand, send her/him a note that you are submitting, along with a copy of the paper. You seem to indicate that the supervisor should be a co-author (field dependent)and if so, do that also.

In your note say that submission is pending unless you are advised against it. Make the note itself short so that little effort needs to be spent to make a quick decision. In particular, don't ask for a review and revision of the paper.

"I expect to submit the enclosed next week unless you advise differently... I will wait if you prefer.".

If you don't get a request to wait then just submit it. If they are well enough to review it, they probably will.

Of course, if there are no time constraints/limitations, you can also just wait.

But note that if the situation is dire and your advisor is near death then it is time for you to step in to the legacy along with his/her other students. You will have sole responsibility for these situations soon enough in that case.


Retyping some material to obscure source of a textbook with a solution manual?

I can think of the following potential ethical issues, some more easily mitigated than others:

Misleading others into believing that you have created the exercises yourself - You can easily avoid this by explicitly noting that the material is adapted from another source (without specifying the source). In most cases, there is no expectation of originality in teaching materials anyway - see Is it considered plagiarism for a professor to use uncited sources in teaching materials?
"Stealing" professional credit or similar benefits that would otherwise be due to the original authors - If you are redistributing the materials to colleagues for use in their courses, or otherwise using the materials in a way that would earn professional "credit" or goodwill (not just assigning the exercises to students), then you should definitely cite the source. Otherwise, I don't see a problem here.
Withholding a potentially useful resource from the students - If the book is genuinely helpful, I don't like the idea of preventing students from finding out about it. (Surely there is some more content and other exercises in the book that you aren't rewriting and giving to your students, that they might benefit from?) If you judge that the educational benefit of preventing some students from finding the solutions is really much greater than the benefit of some students buying the book and using it to learn more effectively, fine; but think that through very carefully.
Suppressing sales of the textbook - Presumably if you did not obfuscate the source, some of your students would buy the book (because it is such a helpful learning resource), and the authors of the book want people to buy it (or download it, if they have made it available in that way). I suppose you could mitigate this by getting permission from the authors.

Personally, I would prefer to tell students about the textbook, but remind them that if they don't actually do the exercises themselves, they will probably do poorly on the exams. If that was not an option, my second choice would be to modify the exercises so that students who had the original text and the solution manual would only be able to solve them if they understood them.


Why don't researchers publish failed experiments?

"Why don't people publish failures?"

Actually, they do.

Journal of Negative Results (ecology and evolutionary biology)
Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine
Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results
Journal of Interesting Negative Results (natural language processing and machine learning)
Journal of Negative Results in Environmental Science (no issues yet?)
Journal of Errology (no issues yet?)

and so on...

(You might also want to see the Negative Results section of the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.)


Answering form letter graduate school application emails

I use a form letter to reply to some* of these emails:

  [Given Name of Person],

  Thank you for your interest in my research. Please submit an
  application to our graduate program via [my university]'s graduate
  studies website: [link to application]. You will have opportunity in
  the application process to attach examples of any work related to [my
  field and specialty] and can state your research aims there if you
  wish. Our graduate coordinator ([email to grad coordinator]) can
  answer further questions about the application process.

  Sincerely,

  [My Name]

I do this just in case I might have stumbled upon a Ramanujan-like person whose work is brilliant, but perhaps not yet formalised. This form letter has produced I believe two applicants (that I am aware of), one of whom was accepted to the university and did work with me. Almost always, the person realises that their GRE/TOEFL/IELTS scores are not nearly good enough and they do not even apply. I feel that sending this form letter avoids the unfortunate process of emailing back and forth with a potential student only to find that they have next to no experience in my field and cannot pass the entrance exams.

If they email me further wanting me to look at their work and they have not submitted an application for graduate school, I usually ignore those emails. Making them apply through the graduate studies department screens 95% of them right off the bat.

*I say "some" emails because there are some emails that are clear phishing scams.


Article with unspecified-but-present authorship ("consensus document")

The website you've linked to, under the "How to cite" tab, suggests the following format for the entry:

  (2008), Vacuum Assisted Closure: Recommendations for Use. International Wound Journal, 5: iii–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x

Note that there's no author information at all. I suppose that's not a problem for numeric-style citation call-outs, but it sort of begs the question what should be done if authoryear-style citation call-outs are to be used.

The printed article itself provides the string "Expert Working Group" (followed by the names of all members of the group) where one would usually provide the authors' names. This suggests using a "corporate author" approach, along the following scheme:

@article{vacrfu:2008,
  author  = {{Expert Working Group}},
  title   = {Vacuum Assisted Closure: {Recommendations} for Use},
  journal = {International Wound Journal},
  year    = 2008,
  volume  = 5,
  pages   = {iii--19},
  doi     = {10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x},
}

Note the use of double curly braces around the argument of the author field.

If that's too unconventional for your taste, you might try either

  author  = {{Expert Working Group (Apelqvist et al)}},

or, more simply,

  author = {Jan Apelqvist and others},

as the content of the author field.


Conference registration fees by sketchy means?

(Not an answer but a long comment)

Sending credit card numbers via e-mail is a violation of the security standards of the credit card industry. See, for instance:

Does sending credit card info over email violate PCI-DSS?
Is storing CVV complaint with PCI standards?.

If you report the conference to your credit card issuer, they will risk a fine. The conference will then have to switch to another means of communicating credit card numbers that complies with these directives, such as an electronic payment form, fax or snail mail (sigh).

Note that these are indeed arguably more secure than e-mail, because they are much less vulnerable to remote hacking.