interviewing for postdocs with two groups collaborating in the same grant, should I mention it?

I would start out by assuming that all of the PIs will know if you apply to any of them. If the conditions for the various positions (pay, etc) are similar then I see no reason not to mention it. Perhaps the three of them together can find you a slot, even if one can't. This would probably be different if the pay and such were quite different.

And note that working with a top researcher is only sometimes better than working with others. The top person may have less hands-on participation at that point in their career.

On the other hand, there can be issues with non-tenured supervisors, who may have little time for anything but getting their own tenure.

But the collaborative possibilities you mention sounds like a big plus.


Including images in a research proposal presentation?

The exact expectations for a research proposal will vary by context and audience (e.g., a formal proposal to a government funding agency will require specific rules to be followed) but, in general, any aid you can provide your audience in understanding your planned research is helpful.

It's easy to neglect details like the amounts of time and other resources your research may require. Visual aids can help to make those details clearer. As you suggest, a timeline can clarify the time your research will require. Similarly, a flowchart is often an excellent way to establish not only the order of your project stages (or even if some stages will be concurrent) but to identify outside resources you plan to use, like databases or established protocols. A single figure may also serve to explain detailed methods. That's especially useful if you have a page limit to deal with.

So yes, include helpful figures if you can, as long as they further the goal of explaining what you plan to research and how.


Is it possible to download magazines as single PDF in IEEE Xplore with an institutional subscription?

No, this is not possible, at least not with IEEE Xplore.

In fact, they explicitly disallow this. See http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp (Point 4 of the "Do Not"s for Institutional Subscribers). So it is not surprising that there is no technical support for doing that.

As an individual former subscriber of "IEEE Security & Privacy", they may have granted you that right. Interestingly, under the "Do Not"s for IEEE Member access to IEEE Xplore, the point about downloading whole issues is missing. So that may be part of the reason.


Is it appropriate for a PhD student to write reference for a PhD applicant?

I think this is in part a cultural question. For example, in the US, I think letters from current graduate students are not given nearly as much weight as from more "senior" professionals. However, in German schools, it is quite common for senior doctoral students to write letters of recommendation for undergraduates, particularly in disciplines such as engineering, where the group sizes tend to be quite large, and in many cases the professor in charge of the group may never meet the undergraduate in question.


Editor of manuscript assigned after reviews were completed

Each journal has its specific take, but the most likely explanation is that the peer review process took longer than usual and the same editor had expired and had to be reassigned, or that he was no longer interested in handling your manuscript and it was thus assigned to another editor.

In most busy journals several associate editors cooperate with the editor-in-chief, and it is likely that your manuscript was switched from one associate editor to another one.


As a teaching assistant, how important are student evaluations?

This is an excellent question, for faculty as well as students!

How important are these points in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student?

Obviously this varies significantly in different departments and institutions, but in my experience, the scores themselves are not that important.

My department does pay attention to these numbers when allocating future TAships, but definitely not in isolation.  Narrative reviews from the instructors carry significant weight.  The people doing the assignments also know which courses are unpopular, and which instructors are irresponsible, and adjust the evaluation accordingly, at least in principle.  In practice, there are only three evaluations: (1) truly outstanding TAs, who are considered for teaching awards; (2) truly abysmal TAs, who are not rehired, at least without retraining (and since we have a TAship requirement, this has teeth); and (3) everyone else.

When we evaluate tenure-track faculty candidates, teaching ability is usually a second-order concern, but it is a concern.  Poor evaluations on an applicant's CV are a red flag—why didn't they just omit them?  Good evaluations are mostly a signal to look further.  Teaching awards carry more weight.  Recommendation letters that directly praise the applicant's teaching ability — with concrete and credible details — are even better.  Similar issues arise when evaluating faculty for tenure, with one big difference: omitting the teaching scores is not an option.

How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluation?

You can't.  Sorry.

However, I believe you can increase the fraction of sincere (and positive) responses by consistently treating your students with respect.  Make your expectations clear from day one, and enforce them consistently.  Invite feedback throughout the semester, and respond to it quickly and appropriately.  Apologize quickly for mistakes, thank students publicly for useful suggestions, but do not buckle on high standards.  Give timely, consistent, and useful feedback on coursework.  Above all, do not waste your students' time; the correlation between hard work and low evaluations is much higher if the students don't see any benefit to doing the work.

<Insert standard confirmation bias warning here.>

How does the TA make the best of a bad job [if the instructor is irresponsible]?

First, do your own job as best as you can.

Second, raise your concerns with the instructor; be respectful but brutally honest.  If the instructor is unresponsive, raise your concerns with your instructor's boss; be respectful but brutally honest.  (Note: Disagreement is not the same as being unresponsive.)  If your instructor's boss is also unresponsive, your department doesn't really care about poor teaching; they're likely to ignore your evaluations, even if they are low.

Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all?

There are many more things that TAs can do.  At a minimum, hold office hours that the students actually find useful; don't just show up.  Distribute practice problems, and offer feedback on the students' solutions.  Hold weekly review/discussion/problem-solving sessions.  As aeismail suggests, write review notes.  If the instructor covered too much, distill down their main points; if the instructor didn't cover enough, expand on the key ideas they missed.  Offer to give a few guest lectures, and then give fantastic guest lectures.

More self-servingly: Make sure the students see you working to overcome your instructor's shortcomings.  If the students don't see you fighting on their behalf (even if you are), they'll write you off as yet another useless academic, like your instructor.  But if you can make them believe you're on their side, they'll reward you.  I think this is why students often reward "lenient grading"; if the students think the coursework is a waste of time, they'll see lenient graders as their allies.

Obviously this all takes time.  As aeismail says, TAs usually have many other responsibilities, especially to their own classes, projects, research, families, and sanity.  It is frighteningly easy for committed and caring TAs to find themselves being abused by less committed instructors (or even departments).  Set limits.


I like the headphones idea, and perhaps a baseball cap, worn rather low, would help in a similar way.  Some more ideas:

You could put an embroidered sign on your cubicle wall (or a
calligraphy version) saying something like "If you can't say
something nice, don't say anything at all" or "If you can't say
something nice, say it in French."  If those are too blatant,
perhaps you could post the latter phrase in French.  Or choose one
of the many images available online that represent the concept.
I particularly liked "NO Trashing OR Bashing Zone."
When someone approaches you and starts yakking, there are two ways
of stopping them:

(a) Look interested, respond with a wide variety of facial
expressions, but without saying anything.

(b) Say, "I don't want to lose my train of thought, and I've got a deadline -- can you tell
me the rest tomorrow?"
Start coughing, grab an empty water bottle from your desk drawer, point at your throat, and walk quickly to the bathroom.  If the person is still in your visitor's chair when you come back, point at your throat and communicate nonverbally that you can't talk -- until he goes away.
For the really stubborn person who needs a more careful explanation -- just tell them the truth: "I'm the sensitive type, and when I hear negative remarks, I soak them up like a sponge, and they affect me way too much.  This is nothing against you -- but I have to protect myself.  So when I hear you starting to tell me something that's going to affect me this way, I'm going to say, "I'm sorry, Rafael, but I don't want to listen to this."  (And then if he tries again next week, say it.)


Undergraduate seeking advice about future career and working relationship with PI

Your question could be edited to be more concise (it reads a little bit like a rant at the moment), but here are some responses to your points:

"I asked my PI for advice where I was told to take Class B over Class A" - You asked your PI for advice, and he gave you his/her advice. It is your fault for not making sure that the course doesn't cause problems for your schedule. Your institution likely has some sort of "academic advising" service for these types of degree scheduling things, and your PI likely does not know all of the intricacies of your undergraduate program. This is a learning experience for you, but it's important to remember that it's up to you to take charge of your education.
"I have been working a lot during the semester, between 40-80 hours/week." - I'm not sure how you're working 40-80 hours a week while still completing all of your undergraduate courses. Can you maybe clarify this? But that much time seems fairly high for an undergraduate student with a full course load.
"I am not being fully compensated due to "lack of funding" or "investments already being made" in my research" - This is up to your judgement. There are some professors who will take advantage of undergraduate students (many are not paid at all), but there is also very likely limited money budgeted for undergraduate students. It's impossible for us to tell what's going on, but it's up to you to decide if it's worth it, and if you should maybe try to become involved in a different lab at your institution.
"when I ask for a recommendation letter the topic quickly changes, or my PI asks me to write it myself. To my surprise, my PI writes recommendation letters for other undergraduates in the lab applying to graduate school." - Many professors will have the student write a letter of reference, even for students applying for grad school, so this is not unusual. That being said, reference letters for grad school are arguably more important than letters for summer positions, so it would make sense that he/she would put more effort into a grad school letter. But even if you write the letter, your PI should still be editing it and making it their own.
"Ultimately, I was placed on another project and my old one was left to be determined." - It's not uncommon for projects to be put aside while there are other more important projects on the go, and it's possible the PI's current funding does not cover those projects. Again, we don't know the situation, so maybe you should try discussing this more with your PI, and ask more specific questions about what kind of data he wants and what it would take to finish them.
"Ultimately, I want a strong recommendation for wherever I apply, but it seems like it has to be on my PI's terms, and I feel stuck." - I don't really understand why you feel stuck and why it's on your PI's terms. It sounds like you've already gained a lot of experience presenting your work, and that will help make a recommendation letter strong, especially for a second year undergraduate student. Now if he is refusing to write you a letter because he wants you to work in his lab, that's a different story. And by writing you a reference letter, that includes you writing it, and him/her editing it.


How much involvement should my advisor have in deciding my availability and actions for me?

As with most things, tone matters. All the items on your list don't scream terrible unprofessionalism to me, if done in the right tone and in moderation (ok, the "tells me to stand" one is a bit weird). For instance, I would not force a student to blow off their anniversary dinner for a standard meeting, but I have certainly asked them to cancel some other weekend appointments because of an important deadline on Monday. Further, you mention meetings after 5PM - given that much of my research is done in international cooperation, Skype calls at terrible times are unfortunately not unheard of in my group as well.

I can't help but notice that (as ff524 already mentions), the majority of your items are not so much about professionalism than about time planning. Indeed, in academia, you may need to get used to the fact that most professors require students to be flexible, maybe more so than in larger corporations (but not unlike startup companies, for instance). Nine-to-five workers are typically not popular in academic environments.

You added:

  Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel

The exact same thing happened to me as an employee of a large, international company. Not usual, but yeah - happens if funds for travel are low for some reason.


How will academic misconduct as a first year undergraduate affect graduate studies admission?

One offense, if in early years and followed with solid achievements later on, will probably be forgiven. But someone with your exact same qualifications and no black mark would probably have an advantage.


Did it become easier to land an academic job in the UK after the Brexit referendum?

Fro the anecdotal evidence referred to by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan it appears that there are people who do not want to come to the UK post-Brexit. In your question you are implying a conjecture that the number of applications will fall and there will be easier to get an academic job in the UK.

The conjecture seems wrong to me. You seem to ignore the fact that the number of jobs in academia is not constant. Many jobs are funded by research councils in the UK but also EU councils like ERC. If this funding is going to reduce, so will the pool of available jobs.

Teaching-focused academic staff are funded by the Universities directly and this funding depends on student recruitment numbers. There is a certain rise in the numbers currently following the cap lifting in 2014 but it won't last forever and can't compensate for the expected reduction in EU student numbers.

Even if Universities disclose their records of application numbers for the academic posts (which is not likely), this information has to be compared also with the number of posts being advertised. Bear in mind also that with pound weakening, UK jobs are becoming less attractive for overseas applicants even on purely financial grounds.

To summarise, it is possible that the application numbers reduce and it becomes harder to secure an academic job post-Brexit.


General equivalence of physical chemistry II and undergraduate courses in quantum mechanics

This depends a lot of the specific classes. Based on my anecdotal evidence, I'd say the classes are quite different.
My anecdotal evidence is that as a physics major, QM 1 was one of the easiest upper division classes I took. Griffiths was super clear. QM 2 was a bit more complicated, but I still thought the material wasn't as difficult as other subjects.
Then my friends in chemistry often talked about pchem like it was the hardest, most confusing class they barely made it through. They also didn't really seem to have the same view of QM I had, and tended to talk about it as if it were overly complicated.
I got the sense that their class focused more on applications of the ideas than the underlying principles, and the people who struggled were trying to memorize the individual applications. I don't know if they would have recognized the material from my QM class.


Which authority regulates the conferring of degrees in South Africa?

The laws you want are the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997 and its amendments, and the NQF Act 67 of 2008 (NQF being the National Qualifications Framework).

They establish the Council on Higher Education and the South African Qualifications Authority, respectively, who between them bear responsibility for assessing, registering and accrediting institutions and qualifications in South Africa, and recognising foreign equivalent qualifications as appropriate.

I have not examined specific availability of courses, programmes, specialties or qualifications in the records maintained by either group.

However, Chapter 7 of the HEA, Act 101/1997 as amended forbids practise as a provider of higher education by anybody except "public higher education institution[s] and ... organ[s] of state" without being registered or conditionally registered, under that Act.

Section 66 of the same Act is of particular note. In full,

  66.    Offences

  Any person other than a higher education institution, who, without the authority of a
  higher education institution -

  (a) offers or pretends to offer any higher education programme or part thereof;

  (b) purports to confer a qualification granted by a higher education institution, or in
  collaboration with a higher education institution; or

  (c) purports to perform an act on behalf of a higher education institution,

  is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a sentence which may be imposed for fraud.

  (2) Any person who pretends that a qualification has been awarded to him or her by a higher education institution, whereas in fact no such qualification has been so awarded, is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a sentence which may be imposed for fraud.

  (3) Any person who contravenes section 51 (1) (a), 54 (7) or 55 (2) is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine or to imprisonment not exceeding five years or to both such fine and imprisonment.
  [Sub-s. (3) substituted by s. 10 of Act 54/2000]

  (4) Any private higher education institution which does not comply with section 55 (1) is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding R20 000.

Note that 51(1)(a) is the aforementioned ban on unregistered practise, 54(7) forbids the use of names like "university" or "professor" unless entitled to use them by correct registration, 55(2) concerns deregistered institutions returning registration certificates, and 55(1) requires the public display of (a certified copy of) such a certificate.

Penalties are either specified in the section or are set equivalent to those for fraud. Needless to say, if you believe any such laws and regulations are breached, you should contact either the CHE or the SAQA directly with your information, because these are offences held equivalent to fraud.


How should use of a preprint server be incorporated into the publishing workflow?

Workflow may be different, but the one I am familiar with is:

put preprint on arXiv along with sending it to a journal
after the final version is confirmed, update the arXiv with the newest version of text (with your formatting)
(in case there are serious mistakes or omissions, update arXiv at anytime)

Sometimes version on arXiv is put before the submission to a journal, for example:

there is some work that need to be done before the submission, but we want to have it before a conference we are attending, or a talk at another department (so we can point the preprint to the reader),
we haven't decided yet where or if we want to send it.

And in some cases, arXiv is used instead of a journal, especially if:

the work is not suitable for publication in a journal (e.g. a PhD Thesis, textbook), but we want to disseminate it, preserve it and make it easily citable,
the author prefers it that way (e.g. it is a short note, or the topic is unconventional and the author prefers to avoid struggling with editors).


Credit, recognition, or compensation for reviewing an accepted article as a native english speaker?

I would expect no direct compensation.  However:

This is a good networking opportunity which will improve your reputation if you do a good job.
Tell your supervisor about it.  They may later mention it in a letter of recommendation.
When applying for jobs, you will be asked to give evidence you have great communication skills.  "I edit papers for senior professors who are English language learners" is one way to do that.  It also works as evidence you can collaborate with diverse people, which is another common hiring criterion.  Do not name the person you helped in a job application, as that could be viewed as criticism.


Should I write a peer-review in third person?

I recommend the first person.  Like most good linguistic constructions, the reader passes over it without explicitly noticing it, whereas your first construction with "this reviewer" holds up the entire mental process for a split second.
The idea of using the third person to "soften" the criticism: well, Paul Garrett knows how much I esteem him, and we usually see eye-to-eye on things.  But this time I simply disagree.  The reviewer is empowered -- nay, enjoined -- to supply an opinion on the work.  If you want to shade your opinion, explain very carefully and explicitly why you are doing that.  Switching to the third person should not convey that you are less sure of yourself, and it does not convey that to my ear.
[Imagine my answer began with "This academic".  Wouldn't that have been more distracting?]


What is a good scheme to determine percentage contributions to a paper

This does sound awful. However, I understand trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

As you write, it is extremely hard to numerically quantify intellectual work. As such, I would strongly recommend going with an extremely simple weighting scheme, so as to minimize the acrimony of discussions that will certainly come. You don't want people to discuss why somebody got 15% of a paper, while somebody else got only 10%, because people are extremely fast in figuring out what this 5% difference means in $$$.

For each paper, get someone impartial to administer this. Then have all authors quantify everyone's contribution on a scale of 1-3. Don't go any finer, because anything finer is impossible. Let the impartial person pull all these together, average everyone's estimate of everyone's contribution and assign percentages based on the final number of points.

Advantages:

This is simple and understandable.
It requires no special software, apart from a few spreadsheets.
And it gets the job done.

Disadvantages:

It can easily be gamed. If someone consistently gives himself top marks, the impartial facilitator may want to have a discussion with this person.
How can a junior author, perhaps an undergraduate student, assess the contribution of the PI and how much time he spent writing grants to get the money?

So it may well be that this is impractical, given the disadvantages. In which case you may need to fall back on someone senior unilaterally assigning contributions.

In such a case, I'd again work only with three-point scales. If your scale only includes three possible grades, you can meaningfully grade contributions into "minor", "medium" and "major". Anything more fine-grained, like a four-level scale, and people will start arguing why they only got a 2 when they obviously deserved a 3.

Everyone, please feel free to point out further shortcomings in the comments.

(And: try to get this policy revoked. It is horrible. Either the bonuses are too small to spend much time on such a scheme, and to fight over it - and someone will always pick a fight over this, no matter how trivial the sums are. Or the bonuses are high enough to matter, in which case the fighting will be worse. Better not to give bonuses based on paper contributions at all. Scientists should be motivated to write papers for other reasons, like tenure or recognition, which still seems to motivate enough people to write but should have drastically lower chances of poisoning your work environment.)


Where to publish comments on a scholarly book?

From your description, about the most it sounds like you could do is post your notes online.

Why?  Your notes are not self-contained and I haven't seen things like "study guides" published in concordance with graduate texts, which indicates that there's little market.  Even if there were some market for this, if you don't have time to make your notes self contained, you likely don't have time to get them in a publishable format either.  In any case, the amount of money you would get should be minimal.  Grad texts are not a cash cow.  I also don't see much advantage in an ISBN, but you could get an arXiv id if you post to the arXiv.

Free online notes can give you just as much if not more "recognition" than publishing, depending on the situation (free notes are easily accessible, hence can get wider distribution).  I've done this for some courses I've taught, and while I don't have any measure of how much recognition I'm getting (nor is it that important), sometimes I meet people at conferences or what not and they say nice things about my notes.  Conversely, I've gotten a good impression of many young people by coming across some nice notes they've written.

Of course, if you do this, you should make sure to give the author due credit and that you will not be infringing on copyrights.  Note that the presentation of material and choice of definitions is a big part of the originality of the author's manuscript.  I spend a lot of time thinking about order of presentation when I write notes.


PhD Application Review moved from Fall 2015 Start to Spring 2016 Start: Options?

I think given the amount that I know from your post, I don't think we can give you more advice than to ask for clarification.  This isn't a standard procedure that I know of, though I could imagine various reasons this could happen.  Since I'm just imagining (and I'm sure you are too), just write a polite email to the director of the graduate program, or whichever faculty member seems to be the correct contact, and ask them precisely what this means for you.


How to cite future conference poster session on CV?

With a future event so tenuous, I would recommend against putting it in your CV at all.

Even if you think your CV is thin, it will not be improved by putting in an abstract that might or might not get presented and that you haven't even started to prepare.


What should I do if wrong version of manuscript was uploaded and submitted to journal?

The odds are very good they'll let you do it. They have nothing to gain by sending a badly-formatted manuscript for review. You could even submit the correct version as a separate submission now and the most that'll happen is some minor inconvenience for the journal staff (this is when the duplicate submission flag kicks in).

Worst case scenario, you can withdraw your submission and resubmit with the correct version.


What are the ethical implications of lying to get into a course?

If I found out I was intentionally deceived by a student after telling them they could not take my class, I would alert my dean (I would go beyond the department chair) that said student was violating the rules and spirit of the exchange program. At a minimum I would expect that student to no longer be able to take advantage of the exchange and have their grade withheld from the other class. I would hope the home university would also punish this student for academic misconduct.


What to do when you have more things to say in a published paper?

Writing a paper that extends another is pretty common practice. It could be published anywhere that will accept it.

But if the results in the new paper are insufficiently novel then it might be hard to find a venue that accepts it. If the conclusions of the new paper are obvious to readers of the old one, reviewers will probably notice it and editors won't be very inclined to want to publish it.

The theoretical underpinnings may be a different matter. They may stand on their own as a separate paper. Or not. But reviewers and editors will judge that also.


Is it appropriate to mention lack of expertise in certain area as limitation for master's thesis?

Rather than describing this as a limitation, I would present this as an area for future research. For example,

  Machine learning methods X and Y produced promising results for predictive modeling. An area for future research would be to optimize these as well as explore methods, a, b, and c.

and then build upon this with details to be an appropriate length (probably a paragraph or two).


What is the impact factor of EPJ Web of Conference?

According to their Homepage this journal is supposed to be listed in Clarivate Analytics' Databases, Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports, but I cannot find it there. The are some EPJ Journals indexed in WoS. The one you are looking for is apparently not. The only EPJ journal indexed in the JCR is EPJ Data Science by SpringerOpen. As EPJ Web of Conferences seems not to be indexed in the JCR at the moment, it should not have an Impact Factor.


I think you should apply if you find both the degrees interesting, and they are complementary. For example, Physics and Computer Science if you aim at writing very good quality physics models (e.g. climate models). Maybe it is hard for you to say what you really want, and therefore it might be hard to judge whether or what dual master (if any) would work for you. On the short term I would try and see if you are drawn towards both masters. If so, you could get a dual degree. Do mind that I suspect two degrees is more work. If you are up to it, and willing to dedicate the time, it could be worth it. On the other hand, I would not recommend just doing it because you feel it might look good on your resume.


As mentioned in the comments by Anonymous Mathematician, there won't be a problem with mentioning a book that you read in your statement of purpose. If your statement of purpose has a list of references, you can include it there and just use the standard referencing style to cite it. If you don't need a list of references, then just cite the book in the text, e.g., "Reading the book 'A nice mathematics book' by , I found that...".

The difficult part will be to make citing the book really worth putting it in your statement of purpose. Which books someone read is probably not as important for computer science students as it is for students of literature. Think about the following questions, as examples:

How did reading this book influence your decision to apply for graduate studies?
In which way will your planned research build upon what you learnt in this book?
Does the book define research problems that you are planning to tackle?

If you cannot write something along these lines when referring to this book, then I am not sure that it would be worth writing that you read it.


Do you want to learn or do you want to just be an audience for a performance. Rhetorical question, I know.

Yes, take notes. Express things in your own words, rather than just using the presenter's words. This will better engage your brain and make real learning possible.

Even better is to revise (and extend) your notes after a period of time.

Another sort of notes you can take, of course, is about questions that the presenter doesn't answer and that you might want/need to follow up on later.

Note that learning involves actively engaging (and actually changing the physical structure of) the brain. You learn things deeply by reinforcing them. Notes are one necessary way to accomplish this for most people. Exercises and problem solving are another.

If you have the time, you can, of course, watch a lesson more than once. You might want to do most of your note-taking on the second viewing. But that assumes you have the discipline to actually do that. You can take different sorts of notes on subsequent viewings, being more detailed for example.


What degree is necessary for a career in conservation?

The conservation, applied ecology, and natural resource management fields can be a tough job market depending upon your geographically location and what subfield you want to work in.

For your undergraduate degree, any of the majors you listed would be reasonable. I would browse graduate programs you are remotely interested in and see what courses they require for admission. Some programs might requires 2-3 semester of calculus where others require none. Likewise, chemistry (e.g., organic) and physics requirements sometimes vary. As noted in a comment, your exact undergraduate degree does not matter if you plan on going to graduate school. However, some agencies (e.g., the US Federal government) have course requirements for jobs (e.g., a fish biologist).

Academically, I suggest a double major or a minor in another field to give you technical skills to help you stand out. Possible examples might be chemistry, math or statistics, or something related to GIS.

Outside of school, try to get as much experience as possible. Hopefully you can get payed summer job/internships. One great place to find these opportunities is the Texas A&M Wildlife/Applied Ecology jobs board.

The source for my information is my own experience. I am PhD-level research scientist working for a US natural resource research agency.


How involved should your PhD adviser be in your project?

1) Email your advisors short (few sentences) progress reports every week or less. This forces you to move at a quicker rate than 2-3 weeks, and keeps them more invested in your progress.

2) As a junior student I suggest that for now you trust your advisors and peers and grind through this project. Researchers tend to always be critical of their own work, no matter how good it is.

3) It would be ideal to work side by side with a more experienced graduate student or advisor.

4) Part of a PhD is intellectual independence. You should not be afraid about pursuing an area if no one else is pursuing it, so long as you can see its merits. Why work on something that everyone else is working on?


How should a student with no research background write a research proposal?

I don't know how to continue.

Well, there's a lot to do, actually. For example, you can structure your research proposal in the following sections (other points can be added):

Introduction and background information. Here you should clearly state the goal(s) of your research and give supporting information. For example, since you claim that multiculturalism is denied in Japan, in this first section you shall report this claim and provide supporting references; then, you shall explain that this phenomenon is not well studied and why it would be a good thing to investigate it.
Methodology. How do you plan to carry out your research? Anonymous questionnaires? Interviewing people? What kind of questions do you want to ask? How do you choose the population sample? How do you plan to carry out the interviews or distribute the questionnaires? Especially, whatever methodology you choose, explain clearly why the chosen methodology is suitable for reaching the goals of your research.
Data analysis. Here you have to describe in which way you plan to analyze the data you have collected.
Schedule. Subdivide your research in different tasks and describe the time allotted to each one (Gantt charts are common these days).
Scientific outcome. Original research is typically published on journals and presented at conferences. Can you name a journal and/or a conference suitable for your research topic? Can you think of other possible outcomes? For example, if the subject of your investigation constitute a social issue, can you think of writing a recommendation suggesting ways to improve the situation?
Possible issues. Describe what can go wrong in your plans and how you intend to mitigate possible problems (e.g. people not answering to questionnaires).
Resources and costs. Every kind of research needs money and resources. For example, if you plan to realize an online questionnaire you might need to hire a developer. So, try to figure out what can be the amount of money needed to make your research and write down a small budget.

Edit: I've added a couple of points. That said, good luck!


Do I still need a PhD to do research if I have double honours in CS and Pure Math?

I can do research sitting at home

Read a few research papers published in highly regarded venues in your field of interest. Are you capable of producing that kind of work at this point in your training?

Do you know how to identify important and original research questions?
Do you know how to select an appropriate methodology for answering a particular research question?
Do you have a "toolbox" of methods you can apply to different research questions as appropriate?
Are you able to critically evaluate your own and others' work as experts in the field would?

If not: a PhD is an apprenticeship in which you learn how to do the things mentioned above under the guidance of an expert advisor, in an environment that is designed for learning those skills, hopefully with a salary that allows you to focus on improving your research abilities.


How to get started with submitting first peer reviewed paper based on PhD?

The procedural parts are pretty simple:

Select the journal you're interested in submitting to.
Read their "Instructions for Authors".
Follow those instructions.

It may sound trite putting it that way, but journals are typically pretty good at being clear about what they want, both in terms of content areas and format & typography.

What you also need to do is identify what you want to take from your PhD, and determine what the "narrative" structure of that material is - a paper that's just a bunch of random things with no through-line is not a great paper.

You may also want to take the time to look at the editorial board of the journal you're interested in, find who is knowledgeable in the topic of your paper and be sure to indicate (in the manner proscribed in the instructions for authors) that you'd like them to be the editor in charge of your paper. A good choice here can help ensure that it's reviewed by the right people for the job.


Is it acceptable to put programming code as proof in paper?

From what I can guess about the context, I would avoid putting the code in your paper unless:

the code is really short (say no more than half a column);
the code is interesting in itself;
and you know that your average reader understands the language R.

Otherwise, it would probably better to omit the code altogether and write, in a note, something like:

  To those interested, the authors can provide the R code employed to compute the probability density functions described in this work.


How should an independent researcher introduce him/herself in his/her to be submitted articles?

The linked questions provide good answers ("Unaffiliated Scholar" / "Independent Scholar"), but another question might be what do you hope to accomplish with your paper?
Are you trying to simply make a contribution to the academic literature? In this case, Unaffiliated Scholar might be the best approach. Are you interested in establishing your bona fides for a corporate career or consulting business? In this case, I have seen plenty of independent researchers publish with their personal consulting company as their affiliation. The paper then presumably adds to the academic literature while providing a track record to use in advertising for future consulting gigs. In this case you may need to incorporate yourself, which is beyond the scope of Academia SE.


As for all CVs, they get less important in time. If you're applying for graduate study straight after undergraduate, they're good to list. Your acheivements at this point are likely to be from academic performance, rather than from independent work. When you've completed the graduate programme, no one will care that you came top in Module X in your second year of undergraduate. If the scholarships and fee reductions were based on academic merit, then list them, bearing the same in mind.


Found and corrected a mistake on someone's else paper -- praxis?

I have not been in such situation. However, I do not see what is the problem for you to write a paper complementing or correcting the previous paper? Isn't this how science works?

In my opinion, it is very toxic culture in academia to consider such thing as inappropriate. Those previous auathors are humans. Assuming good faith, that was what they knew and what was to the best of their knowledge, and to the best of the reviewers' knowledge, at the time of their publication. You got something, great, you have the right to get the credit for it. I feel it is unfair that you inform the authors offline. You should write it, and publish it too.

Also, we should not forget that you might be wrong too! I do not mean to offend anyone. But if we remember that we are all humans and have limitations in our knowledge about exploring this world, we would take these issues in a more relaxed way.


What should I put in the Introduction as opposed to the Literature Review?

(In economics at least.)

Introduction (5 pages)

• start with some broader motivation or backgrund

– maybe a sentence or a paragraph at most

• quickly explain your problem/puzzle

– show not tell

– don't say your work is pathbreaking or the problem is interesting (arrogant)

• clearly, concisely explain what is novel

– crystal clear

• report key results

– no hiding the punchline!

• discuss implication

– what does it mean for public policy? for theory? etc

• Layout:

– a clear roadmap

– Section 1 does this. Section 2 does this. Section 3 etc...so they can find what they want. (This is the easiest paragraph to write)


Student talks about carrying out a shooting on campus

TL;DR: you report this to campus safety (i.e., campus police) immediately.

Slightly longer response:

The proper way to handle this may vary from school to school. At my uni, which has unfortunately had to deal with school shootings, we are urged to report anything that even hints at such violence to the campus safety authorities (at my uni, campus police). There's a sound reason for this -- you may not know the whole picture. It's entirely possible that this student has made such threats in the past that you are unaware of, and that they've been monitored for an extended period of time. In such a case, this type of information may indicate to authorities that they need to take preventative action now. Even if they don't take action, they'll be able to document this and keep an eye out for worrisome patterns.

It's worth mentioning that there are those who would argue that this is premature -- or even a potential invasion of privacy on the part of that student -- with the thought that the student may not be showing further warning signs. This is not the right place for that discussion - if you feel that way, let's take it to the chat.

Ultimately, I would argue that you need to do what's best for the community here, not just for the victimized student. There may well be ways of protecting the victim's identity -- if so, feel free to do so -- but most administrators I've met would prioritize the safety of the community over the privacy of either the victim or the aggressor.


The objective of reading/review academic papers is to critically analyze research studies.

Critical reading is basically a process where you ask yourself questions as you're reading, such as:

What was the objective of the research study?
Did the researchers accomplish this?
Why or why not?
Why is the study important?
What are the implications of the findings?
How does this paper contribute knowledge to society?
Do I want to borrow an idea from this paper?
Do I believe something can be improved?

Answering those questions will help you figure out what you've read and why it was relevant to you and the research study you'll end up designing. It can also help you as you target each section, it's not always clear cut the order in which you'll read the paper critically.

Now that you know what to look for, how you organize those notes is up to your individual preference. There are many options available: hand written notes, digital notes, laptop, ipad, etc. I personally like to use a matrix format with different fields, such as objective, method, findings, theoretical model, etc.


What happens when a instructor really goofs up a course?

By and large, ff524 as usual has it right: if there is a problem (even a serious one), the responsible people deal with the problem and its immediate consequences, and then life goes on. Smart people will learn from their goof-up, and it will not happen again. Less smart people do the same crap all over again until a higher-up steps in (in the worst case, this may mean getting fired). I am not sure if there is anything much more general to say about this topic.

Some examples from my personal experience:

  Losing exam scores

In the university where I did my PhD, a young professor once lost track of 400 final lab exams in a programming course (that means multiple large stacks of paper - not exactly easy to lose). Apparently, he locked them in for the weekend, and on Monday they were nowhere to be found. As there were no traces of a break-in, the theory was that the cleaning lady has thrown them out for whatever reason (as she was the only one with access to the room besides the prof). Following, an entire lab was digging through garbage for one morning, without success.

The prof. sent out a very embarrassing apology, announced a make-up test, and gave students the chance to just get their mid-term grades if they could not / did not want to participate in the make-up test. Following, all people in this lab were extremely paranoid with ungraded test sheets.

  Missing a large number of class sessions, or somehow leaving mid-course.

In another course in my old alma mater, an external lecturer apparently entirely lost interest in his course and basically stopped going to his own lecture after the second or third week. He was kicked out fast and unceremoniously. As nobody was available who could teach this course in his stead (it was very specialised), the course was cancelled mid-flight with the promise of a make-up course in the next term, leaving behind a number of understandably pissed students. A policy was put into place that external lecturers should not be allowed to give classes for which no replacement person was available, should something similar happen again.

  Provably unfair or wildly too strict grading.

Sadly, the common way to deal with this problem is "better luck next time". That is, in my university, the best one can hope for in case of a very difficult or unfair exam is that the dean talks to the lecturer in private and asks him to make the test easier next time.


Should I include a DOI/website URL for a publication in dissertation bibliography?

Adding DOIs and URLs to your bib references is really a good idea!

If you are really concerned on the visual clutter, you can "hide" hrefs under the author/title/journal line. In this case, the references are not visible in print version (which is probably not terribly bad, since only a few people will bother to type DOIs from paper back to a browser search line). In the pdf version, however, one can click on the bib reference  line to access the online document (which is really something people appreciate). If you hide hrefs under the titles, make sure your PDF readers do understand this (give them a clue with a footnote or so).

It is really a good idea to use DOIs as much as possible and avoid using potentially unstable URLs. However, if the document is not easy to find (e.g. not among first 3 references in the Google scholar), I would probably go with the URL to help navigate the reader.


plagiarism and transcription of audio recordings

What is important here is to check the experimental protocol for any data protection/privacy issues.

Because you conducted an experiment involving human subjects, there should have been an approved protocol that tells you how the data can be handled. It is important to see if it can be sent to a third-party service, and what precautions are necessary.

In some cases, the recordings have been anonymized and nothing sensitive is discussed, so it may be OK. On the other hand, if there is personally identifiable information, or sensitive medical information is disclosed, laws, like HIPAA apply and special agreements and arrangements are necessary with the transcription service.


Is there national/ethnic discrimination against Asians in U.S. graduate school admissions and in university faculty hiring

There is quite a bit of academic research on university entry and race, mostly in US universities, so if you are interested in learning about racial discrimination in academia, this would be a good place to start.  The phenomenon of discrimination against Asians in academia is well-known and has been identified regularly over the past twenty to thirty years, both in academic literature (e.g., Tsuang 1989, Wu 1995, Wong and Halgin 2011, Kim et al 2011) and in the press (see e.g., The Economist 2015).  The Asian-American Coalition for Education claim that there is widespread discrimination against Asians in academia, particularly in the elite Ivy-league schools, and they provide references to a number of articles and books discussing this issue.

This issue has been studied in quite a bit of detail by the economist Thomas Sowell in the context of his research on affirmative action (an overview of his ideas on the subject is here and his recent book on the economics and politics of race is here).  Sowell argues that affirmative action leads to discrimination against Asian applicants, as a consequence of this group having a higher proportion of applicants with high grades/skills.  Since Asians are the "model minority", Sowell argues that the use of affirmative action in academia tends to involve a raising of the bar for entry for this group, in order to try to avoid their "overrepresentation".

Anyway, this is a big subject, and a lot has been written on it.  Some users on this site may be able to give their own anecdotal experiences, but I recommend you examine this broader literature.  The links I have provided will get you started, but there is also plenty more on the topic.

UPDATE: There is presently a major lawsuit against Harvard University for alleged discrimination against Asian applicants.  It is alleged that Harvard admission staff have systematically down-rated Asian applicants on their "personality" in order to achieve racial balancing, consistent with the university's goal of racial diversity.  @BlueRoses: If this is a topic that interests you, I cannot think of a better example than for you to watch how this legal case plays out.


Ethical grounds of letting supervisor hear recorded interviews with research subjects

Ordinarily, when research involving human subjects is conducted, it needs to go through an ethics clearance with the university, and that should involve stipulation of which staff members will have access to the data, and what protections are imposed on the data.  Usually the scope of this access would be broad enough to allow access for anyone on the research team (researcher, supervisor, relevant administrators, etc.), so long as they comply with the relevant data protections and only access the data for legitimate purposes.  These matters really should have been stipulated clearly in the ethics application for the research, and it is an oversight if they were not.  (You should think about this for next time.)

You mention your concern that giving access to your supervisor goes beyond the consent stipulated to the participants under the data protection section of your project, but you have not stated the content of that section, or the parties to that document.  (If you can elaborate on the specifics, they may help.)  Usually a data-agreement for research will be made between the research participants and the university, rather than being an agreement between the participants and the specific researcher.  Members of the public who consent to participate in research through a university usually expect that they are giving consent to the institution to record and access their data, rather than giving consent to specific researchers.  They will therefore expect that various professionals in the university will have access to their data, for the purposes of conducting or supervising the research, and the university will ensure that access is only done for a proper purpose.

Now, obviously, if your data agreement has a section that stipulates an access restriction, then you should obey that restriction.  However, in the absence of any clear stipulation that access is restricted to specific researchers, the more natural interpretation would be that the university has consent to record and access the data, and this would usually be expected to extend to a supervisor with a duty to supervise the research of a student researcher.

As to whether your supervisor can "demand" access to the data, if the research agreement with the participants is between them and the university, then your supervisor can probably legitimately demand access, and the university will almost certainly grant him access.  If you are a PhD student at the university, and this person is your graduate supervisor, then your supervisor has a duty to supervise your research.  In any case, if you are not sure of the access rules here, just send an inquiry back to the ethics board that approved your application, and ask for their guidance.


How do I explain to a prof who is not happy with my actions which were simply a mistake due to miscommunication?

Agree with Dave, as supervisor/student relationship is like a marriage, communication is essential for it to remain healthy.

However also note that, since you have emailed him quite a number of times and he never responded with any feedback, he did not want to help you, and hence he might not be the kind of person you want to work with. There is nothing worse than a bad supervisor in academia.


What determines you have learned a (theoretical) subject?

I asked myself this question a lot during my undergrad - "Did I learn anything here?"

This is how I determined if I have learned a subject:  Can I teach it?

Now, I don't mean can I get certified to teach it, or can I go teach the course in the next semester. If I could sit my parents down and explain to them subject X and have them grasp it then I believe I have learnt it. If you can't inform someone about a subject well enough that they understand it then you cannot possibly understand it.

You could also write a (fake) course outline. Pretend that you would be teaching this subject as a course. Create an outline such as

1). Major point

   A). Sub point

      I). Explain sub point with case x

      II). Explain sub point with case y

B). Sub point

Etc.

This is what I do when I tried to determine if I learned enough about a subject and if I felt as though, for example, on main point 5 sub point B I can't explain it very well or I am even too confused by it to really grasp it - back to the textbook, or google.


Reviewer asks to add more references to already many references

You could do the following -

Compare other papers in the journal and see how many references they
have put.
Extend references by multiple references for
one instance. Example: In deep learning there is a technique called
object detection. It has 3 top notch review papers for that field
(which I know of). Instead of citing one, I would cite all three in
this case. You could do the same in your case.
You could do what Prof Santa has mentioned in the comments.
Search for relevant references from your cited papers.
Cite the general stuff. Many a times, techniques used so widely, people don't cite them. You could cite them as well.

I think 70 is actually a lesser number cites for a review paper. They generally span between the range of 150-200 in the field I work in. Though I think it differs in every field.


What is a common way to tell if an academic is "above average," or outstanding in their field? Is their h-index (Hirsh index) one of them?

Yes, there is one and only one standard method that is universally employed by reputable academic institutions worldwide.  This is how you evaluate a researcher:

Read their papers.
Attend one of their talks.
Ask the opinion of other experts in the field.

This is how hiring committees and promotion committees do their job.  There are no shortcuts.  Parts 1-2 require that you have some relevant expertise; if not then you must rely entirely on #3.

Every academic is regularly asked to give an expert opinion through reference letters, which often are expected to include some sort of ranking (e.g. "Assistant Prof. X should be promoted because she is clearly as talented/better than Prof. Y who was recently promoted at Prestigious University Z").  How does one justify this kind of claim in the reference letter?  You guessed it:

Read their papers.
Attend their talks.


Transferring results of Google Scholar search to My Profile

as i recall from using this feature, once you verify your email, there is an "import all" button to collate the works, and way to choose from among them, if you care to do so.


Are DOD Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) grants transferable to new universities?

The answer to your colleague's question is specific to his funding award, his program officer, and his specific situation. Only his program office or someone else from DoD could answer his this question. That being said, a quick Google search found another funding request that describes general DOD grant policies:

  Transfer of Award to New Organization: Unless restricted by the specific Program
  Announcement, a change in organizational affiliation will be considered on a case-by-case basis
  by the USAMRAA Grants Officer. If approved, the PI’s original organization will be required to
  agree to relinquish the award. The new organization will be required to resubmit the entire
  application on behalf of the PI, including regulatory documentation. Extended times for transfer
  may put the award funding at risk. A transfer will not, unless under extraordinary circumstances,
  be allowed for any organization that includes a study site/clinical trial at its location.


Contact the editor of the journal immediately and tell them you wish to withdraw the article.


Postdoc in reputed university vs Assistant professor in below average university

A good boss (both personally and scientifically) is everything. Try to find out where you will get the best (direct) supervisor/professor because that is where you will most likely be both happier and more productive.


Why do I have access to Springer articles/books using a laptop when I am not logged in?

It looks like Springer does this using cookies.
I also observed what you described in the question. I was able to access articles that had a paywall when I was neither in my university's IP range nor logged in. However, at the footer of the page, near the copyright notice, it showed name of my university and a mention that this was what gave me access to that particular page.
This did not work while browsing incognito, which suggested the use of cookies. I was then able to verify this by clearing cookies from link.springer.com in my browser, after which I lost access.
I suspect the cookie was stored at some point when you were in the institutional IP range, and had a sufficiently long validity that you continue to have access, and will probably do so for as long as it is valid or until you remove it.
Edit: I was able to verify this as well, accessing Springer from my institution's VPN resulted in me getting access again, which persisted even after leaving the network. A further check showed that the cookie is a session cookie, valid till the end of the session. The duration of storage of such cookies varies by browser and operating system, but should generally persist for at least as long as you keep the browser open (which on a laptop could potentially be a long time), and often even beyond system restarts (e.g. Firefox, Chrome).


Professor agreed for a Skype meeting and then didn't follow up. Also hasn't responded to a reminder I sent a week after. Should I move on?

These things could happen due to a million reasons.

My advice,

Don't wait for other people, until you get a signed contract keep looking for other opportunities. This doesn't mean give this up, but it means that you shouldn't stop searching for other things.

There are too many reasons why this might be happening to list them all (ie he's ill, family commitments, travelling, etc.).

If he didn't agree on the Skype call, then technically, he hasn't left you standing.

I suggest trying to get a contact number and calling. Professors get bombard with e-mails daily and it's easy for some to get through the net. If you call and he answers, an easy way to start talking is saying something along the lines of "Hey, I'm just checking everything is OK" or "Hey, could we set a type for that Skype call".

Good luck.


PhD contribution by combining two or more methods

Same as any kind of research. First have a state of the art of existing methods, which will describe and analyse what is currently done. You should point out the benefit and shortcomings of these methods, and highlight how these single methods do not fit the purpose of the problem. The search should be as exhaustive as possible within the bounds of he problem.

You can then proceed to explain your solution, and its result on the given problem. Analyse its value and shortcomings as you did previously.

When you will have done all this, you will basically have proved that:

No existing method currently provide the necessary solution for the problem at hand (the combination of methods aren't already tested anywhere either, and all single solutions fail the benchmark of the experiment).
The combination considered is solving the problem (or is not solving the problem either, with different outcomes), is correctly bench-marked and understood.

Possibly, you might have to justify that the combination of the two methods aren't an obvious combination that would be used by any non-expert in the field having some sensible basis in the problem being solved.


What is the license for the data shared on Jounral of Political Economics

A "suggested" license isn't necessarily imposed on authors. Especially one that is second hand. Ask the authors if you can't otherwise get a definitive answer.

Some journals might impose a license, but you should be sure, rather than make assumptions.


Are non-Western University PhD's really frowned upon?

All degrees have value somewhere. What you need to think about is where you want to work when you complete your studies. Obviously if your goal is to work in Asia or particularly in Hong Kong there should be no problems with a Hong Kong degree.

Another concern to consider is whether you will work in academia or industry. Sometimes academia needs to hire people whose degrees are recognized by the local government. Sometimes for political reasons one country will not recognize another country's degrees unless the university is transcendently elite. This forces the university to look elsewhere for talent.

In industry, they usually do not need to hire people with degrees from government recognized countries.


Is it wrong to change the name of the university on a recommendation letter

You cannot do this.

Your professor recommended you for University A; changing their recommendation to University B is fraud. I realize that they are probably also willing to recommend you for University B (they may even have promised to write a letter for University B), so I know it seems like you're just saving everyone some  time.
But, the professor still hasn't authorized you to do this. I for one would be angry if I found out that anyone submitted a letter with my name on it without my explicit permission (and, for an undergraduate student, I would indeed want to glance at the updated letter before approving it).

The other concern is that University B could somehow find out about this and assume the worst (that you falsified the letter). They could reject you without even bothering to ask for clarification.

So, three options:

Ask the professor to change it
Ask the professor if you can change it (this addresses the first concern only)
Submit it as-is -- as noted in the comments, programs will not generally be too concerned about this mistake, particularly if Universities A's competitiveness >= University B's competitiveness.


How beneficial a literature survey article would be if it's about gender gap?

Google seems to have gone out of its way to make the results on google scholar difficult to access with a program.
That said, there are many tools that automate some of what you are painfully doing by hand. The results can be imported into excel.
Search for scrape google scholar.
You would certainly need this kind of literature search to think about the extent of a gender gap in the indexed publications. Making sense of the data would be hard. What reliable method might you use to determine the genders of authors?


What attitude should a speaker have to going over time?

Speaking for longer than the allotted time is unprofessional, and it can be very damaging and offensive in some circumstances.  For example, if a conference schedules talks back to back, then it's not acceptable for one speaker to try to use part of the next speaker's time.

It may not be quite as bad in other cases, but it's still disrespectful to the audience.  It tells the audience that the speaker believes his/her final words are more important than whatever else the audience might need to do, and it forces anyone with other obligations to risk drawing attention by leaving before the end of the talk.

Classes are something of a special case for two reasons.  One is that the professor has a certain degree of power over students in the classroom, unlike a typical seminar speaker; another is that it's easy for professors to rationalize that they are going over time for their students' own good.  Going over time is still problematic, but some people don't feel bad about it.

As for how to handle it, this problem should never even come up if the speaker is on top of things.  It's important to keep track of the remaining time and adjust the presentation to omit details as needed to finish on time.  If you screw this up, then you are out of luck if anyone is scheduled to use the room after you.  Otherwise, you could apologize and offer an extremely brief summary of your remaining points.  (I.e., if you suddenly discover that your time is up, that's when you should switch to the 30 or 60 second summary of your conclusions, rather than continuing with the seven minutes remaining in your talk as planned.)


Journal for machine learning applied in finance

Regardless of your specific context, there are tools that may help you with finding appropriate journals based on your paper's Title and Abstract.
For instance, if you want to publish in an Open Access (OA) journal, you can paste your Abstract here and to get recommendations for topically suitable OA journals: https://ojm.ocert.at/
Publishers likewise provide similar tools, such as:

Elsevier's Journal Finder: https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/
Wiley's Journal Finder:
https://journalfinder.wiley.com/search?type=match
Springer's Journal Suggester: https://journalsuggester.springer.com/


Is getting an oral recommendation from a professor who has known me since childhood a conflict of interest during graduate admissions?

I suspect @Buffy is right, that you did not do anything wrong. However, you did receive an advantage you did not earn because of who your parents are and who do they know. I suspect that that advantage is much more subtle and much more substantive than the oral recommendations (compare your experience with this answer Does politics and perception play a role in higher education? )
In short, you were lucky, and it is not moraly wrong to be lucky. However, it is understandable (not right, but understandable) that people who had to earn their position the hard way require extra evidence before they are willing to accept you as an equal. It is your challenge to deal with this situation gracefully. Demonstrate your competence, as Buffy suggested, but also learn how priviledged you are, and how challenging university can be for those who do not come from a middle class or higher background. A nice place to start is here: https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/feb15asrfeature_0.pdf


Depth and difficulty of mandatory courses that could be elective

In such an inflexible curriculum, this may not be possible, but one thing that I frequently encountered in my undergraduate and graduate education was courses with an option "add-on" component.  The lectures were the same, but the students who opted into the add-on were expected to do extra work outside of class.  In different classes, this can take on different forms, such as extra assignments, or a final project, or a stronger version of the same project everybody else was doing, or something else entirely.  In exchange, the students a) get a deeper education in the material, and b) receive additional units for their transcript.  The latter can be a significant incentive, particularly since students usually don't opt for extra units unless it's a subject they are likely to receive a good grade in.


APA reference same author, one dated, one not dated: which order?

This has been described quite clearly on the APA Style Blog:

An “in press” work has yet to be published, so if you have one or more references that contain a publication year, these references will always come before an “in press” reference because they’ve already been published.

When dealing with “no date” references, simply follow the same “nothing precedes something” guidance that the Publication Manual gives regarding alphabetizing author surnames in the reference list (see p. 181). Using this guideline, “no date” references should always precede references with “some date.” Also remember that “no date” is abbreviated as “n.d.” in both the reference list and the in-text citations (see p. 185).


Correcting a paper that just came back from review, what should I do?

If you can justify the changes, there's no problem with making them. The first error for example should be clearly acceptable, if you said you performed error analysis in this way and it turned out there's a bug in your code.

The second is more dicey. Superficially, it might seem like you're altering your data because you have an outlier point (ergo, it's confirmation bias). You will need a convincing explanation why the new data set is better than the old one, why the outlier should not matter, etc.

In any case, if you make these kind of unsolicited changes, do be clear about them in your response to reviewers / cover letter. Otherwise, reviewers would have to read the entire paper again.


When can asking a question during lecture be offensive?

Asking questions is a good thing, but you need to make sure that the questions you ask are appropriate. The best thing to do is judge for yourself whether or not a majority of the audience might be interested in your question.

An example might be that the lecturer has made a mistake, or has forgotten to define something in a mathematical derivation. In such cases, perhaps you could whisper to the person next to you for a quick second opinion.

If a concept has been neglected or poorly explained, then you should ask for expansion or clarification if you think that most of the class will be in the same boat.

These aren't always easy judgements to make. If you're uneasy, save the question for after class. You can also simply ask the lecturer if he or she minds you asking questions, or your classmates if they thought your question was a good one. Good questions enhance the learning experience for everyone.

The bottom line is that most good professors like to have some interaction with the class. Many students audience don't like to say anything, so it's often up to just a few students to ask any relevant questions. But more than one question every ten minutes or so can start to get tiresome for the lecturer, so unless it's a tutorial class you shouldn't turn it into a Q&A session.


Applied math PhD programs - no. of courses to counterbalance low GPA?

I would be surprised if the admissions committee paid that much attention to a number determined so many years ago. First of all the math GRE is extremely difficult and demanding, and if you do well on it people would notice. I would say if a professor looks at your GPA and has some concerns and then turns to your math GRE and sees that you scored 65%, 70%, etc. their fears will be quickly allayed and forgotten. Probably a GPA above 3 would be good but a few recent courses in senior level or beginning graduate level mathematics with an A-B in all of them together with a letter of recommendation from one of the professors who taught the class would be much more influential. There are so many factors that the admissions committee has to balance when trying to decide if a person is cut out for research, it would be silly for them to focus unduly on one thing like GPA.

My one suggestion is that when you mentioned your coursework you mentioned mostly applied courses. The admissions team will likely be composed of analysts, but also algebraists, topologists, logicians, etc. It would not hurt to flesh out your resume with some proof based courses: an introduction to abstract algebra, an advanced linear algebra class with proofs, going beyond intro analysis, things like that.


From Chemical Engineering undergrad to chemistry graduate school

I am a Canadian graduate student in Applied Science with an undergraduate in Engineering so my answer comes from some personal experience.

What I've always been told is that your grades from relevant courses in the most recent two years of university are the most important when considering you for acceptance into a program. So if you apply for a BSc in Chemistry, your Chemical engineering courses should be considered relevant, but any non-technical electives would not.

In most Canadian graduate schools you are expected to maintain an average above B+ (3.3 out of 4.3 maximum). Depending on the scale used to determine your CGPA you might be just above that threshold, which makes your GPA respectable but not stellar.

You can apply to any university you like, they won't turn away your application. Make sure to check out the U15 Universities if you plan on applying in Canada. They are generally considered the most respected universities in the country.

If you have any co-op work terms/summer terms remaining before you graduate, and if you are a student at a Canadian university, you should consider applying for an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award. This will get you some research experience in your undergrad that will help you stand out on a grad school application regardless of your GPA.


Are there any drawbacks in adding hyperlinks in PhD application email?

My personal remark:
I am not particularly fan of clicking all around links in an email I just got from a stranger, however natural and official looking it is.

From reader engagement point of view:
Links directly included to the text actually invite the reader to interrupt their reading and click and go to the website of another university, reading this and that there, instead of reading your mail! It is exactly you don't want, becasue you want her/him to stay and read your mail from start to end. If you really want to link, I would make a separate short paragraph at the end or in P.S., something like "for your convenience, here are links to blablabla". That way the reader easily can reach those websites, IF she/he chooses and AFTER she/he read your message.


Tips for a successful PhD in Artifical Intelligence

It’s not very different from other fields, really, except for the hype.

AI is super hot right now, and far too many works follow the line of: I found a dataset, trained a neural network on it, here’s the paper! (Preferably followed by a tweet/thoughtful Facebook post humblebragging about it)

It’s tiring, often unscientific, and most importantly- boring.

Focus on your fundamentals instead: be really good in math, theoretical foundations of CS, statistics, learning theory, optimization etc.

This’ll buy you a toolkit that you can use long after the current AI hype dies down.

Programming skills are good to have but should not be the focus. You can have undergraduate students do the coding (they’ll be happy to and at least in my case, they’d do a better job than me). All of the top AI people I know are not coders but theoreticians at heart.

The field is hyper competitive which means you’ll need to be ambitious and learn fast to shine.

Soft skills matter. You need to learn how to present your work clearly, both in writing and orally.


Why is Howard University still predominantly black?

I just don't think HBCUs are all that unusual in terms of having a student body that's not a random demographic sample of the United States.  Brandeis has a higher than average percentage of Jewish students, Cardiff has a higher than average percentage of Welsh students, and Duke has a higher percentage of southern students.  Students pick schools in part by cultural and social match, and ethnicity plays a role there.  Furthermore, people go to schools that their family members and friends went to, and a black kid is more likely to have grown up hearing "keep up the good work and you'll get into Howard/Morehouse/Spelman" from their alumni parents and teachers while a white kid's role models are less likely to be Howard alums.  Finally, demographic shifts happen slowly: Sarah Lawrence has been coed since 1968 and it's still 3/4s female.


Should I contact the editor-in-chief about a senior editor's lack of communication?

The reviews are already 3 months overdue past the deadline. You have every right to ask for a progress update, if only to remind the editor in charge of your paper that you're still waiting.

I would write to that editor again, and if you don't get anything back write to him again with a CC: to the Editor-in-Chief.


How to turn something negative to positive in SOP?

Did you graduate with a master's degree? If yes, then one option is to avoid discussing this altogether. You can approach this (honestly) as "I earned my master's degree and now I want to get my PhD." They may guess what happened (or your letters of recommendation may spill the beans), but it still lets you avoid dwelling on a negative in your SOP.
Your other option (and only option, if you left without a degree) is to provide your own perspective on what happened. "Turning a negative into a positive" is probably too much to hope for, but you can take some of the sting out of the negative. I would suggest to: acknowledge the failure, explain what went wrong, and explain why things will be different next time. You can do this very concisely -- just a few sentences.


Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?

I don't entirely agree with the answer "No". This may be because my field is mathematics, though. Sure, not looking at literature beforehand means you are at risk of re-doing something that was already known and it's never nice to discover after spending lots of time working on something that it was already out there.

On the other hand, when you come across what seems to be a good question, I don't think it's such a bad idea to start by asking yourself "Can I answer this myself?" and not rush immediately to see what other people have already done in relation to this question. I see a possibility of positive outcome to not being aware of previous results for a significant time (of course not to the point of being on the verge of publishing and discovering the day before submission a very similar paper...).

As ff524 pointed out in a comment, "if you are a researcher, [...] you already have some idea what's been done before". If you find an interesting question and don't know about an answer, it may be because it does not exist, but it may also happen that it does and has been overlooked before. Maybe it came out at a time when it didn't meet the interests of the community, or it came from another community, or the communication on the result was not so good, or it didn't look interesting because the strategy was inappropriate. If you find this result early on, you will likely drop the question, not advertise it and the result (although of interest to the community) will remain unknown. If you start searching the answer without knowing about the previous result, it's likely that you will not follow the exact same path and that can be good.

Maybe your way is more "natural" and makes the result fit nicely in a developing theory that didn't include it before. It's not such a bad idea to provide a new way of looking at something, even if the result per se is not new.
Maybe your way is more fruitful, in the sense that during your quest for the answer to the original question you will come up with new interesting questions which did not stem clearly from the way the result was previously established.

It's still risky, but in research you constantly invest your time in stuff you don't know the outcome of.


The correlation between GPA in grad school and research ability

In the US graduate universities, Ph.D. students have to take courses. Can a student with low GPA do good research?

In short, yes. GPA is a measure of your ability to follow instructions, do homework on time, and perform on exams. If the grading scheme has enough of a curve it barely does that. In any case, it's not a meaningful measure of research ability.

In the US graduate program I'm familiar with (in physics), several of the classes you take are actually not that closely related to your own research. Spending too much time on those classes can actively hurt your research output, while being somewhat beneficial to your GPA. Often there are also teaching duties to handle, so time management can be crucial. Sometimes you hear the advice to get good enough grades*, and spend the rest of your time on research. It also seems that potential employers are not too interested in the graduate GPA - the degree itself and your research tend to be more important factors.

*The grades should be enough to remain in good academic standing, and count towards your degree.

  I think doing research is solving problems. If someone cannot solve a homework or an exam, how the person can even solve more complicated problems to publish?

To some extent this is true, particularly for the courses relevant to one's research area. Understanding that subject matter and being able to solve problems is clearly worthwhile. Usually that translates to good grades in those classes, but I don't think it's guaranteed. One can have personal issues that semester, suffer from time pressure on a final exam, etc.

On the other hand, research problems are not always just more complicated versions of the problems studied in class. They may require new, creative methods that you wouldn't see in a course. They may require learning specific procedures that just aren't covered in standard courses. Not to mention that being able to pick a good open problems to work on is an art in itself. Certainly, getting good scores in a course does not guarantee one becoming a successful, independent researcher.

In conclusion, there might be some correlation between graduate GPA and research ability for large enough population sizes, but I don't think it holds any predictive power on the individual level.


What is the difference between "prepare to submit" and "working paper"?

A "working paper" does not mean "a manuscript I've been working on". It refers to a paper that has been published in venues designated for disseminating preliminary research reports. These venues are often (but not always) internal to a department, and they are rarely peer-reviewed (usually they are reviewed only by the editors). See the Wikipedia entry on Working paper. In conclusion, you cannot call your manuscripts "working papers" if they haven't been published in such venues.

The best you can do is to call them "manuscripts", because that's all they are. They're not submitted, under review, under revision, or anything like that. I personally wouldn't pay any attention to entries on a CV that say "manuscript", as there is no way for anyone to know if these manuscripts even exist. What's worse, it looks like CV padding.

I also don't care much for CV entries that say "submitted" or "under review". Anyone can submit anything and have it reviewed, so it says nothing about its quality. I wouldn't list any paper on a CV that either (1) hasn't been published, or (2) hasn't been accepted for publication.


How should PhD student show importance of research proposal in cover letter requesting access to important dataset?

Your advisor's critique is exactly right.  You've made a convincing case that your subject is important, but not that your work is important.  This:

  My current research interest is concerned with the interactions between families, students, teachers and staff in Head Start programs

is the sort of vague writing that a lot of academics are prone to (I'm always trying to beat it out of my writing).  Being "concerned with the interactions" is a very abstract, high level statement that doesn't actually say anything.  Concerned with how?  Which interactions?

Finding out whether teachers say "hello" or "hi" more often to family members is an investigation of the interactions among the people you describe, but it's an utterly uninteresting one.

Start concrete, with the specific research questions you plan to ask.  Think about what you excited about your research. How would you describe your work to a non-academic? What's the story you that keeps you excited about how your research will actually matter - the line of causation from the work you're going to do to actually making people's lives better?


Average age to start a PhD and correlation to future career

There are many confounding variables (field of study, country, citizenship status, sex, race/ethnicity, probably many others) that correlate with both age at doctorate (as seen below) and post-PhD plans. This makes it difficult to directly measure the relationship between age and post-PhD plans.

The median age at doctorate varies by country and by field. Here's some OECD data:

It also varies over time. In the US, from 1978-2003, in the science and engineering fields:

And in the non-science and engineering fields:

See this report for more details.

For the US, we have data on the distribution of students' age, not just the median, and it's also broken down by  sex, citizenship status, and ethnicity and race.  From 2014:


Talk to them, the advisors will have met people with all options / constraints...

Or go and see them...


Are patents included in literature reviews?

Everything is included in the literature search including patents. It depends on how deep you wish to search,  where you wish to stop and which range of years you would like to focus. Papers, reviews, patents, books, monographs, conference proceedings, handbooks, MS/PhD theses, technical reports, etc., are all part of a formal literature search.  You should not include unreliable sources like internet pages until and unless the author is known to be scientifically reliable. Wikipedia should also be the last resort...it is an excellent beginning for a topic search. A good reference list includes seminal papers (earliest ones) and the latest ones, emphasizing the recent ones.


How to reply to a claim that a paper is "obvious" and "not interesting"?

Well if you disagree with the comment, then you offer a sound, well-reasoned counterargument that addresses the concerns.  If your equation is interesting, then why?  If it is not obvious, then why?  Do these alleged equations/models only look similar, but in fact there's a deeper and possibly subtle distinction?  If so, point it out.  Non-combatively.

These are the sorts of things that often get addressed in the introduction.  Possibly the remark is ultimately a reflection on your paper having a weak introduction that fails to address the "what's new here and why should I care?" questions with sufficient flair, clarity, and authority.  More than one legitimately good paper (to whatever extent such a benchmark exists objectively) has been rejected because the authors failed to do an adequate job of "selling" and explaining the paper in the abstract and introduction.

Of course, there's also the possibility that the remark is spot-on.  One reason journals tend to use multiple referees is because there's no guarantee that any one expert has authoritative and unbiased knowledge on whatever bits of arcana your paper is using.  Nor is there a guarantee for two, or three, or whatever, but the odds are better that if something is "wrong" from the standards of the journal then it will be found.

A literature review is the way to delve into this possibility.  "Elsewhere in the literature" would suggest to me that the reviewer believes you have intentionally or accidentally excluded some important pieces of the literature, and this can only be resolved by looking further into the literature (and possibly asking colleagues if they know of anything that might seem relevant).

If ultimately you end up agreeing with the comments, in part or in whole, that can be a tough pill to swallow, but reality is what it is.  You can still try to rewrite portions of the paper to properly address preceding similar work and argue why yours is in some sense novel, interesting, and/or useful.  And then you either hope this placates the negative reviewer sufficiently to earn acceptance, or you submit it to some other journal after a rejection.  "Minor generalizations" are sometimes simply not up to snuff for certain journal standards, while it is well within that of others.


Where to get a basic introduction to a science subject published legitimately?

5000 words is too few for a commercial publisher to publish as a book, and it sounds too elementary to be published in a journal.

Your best chance is likely to find a paleoclimate textbook author and offer to collaborate with him or her. They might be willing to insert your chapter into their book.


What is a professor called who teaches only one class and who works in the industry during the day-a visiting professor still?

I believe the best term (in the abstract) is "adjunct professor." "Visiting" does not seem to apply, for the reasons you state.

"Adjunct" conveys some useful information, and is important in the politics of how academic departments function. Many adjuncts do not have professional ambitions in academia; they are well established in their professional field, and teach a course in order to stay in touch with the academic world, to add credibility to their name, or similar reasons. So, while from an academic perspective an adjunct might be considered less academically qualified, from their professional perspective that might not be especially important. Also, bringing practical experience into the classroom is highly valued in many disciplines.

There has been a great deal written in recent years about the efficacy and ethics of universities, community colleges, etc. hiring more adjuncts, at the expense of tenure-track professor positions. They do so, in part, to save money, which is seen by many as an infringement into the academic quality/integrity of a university. Worth looking into.


Should I ask for a submitted recommendation letter to be retracted in order to submit another, stronger recommendation?

You can't "retract" a letter.  This isn't done, and I think it would look weird and somewhat suspicious.  The committee might be inclined to read that letter more closely in case it contains something damaging that you were trying to conceal.  At the very least, it seems distasteful to be "gaming" your professors' supposedly well-considered evaluations in this way.

You certainly can have this other professor submit their letter in addition to the others.  For those schools that specify three letters, it will be up to the committee whether they read all four, or choose three in some arbitrary way.  I suspect that if three letters suggest you're a viable candidate, the committee will be willing to look at the fourth.


What is a good way to proofread for a journal article?

Proofreading is really hard.  The best way to proofread is to ask a friend to do it, who is less familiar with the material and therefore will be more likely to spot inconsistencies and errors---especially the bigger gaps in logic and tangles in presentation that are so difficult for an author to see.  You're simply too familiar with the technical material, and will inherently read it non-linearly, where a new reader will not.

For doing it yourself, I recommend printing out a copy of the material on physical paper and reading it out loud to yourself.  Reading out load has two big advantages:

It slows you down a lot, thereby forcing you to pay attention to every word.  Ordinarily, most of us actually read at a whole-phrase or whole-sentence level, which lets us hallucinate in things that are not there.
Reading out loud engages your language system through two different channels, thereby increasing the salience of any error and making it more likely for you to notice it.

You don't have to print it out---reading it out loud on a screen can work too---but I like printing it out because that also lets me take the paper into a different context with less distractions for doing the proofing as well.


Graduate school admission: what is the point of having a waitlist of size 50 while intending to eventually offer a position to only a few applicants?

In my experience, most members of admission committees usually agree on who the star applicants are, or which applicants are simply unqualified.  However, there's a lot of disagreement in the middle, and it comes down to essentially arbitrary decisions among a sizable group of applicants who might or might not be admitted.  This is a strong incentive to have a big wait list:

It can function as a polite form of rejection, to minimize hurt feelings among applicants who genuinely might have been admitted under other circumstances.
It plays the same role for admissions committee members.  If someone is strongly in favor of a particular candidate but there isn't a consensus for admission, adding them to the wait list can be a good compromise.  Insisting on rejecting them outright just leads to pointless arguments.

This role as a sort of "honorable mention" is essentially independent of the chances of admission from the wait list.  However, having a large wait list can have important practical benefits even if there's no chance of admitting more than a few people from the list.  The key insight is that the list isn't necessarily rank ordered, with the first few candidates likely to be admitted but the fiftieth having almost no chance.  Instead, who is admitted may depend on the department's needs, based on which of the previous admissions decisions were accepted.  For example, it may take into account the representation of different subfields in the entering class.  From this perspective, a 50-person wait list may effectively amount to 10 different 5-person wait lists, with no one knowing in advance which of the smaller lists will end up being used.


Doing part of my PhD remotely in Europe while working full time?

You would need to check that with both the university and with any supervisor/advisor you would have. I'm pretty sure that such relationships do occur, even if not common. But being less the norm, you need to work out the details.

In some ways the supervisor might be the bigger block than the university. It might take a trip to Europe to finalize any such arrangements. But you first need to determine if they would even consider such a situation. The answers will vary.


Response to desk return of PLOS submission

Check if you have covered all the details that the editor has mentioned. If you are very sure that there is no scope for adding any other detail, you can write to the editor, providing a point by point explanation of what you have done, with page numbers and line numbers as evidence. Since the manuscript has anyways been rejected, you do not stand to lose anything by doing this. However, ensure that you maintain a polite and courteous tone throughout your email. Your email should not give the impression that you are refuting the editor's decision; rather, it should seem like you are seeking more clarity on the weaknesses of your paper, so that you can work towards improving it.


The average decision time of math PhD application (Brandeis, Tennessee, York, SFU)

For most American grad schools, April 15 is a significant date for admittance offers.

Here is the relevant link about the April 15 deadline. In essence, students who receive offers for grad school admittance are allowed to wait until April 15 to respond. What can happen is that students who receive offers sometimes wait until the last minute to decide, and thus the grad schools don't know if they have enough slots to offer someone further down their waitlist until around April 15.

Thus, I think the latest you might get an offer from a grad school is April 15, or perhaps a day or two later.