How to address students in the USA, as a university instructor: first name or last name?

First name, at every university I've been. Both for in person communication and email. There are a few charmingly old fashioned professors who use Mr/Miss Lastname, but they're seen as oddities. So yes, the communication is generally asymmetrical.


Self-plagiarism of thesis for public report

Almost all questions about plagiarism come down to the question of what expectation of originality the documents carry.

In particular, a funding report doesn’t carry the same expectation of originality that either a journal paper or a thesis would.  It’s very common, and legitimate, for a funding report to consist (partly or entirely) of material re-used from other presentations of the work.  (At least, this is the norm in my experience in maths and theoretical CS; I can’t speak for all fields or all funding bodies, of course.)

So it should be absolutely fine to re-use material from the thesis or paper in the report; and I’d feel it’s fine to use a blanket attribution like “some parts of [or “much of”] this report are based on [or “taken from”] the corresponding thesis (Smith 2020) and paper (Smith and Jones 2019).”

  It is likely that the report will be published before the thesis is published, and possible that the report is published before the thesis is submitted. Would I therefor need to cite the report in the thesis, to avoid self-plagiarism in the thesis?

It certainly doesn’t hurt to do this.  But it’s common, and understood, that the chronology of publication may not match the chronology of production, so there’s no need to make it sound like it detracts from the originality of the thesis.  It can be given as an aside, and phrased as e.g. “The report (Smith 2019) contains material excerpted from this thesis”, or similar.  Conversely, the report can and should still cite the thesis in this case, listing it as “(in preparation)”, “(to appear)”, or similar.


Should I list all my research on a CV? Or should I only put the most significant medical research trials?

Ah, this is a good question!

Unlike a resumé, in which one includes only the experiences/skills that are relevant to the position being applied for, a CV is meant to document all  reasonable academic endeavors and accomplishments. In some cases, lines on your CV will be only loosely related to your main research interest; my CV for instance includes several co-authored papers I am not particularly keen on.

I don't know that there is any hard-and-fast 'rule' stating your CV must be complete, good and bad, but it has been my impression over the years that one includes pretty much everything.  If you've ever wondered why your department chair's CV is 35 pages long, now you know why.


One of my group members did not contribute anything and I notified my course lecturer. Did I do the right thing?

No, you didn't do the wrong thing. She did not notify you in advance of the deadline, and you needed to submit to avoid incurring your own penalties. She and the instructor can sort out the mark - it may be that her issues meet the guidelines for special consideration for example. Ultimately, it's none of your business and not your responsibility.

I know some instructors think that group work is a good way of preparing for teamwork in the real world. But, in the real world, problems like this are handled by the boss, not the other team members. On the other hand, you should learn from the experience to have all the team members commit to completing their pieces in advance of the deadline (preferably a week or so in advance if there's enough time), so that you have a chance to resolve such problems before the project completion date.


How do I judge the novelty of my paper in the area of algorithms and system design?

The novelty of a scientific result is defined in terms of its relationship to previously published results.  In order to perform such a comparison you need:

to have a good idea of what related works have been published by the community, typically obtained by some combination of reading papers and attending conferences, and
to compare your your system against the most similar prior systems and demonstrate its quantitative or qualitative superiority (e.g. "my system is three times faster" or "my system can process widgets AND frobs, and all previous systems could only do one or the other").

The "amount" of novelty is then how much better you are, relative to the interests of the community, and is very community dependent: a 2% improvement in the cost of manufacturing concrete is worth billions of dollars, while a 2% improvement in the speed of a personal computer program is generally unnoticeably tiny.


How do I modify the abstract in Arxiv (without changing the paper)

The only changes that do not generate a new version number are adding a journal reference or DOI. Changing the abstract will generate a new version. As far as I am aware there are no limitations to the number of updates, but at some point arXiv will stop including udpates in the daily mailings (I believe after version 5). Making many new versions with minor changes might give the impression though that you have not carefully checked your manuscript before submitting, so generally I would recommend to save such small updates for after the paper is accepted or revised. This would also be less work for yourself and for the arXiv moderators.

Personally, in the case you mention, I would not bother to update it now. Most people are smart enough to try to remove the period at the end of the URL.


Where is your line with students on social media?

My line:
On the first day of classes I tell the students that I don't want to be contacted by social media or by any means other than the school e-mail. The school also gives students a nice way to provide anonymized feedback, which no one has ever used so far.
If students send me friend requests on Facebook et al (which I don't really use), I delete the requests (it's happened a few times).
If students send me friend requests on LinkedIn anyway, I accept the requests after the end of the semester. (I can imagine a scenario where I might want to delete the request, but it hasn't happened yet.)
On at least 4 occasions I remember, former students messaged me via LinkedIn about recommendation letters for graduate school, advice regarding internships, etc. I don't know, maybe they don't have access to school e-mail anymore. I'm a little ambivalent, but so far nothing bad has happened.
I have no doubt that some students create class-related social media discussion groups. I also trust that if something happens that needs my attention (e.g. many people not understanding the material), they will contact me by school e-mail or make an appointment for office hours.


Do universities in the USA help postdoc researchers with the visa process?

Yes, they should help you with the visa process, at least to some extent. In fact, they will likely have to sponsor your application. You will probably require a J1 (non-immigrant) visa for a postdoc in the US. More information on how to apply for such a visa is provided here.

In short, you will need a designated sponsor. Your university likely has this status. They have certain obligations to support and monitor your progress during the stay. If the university has an international office, they can likely provide you with more detail.

In any case, for you to apply for a J1 visa, you will need to have a copy of Form DS-2019 provided by the university. This is issued by the designated sponsor, confirming your eligibility for the J1 visa program, and contains some details about their exchange program (under which postdocs from abroad will typically fall, if my understanding is correct), start and end dates, and how your stay is funded. Without this DS-2019 form you cannot apply for the visa at the embassy. You will also need to bring it to the interview at the embassy, where the consular officer will evaluate your application.

One important thing to note is that if you will bring dependents with you (spouse or child), they will need their own DS-2019 forms to apply for a J2 visa.


I attended a poorly ranked school for my undergraduate education. Will this affect my chances for a PhD in economics?

As the commenters have pointed out, a lot will depend on your ability to get good letters of recommendation. However, there is an important issue to note: a good letter of recommendation does not mean the same thing as "a letter from someone famous." You can get a letter of recommendation from a big name that is completely useless, if it doesn't provide any real information of value about the candidate.

Instead, what you want are people who can testify that you are a good student, and show evidence that you can become a good researcher. Since you have excellent records, and are working with a research group before applying to graduate school, I think you have the right groundwork for getting good letters. To make sure that you do so, you'll want to meet with the people who will be writing the letters, make sure that they are willing and enthusiastic about writing the letters (hint: if they are at all hesitant, do not get a letter from them!), and then provide them with the necessary material they'll need (CV's, samples of writing and research work, citations and awards, etc.) to write the letter.

Ultimately, the only way attending an unranked school will affect your chances of getting in as a graduate student is if the admissions committee at the school you're applying to shows such a bias. If you're concerned about such a possibility, and have the resources (time, money, motivation) to do so, setting up a meeting with the person in charge of graduate admissions at the department you're interested in probably can't hurt.


First of all you should inquire with your institution regarding intellectual property. Usually, there are some strict regulations in place. In my institution, for example, whatever is produced by the university's funding or using the university's equipment is at least to some point eligible to be the intellectual property of the university. Honestly, I've never heard of anyone who got into trouble with these regulations, but they're there, and should a feud arise, the institution will have the legal upper hand.

As you see, even if your code contained nothing of someone else's code (or other contributions - source code is not the only thing that makes a project), you could still expect some difficulties.

Further, is the algorithm published, i.e. could I find a paper describing it and reimplement it to make a similar component as your adviser? If so, that puts you in a bit better position to use it without his consent, but I still wouldn't.

However, you still can't sell this product for your own benefit, without getting the consent and including all the parties that made a significant contribution. (Well, you could, of course, but that would be highly unethical and probably illegal) I do not see any obstacles in continuing research on your project, if you find a suitable department and new adviser whose interests happen to coincide with it. You could even find a way to improve you adviser's algorithm.

Finally, I would strongly advise against antagonizing you adviser (whether you are right or not). Remember, that you will need recommendation letters for your PhD studies. You should always try to maintain good relations with ex-collaborators (including your adviser), it's a lot easier to advance you career, if there are people who worked with you and have nice things to say about it, especially at the beginning of your career.

My advice is not to go behind anyone's back in your group. Your ideas are your own and nobody can prevent you from working on them in the future, so you have nothing to lose there. But, you shouldn't rely on those border cases, e.g. "if I took that and modified it slightly, would they still be able to sue me?. Talk to people, if you can't work things out, it is not the end of the world, you'll have to work on it more and come up with your own methods. As a byproduct you also get additional research material which is never a bad thing for a PhD candidate.


Phd in the computer science - mathematics interface

You can certainly do a PhD in mathematics and apply it to AI. You should also look at CS PhDs in addition to mathematics ones, as the boundary between the fields is pretty nebulous and which department will have the faculty you wish to work with will vary by the university. You should in particular look for university with a strong program in Combinatorics, Algorithms, and Topology (especially if you want to go into object recognition/computer vision).


I missed the PhD application deadline, what now?

Some universities will let you  take classes as an un-matriculated student. But you need some (personal) funding for this.

Some laboratories might hire you as a low level lab technician or assistant. This would give you some funding and a bit of experience.

Either of the above can give you contacts that might be useful in the future.

In the rarer case, you might be able to do both. Hire on at a university lab that also lets you take a few courses as a perk.


How to explain to my supervisor that her style of input is hindering my progress?

There are several intertwined issues here, and it is going to be difficult to sort them out:

Your supervisor is an expert.  She likely knows things you don't.  So if you suggest one way and she suggests another, it may be because she has seen that way tried before and knows that it doesn't lead anywhere.

Your supervisor doesn't seem to be great at leading, or doesn't recognize that you are not her colleague yet.  If two people at the same level are trading ideas, shooting them down or poking holes to patch can be a very useful exercise.  As a new researcher, you aren't at this level yet, but she may be treating you as though you are.

What you consider interesting and what she considers interesting may not overlap

What you consider interesting and what is actually publishable within the scope of a single paper or blog post may not overlap.

Let's treat these individually.

I have seen many grad students (and I have been one myself) who don't fully grasp the field.  I've read papers, thought "Oh, I can fix that problem", then gone on to work for a week and then find the paper written 20 years prior that solves it.  She has a much broader understanding of the field than you do, and she knows what's been done.  Take her suggestions helpfully: "I want to do X, but my supervisor suggested Y instead.  I'm going to compare and contrast the two methods in a literature review and see which is best".  That's your job as a PhD student anyway.

This is time for an awkward conversation.  Depending on your personality, I personally suggest being a bit blunt but polite.  Tell her what you told us: "When I suggest something and you change it, it takes my enthusiasm away.  Can we work together to make sure that my ideas are fully explored, even if they aren't the best?"

This is up to you two to figure out.  This is more fun.  Ask her what she thinks the big problems of the field are, why she's in the field, what interests her about new research etc.

My supervisor was phenomenally good at writing.  I am not.  He was also very good at focusing a paper onto the key relevant points.  I was not.  We fought over papers a lot, to be honest, and to be equally honest it was a mutual problem.  Both of us had reasonable ideas, but he was better at it and knew what it took to get published.  I did not.

If your supervisor thinks that you are proposing something too broad, that's a very, very good indicator that you are.  Think of those broad ideas as your research program, and the individual smaller ideas as your research projects.  Projects lead to papers, programs lead to careers.  Don't take it as "this is a useless idea", but more as "this is not suitable for publication because you haven't actually solved the big problem.  You have, however, solved a smaller problem that moves us towards the bigger solution.  Let's publish that and keep making progress"


Effect of Low credit hours/ long undergrad on grad school

I don't think taking a little bit of extra time is going to make a huge difference in your case is viewed by admissions staff, so long as you've been putting the extra time to good use. Have you used the extra time to do research? Have you done summer internships or research programs?

If all you've done is lengthen your undergraduate program with nothing but good coursework to show for it, then extra time may hurt you.


What factors determine acceptance to top graduate program in Engineering?

To get into a top graduate program, you typically need:

No red flags that will cause your application to be discarded.
Something that causes you to stand out from the vast crowd of good applicants with no red flags.

A lot of people seem to think that having an extremely high GPA, GRE, class rank, etc. will help, but it does not.  The problem is that such standardized evaluations address only category #1.  There are a lot of good students out there, and graduate programs aren't really interested in whether you are the best student.  Instead, they are interested in whether you have problems as a student that would prevent you from succeeding in graduate school.

The honest truth is that there is a huge amount of unpredictability in satisfying criteria #2. and you can only do so much to control it.  There are many useful things you can do to help make yourself stand out, like participating in research projects, but ultimately there are no guarantees, because you never know how many other excellent candidates might also be applying to that program in that year, and what exactly it is that will make one person's application resonate with the particular faculty member who reads it.


Do not get distracted and focus on completing a thesis rather than publishing. After 10 years, you should have enough material to write a decent thesis, even though what you have done may not be publishable. Get support from your supervisor and anyone supportive from the your department to achieve this. Otherwise, self-fund or reach out for coaches or mentors are able to achieve this aim. Ideally people that know your area and can help support you to focus on your thesis rather than the publications.

I understand and respect that publication is important especially in mathematics. Publications is the focus for an academic career but you have already invested 10 years of your life and it does not sound like you are going to be hitting a string of publications soon. Also, if you are already working part-time, it seems to me, getting the PhD and then working full-time is a very reasonable and respectable career goal.

Recognise that you get a high every time there is a new challenge. Every one does. It is far more exciting to mov from one exciting topic to the next. Every new challenge has a buzz to it. You have to decide whether this buzz and excitement is more important than completing your PhD. Going over old material and old "stuff" would be drudgery and probably your previous traumatic experience (as you remember why you were not able to achieve publication), but it is important to swallow your pride and decide whether completing a thesis and your PhD is more important than achieving the goal of publication.


Which term is correct for a work submitted for a master's degree: paper, thesis or dissertation?

A paper usually refers to a published article but can also mean a shorter written essay, for example as in term-paper. The thesis and dissertation is basically equivalent, at least in its use. Originally a thesis is more than the written work, it is the thought or thinking coupled to the problem as the original meaning of the word indicates. From this perspective the word dissertation is used for the written work that comes out of your degree work.

So for a master degree, you will see masters thesis and masters dissertation used interchangeably. I would suggest checking what is used in your department or university and use whatever is customary.


Where should I look to see if any funding is available for an industry-based research to attend and present at academic conference?

Unless you are invited to present as a keynote speaker, you're probably out of luck for getting sponsorship from conferences to present.  The expected cash-flow is generally in the other direction: conferences ask industry to donate money that supports the travel of academics.

Many companies, however, have internal "professional development" programs that allow employees to apply to use internal money to attend conferences, even if it is not directly connected with their current job responsibilities.  Check and see if your employer has an option of that sort: most large high-tech companies have some sort of formal program, and many small companies have informal options.

Another option is to see if you can convince your employer to run a marketing or recruitment booth, if the conference is within the company's general scope of interests (or public relations outreach).  Then, even if it's not within the scope of your current duties, you may be able to "pay your way" on the trip by organizing and spending part of your time manning the booth.


Difference between a research gap and a challenge

It is a bit hard to judge as the phrasing may be due to an individual. But I would think that a research gap would be an unsolved part of some area of a field that has been studied fairly extensively and needs the gap filled to advance in some particular direction.

On the other hand, a research challenge is broader. It would be a request for study of some problem that has been neglected by the research community either because it has just been overlooked or because no one has yet thought it important enough to tackle.

Filling a research gap may be difficult, but it is relatively constrained with much work surrounding it already done. A research challenge however requires a much more extensive attack and probably many more resources. It is intended to open new lines of inquiry.


Return to academia [in administration] from industry

In my limited experience, high-level administrator posts filled by current-or-former academics fall under one of the following categories:

Ex-officio with being a Full Professor somewhere (with perhaps some rotation among Professors)
Carried out by regular Full Professors on temporary leave from their academic duties, or in parallel with a much-reduced regular academic workload.
Carried out by Professors Emeritus, or people who academically-retire early from their position as Full Professor to do only managerial work
Populated only by people who have a special long-standing relation with the academic institution (and aren't Full Professors).

I have encountered a few exceptions to the above, but those were extremely rare.


How to evaluate an implementation Master's Thesis in Evaluation chapter?

Since you mentioned that the application is similar to another previously developed application, your evaluation ideally should compare how yours stacks up to the one it is derived from. Mention what differences there are in terms of implementation, as well as what it does better, and also whatever pitfalls exist as opposed to the other application.
You want to show what you did and learned throughout the whole process, as well as what potential improvements you might make to the application in the future. Best of luck.


Is it wise to do teaching-assistantship in a university I am not studying in?

Benefits:

You keep your contacts with the academic environment, that may be useful applying for a PhD.
Some professors will know you, and this that may help you get a position (depending on how it is done in your country).
You gain teaching experience.

Drawbacks:

TA salaries are usually quite low. Depending on your background, you may be loosing money. The working conditions may also not be so good.
You are not getting other kind of experience, that would be useful for any non-teaching job.

On a side note, it may look weird on your CV being a TA while not enrolled. This is not necessarily bad, but be prepared to be questioned about it in interviews.


Citing an accepted but not yet published paper

You can cite anything you want, regardless of whether it has been accepted for publication or even submitted.  Of course citing preprints can make life more difficult for the referee, but there's no issue with accepted papers.  They are considered just as reliable as published papers, since they've already gone through the refereeing process.

If you rely on a paper that is not yet publicly available, then you should provide a copy for the referee.  However, if it's your own paper, then it's much better to post it online, for example through the arXiv.  (If you supply a copy for the referee without posting it online, then it gives the impression that you are deliberately restricting access to the paper.)


How do theorists in STEM fields update equipment?

I'm not at an undergraduate institution, but I am a theorist in a department that doesn't have many of them.

My summation of my startup costs were "People and computers".

A couple of things to potentially consider:

People. Support for a programmer, or a grad student, or undergraduate salary for the summer.
Consider negotiating for a recurring or longer term startup package. For example, my startup doesn't expire. I know someone else at another university who negotiated for "A workstation costing $X,XXX, replaced every 5 years".
Data costs. If you use data sets, or could conceive of using data sets that cost money, you want to allocate startup to those.
Similarly, travel and publication costs.

Another approach is to ask your Chair if the Department needs something, and put that in your startup in exchange for...favors, or unallocated funding, etc.


How to refer to an author whose last name can be confused with a pronoun?

Specific anti-advice (for a related situation):

If this situation arises with a female author, especially if their first name is recognizably female, I encourage you not to write out the full name each time.

It may seem unobjectionable, but this would play into the sexist practice (once widespread, though fortunately much less common today) of referring to men by last name while referring to women always by first and last name:

  This phenomenon has been analyzed previously by Schmidt [6], Wang [7], Mary Jones [2,3,4], Elfenbacher [1], Doris Laubin [5], and Washington [8,9].


There is some indication that I am not that good at teaching – should I still strive to become a professor?

There are many possible interpretations of why the students turned away from you. You should not jump to the conclusion that you are bad at teaching. For example, it is possible, judging from the information you gave in the comment, that the students simply did not wish to have a tutor, despite the good intention of the parents who hired you. This is especially common in certain East Asian countries where competition for educational resources are fierce. Moreover, depending on the type of students you tutor, your experience may not speak to your potential as a professor at all. After all, the academic need of a high school student is quite different from that of a college and graduate student. Your teaching style may work well for college students, but not so much for the high school ones.

Finally, even if teaching is not your strongest suit, the experience you gain as you finish grad school and post-doc should help you build the necessary skills (yes, teaching can be an acquired skill, not just an innate charisma). So depending on where you are along your education, there may still be time for improvement. Also, depending on the type of university you work in, the relative importance of research and teaching can vary considerably. So even if everything else fails, working in a research-oriented university should help a bit with the problem.


When citing a journal paper, should I use the online publication year or the print publication year?

As StrongBad said, the general rule is to follow the guidelines outlines by the publication venue.

If there is none, then as a rule of thumb, cite the journal version. The reason depends on the type of online publication:

When the paper was an early access version of the later journal paper and
thus identical, the journal paper in some sense replace the online access
version.
When the 2012 paper was posted at arXiv.org or the like, then the later
journal version went through peer reviewing, whereas the earlier version did
not. So the journal version can easily be more mature.

Note that one role of citations is to assign academic credit. Credit towards a paper that appeared in a reputable journal counts a bit more, so citing the journal version is also a courtesy to the author(s).

If for some reason, for your paper, it is of importance who had an idea first (e.g., when you give a chronological overview of related work), you can just add a note like "An earlier version of the paper appeared in XYZ in 2012" to the bibliography entry of the journal version to make that clear.


Are the criteria of faculty positions different in the US and UK?

There are several levels to answer your question.

There is a large variation in quality in both US and UK institution, from world best to the end of the spectrum. We do not know - and you can only rely on available university ranking - if both US and UK institutions you applied to  lie in the same range.

Now, statistics. You said you applied to 5 jobs in US and got invited to 3 interviews. Applied to 4 UK jobs and got 0 interviews. If we use the hypothesis that US and UK institution quality is the same, then your average success rate is 3/9=33%, and the chance to get 0 interviews instead of the (less than) 2 you would expect could be entirely due to randomness. I see no reason to think of biases to start with.

You do mention that one UK position has been reopened, which means that they thought you did not meet their requirements. Which leads to the requirements issue: I would find it unlikely that all 9 institutions are looking for somebody with the same profile. Perhaps some institution care more about teaching, others about the ability to get grants, other about seniority in the field, etc.etc.

Last, you say "I prefer to move to the UK since I still do not need a work permit". US institutions are eager to sponsonr visas for people they wish to hire - and the government makes it easy to issue visa to academics at any level; you certainly need not worry for a full professor position. And with academic visa you can get a green card in a short as a year. They'll probably pay for relocation as well.

Moral: I am not aware nor is reasonable without data to say that there are fundamental differences in general criteria for hiring faculty between US and USA. There are certainly large variations at both university and department-level strategies. Visa is not a problem at all.


Does writing a book improve your chance for getting scholarship for applying PhD abroad?

The goal of a PhD is to teach you how to do research. Teaching is not the primary goal of the PhD. Book publishing is also considered something that can be detrimental early on in one's career, since it takes time away from the other more important goals (advising students and postdocs, peer-reviewed publications, grants, teaching, committee work, etc.).

That said, a well-written published book probably can't hurt your chances. If, however, it's riddled with poor writing and technical errors, it will not help and may even do some harm.


It's your thesis, and so long as the work --- including the cover ---conforms to the requirements set down by your institution, then I see no problem with it. Yes, you might upset some of the more conservative of your colleagues, but if you continue in research no doubt you will in future perturb the status quo again.

The only concern I have is whether such an unconventional decoration would influence a grader. However, I suspect you are considering the final version of the thesis, after any corrections set down by your examiners, so this isn't an issue.

Naturally, you should give credit to your artist.


What is proper acknowledgment for figure authorship in a book chapter?

In the acknowledgements sections, the authors could write:
"The authors would like to thank F'x for providing us with Figure X".

Alternatively, in the caption of the figure they could write "Figure courtesy of F'x."

Both are acceptable, as long as you are happy. I don't think they are obliged to thank you in the paper at all.


Is there a known relation between course pass rate and student feedback?

Yes, this has been rigorously probed in a 1998 study called DUET at Duke University. The study is described in chapters of Valen Johnson, Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education.

The correlations you describe had been observed for many decades, but they don't do a very good job of probing what's going on. The correlation could arise because teachers' effectiveness is correlated with students' performance, and therefore with grades; because students give higher ratings in return for lenient grading; or because students attribute success to their own efforts, and failure to the professor.

The DUET study got around these issues with a design that used a pretext to get students to fill out two different online evaluations of their teachers. (This was in the early days of the internet.) They gave evaluations both before and after seeing their final grades. The results showed a time-sequence consistent with a cause-and-effect relationship, with students tending to change their evaluations after seeing their grades.

There is other evidence that student evaluations lack validity, including a famous experiment called "Dr. Fox," in which a very energetic and persuasive lecturer gave a great lecture with total nonsense as the content.

Personally, when I'm on a tenure committee or evaluating an adjunct, the only thing I find useful about the evaluations is if the written comments show a pattern of something objective, e.g., lots of comments complaining that the instructor was often absent.


Is Academia.edu's "mentions" feature real?

It is so clearly a hoax, trying to get more subscribers. Please, Academia.edu software engineers, do not try the "we make errors" card, as it is not believable.

I do believe they are legit, but this mentions baiting reeks of dark patterns. If they continue doing this, they will lose credibility with the public, and end up losing the one thing people are willing to pay for, especially in research: a trusted reputation.


Asking authors to send figures from a paper in as separate pdf files

The question is difficult to answer in the way it is phrased. I would find it hard to believe that there was a seminar activity asking you to find other people's figures and present them. There are lots of immediate copyright issues from doing that.

There is a certain amount you can do based around the fair use rules for academic use and giving acknowledgement to authors. The norm there would just be the screenshot, with the acknowledgement (the latter of which should cover the fact that image will not be of the highest quality).

But it may be that the request for high quality figures is really asking you to create your own, whether this means coming up with something novel, or generating your own (cited) version of the original figure.

In any case, I don't think that contacting the authors is appropriate here.


Are there any academic data sets that force users to release any source code written to analyse them?

Open data licenses apparently do exist, for instance, Open Data Commons maintains the ODbL. I don't think that this has a restriction on code used for analysis, but it does put a share-alike restriction on any derivative datasets.

  If you publicly use any adapted version of this database, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL.

This essentially ensures that the derived database (or steps used to create it) used for analysis must be shared, though not necessarily the analysis itself.

I imagine that you could modify this license to mandate that you share the steps used to create any work produced (i.e. the analysis code) as well under some kind of open license, but I am not a lawyer, and I did not find an existing license that does this in my (short) search. In particular, this could easily be troublesome if you use closed-source third-party software in your analysis (e.g. Stata, Matlab), though people have overcome similar issues with GPL licenses.


I'm not sure what is meaning of no response during post-doc contact.

If they originally had interest in interviewing you, after the second reminder, there is a good chance it has evaporated. The mail frequency was too high, and there were too many repeats (unless you know the person really well).

A PI would be probably reluctant to hire someone who appears to be insistively dependant on them or even "pushy". A person who wasn't "pushy" may not get a reply for various reasons (like the PI is trying to make it possible, but the whole idea fizzles out, or gets postponed by months and he doesn't want to give a straight no in case it ends up working, and then forgets about it). On the other hand, if an opportunity presents, they may reconsider and come back to you later.

However, they are less likely to do that with a person that comes across as too aggressively pursuing their purposes, because they will infer that's how they will also behave during regular interaction.

Instead: What you should have done is to respond to the interview suggestion as: "Shall we agree on a date?" and then wait for a few weeks (two weeks, as suggested in the comments above, is a good number) and then try again. If it does not work out, it's effectively a no (although it may not be even a final no, see above comments).

Yes, a "no response" can be considered a bit "rude", but do understand that people are simply overworked, and whatever the most current pressure is, it pushes itself in front of the queue. Don't be the one adding to their pressure by overmailing, because then the rudeness has appeared on your side before it has had a chance presenting itself on theirs.


The name of academic journals that ask for money to review or publish papers?

This model is typically called "Gold open access".

Some of them are good and well-reputed (e.g., the PLOS family of journals), and some are predatory scams designed to bilk authors out of publications fees.

In most fields, journals will never ask for money to allow peer review: in those fields, that is definitely a red flag for a scam. Note, however, that in a few fields, such as economics, it is standard practice to ask for submission fees.


Collaborating (online) with researchers from other institutes/countries

I have found that it is very difficult to start collaborating with people who are totally new to you. Some good ways to find people to collaborate with are:

Tapping into your PhD/PostDoc advisor's existing contact network
Using your advisor's status/fame to get new collaborators (i.e., the advisor handles the initial contact)
Giving talks in conferences and getting people excited about your work.
Talking to people in conferences and finding some common interests for new projects.

I write this as a PhD student with experience in collaborating within physics/chemistry communities.


What kind of research failures are publishable?

A lot depends on the message which is conveyed by the paper and how it is formulated. In your example, essentially, researchers take system A, use theory A' to explain the experimental results observed in it, publish 1st paper, then take system B, use the same theory and find that the theory does not work in the sense that it cannot describe the experiment there. So, a paper saying "system B shows interesting behaviour which is not captured by theory A', see how" has higher chances being published than a paper saying "we tried to apply theory A' to system B and it does not work".
Further, it is very common that if you achieved a "failure" (which is not the best word if applied to research), that is, a negative result, you can reformulate your message to make it sound "positive". In particular, you can analyse why exactly your attempts did not work, what was lacking in your theory (theories usually have assumptions and/or model simplifications) and how further theories can be improved to actually do the job. This is valuable information and often is perfectly publishable.


In U.S. universities, do male professors get paternity leave?

The answer varies wildly across university to university, even within the same class of university. This can go from the mandatory FMLA minimum of 12 weeks (unpaid) to 12 months, with some pay. I've attached a comparison table from a 2009 survey by Robert Drago and Kelly Davis,  Parental Leave and Modified Duties Policies across the Big Ten.

I found this from the AAUP's page on family leave, which is fairly useful: https://www.aaup.org/issues/balancing-family-academic-work/leave-policies

In addition to the formal leave offered, there can also be varieties of teaching relief and tenure clock stoppage for both mothers and fathers. All of this seems to vary from place to place, and probably some details could be negotiated at the time of a job offer.


Leaving my tenure-track position for industry in January 2021,

When I left I first informally talked to my direct line manager to whom I usually reported (which was in my case the head of the department). Then my official (and signed) letter went to human resources to formalize the termination of my contract. Then talk to your PhD students / postdocs etc .. It was a slightly different situation as I left after I already had tenure but I guess the same procedure might work best for you as well.


They want you to select either a figure or possibly a more creative rendering of your research, for the purpose described in your quote. Imagine your article was going to be a book, they want you to pick an image for the cover.

If you don't have eye catching data, try to figure out the most effective way to visually describe your theoretical work, and produce an image of that.


Are there any acceptable reasons for omitting data in a publication (i.e. "data not shown")?

I think it is perfectly reasonable to not "show" data. For example, consider a multivariate randomized control trial with two groups. If there are a large number of partially correlated dependent variables, the data are not suitable for graphical or tabular presentation. What we are potentially interested in is if there is a difference between the two groups. We can "see" that from a single sentence about a statistical test and a comment that the data are not shown (so people do not go looking to find the figure).

In a biology example, maybe you are counting the number of intact cells after two different treatments. There may be hundreds of slices that result in two numbers. What exactly do you want to see?


Testing out of Undergraduate Major Requirements

Some universities will permit this and have regular procedures. For others it might be an exceptional case. One place to start is to go to the department office and enquire. Another is a (possible) enrollment counseling office that has responsibility for placing transfers.

You might wind up with a few oral exams, however, so be prepared for that. The oral "exam" might just be an interview with a faculty member who explores what you have done and asks a few questions.

The only other way I can think of is to have transcripts of very similar courses, but you likely don't have that.

You probably don't get traditional "credit" for the courses, but a notation that you didn't need to take them. Grades are not likely, but there may be exceptions.

But each institution will have different procedures (in the US, at least).


Why is it required for Test Administrators and Proctors to constantly walk around the room during testing?

It is not globally required: e.g. I do not move around the room unprompted when proctoring an exam.  So it is probably a matter of local academic culture and/or preference of the (head) course instructor.

In these kinds of fine points, academic culture differs so strongly from place to place as to make it clear that there are not always deep, well-thought out reasons for doing things one way or another: many institutions do things in a certain way because they "always" have done so.  The academic culture shock that I experienced in moving from the US to Montreal was considerable.

For instance, I believe that I first learned the word "invigilator" when someone introduced himself to me as an invigilator for my course.  If you had told me before I arrived in Montreal that final exams there have professional invigilators, I might not have believed you.  In the US, if you are teaching a course without a "common final" (I imagine that common finals occur only in a small minority of all courses taught, but I don't know for sure) then you, the instructor, are very likely the sole inviligator/proctor/administrator/TA in the room when an exam is taking place.  (Not that having professional invigilators is a bad idea: if you have the infrastructure in place, why not?  But I assume that they get paid at least a little bit, and this would never fly in the state university at which I currently reside.)

So understand that when I say that I do not move around the room when giving a final exam, I mean no one does.  It is not really clear to me what cheating I might be missing out on by only looking at the students from the front of the room.  I should say that I am used to a classroom environment with stadium seating and small flip-up desks so I can see a lot from the front of the room.  I also teach a subject -- math -- such that coming in with a cheat-sheet or something like that would not make things that much easier.  Even consulting the internet on your cell phone while in the bathroom would not help that much -- one does need to show one's work, after all -- unless the student was unusually insightful and well-prepared about how to cheat in this way.  In my local academic culture, cheaters are not insightful or well-prepared...


How can I move from chemical engineering into drug discovery?

As I mentioned above, drug design is not really a "major" field, in the sense that it's rare to be able to get a diploma which lists "drug design" as the field of study. It's a dissertation topic or a focus area.

The relative advantage of this is that very few people come in with experience in the field, because it's so specialized. That means it's harder to be "picky" in selecting students—if everybody has to have lots of experience, you may not end up with enough qualified candidates.

Given your past experience with drug delivery, you probably have a fairly good idea of some of what is involved in drug design, so it's not as if you're coming from a completely unrelated discipline.

So, I don't think you have much to lose by applying to PhD positions while you look for alternate opportunities to work in the field. (Sometimes you need to apply more than once before you get accepted!)


Is it appropriate to make a pun that references a highly charged topic in current events, in a lecture on an unrelated subject?

This would be very unfortunate. People across the political spectrum have strong feelings about the words Black Lives Matter. Indeed, the subject matter of the movement is literally life and death. It's not something that should be made light of in mixed company, let alone in a classroom.


When to book a flight for a faculty interview?

should he book the flight now, or wait until last few days, in case he was invited for another interview.

If your friend has a bit of time to spare, I think a reasonable first step would be to check the flight options that are available right now. If it were me, and if it is feasible (depending on where your friend lives and which airport(s) is(are) nearby), I might narrow down my search to direct-flight options since I don't want to be sitting in airports all day long.

From this information, you can get an idea of the current availability and, time permitting, you can occasionally track this as time draws near for the interview to see if you need to act (if availability is dwindling rapidly) or if you have time to wait for any additional on-site invites to roll in. I realize that folks typically don't have a lot of time to devote to tracking flight availability, but it doesn't hurt to check it every now and then.

I personally don't like to delay booking the flight less than a week prior to the interview. I should add, though, that, if your friend gets additional invites, nothing is stopping your friend from booking a flight from the airport near the institution he/she is interviewing at to the next interview destination.


Is it normal to "extract a paper" from a master thesis?

It is plagiarism only if you do not properly cite it.

If you have not published the thesis itself, of course you can publish parts of it or summaries of it or even the whole thing unchanged.  The requirement to avoid "self plagiarism" is to cite.  For example, in the introduction write:

  This paper is taken from my thesis [title] done in [date] at [school] under the direction of [advisor].


Statement of Purpose in Graduate School Application

Yes, you should mention your situation in your statement, briefly and unapologetically.  Omitting any explanation might raise a red flag with admissions committees, and most people will be sympathetic to your family situation.

You might also get back in touch with (Big State School) to see if they would be willing to reactivate your earlier admission.  It's a long shot, but it couldn't hurt.


Collaborative paper-writing with non-LaTeX-using colleagues

Excluding LaTeX-focused online collaboration services, such as ShareLaTeX, due to your new collaborators' preferences, I think that you have pretty much two major options, as follows:

Overleaf (formerly WriteLaTeX)
Authorea

Both online academic collaboration services support simultaneous use of LaTeX and WYSIWYG rich text mode, Authorea also supports some other formats, such as Markdown and HTML. Both services (to various extent) offer other nice collaborative features, such as data sharing, version control, revision notes and much more. Due to multi-format support, I would prefer Authorea to Overleaf, however, the final decision should be made upon a comprehensive comparison of both services across all available features and your detailed requirements as well as some testing.

P.S. Just for completeness, I will mention two other options. The first is to use blog engines that support both WYSIWYG and LaTeX (most of the major ones do: from WordPress to Jekyll). It's a decent option, but I would prefer one of the above-mentioned dedicated services, for multiple reasons. The second option is to self-host RStudio Server (or maybe a custom Shiny application), which would allow academic collaborative writing, using RMarkdown, but IMHO this is the worst solution possible, as trying to implement various needed features and solve issues, such as version control integration, would bring you and your collaborators a lot of headaches.


Obviously I don't know how this particular editor works (and I'm not familiar with textbook edition), but it's quite common for an academic review process to take several months or even more than a year. Another general fact about reviewing: if reviewers don't like it they don't send it to another reviewer, they write a bad review and you will be informed about it.

Unless this editor promised you a fast review process, from the information you provide it looks to me like there's nothing to worry about. At this stage the reviewers have your book but it's possible that some of them haven't even started reading it yet.

  I've been writing to him once a week since then--and twice last week, but with no luck.

Are you sure this editor was happy about you emailing him every week? Unless you are in very friendly terms with him, your frequent emails might be a bit annoying to him! And that might explain why he stopped answering.

Obviously I don't know any specifics, but it seems to me that there's absolutely no reason to panic: as you said, the first half was well received and you were feeling confident about it when you submitted. Try to go back to this original state of mind instead of imagining the worst. Delays are frequent in a review process and they are not a sign of negative outcome... just a sign that everybody is busy. Patience and good luck!


In mathematics, the answer is easy: most American math postdocs are selected on about the same schedule.  There are some variations of 4 to 6 weeks, but that still leaves plenty of room for second round offers from an early school to coincide with first round offers from schools that run later.

Further, there's been a tendency for schools that tend to compete over people to try to race each other to making offers, so the number of simultaneous offers ends up being higher than the number of schools would suggest.

(Also, a one week deadline to respond seems a bit short. What I've seen is more like two, with the ability to ask for an extra week or so which is usually granted if there's a chance of another offer.)

(Just for clarity, by most I mean more than half; there's a big early cluster and then additional positions being considered for months.)


Can I, when writing a book, make use of a physical model made up by someone else?

Anyone can use anyone else’s published theory as long as they cite their sources and don’t try to falsely claim ownership of the ideas of others. So yes, if you present it honestly as Harari’s theory then of course you can use it in your book.


Why are there so many mental health problems in academia?

I think that part of the issue of why it seems there are so many people with mental-health issues is systematic. I think that academic environments are beginning to place much more emphasis on the mental well-being of their community members (students, faculty, and staff), so diagnoses of mental-health issues have increased compared to the past. Moreover, because universities tend to be more "accepting" of issues than most other environments, it's easier for people to mention such issues. Also, because of the nature of the people in academic environments, they're much more likely to recognize that they're experiencing mental health issues, rather than "passing the buck" or pinning the blame on someone or something else.

One other question that you haven't raised is if there's a greater correlation between increased academic training and propensity to experience mental-health issues; I'm not sure about the answer to that, and whether that skews the stats.

But in general, I think that what you're seeing is more likely something closer to the actual level of mental health problems in the general society in academic environments, and an underreporting of it outside of academia (where it is still heavily stigmatized).


Is it reasonable to do number theory without active/good prof in uni

Number theory is perhaps the historically deepest, most studied area of mathematics.  To even begin to understand research in most areas of number theory, you need two full years of graduate coursework over several subfields of mathematics.

What one can learn in an undergraduate course, or even a first graduate course, in number theory is so far from the frontiers of research that it makes absolutely no difference whether the person teaching is active in research or even has ever done research in number theory.  You probably won't get into the 20th century in an undergraduate course, and not much beyond the 1940s in a first graduate course.

Except for a few exceptional students who are taking several graduate courses while still an undergraduate, no one is doing serious, mainstream number theory research as an undergraduate.  Hence, it doesn't matter.  You're not competing with people who have somehow learned lots of number theory already.

I should add that, in the job market for permanent positions in pure mathematics that support significant amounts of research, the sky has fallen.  Only exceptional people are getting permanent research-oriented jobs now.  Given that your job after your PhD (and your postdoc if you get and do one) probably won't involve doing research in either number theory or geometric analysis, you might as well study what you're interested in.


Must graduate applicants who will need funding submit financial statement for I-20?

A financial statement is required by the US for visa eligibility for all international students applying for standard student visas. It is not needed for admissions decisions, as stated in the form you've uploaded.

The purpose of the statement is to show that you will be able to support yourself (and any dependents) while you are in the US. If the university offers funding, you will use that as a source of support on your I-20. If the university funding does not fully meet all your financial requirements, then you will need to show that you can handle the rest of your expenses through other sources.

You don't need to worry about the I-20 until after you've been admitted. The university will give you more information then, including how to submit the necessary documents and what the official program expenses are for visa purposes.


Are academic jobs easy to get in New Zealand for someone with a good PhD and Post-Doc experience?

This may be subject-dependent, but my impression is that it is certainly not like that in mathematics (my subject).  I come from New Zealand and would probably like to return to live there eventually, but I'm expecting to have to do at least one more postdoc (I'm already on my second, but my first was just one year) before I have any chance of a permanent job there.  (And I do know people there who I think probably like me and, more importantly, are interested in my research.)

There are so few universities in New Zealand (eight, but one is small and primarily agricultural, I think) that there are by no means anywhere near enough academic jobs available to employ all New Zealanders with PhDs and postdocs from 'good' universities.

Still, I can imagine that if your student does indeed 'know people who like him' in New Zealand, his chances may very well be better there than for US universities of comparable standard (this is assuming that 'liking him' partly includes being impressed with his academic work).


This seems like a mixed blessing/curse to me. It seems to be hard and frustrating, of course, but on the other hand you have two professors who, while not agreeing on much, seem to love your work. You get a lot of finalized work (publications) out of the deal. I suspect you are building a strong academic career for yourself.

But I suggest you look for the end of the tunnel. Get the main work done somehow and find a good position without alienating either of your "patrons." I suspect that you are in a strong position in the long run and quitting would be giving up too much.

I suspect that you are pretty good already at putting the two off at least a bit to make some room for yourself. If you can continue that, then just start to plan your exit. You won't be juggling their needs forever, I think.


I got accepted to PhD program, but I am not sure with whom I want to work. Is it bad to change advisors?

[Background: I'm a full professor in a top-5 American CS department.  My answer is skewed toward standard practice in theoretical computer science, but I regularly give the same advice to all incoming PhD students in my department.]

As others have said, practices vary in different departments, and in different sub-fields within each department, but as a general rule: It's your PhD.  Of course you can switch advisors!

Professor A voted for your admission, but he did not admit you.  The department admitted you.  Prof A's vote does not oblige you to work with him at all.  It's natural for Prof A to anticipate that you will work with him, but he has no right to demand that you work with him.  (These are all shadings of the word "expect"; I'm not sure which meaning you intended.)  If you prefer to work with Prof B, you do not need to justify your preference to Prof A.  (You should still communicate your preference to Prof A, of course, especially if he asks you about working with him.)

More generally, you should never feel constrained to only work with one professor, just because that professor happens to be your advisor or happens to be paying you.  Nothing prevents you from working with both Prof A and Prof B, provided you are meeting the obligations attached to your funding.  (Exclusivity is not a reasonable obligation for a research assistantship.  Progress, yes.  Good-faith effort, definitely.  Results, sure.  Exclusivity, no.)

In my department, faculty in my research area strongly encourage entering PhD students to work with multiple faculty — in the first year, to help everyone make more informed advising decisions, and in later years, so that students develop a more diverse research portfolio, and to provide a backup in case research with one faculty member doesn't pan out.  Yes, even the students I am supporting from my own grants.

All that said, it's best to approach the situation under the assumption of good faith.  Assume that Prof A and the other faculty in your new department have your best interests at heart, and approach them to discuss options under that assumption.  Be clear with Prof A that you are not sure you want to work with him and why, and ask for advice on how best to meet your professional goals, including approaching other potential advisors.  If Prof A objects, or tries to guilt-trip you into working with him, or tries to convince you not to even talk with other faculty, then congratulations, you've identified someone who does not have your best interests at heart.  Best to learn that early, before you waste your time working with them.


Does stating multiple degrees from a single university on a CV disadvantage an applicant for a research or lecturing position?

No, there is no disadvantage to having multiple degrees from the same university.  Normally you should not leave any degrees out of your CV.  There are advantages to having experience at multiple universities, but that does not have to be in the form of a degree.


Leaving soft-money job for tenure track position that doesn't start until August: when to tell current advisor?

DO NOT say anything at all until your TT offer is signed, sealed and delivered. Hopefully this can be expedited.

Once that's done, you should tell your mentor the information as soon as possible just so that s/he doesn't get the news from elsewhere.

  The overall message you want to convey is: "I've enjoyed working here,
  and am excited to move on to the next phase of my career. I value the
  collaborations I've had with you so far and want to make this
  transition as easy for everyone as possible"

Don't worry about their reaction though: that's not something you can control, and for the most part a mentor will be happy for you (as well disappointed). Just make sure above all else that you are straightforward and open, and don't try to hide/shade/evade the truth for fear of "offending" anyone.

Note: As regarding financial commitments, it might be possible to carry over some of the money to your new position, at least for travel/equipment/students. You should make a list of potential carryovers, and bring that up for discussion when you talk to your mentor.


What to do when paper is under review in two journals, because first journal did not act on request to withdraw?

Contact the editor for Journal A immediately, sending a copy of the withdrawal request you sent previously, and ask them to complete the withdrawal because you have submitted it elsewhere after the original withdrawal. Be polite.
I would at the same time check whether there is any way to withdraw the paper through the online submission system, and do that as well. Your email may have been missed.
It might be worth giving Journal B a heads-up, too. I don't think you've done anything wrong here except perhaps for not following up with the withdrawal when you didn't get a response, and therefore making the situation clear is best for you.


Does it seems that my supervisor was reluctant to let me go for conference?

she didn't answer means she didn't want to answer and she didn't agree.

She may not have answered for many reasons.

  So I'm wondering if I should ask her before submitting my abstract?
  Do I have to ask my supervisor first and submit the abstract?

If you want her to fund your attendance, then yes.

  Do I include my supervisor's name in the abstract? I'm working in the field of humanities, and I collected and analysed the data, but she involved in the research design in my early stage and now she is giving me feedback on my writing.

It sounds like she's a co-author, so yes.

  So I really want to know if it's just she didn't want me to go for conference or my unethical behaviour offend her?

Again, she may not have answered for many reasons, but you require her permission to list her as a co-author and you may require her funds to attend, so you should have probably asked her first.

  Shall I ask her in the supervisory meeting again for this issue to
  figure out what's the problem?

Yes.


What is the general protocol to name something after somebody (some people)?

Good questions.  I will only tackle the last two:

3) In mathematics, it is (virtually?) universally bad form to name something after yourself.  This is high on the list of things that amateurs/newbies do that make the professionals/veterans roll their eyes.

Some people have joked that the best strategy to get something named after yourself is to give your nice new concept such a terrible name (or lack of a name) that the rest of the community converges on naming it after you.

Even after something has been named after you, it is not necessarily completely kosher to speak your own name when referring to the concept.  Rob Kirby famously speaks of "the calculus of framed links" (or, I think ironically, "the calculus") where others speak of "the Kirby calculus".  At one point Armand Borel writes of "the subgroup whose name I have the honor to bear".

It gets a bit ridiculous: when you give a talk and state one of your own theorems, it is most common to write out the names of your coauthors and not write out your own name.  In my student days I saw a lot of first letter then dashes.  Nowadays I mostly see the name dashed out entirely.  Come to think of it, this reminds me of the Jewish practice of leaving letters out of the name "Jehovah", although the theological implications of treating your own name this way are much more profound.

4) I don't know whether we "should", but we often do. In general, it seems to me that mathematics has gotten used to naming things after certain people, and we often name things after people who would never have understood the things that are named after them.  The example Hilbert space (coined by von Neumann in its present generality) is a famous one.  The example Euler system has always struck me as being especially ridiculous (I asked my advisor about this, and he told me that the name comes from Euler products: that's quite a stretch).

Some people in mathematics are somehow especially good at getting things named after them.  In my field, perhaps the outstanding example is John Tate: he has curves, algebras, half of the Shafarevich-Tate group, half of Hodge-Tate weights, half of Lubin-Tate formal groups, a pairing...As a graduate student, I was struck by the fact that I was giving a talk on Galois cohomology of products of Tate curves, analyzed via Tate local duality.  The title of the talk, "Tate-Tate-Tate Stuff" was a riff on the title of the previous speaker's talk ("Hodge-Tate Stuff") and this Tate-ish ubiquity.  When Tate showed up for the talk, I got very nervous...but he was cool with it.

Needless to say, John Tate is a true luminary.  The fact that so many things bear his name is only possible because of the immense amount of fundamental work that he did.  But the converse does not hold: e.g. Barry Mazur is a mathematician with a similar impact on the field, but he has...what?  A manifold and a swindle?  (Both of these come from his work in topology at the beginning of his career.)   Instead we have the Eisenstein ideal.  These things are strange.


How to deal with leftover work after changing employer?

This is maybe handled differently in different fields, but in any case you should inform you new advisor that you have to finish work from your previous position and discuss how this should be handled. Here are some models that I know:

Often it is expected, that postdoc do some independent work, so using this time to finish work with another workgroup is totally fine is this case.
In case your new position does not allocate time to do such work, you should inform your previous advisor. You may offer to work in your free (i.e. "non-work") time and ask for compensation (e.g. using a special contract - in German this could be a "Werkvertrag" but I don't know an English translation).
Your new advisor may get "on board" of your started project, so that your work on the project also falls under your new contract.


Is it plagiarism if peer reviewers use sentences from submitted manuscripts?

The answer to your first two questions are easy: Yes! It is considered plagiarism to take other people's ideas and represent them as your own, without giving proper credit. The same holds for sentences in a paper, no matter if it has already been published.

Your last question is more difficult to answer, as the burden of proof essentially lies with the person being plagiarized. Since the paper have already been submitted (though rejected), there should be a date stamped version of it somewhere in the journal repository. This is, however, not the best way to go, as the supposed culprit(s) can claim that they have never seen this paper - it is, after all, not in the public domain. For this (and other) reason I would always recommend authors to submit preprints to a service like arXiv, to have a valid, time-stamped proof in the public domain.

In the concrete case I would recommend contacting the editor of the journal where the new paper has been published, if adequate proof can be gathered.


Difficulty reading scientific papers in two columns

If the paper has a preprint on on https://arxiv.org/
you can select to download "Other Formats".

Then you can probably get the LaTeX source (if it was typeset in latex),
and from there you can modify it (likely very simply) and recompile it.


What to do if professor comments on candidate's age in an admissions interview?

Are you sure you're not reading too much into this? It seems to me like all he was doing was quoting a stat. More often than not, it's industry and not an academic field, that tends to discriminate (sometimes without even realizing it!) based on age. I have to agree with one of the responders though that the professor was treading on thin ice, and in retrospect, he probably wishes he hadn't!


What can I do to be able to understand conference presentations?

It's not your fault if you don't understand a talk

Unfortunately, many speakers at scientific conferences do a poor job. Most speakers I've seen talk more for themselves than for an actual audience. Unwittingly, they focus more on exhibiting knowledge than on being actually helpful towards the people sitting in front of them.

This mostly happens because people don't know. They see bad examples, which they assume must be good because everybody does it and just do what other people do.

So if you did not understand, don't blame yourself. It's the speaker's job to make you understand something. It's quite a paradox that many speakers thank the audience for their attention (!) after a talk—as if the audience did them a favor by paying attention. Instead, good speakers should be thanked by the audience, because they made things understandable.

Become a better presenter yourself

What I recommend to understand other's presentations better is to start giving better presentations yourself. Effective scientific communication cannot be explained in a simple post, but here are some basic principles:

Before starting to introduce yourself or reading the title of your talk (which is unnecessary anyway), draw the audience's attention. Explain to them in a way they can relate to why your problem domain is relevant.
Then, explain the problem you are addressing (and why it is a problem).
Next, immediately state your conclusion. Don't make your presentation a cliffhanger. Tell people the main point upfront; this helps them (decide to) focus on the remainder of the presentation.
Continue with a preview of your main points that support the conclusion. This is a mental map for the rest of your talk.
Elaborate on your points as necessary.
Close the story by putting your points and the conclusion into perspective.

Many speakers fail to do one of the points above; especially postponing the conclusion towards the end is a common mistake that makes it hard for the audience to follow.

Why should you do this with your own talks?

You become part of the solution. Other PhD students will now finally see a presentation they understand.
You will inspire people to give better talks, which you will understand more easily.
Doing the exercise for your own material, will eventually help you do it for others. If you see a poorly structured presentation, you will mentally start rearranging it into a better talk—helping you finally understand what others do more clearly.

Why is the above presentation structure relevant?

By stating the conclusion first, you give people a mental map. If they get lost during elaboration (like you often do), it's not a disaster: they know the most important thing already. Furthermore, the preview will help them get back on track if they get lost during one of the subpoints.


Can I put my NSF fellowship on reserve in order to investigate leaving academia?

There do not appear to be any reservations on the purpose for requesting a deferral in the linked guide. You need to tell them in advance of filing the "Declaration To Utilize, Reserve Or Terminate A Subsequent Year Of A 3-Year Graduate Fellowship Award" and get their approval, but I don't think that there are many reasons for them to deny it. You might want to have something lined up like an internship, other job, or visit to a foreign university rather than just saying that you're taking a year away from studying. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if the latter happens, too.

Edited to add: You need to start talking to your supervisor and eventually the NSF Program Officer in charge of your fellowship.


How many papers should a Ph.D. student review for their professor per year?

There is no hard and fast rule here: some professors don't ask their students to help review at all, others pass all of their reviewing to their students.  I think the latter position is generally indefensible---the professor is being asked to review because of their expertise, not their ability to press-gang students into doing work for them.

In my own thinking, the driving principle should be the education of the student.  Every person who is aiming for a career in academia will be asked to review, and every person who authors papers should have a chance to experience the reviewing process from the other side as well.  To me, though, that calls for a few papers a year, not a paper every week.

From your description, I'm not quite sure how to judge the situation with your advisor.  At first reading, my thought is that your advisor is accepting more reviews than they can handle, and dealing with the situation by passing on the reviews to you and your fellow graduate students, which would be inappropriate.  If your advisor is actually spending a lot of time with the paper as well, and essentially co-reviewing with you, then perhaps they just have a very unusual perspective on how to learn about paper-writing and the state of the field.

I think it also depends a lot on the quality of papers you are getting asked to review: if you are being asked to read good papers sent to top journals, then it's more defensible, since you really are seeing the newest relevant literature before anybody else; if there's a lot of low-quality stuff to iffy venues, though, it's probably a waste of time for everybody involved.

Bottom line: you're being asked to do an unusually high amount of reviewing, and if it's interfering with your ability to pursue the rest of your program, then it would be reasonable to bring it up with your advisor and ask for a change.


Do you write "letter of recommendation" on recommendation letter?

It’s frustrating to have to look for a bunch of emails titled “Letter of Reference” to find the one about a particular student or post doc candidate. Alternatively, if I’m on an online platform, I want to make sure I’m reading the right letter.

So, as a matter of convenience for anyone handling the letter, I include a header

  Letter of Recommendation for Anna Goodresearcher

or something similar as the subject of my letter. That way, it’s immediately obvious who the letter is for, making life easier for whoever is organizing or evaluating the applications. If it’s a postdoctoral reference or something else being sent directly to an individual by email, I try to include this in the email header as well.


Possibility of skipping lower level prerequisites for graduate math application?

The details will certainly vary from place to place, but, as your questions suggest, what is required is not coursework per se, but knowledge of the material.

The Math GRE subject test is perhaps not the most convincing way to demonstrate competence in calculus and linear algebra. Instead, you should directly negotiate with your target undergrad institution to see how they'd want to be convinced that you're ready to do upper-division coursework. They may have advanced-placement exams, or may have you take the final in Calc IV, etc. It will vary, and it might be a mistake to invest time and energy in doing the GRE subject test, since this might not suffice.

I can't speak for "typical" grad programs, but mine and many others look much more seriously at upper-division coursework (or equivalent!) than lower-division. It is not at all unusual that people destined for math grad school tested-out (or whatever verb applies) of a year or two of calculus, due to taking good courses in high school, or from a community college while in high school, or self-study. The coursework (or equivalent) that matters much more is top-end upper-division or beginning graduate level.


My reading of that message is simply that one of the four requested reviews has been completed, and that the editor will have a look at it. They might have to follow up with the reviewer (e.g. asking for clarification), or decide to invite an additional reviewer. In most cases the editor won't make a decision until they receive more reports, but it could happen in certain circumstances. So expect to wait a while longer.


How to demonstrate potential for securing external funding in faculty applications?

First, the bad news. The best predictor for the potential for securing funding is a history of having secured funding.

Second, strengthen and tailor your application. If you're a newly-minted PhD, make sure to include grants or awards relevant to your application. For example, you must include the summer research fellowship you won from the university, or the publication award you won from the professional association. Make sure that you provide enough information to assist the assessor. For example, you may wish to explain the point of the fellowship, how much it was worth, and what your outcomes were. I have encountered many examples of resumes of this sort:

Summer 1995 - Summer research fellowship to Jordan

With a little more information, you can make this pop:

Summer 1995 - Summer research fellowship ($15,000). Six-week visit to the field site of Dr James Gilman in Betthorus (Jordan) to assist in excavations and measurements of battlements. Output: one oral presentation and one publication (doi: ...).

The 33 extra words makes a difference, I think. Importantly, to an assessor, it shows that you can turn money into research output.

Third, understand that a demonstration takes many forms. If you've got limited history of grant success (or even if you don't), use this as a chance to show the assessor that you've got a practical plan to attract grant funding. You can lay this out clearly in your research statement. The assessor will be looking for such things as

a coherent research plan that is related to the research areas of the group (lab, department, etc). You can't demonstrate funding success if you can't articulate a meaningful and important research plan. Plus, no matter how great your plan, if it's outside the scope of the group, then you just look idiotic proposing it because it shows your lack of understanding of the group's goals.
your knowledge of the developments in the field, especially your capacity (or willingness) to collaborate with internal and external partners. Show how your work relates to the work of other members of the group. Show that you have networks outside the group that you might be able to tap.
your understanding of the scope and processes involved in the major granting bodies in your field. You need to give them confidence that you've got a submission plan involving when you intend to develop and submit your applications. Review the application forms and instructions of the major granting bodies. Try to complete them yourself to get the hang of it. If you have access to it, see if you can study the copies of successful grants from your supervisor or other members of the group. Learn how to construct budgets (which is something they barely teach you in a typical PhD).
your resilience in the face of knock-backs. Grant submission is better seen as a cycle, not a path. The latter has an end, implying that if you don't get the grant, you drop the idea and move on. It's more realistic to consider grant submission as a means of refining a research idea and that rejections come with valuable comments that allow you to improve for the next round.

Fourth, be aware of the start-up costs that you will need to fund your work. Unless you come with your own funding already secured (in which case this post is really irrelevant to you), you will need to do some work on your own while you submit applications. Many groups provide start-up funding, but this is capped and you need understand how this works.

Fifth, be careful of (over)confidence. Receiving external funding is hard. Don't give assessors the impression that your work is so obviously the next big thing that hiring you will result in money falling out of the sky. That might be the case, but more likely than not, you'll simply come off like an airhead.

I'm sure there are many other points, but these are the ones I can list before I head to an appointment with a dentist.

Good luck to you (and to me)!


Is it fair for me to drink caffeine during tests?

That would be totally acceptable. Remember, you are also in a totally different state if you went to the toilet right before the exam. If you drank a litre of water in the morning. If you ate something for breakfast that happens to contain lots of short-chained carbohydrates, providing lots of energy for your brain.

You have to draw the line somewere and coffee is definitely acceptable, if not expected.

Edit:
As several comments suggest, your other question about rudeness because of smelling beverages: that's different from course to course, and you will probably have to employ some degree of common sense there. People are usually not bothered by coffee smell as opposed to french fries or the sounds of eating potato crisps. If in doubt, just ask your TA or fellow students before going to the exam.


Is it acceptable to ask for the original bibtex file of a paper?

I would consider this a perfectly reasonable, if unusual, request.

That probably has a lot to do with the culture of my field; most papers in particle physics are uploaded to arXiv as LaTeX source (though .bib files are often not included), which is then made available to download along with the rendered PDF. This facilitates a cultural expectation that source code to the paper should be available to readers, not hidden. So I would consider sharing the BibTeX file associated with a paper to be a reasonable thing to do, a professional courtesy of sorts - similar to what sharing a copy of the paper itself is or used to be.

Other fields may think differently. Still, in most cases I would think it's fine to ask. The author can always say no or ignore your request, if they don't want their file to be shared for some reason.


Monochrome vs grayscale in scientific journals?

I have a confession to make.  I absolutely ignore it when a publication tells me they want grey-scale or black and white.

Yes, they want it because somebody is going to put something on some dead trees, they're going to be cheap about it and not use color, and somebody might actually pick up a dead tree and see my mangled image.  But either they're also going to put it in a PDF, or else I'm going to put a pre-print in a PDF and that PDF is going to go online in all its radiant rainbow glory, and that is what people will actually read.

So [CENSORED] monochrome.  That is so 20th century.


I don't understand why this is an issue. You can do mathematics anywhere. The same is true of other fields as well, though maybe not all. All you need is your mind and possibly a bit of paper to write on. You can use a commute to develop ideas, or to rest your mind.

There is nothing, really, in the air near a university that makes thinking easier, though interaction with other people usually helps.

But, as a newcomer, assuming that is your position, you need feedback on your ideas. That can be done remotely, nowadays, though your proposed occasional meet ups will also be beneficial, provided you use them for that feedback.

Being seen has little value in mathematical development. Producing something worth reading will be more valuable in your career than just "being seen". If your advisor agrees, you can share your work at any time via the internet or email.

Note that some researchers carry on collaboration remotely for years, not just a few months.


how to develop a new course as a new Assistant Professor

If you believe, as I do, that students learn from practice and feedback, not from seeing or hearing something once or twice, course design focuses on student tasks first.

First decide what they will do to master the material of the course. Whether that is projects or exercises or exam prep (ugh) or whatever. Lay that out. All key concepts should have reinforcement activities (and feedback from you and the TAs).

Knowing the student activities you can select learning materials that will be helpful to them in those activities - books, web sites, handouts, whatever.

Now you have a pretty good idea what your lectures must cover. Note that not everything that you lecture on needs to be covered by exams and projects, but the core of it should be reinforced. If presentation of the core doesn't take up all the time, you can fill it in as you like.


You don't have to be the person who decides what to do in this situation. Actually, there are many reasons to remove yourself from making further decisions. Take it back to the administration of your Department / University, give them a fair account of what's happened, and let them decide what to do.


How to mention colleagues from work in my thesis

Acknowledge those who should be acknowledged by name and for what they have contributed. A supervisor should be acknowledged for being a supervisor, a person providing code for providing code and referencing a paper published on a code or whatever you use should of course be in the reference list. It sounds as if one person fits all three bills and then you should simply cite the paper and acknowledge the person in the acknowledgement for being supervisor and providing code. You also find that there are more personal reasons to thank the person as well. It is not uncommon that supervisors receive acknowledgements for other guidance during the work. But only what is deserved should be mentioned. You can certainly build in an acknowledgement to your supervisor during the talk, either in the beginning, when you mention the code  or at the end. You could also stick the reference into the presentation when you present the code. It is always customary to acknowledge the supervisor anyway and whether you do it at the beginning or end is a matter of tradition or style.


What recent research looks at how scientific theories are established?

While it is not terribly much more recent than Kuhn, I highly recommend reading "Laboratory Life" by Latour and Woolgar, published in 1979.  This book attempts to take both an anthropological and a quantitative approach to the question of how scientific theories are established, and was produced following field-work where one of the authors worked as a technician in a major biological laboratory.

Whereas many philosophers of science such as Kuhn and Popper approach science from a very high-level view, this book instead asks the question of what it is that scientists actually do all day, and why.  It views progress in science in terms of micro-scale arguments about the soundness of assertions, and presents several case studies of investigations and investigators, quantifying them with bibliometrics.

I will warn that the presentation includes a heavy dash of post-modernist thought and language that will turn some people off from the work.  Personally, I find it to not be particularly problematic---just take certain assertions with a grain of salt, just as you would any other investigative work.


Path to AI research from math undergrad, no CS background?

In the field of AI, there are many mathematicians.  For example, they may focus on the theoretical aspects of AI algorithms, e.g., non-convex optimization.  Knowing how to program is a definite requirement, but I do not believe you need an entire degree for that.


Is there an optimum time to leave between writing and self-proofreading?

It appears a number of factors come into this, such as what point proofreading should be done, familiarity with the text and length of time away from it.

According to Jane Cogie, Kim Strain and Sharon Lorinskas

  It is important also that editing [proofreading] be done at the appropriate stage of the writing process, that is, as the last step, after issues of organization, coherence, and flow have been addressed.

In a study, The generation effect in reading and proofreading, the authors Meredyth Daneman and Murray Stainton conducted the following experiments in which;

  Subjects spent 30 minutes composing an essay on student life; after a 20 minute interval (Experiment 1) or a two week interval (Experiment 2) they proofread their own essay, another subject's essay after being familiarized on an error-free version of it, or another subject's essay without the benefit of a preview. Experiment 1 showed that subjects were less able to detect errors (e.g., The best part of student like is socializing.) in self-generated essays than in unfamiliar other-generated essays; on the other hand, they were better able to detect errors in familiar other-generated essays that in unfamiliar ones. Experiment 2 showed that the disadvantage for proofreading self-generated text is likely a by-product of extreme familiarity rather than any special quality of self-generated knowledge per se

Commenting on the above study, Maura Pilotti, and Martin Chodorow (doi:10.1007/s11145-007-9110-x) state that;

  The difficulty experienced by proofreaders with their own writing occurred even though the proofreaders were warned that errors had been added to their writing prior to proofreading. Interestingly, the impairment uncovered by Daneman and Stainton turned into an advantage after a delay of 2 weeks between writing and proofreading. The researchers argued that the ‘‘excessive’’ familiarity afforded by one’s own text, which is likely to decline over time, is detrimental to proofreading because it promotes a less thorough processing of written material.

It would appear from the above that 20 minutes is too short a period, and that something like two weeks is more optimum, but if possible leave it as long as possible.


Plural or singular for a multi-authored paper

This is a special case of a more general problem about 'plural' names for specific organisations/groups, which often comes up (and is different in the UK and US, to complicate things) - for example, https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/138238/are-vs-is-for-proper-nouns-which-sound-plural-such-as-band-names

Generally speaking, either is legitimate - it depends in part whether you think of "Jackson and Kim" as the name of a single entity, the paper, or as referring to two individual researchers who happen to be mentioned together. You can also avoid this entirely by using the past tense - "Jackson and Kim (2014) showed that..." is the same whether you think of J&K as one entity or two. (Ditto for "found", "proved", "refuted", etc). This would be my personal preference.

Ultimately, though, all questions of style in academic writing can be answered with "have a look at what other papers in the field use; if you're thinking about a specific journal, have a look at what's common there." If they all use "show" for multiple authors, you probably want to use "show"


What does happen to accepted posters if no author attend to present?

As someone commented, different conferences have different policies. For those I'm accustomed to, conference papers are usually not published in the proceedings if none of the authors show up at the conference.

If I understand correctly your situation, I would proceed as follows:

First, contact the conference secretary and explain your critical situation of undergraduate students with no university funding, asking whether they would be able to provide student support (e.g., fee waiving, cheap lodging in student's dormitory etc.) for one of the authors.
If the previous point is unsuccessful, try at least to find someone from your university who is going to attend and that could bring your poster to the conference, attaching it during the poster session on your behalf. Explain this solution to the organizers and hope for the best.


If a student is dismissed, is (or how is) that indicated on their transcript?

Transcripts usually do show that students have withdrawn or have been expelled for policy or academic infractions. The specific grounds, however, are probably not stated on most transcripts, perhaps for privacy reasons.


What is the impact of software development experience in a research lab on graduate admissions?

I believe that a graduate school would look very favorably on a candidate who worked as a research lab technician and implemented the research challenges by writing code. To me this seems like a great path for you to strengthen your resume to apply to graduate schools.


Everything is explained here in detail:

https://service.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5971/kw/track/c/10528/supporthub/publishing/

  Decision in Process The Editor has registered a decision in the system. The decision may need to be confirmed by the Editor-in-Chief first. The Editor will email you directly with the overall editorial decision, Editor and/or reviewer comments, and further instructions.


Advantages or disadvantages of using public repositories for paper writing?

There are a few parts to your question, and I'm not sure which one is most important. If the question is about the value of version control, then you should see the answers to this question (which also has a link to a question about which one to use).

If you're asking about putting it on a shared repository, then here are some reasons:

collaboration with others. If multiple authors are writing a paper, then it's very easy for different authors to edit different portions at the same time without too much worry about conflicts.
portability: I work from different machines, and it's convenient to have a single location to check in/check out from so I don't have to worry about edits on my home machine versus my office machine versus a laptop and so on.

If you're asking about making it public, so anyone can read/edit the paper, then I don't see much of an advantage in that. When the paper is done, it might be handy to be able to download the source of course.


Saying "good question" during a seminar talk

As an economist I can rant for hours about people's ulterior motives... as a speaker I can tell you that this reaction springs in me spontaneously, when the question has good timing with what I am presenting, meaning that it is a good opening for the next issue (or next aspect of the current issue) I was about to start speaking on. It makes a presentation rolling with the audience, and you cannot ask much more than that.


How to use feedback on written publications efficiently?

Your writing skills usually improve gradually over time. It seems like a very natural approach to obtain feedback and improve papers accordingly,thereby learning important skills.

If you want to be more efficient/structured I suggest that you not try to collect and categorize all feedback you get but try to build up a collection of "Tips and tricks". What I mean is, that you could skim the feedback for general advice and useful tricks that seems to be applicable in more general form (such as "write the introduction from general to specific and write the conclusion from specific to general") and collect only these bits.