Usually, when I write a paper for a conference or a journal, I download their template and start adding my content into the empty template. Things invariably fall into the right place. Even if you have written the paper in another template, it is a good idea to open both the documents and copy section by section into the new template.
So look for the templates e.g. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rqufLatex.zip
and use start using it.
As suggested by @Buffy above, you should consider looking at published papers. I think they are trying to stress upon the fact that in your title page, which is nothing but the first page of your paper, you must include acknowledgements, and other information properly. So title page which is the first page will also include your paper sections.


Should you include references in a research plan for a postdoc application?

You can, but you don't need to, include references to other works in the field. You may use them to explain in the first part of your statement what the big questions are that you are trying to answer. One could use review papers, or references to the really important papers that started a field here, but it is probably just as fine to write statements such as "In 1971, Grothendieck asked the question..." without further references -- whoever understands the question, will also know where it came from or how it fits into mathematics. (Obviously, the same is true in other fields, if you reference luminaries.)

What is really important, though, is that you reference your own papers to explain how your own (published) work fits into the field. If you apply for postdoc positions, your list of publications is likely not very long, so it is important that your statement explains not only what you are interested in or plan to do, but also where you expertise is in.


Time allocation in conference presentations

The only rule of thumb I'm familiar with is a bit like this, keeping in mind that some of the additional time may serve as buffer in case there are questions during the talk:

For talks of or less than 30 minutes total, include no less than 5 and no more than 10 minutes for questions.
For talks between 30 and 60 minutes, include no less than 10 and no more than 15 minutes for questions.

So that essentially means at least 5 minutes for each half hour (not too far off from your estimates).

For longer talks, there never seems to be enough time for questions, so I would suspect there isn't one rule for all situations.


What degree of borrowing from a Stack Exchange answer and submitting to a peer reviewed journal, without citation, is ethical?

General Case

Ideally the author should acknowledge you in an acknowledgements section if you contribute assistance in some way. Unless you wrote part of the article, authorship is not warranted.

This Case

The post your wrote was quite good and provides a lot of good material, but other than saving a researcher time, it doesn't appear to do any original research. That's in line with the policies of Skeptics.SE as well. Likewise, while the person asking the question has reasonable grounds to be skeptical of the claims, the thesis is not novel.

I will also note that it the edit history shows that you started working on the answer in June 2017. The letter to the editor that you linked to says that it is in press as of the same month. I'm not sure what the lead time is like on that journal, but I wouldn't be surprised if the author has been working on the paper for significantly longer than you were working the Stack Exchange post. This is somewhat borne out by the author's publication history - they previously wrote on the same topic.

In short, it appears that you were both working on the same material independently before encountering each other.


On the few occasions where I've accidentally mis-reported a grade, mercifully the computational error was not great, and it was within my authority to change the pass-fail line (or other relevant line) by a small-but-sufficient amount to make my initial report "become correct". Of course, I correspondingly "improved" other peoples' grades to match. That is, if we are talking about a small adjustment, I feel that the initial grade announcement should be "made true" by changing the grade line.

My rationale for this is that precise gradelines are pretty meaningless, so a small change (in favor of students) is completely harmless, and thus avoids the very-bad fallout from recanting on a grade.

If some bizarre, large computational mistake occurs, so that one has reported an "A" instead of "F", it's probably not feasible to make the better grade "true". Whatever your local policies allow/require, do be sure to manifest the same "adjustment" (and only upward, by my thinking...) for every student in the course. Large errors, and/or large changes, should probably be discussed with other people in your department so that they'll  not be "surprised" at any further fallout.


Is it ethical to host ads on an institute provided homepage?

It may depend on the rules of your institute, but I'd bet that putting ads on your homepage is not allowed.  You should certainly not put up ads without verifying that you have official permission to do so.

If you work at a public university or other governmental institute, then putting up ads could be considered using government property for personal gain.  That's probably not just unethical, but illegal (but you'd have to look into the appropriate laws in your jurisdiction to be sure).

If you work at a private university or institute, then it may not be illegal, but there are still probably institute rules against using institute property in this way.  I'd be surprised if any big organization didn't have such rules.


How can I tell if I am short-listed for Phd position?

You would more probably learn early of a rejection than an acceptance. I'd say you are still in the running. Unless you have another option with a deadline, I suggest you wait a bit.

It may take a while after decisions are made for candidates to hear due to nothing more than administrative issues. And schedules slip, of course. A scheduled meeting might have been delayed.


I would write:

The research in this article did not receive third party funding. The research is (partially) based on data gathered within the project xyz which was funded by abc. We would like to thank uvw for the data acquisition and support.


Writing a letter of recommendation as a graduate student

[H]ow much does the position of the person writing a recommendation letter matter, as opposed to his/her academic familiarity with the student?

It matters very highly.  For most graduate programs it would be better to have a letter from a very eminent and trusted person which simply says "Student X's performance in my class convinces me that she will be successful in a top master's/PhD program.  I highly recommend that you admit her." than a more personally insightful letter from a less well known faculty member, let alone someone who has not even completed the degree that the student is applying for.  If you have not yourself completed a master's degree, how can you certify that the student will be able to do so successfully?  (Well, of course it may well be that you probably can, but what degree of trust can the reader put into your letter?  Not very much.)

In general, I would recommend that even postdocs and temporary faculty should defer to more senior faculty, if possible, when writing letters, and in any case the student should make sure to get at least one letter from a senior person. If someone who has a PhD (let's say) but is otherwise very junior can say something about the student that other faculty cannot, it could be a good idea to send along a letter, but it would be better to have that be an additional letter beyond the number required.  However, for someone like you who has not even completed the degree the student is applying for, I would simply say that you should not write a letter for the student.  If you want to help, I would recommend that you find a faculty member who is senior enough but doesn't know the student very well and give them the information that you wanted to convey in your own letter.  (Don't write the letter for them!  Just give them the information.)  It helps of course to find a faculty member that you are comfortable with.

By the way, if you are in the habit of mentoring grad-school bound undergraduates, you
would be doing them a favor if you let them know as early as possible that it is in their best interest to make significant contacts with senior faculty as well as with you.


Ethics of using company data from internship for academic project

You should ask the company where you do your internship. Perhaps they are fine with whatever you want to do. Perhaps they will allow you to use their data but only release summaries, not the raw data. Perhaps they will require you to anonymize it.

In addition, how will you do the analysis? Will you take the company's data and transfer it to your own computer? (This may well not be welcomed by the company.) Or do you plan on using a company-supplied machine to do your analyses? (Same problem - companies don't necessarily like it if you use their hardware for what are essentially personal tasks.) Do you want to install third party software to analyze your data on their machines?

Think through what you want to do, then go to your supervisor. Depending on their personality, people may even be interested in working with you on this, perhaps get a publication out of it.

Whatever you do, don't, don't, don't just use the data without asking. Whether or not you sign an NDA.


Is it widely followed that only some parts of academic books are taught to undergraduates?

Not covering the entirety of a textbook is true in absolutely ever course I've ever taken, and is true of every institution I'm familiar with. However, I would not say that it is true that any given subset of sections of any given book are the ones that every professor covers; in fact, at least in the US, each professor has a wide latitude in choosing what parts of the book they want to cover, and to what extent their lectures and/or tests cover the same material as the book at all. Some professors, in some classes, prefer only to cover whats more-or-less written in the book, and some intentionally lecture on topics that are not in the book and rely on reading the book to cover other topics. Some professors even have a book only as optional reading and you don't need to read any of it.

All of the above is true at the undergraduate level, and even more true - in my experience - at the graduate level, as professors deviate even further from any available textbook.

As to some books being designed for both undergraduate and graduate levels, this varies by book. Some books are almost never used at the graduate level, and some are almost never used at the undergraduate level, and some are used in both but to different extents.

But to answer your core question: yes, it is very common not to cover the whole book, and no you shouldn't worry about it. Its always good to lightly skim through the material that isn't required, so you get an idea of what you are skipping, but generally most professors make it a point to select out the material they believe is most important and relevant and skip what they don't deem necessary. Few professors ever follow the order of the book, either, and prefer to select their own ordering - and rarely do two professors agree on what that order would best be.

And don't worry - if you end up doing anything challenging, you will always feel tremendously under-prepared and under-trained, no matter how many textbooks you've read. That just comes with the territory :)


How to properly use paid participation survey in my research?

I'm not very familiar with paid participation surveys, but anyway the first step is always to seek approval by the ethics committee in your institution. They might require  modifications in your methodology if they find some issues, and their approval will ensure that your study complies with minimal ethical standards.

In a publication you should definitely mention that participants were paid, since this is an important information about how the data was obtained. In general you should always explain the details about the recruitment method. Typically it could be a paragraph at the beginning of a "data" section, I'm not aware of any strict standard about this.

I've seen many cases where participants are offered a gift voucher of some kind, so I'd say it's quite common to compensate participants. There are also many studies which use crowdsourcing platforms where participants are paid for their time. I assume that it's also common in clinical trials but I'm not in the medical domain myself.


What are the impacts of closing STEM departments?

I can't give you a 100% answer (your question is kind of too wide) but I will try to give you some ideas:

The UK evaluates all departments of universities and research institutes on a
regular basis by a so-called Research Excellence Framework (REF). A bad REF evaluation might force a university to shut down a department. This is because universities are only allowed to teach a subject if they also do well received research in this field. Similar evaluation evaluations might be in place in other countries.
It might be a financial issue of why a department shuts down. Too few students and too high costs (in STEM there are often not enough good students applying)
"without the usual qualifications in Mathematics" I would not see this necessarily as a negative point. If you allow people with different backgrounds into a degree you might create a cohort of interdisciplinary graduates that might be in demand in industry. (They might not be competitive with e.g. pure math graduates but how many people really work in pure math later?) But it might also be due to the previous point that not enough people apply with a strong enough math background.
One more possible reason is that the university is not able to hire/hold sufficient professors in STEM fields as the pay in industry is usually much better and people with strong technical background might be aggressively recruited away.

Impacts:

It is difficult so say what the impacts are as they are university specific but some degrees will not be offered anymore and/or they get external lecturers for e.g. math courses in non-STEM-degrees.
On a whole population level: Fewer people with STEM degrees means
fewer qualified workers
On the positive side: The university might have free-up resources in
order to persue other fields more intensively - but that is more a
strategic decision.


So what I'm wondering is whether it's kosher to ask for any info as we're emailing to set up the interview — who's on the search committee, what issues they will want to focus on, that kind of thing? I don't want to look like I'm trying to game the system or anything (much less actually do so). Is there any way for me to get more info without that appearance?

This question would be a better fit for The Workplace Stack Exchange, so you might want to ask it there. For what it’s worth, my opinion is that it would be a very bad idea to ask those questions.  Preparing for the interview is fine and certainly advisable, but you should not ask for this sort of information.

Specifically, asking who’s on the search committee definitely sounds like you’re trying to game the system. I’m not seeing how this could possibly be relevant for any legitimate interview-preparation you want to do, or what reason you could have for asking this other than wanting to do research on those people (or possibly even doing slightly creepy things like scouring the internet and social media for info about them) to gain an unfair advantage in the interview. Definitely not kosher.

As for the other question, it’s maybe less unreasonable, but in my opinion simply makes you sound inexperienced and insecure. The “issues they will want to focus on” obviously pertain to the position you’re being interviewed for and to you, your skills and qualifications. What more of an answer could you reasonably expect to get, and, particularly, what more of an answer could you expect that isn’t perceived as giving you an unfair advantage over other candidates being interviewed? Again, this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that any benefit you might get out of the answer you’re given would be outweighed by the bad impression you would be leaving by asking the question in the first place.

Sorry the answer isn’t more positive... Good luck at the interview in any case.


How can I change a typo in the author affiliation after publication?

First of all, calm down. This is not as big of a mistake as you think it is. Many if not most published work contains insignificant mistakes such as minor typos. If it would make you feel better, I once had a typo in my own name (I blame autocorrection).

Contact the editor. They are probably going to publish a correction or erratum. If it is already published, they probably won't fix the original published article even if it is online only. (I am not familiar with the ACM Platform.)


Are the ISBNs of two copies of a book the same?

As noted in the comments, the purpose of an ISBN is to uniquely identify a set of books, all of which contain precisely the same content.  Thus, it is reasonable to expect that two books with precisely the same ISBN will have precisely the same content.

It is worth noting, however, that the reverse does not apply.  Two books may have precisely the same content but be issued different ISBNs because they come from different printings.  Likewise, printing errors, etc., can in rare cases render two books different despite having the same ISBN. For nearly all cases, however, the one-to-one relationship holds.


How can I prove that my article has not been submitted to another journal?

If I understand you correctly, they thought it was a double submission because the template you used included the header "IEEE Transactions on ..."?

Email the editor and explain that there has been a misunderstanding. If you make it clear that you only used the template because there was no template specified and you liked that one, a reasonable editor will probably at least remove you from their blacklist, unless they have other reasons to find your submission shady. They may or may not agree to consider your submission after all.

As a side note, "IEEE Transactions" is not even a journal. There are many "IEEE Transactions on <Topic>". If the template really only said "IEEE Transactions" you could note this in your explanation.


How should a high-school student approach professors in research institutions about research opportunities?

It might be better, if you can arrange it, to have one of your teachers help you with this. It may well be that one of your STEM teachers went to one of these universities, or has some contact there. If so, they can help you make contact, vouch for your seriousness, and ease the way.
This is much harder now in the pandemic, but perhaps it can be arranged in virtual space. A phone call from a teacher to a professor before you make contact will make all the difference. Even if none of your teachers have any contacts, a mail from them, introducing an "interesting student" will make your contact much more likely to bear fruit. Make sure that your teacher can say some interesting things about you and your interests and skills.
This should avoid the "bulk" problem and you can approach it one step at a time.


Is it possible to outsource some tasks of thesis writing? How and what kind of tasks?

In my opinion, the most ethical and legal answer to someone who is unethically and illegally asks others for writing his thesis (some parts or the whole) in any form (from doing research to typesetting and etc.) is a big NO!

By hearing NO!s from others, that person will understand that he is the only person who is responsible in writing his academic manuscript and he has social responsibility as a student to do his own research.

Thesis research is not something like procurement or construction project to be outsourced.

Help such person and help your society by saying NO to such requests!


Is it ethical to invite a student to apply for a job through my spouse?

(Disclosure: I'm not a professor.)

I don't personally see any ethical concerns SO LONG AS you indicate clearly (as you said you would do) that the recommendation letter will be equally strong regardless of whether or not the student applies through your spouse. Under those circumstances, I'd call this "networking," not "bribery" or "coercion".

The idea you proposed of writing the letter first and then informing the student seems like a nice way of ensuring that the student knows you've written a strong letter. There is the possibility that the student will still feel pressured, of course -- "if I don't say yes, then my professor will send a second contradictory letter" -- but assuming you have a positive relationship with the student, that seems unlikely.


Can a department renege on a student's "guaranteed funding"?

I am the Graduate Coordinator of my department, so I have some experience both reading and writing letters like this.  I find the phrasing

  "although we will be able to renew the assistantship in most cases, renewals are contingent upon the availability of funds".

strange.  It is not clear to me what "most cases" is quantifying over: you are only one case.

But here's a key point: what is being taken away from you in going from a letter in which funding is guaranteed to a letter in which renewal is contingent upon the availability of funds?  In all cases the renewal must be contingent upon the availability of funds, right?  Within the culture of American universities it would certainly not be acceptable for your department to, say, go over budget on renovations and then tell a student "We're sorry, but funds are no longer available -- we warned you!"  Not having the funds to cover promises made to students would be a nightmare scenario in any department that I know of.  A subtle linguistic change in a contract would not affect that.

However, I agree that the new letter is not exactly encouraging.  In my view you are well within your rights to inquire about the meaning of it, and you should of course do so before you sign the contract.  I would discuss this with the department official who wrote the letter, unless you feel uncomfortable doing so, in which case you could act through a suitable intermediary (ombudsperson, faculty advisor...).

In conclusion, I think it is highly unlikely that your funding will get cut, but they are taking from you some peace of mind -- which is also worth something!  I'm sorry for that, and I wish you the best.


Co-authoring a paper with a persona non grata

I expand on a comment by Buffy where this was hinted at:
It is a very different issue whether the misconduct was on the scientific level, which would cast doubt on the results, or on the social/moral level.
In the first case, it is difficult to trust the results if B is on the author list. Here, we have a serious dilemma. Probably OP might want to consider to cut their (and everybody's losses). Perhaps there is a way to publish it that makes it explicitly clear that this work has not been tainted by misconduct (editors note etc.).
To the second point:
Reiser's filesystem, Bieberbach's or Teichmüller's achievements are not devalued by their personal moral failings.
In this case, the research is done. It should be published. I do not know how important or impactful it is, but in principle, it's always a service to science and humanity, not just the respective taxpayer. Ultimately it's the OP's decision whether they are prepared to accept possible flak for their step. The research is separate from the authors behaviour. It's their detractors that would be trying to mix science and mores.
The only exception I can imagine for research to be suppressed for moral failures would be if the data were obtained in a clearly unethical way. The purpose of this is to discourage incentives for future breaking of ethical rules for obtaining it.


Advisor forcing to publish paper in high profile journal

Everyone should be so lucky to have an advisor who pushes them to excel and to aspire to the highest standards of achievement. Really, I don't see why your friend is complaining -- he should just go ahead and submit the paper to the high-profile journal.

Moreover, your friend's advisor, whether he published in the journal before or not, is considerably more qualified than your friend to judge the chances of the paper to be accepted to the journal. If the advisor thinks that's where the paper should be submitted, your friend would in all likelihood be foolish to disagree, especially since the worst that can happen is the paper will get rejected, probably sooner rather than later.

The only exception to this advice is in the bizarre situation in which the advisor is clearly delusional. In that case, your friend has much bigger problems and should probably look for a different advisor, not because of the small and self-correcting problem with the journal but because having an advisor who is so delusional and has such poor judgment does not bode well for your friend's eventual success in his research.


Should I notify people I mention in the acknowledgements section?

shall I communicate their inclusion in the acknowledgements section?

Yes, why not? It helps at building connections and improving relationships. Besides, if the acknowledged people are from a different field than yours, they might never know you've acknowledged them otherwise.

  what will be the correct etiquette for such an email?

I don't think there is any need to be overly formal. Typically I would write something simple, along the lines of (names and facts have been changed to protect the innocent):

  Dear John,

  thank you very much for helping me with the problem of packing holes. I've included an
  acknowledgment in a paper I recently wrote on the topic.

  The paper is titled "Packing the unpackable and stacking the
  unstackable" and has been submitted to the Transactions on Painstaking
  Stacking. You can find a preprint of the paper at the address (link to, e.g.,
  arXiv).

  Kind regards/Sincerely/Cheers,

  Massimo

The above example is meant to be sent just after the first submission. In more critical cases, when I'm not sure whether the acknowledgment would be well-received or not, or if I think I might have written a wrong detail (e.g., the affiliation), I typically send a copy of the paper before the submission, asking for feedback.


How to interpret division of Korean names when citing articles?

There are three general naming conventions you need to familiarize yourself with for proper citation in a modern context: European, Middle Eastern and East Asian.
European
(Primary Given Name) (Optional Secondary etc. Given Name[s]) (Family Name)
(John) (Mephistophiles) (Smith)
East Asian
(Family Name) (Given Name)
(Huang) (Jieshi)
or
(Park) (Hwa-won)
In this case the Family name is usually 1 Chinese character, and the given name is 2 characters (even if the characters are no longer used as in Korea and Viet-nam). In Chinese, Korean, and Viet-namese that usually means one syllable per character, but in Japanese it varies wildly.
Many times the romanization of the East Asian names will join the given name with a hype (Won-Hwa) or have them as a single, unbroken word. However, sometimes they are broken apart, in two words, but they are still one name. When in doubt, Google the name you suspect to be the family name. If it is the family name, there will be lots and lots of people with that name. (Park is the most common name in Korea).
Middle Eastern
(Given Name) (Father's Given Name) (Grandfather's Given Name) (Tribal or Locational Name)
Sometimes the Fathers and Grandfathers given name is preceded by an article like 'bin' (Arabic), 'ben' (Hebrew), 'ibn' (Classical Arabic), or substituted for 'bint' or other female forms before the father's name if a woman. The locational name will almost always be preceded by the article, 'al'. The articles may be separated from the names by a hyphen or not, but when written should be included, but not usually when spoken unless in very formal circumstances.
(Mahmoud) bin (Hamid) bin (Abdul-Qadr) (al-Hashemi)
In a citation manager it should be entered as follow:

Following this table your entry should be:
Last Name = "Park", First Name = "Won-Hwa", Middle Name = ""


I applied to tenure track positions in the US when should I hear about interviews?

This will vary widely depending on the institutions. Since most new positions will only start around August there is plenty of time to have committees do some initial sifting of candidates. It might take a few weeks to a few months, actually. It is somewhat dependent on how needy they are to fill a position. If they feel at risk of not filling the position in the initial search they will want to save a bit of time for a follow up.

Some institutions will be willing to give you some guidance if you ask and there is probably no real down-side to asking. Some will even list their deadline for decision in the application materials and will need several weeks prior to that to schedule any interviews.

However, if you are a serious candidate, then you will likely hear sooner rather than later after the initial selection is done.

Sorry not to be very definite, but every institution in the US is different in this regard and operates under its own rules and schedules.


At this point, you should probably give up on your hope that the professor will send the letter. If he hasn’t done it three weeks after the deadline despite repeated reminders, then I think a revision of your assessment that “he is very willing to help” is in order. Without trying to psychoanalyze him, all that one can say is that for all intents and purposes he is behaving like someone who is not at all willing to help, so that should be your working assumption from now on. Sadly. :-(

My recommendation is to look ASAP for someone else who can write you a decent letter of recommendation. At the same time, it may be a good idea to contact the department, explain the situation (including enough specific detail about the professor’s strange behavior to make it likely that they will be sympathetic to your situation and willing to be forgiving about this), apologize profusely, and say you are working on getting a letter from someone else as soon as possible, and that you hope that they will still be able to consider your application.

Good luck.


Increasing chances of getting a research internship with no experience?

I am starting an MSc in Computer Science in the autumn and I am concerned that I don't have any research experience.

Not having research experience when starting an MSc is not a problem! One of the goals of MSc is to acquire research experience.

  However, as an undergrad I am finding it hard to identify something that is achievable at my level and to narrow down to one area

It is perfectly normal that at this stage you do not already have well defined interests.

A potentially more successful approach would be to ask your current teachers. Even if they do not have any funding in their lab, they may be able to suggest some of their colleagues and to recommend you.


What are the differences between M.Sc, M.Tech and M.Eng.?

There are some differences, especially in the concept of the programs M.Eng./M.Tech. and M.Sc (and M.A. obviously too).

From my experience, and Wikipedia states this also, the M.Eng./M.Tech. degrees are rather given by Universities of Applied Sciences (at least in Germany, Canada, Finland etc,) and seldomly by Universities focusing on research. Any program that is research oriented will thus very likely give M.Sc. degrees.
The M.Eng. is even given as an undergraduate Master in the UK (see the Wikipedia Link) that gets granted immediately (without a bachelors in between).

For the career of a graduate, the title itself is not too important as aeismail mentioned, since any employer will have a look at what's inside (= the student track record).

Because there are so many slightly different programs, especially in computer/information engineering/technology/sciences I am not sure where universities draw the line regarding the "not granting a 2nd masters degree in the same field/area/discipline" policy.


What is the appropriate response to students who peek at the exam questions before the exam starts?

I don't know what an "invigilator" is exactly, but I presume that you merely watch the students to make sure they don't cheat, distribute exams and paper, and take the filled exams at the end, more or less.

As such it isn't your role to decide on any kind of punishment for cheating. There are probably procedures in place to report cheating. Do it. What happens next isn't up to you. If there are no formal procedures, take the name of the student and inform whoever is in charge (the professor in charge of the course for example).

Unless you have explicitly been told that it is okay, I would recommend being extra careful about expelling students. Students are afforded due process. If it is ever found out that peeking at the exam isn't something worth getting a zero on the exam or if the student is not found guilty, then having expelled them is something that will be terribly hard to correct. In my university the rule is to expel students only if their behavior causes trouble for the other students or in cases of person substitution (someone is taking the exam in the student's place). And even then, it's not the role of the proctor to decide this -- you have to get approval from the university president's office.


Is listing annexed territory listed in author details a valid reason to decline to review?

Since you ask for a framework for thinking about it, I'll suggest that an action on your part that disadvantages the author, perhaps already a victim, won't bring justice. Probably better to ignore that detail and focus on what the author says, and honestly give the usual feedback.

If you want to try to deal with the unfairness of the annexation, there are other places that would be more appropriate and effective.

But your review is independent of any concept of "legitimization". You are giving a service to an author and a journal, not the occupying country.


Is it acceptable in an academic interview to pretend like you derived something, or to explaining where it is from

I really don't think the interviewer cares one way or another whether you've seen the problem before.  She just wants to know if you can solve it, and to hear how you go about it.

In the video, she does say "the function that I'm going to write down, you've probably not seen before"; but I interpret that as just a way to reassure the student that the problem should be possible to solve whether she has seen the function before or not.  It's so the student doesn't panic or get stuck trying to remember the function, rather than actually trying to solve the problem.

So I don't think there is any point in either pretending the problem is new to you, or in announcing that it's familiar.  Neither will significantly help or hurt you in itself.  If you know how to solve the problem, solve it and move on.

On the other hand, it probably wouldn't be helpful to just draw the graph from memory and say "here it is, done".  The interviewer is almost certainly more interested in having you demonstrate that you understand the concepts and methods used to solve the problem, than in seeing if you know the solution.  So you would be wise to work through the problem methodically, explaining what you are doing and how you know to do it.


Is it ethical to have a relationship with a student after my supervision of him is complete?

The ethical, and safe, thing to do -- now, actually -- would be to look for another faculty member to pass this thesis supervision responsibility to, because your objectivity has been, or could be seen to be, compromised by your feelings.

I was given some very good advice once by a senior professor: when contemplating a particular action, imagine what it would look like if described in a newspaper headline.

  "Emcor Involved in Romantic Relationship with Student S/He Was Providing Direct Thesis Supervision to"

Doesn't look so good.  Compare:

  "Emcor Hands Off Thesis Supervision to Colleague before Embarking on Romantic Relationship with Student"

Better, no?

This doesn't mean you can't read a draft of the thesis, or that you can't be a sounding board for the work.  It just means that you shouldn't be the thesis supervisor.

That's how I see it.  However, if you are in any doubt, do check with a department administrator.


Is "I don't have enough funding" the most popular phrase used as hint for rejection

It is likely an amalgam of the truth and a gentle let-down. It's a polite way to reject someone, in that it doesn't place the failure in the hands of the applicant. There's nothing you technically did wrong. Nothing you necessarily could have changed. It just didn't work out.

It's also very likely a truthful reason for not accepting a candidate. It's possible that, given a couple more graduate funding spots (getting lucky with a grant, or promised a few TA spots for their students, etc.) that they might accept an additional student, but when those don't work out,  there's nothing for it.


How to politely tell a colleague they won't be an author of my article?

TLDR: Unless explicitly discussed otherwise, your friend does not expect to be a co-author. Just write a friendly email thanking them for the discussions and asking them if it is ok to include them in the acknowledgements.
As pointed out in the comments, this highly depends on which field we're talking about. In some fields, even pointing in a direction that actually turned out to be right might only be worth an acknowledgement (probably specific though, "we thank X for point to the results published in <obscure jounal 60 years ago>"). Since this is clear to most people, based on the information you provided, I would not think that your friend even expects to be co-author at all (unless they explicitly asked to be co-author, which would be border-line in terms of academic integrity but happens when the person urgently needs another co-authorship for formal reasons - in that case, however, one would expect that person to (a) communicate this clearly beforehand and (b) do much of the mindless busy-work, e.g. beautification of images).
That being said, I would assume that your friend knows they're not going to be co-author and thank them by email for the interesting, albeit ultimately fruitless discussions (but hey, maybe we can explore this in the future,...) and ask them if they agree to be mentioned in the acknowledgements. In other words, put a positive spin on it.


How to show that the department fits my research goal?

Your draft paragraph says nothing specific about the department or lab beyond the "create a better world" vision statement, and it says nothing specific about you beyond that you can enrich diversity.  (Every applicant hopes to be a valuable asset and feels they have a compelling plan.)  If your paragraph were swapped with another applicant's, in many cases nobody would notice the mismatch.

I'm not convinced that's a problem.  Your statement needs a conclusion, and this is a conclusion.  Writing a better concluding paragraph will make at most a small change in your chances of admission.  If the rest of your essay is compelling, then this conclusion won't ruin it.  If it's not compelling, then the last paragraph is too late to save it.  If you have the time and energy, it could be worth trying to write the perfect conclusion (one that is specific to both you and the department), but you should keep in mind that this is a minor form of fine-tuning.

  Should I use this part to raise their emotions?

I don't think this will be effective.  Reading statements of purpose just isn't a particularly emotional activity.  Usually, committee members are skimming through them looking for the important information and ignoring fluff, and anything that looks like an attempt to manipulate emotions will count as fluff.

  Should I use scarcity to raise their emotion?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by using scarcity.  Are you talking about raising fears that you are a scarce commodity and they might lose you to another department?  That doesn't need to be addressed, and it can look like hubris.  Most applicants just aren't that unique: there may be dozens or even hundreds of roughly similar applications.  (Of course everyone is unique and special as a human being, but this uniqueness isn't necessarily apparent in or even relevant to graduate admissions.)  The failure mode is usually not "oh no, this amazing candidate is lost to us forever" but rather "oh well, let's accept a similar student who was almost but not quite as promising".

To the extent your application is unique, that will be readily apparent and you don't need to emphasize it.  To the extent it is not unique, trying to raise emotions with impressions of scarcity will look arrogant or out of touch.


After 3 Years of PhD - problems with University registration - Fight or apply for another PhD

For the benefit of the wider audience, a little background into the German PhD system is in order.

Researchers after the master's level are hired as Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter (researchers, literally "academic personnel"), and work for the individual research groups as half- or full-time employees, with the commensurate salary and benefits.
In parallel, students are expected to register as doctoral students (Zulassung). Such a process will typically involve some classwork for international students, particularly those studying in engineering fields (and those with degrees other than the area they're now studying). One of the forms to be filled out in this process is the Betreuungsbestätigung, which is a commitment by the signer to be the candidate's advisor.

Normally, deadlines are deadlines; however, if there are mitigating circumstances, many departments will allow the advisor to petition for exceptions to be made. Given that you've made good research progress, it would seem reasonable that your advisor would want to ensure that you get your PhD. So, before doing anything else, talk to your advisor.


Rediscovery of calculus in 1994: what should have happened to that paper?

Online publishing, at the face of it, should be giving editors some room for maneuver. In this case, they could append the online version of the paper with an editorial note like

  EDITORIAL NOTE: Citing this paper as "Tai's method" is strongly discouraged, as the method is actually known under the name of trapezoidal rule. See also Comments for further explanations.

The academic community affected by this rediscovery should have taken actions accordingly, and editors in other journals should have made sure that citations to the paper are only given if something other than the trapezoidal rule is being discussed.

John Paul II apologized for a number of misdoings by the Catholic Church. The editors should've apologized to their research community for committing this peer review failure. It's OK to be wrong from time to time; science moves by rectifying things that come into contradiction with other bits of knowledge. However it's not OK to withhold knowing that you are wrong and insisting on it.


Is there an open crowd-based peer-review tool?

Besides http://peerevaluation.org, there is http://www.peerageofscience.org; and there is also reddit.com. Reddit is most like SE in terms of user interaction, however they have some problems with quality control. It is "open" in the sense that anyone can offer material and make a comment (review): it is "not entirely open" in the sense that authors and reviewers have the option of using a pseudonym, so real identities are usually not known. The other two sites are open in the latter sense, that authors and reviewers are openly identified (as far as I can tell), but peerageofscience requires reviewers to "have published a peer reviewed scientific article in an established international journal, as first or corresponding author", so it is closed to reviewers without that credential. (I am not sure about peerevaluation but it does not seem to require any qualifications from reviewers though it does ask you to categorize yourself).


Who grades the mathematics phd comprehensive exams?

I'd think a committee is much more likely than an individual professor, but I suppose it could depend on the size of the graduate program.  Comprehensive exams are handled in many different ways in different departments (when they are held at all), so there's no way to give a universal answer.  For example, in some departments the grading is delegated to junior faculty, while in others it isn't.  If you are interested in the answer in your own department, you'll have to ask them.


Including poor undergraduate research performance in a masters application

I don't know about your field specifically, but in my field, you can rarely make any serious progress on research working part time for part of a school year.  This is true for professors, postdocs, grad students and and especially true for undergrads.  The point of undergraduate research is (1) to give you some taste of research, (2) to learn a few things, and (3) maybe help contribute a small amount of insight to some problem.  At least in math, it's more common that undergrad research "only" results in a learning experience rather than a publishable paper.  In fact, many research projects for grad students and beyond never become papers, and of those that do, it generally takes more than half a year.  That's the nature of research.  It's not easy.

Moreover, as you advance and mature your point of view, it's natural that you view your earlier work as naive (again, this is true for professional researchers).  That's fine.  That doesn't mean there was something wrong with what you did earlier, but just that your understanding has advanced.

Anyway, to answer your question, I would probably include lines on my CV saying you were a research assistant, and at least briefly touch on them in your personal statements.  (You may also want a letter from someone involved in one of these, but that depends on your situation.)  You're not expected to have outstanding outcomes, so you don't need to focus on that outcomes.  But it shows motivation beyond the required coursework and that you have some experience with research.


Conference presenting: stick to initial paper submission or include recent improvements?

do I have to stick with the work that is going to be published, or can I also present some of the more interesting, newer work?

Absolutely present the improved model.

Conference submissions photograph the state of the work at the time of the submission. But from the submission deadline to the conference, many months can pass and usually people continue to work on their projects. Frequently, by the time of the conference, new results have been obtained, and these surely deserve to be presented.


Are proceedings of this conference really published by IEEE CS CPS?

The IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Service is a service available to conference organizers to help them publish conference proceedings, nothing more. The services they offer to conference organizers include: collecting copyright forms from authors, validating that submissions are in proper format, getting DOIs for the papers, and submitting bibliographic data to indexing services.

It doesn't mean that the conference is endorsed by the IEEE or IEEE Computer Society.

See their FAQ.

It does not mean that the conference is sponsored by IEEE an IEEE society (when you refer to an "IEEE conference", you probably mean one that is sponsored by an IEEE society):

  CPS publishes proceedings of conferences that are not sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, or any other IEEE society.

The eligibility criteria for non-sponsored conferences are listed here.

It does not mean that the proceedings will necessarily appear in the IEEE digital library:

  CPS-published conference publications are submitted to IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (CSDL). All conferences and conference proceedings must meet IEEE's quality standards. IEEE reserves the right not to publish any proceedings that do not meet these standards.

Conferences that are technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society are listed on its website, in its conference calendar. This conference isn't, because it isn't sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. It doesn't need to be sponsored to use IEEE CS CPS as its publishing service.


I suppose it depends on the factors that are causing you to spend more time teaching than you think you should. You should talk to (1) the other TAs and (2) the course leader/director. Find out what is expected and what others are doing.

If you are a relatively new graduate student, then I think it's normal to spend more time teaching and preparing for your teaching. As you start teaching the same courses repeatedly, the time you have to spend in preparation will decrease.

If you think of the time you are teaching as working on a craft that you will use for the rest of your career, then it is time well spent.


Is it bad style to use time-related adverbs (like "recently") in academic writing?

I find that there are some places where temporal context (e.g., "recently") is appropriate in discussing the literature, and others where it is not:

When I'm justifying the "Why now?  Why is this interesting?" nature of the work, typically in the introduction, timeliness is often important, and I'll use words like "recently."  This helps show that researchers are currently interested in the work in the paper, and can help motivate the work by showing how it's filling in a newly recognized gap.
When I'm surveying a landscape of work, on the other hand, it doesn't matter when work was done, just how it relates.  Then I would not note the time of publication.

Your colleague might have been over-zealous (some people have notions or phrases that they just hate), or you might have been giving information that wasn't actually useful in context, and thus should be deleted as distracting.  It's impossible to know without looking at the context in detail, but hopefully these principles can help guide how you think about it.


Ex supervisor published last month a photo from my PhD (5 years ago) with other co authors

It's hard to say for sure without knowing all the details and both sides, but typically, whenever an academic paper uses material that's been previously published (and a PhD thesis would count), academic ethics require that it be cited.


Can I copy my own work within the same class?

There are two issues to consider, self-plagiarism and meeting the course requirements.

The existing answer deals effectively with the self-plagiarism issue. If you quote and attribute just as you would for something written by someone else, you are not plagiarizing.

Even so, your paper might get a poor grade for not meeting course requirements. It would be unusual to set two exercises such that quoting the first one is sufficient for the second. For example, you may be expected to go into more depth.

Consulting the professor is the best solution to that issue.


Addressing a faculty member I interviewed

If the emails are for some kind of 'official' purpose, then there is no harm in mentioning "Dr.". The person, if he feels uncomfortable, then he would reply back with a note asking not to be formal. This has happened with me quite a few times.

If the email is not for official purpose but for starting a conversation in a written manner, then go with "Hey X" or something similar.

Anyway, I would not overthink on these aspects. I would always go with the safe path by mentioning "Dr.".


Am I right to be frustrated that my professor does not actually teach?

If I understand correctly, the professor has:

assigned readings
facilitated online discussions
given written assignments and quizzes, and graded them

But:

the professor does not himself participate in any activities (lectures or discussion)
the online discussion format does not lead to many useful interactions with peers
the professor gives only superficial feedback to written assignments

This does seem like poor practice. You are attending university partially to gain from the professor's expertise, rather than just reading books and discussing with peers. This is a class, not a book club. I acknowledge that there is a legitimate teaching style that involves activities, discussion, group work, and/or individual interactions rather than lecturing. But if your professor is as hands-off as you describe, I do not believe he is using this method, or at least not effectively. At a minimum, I submit that he should provide more detailed feedback (even at the cost of grading fewer assignments) and post a few comments in the discussion board to raise the level of the debate.
Despite this, I doubt there is much you can do. The professor did curate a course for you, facilitated group discussions, and is grading several pages per student per week (which may be a significant time investment). So unfortunately, I doubt that complaining to the department would lead to significant changes, at least in the short term.


How to politely decline a postdoc job offer after signing the offer letter?

Joining the other commenters: I'm not sure what you think a "commitment" is if signing an offer letter and having your employer issue a visa do not qualify!

I'm not sure why you think that your answer in the interview is relevant: it is perfectly normal for you to consider other positions until you accept one, at which point you should take yourself off the market.

I think it is very likely that the offer is not legally binding: I have seen such things happen to departments, and they have never pursued the matter legally.  What will happen though is that the people who offered you the job will feel that you reneged on them, and in particular that you broke your word.  That they have gone to the time and expense of successfully getting you a visa is likely to amplify their feelings of ill will.  (Also, it could make them be less willing to hire foreign workers needing visas in the future: please think about the implications of that for a while.)  It is possible that this could damage your academic and professional reputation in the long-term with this faculty member, at this university, and perhaps in broader circles containing them.  It is also possible that they will get over it rather quickly and hold no lasting grudge.

If you want to renege for a permanent academic job in a country that you distinctly prefer living in: in my experience, while some will call that action dishonorable, most will ultimately countenance it as something that you needed to do in order to get the happy life you want.  But if this is a temporary job for which you cannot see your way to your next job or staying in the country you want to live in: this could turn out to be a decision that you regret.  Whatever you do, I certainly urge you to get up to speed on how academic hiring works: this will stop you from making serious mistakes in the future (and may convey other advantages in your future career).


If the name I used on the publication is different from my legal name, which one should I use in the copyright form?

Between name changes, use names, transliteration, etc., this is a rather common situation, and copyright forms are generally well designed to allow graceful handling of it. Most copyright forms that I have encountered include two separate places where you put a name:

A list of the authors, in which you should write all of the names exactly as they appear on the paper.
A signature line, in which an authorized signer (in this case, yourself) should place their usual signature, in the same form that you use it for other legal documents.

There is no actual requirement that these names be identical, just that the authorized signer take legal responsibility for the assertions of the document, including asserting that the list of author names is appropriate.  In fact, for some authors, their organization may not allow the author to be the person who signs the document!

Thus, if you write your name on the paper as "author" and you write your legal name for signature, this should be fine and appropriate. If, somehow, you encounter a form that does not make the distinction between the two names, then I would say it is highly likely that the organization issuing the form must be rather sloppy with regards to handling copyright in any case, and you should not worry about it.


Etiquette and guidelines for sending pre-published work to other people?

1) Talk to your advisor. She or he should be aware of your intention to send your work to a third party, and can even suggest you the right persons to send your work to.

2) Usually you can ask only people you know personally (or your advisor knows personally).

3) In our university internal review of two colleagues is required if you want to publish a technical report. So, sometimes showing your manuscript to somebody else is required.

4) You might like to stress that the manuscript you are sending is still a preliminary version, and ask the reviewer to keep confidentiality issues in mind.


Is a IEEE student member counted as a member in a submission to a transaction?

I have published in the IEEE and "Student Member, IEEE, " is what you should write after your name (if you care to), because you're not a full member. Note that it doesn't have any benefits to it — you don't get a discount/additional copies/favorable review/faster review/muffins/... nada. It is exactly the same as if you had listed nothing at all.

Perhaps the only advantage might be for senior members, who want visibility (as a member) in order to be elected a Fellow, and for Fellows, if they want to show off (but by that point, you probably don't care).


Is it unethical to submit an older paper to a conference and then update it after acceptance?

"May I submit a paper to another conference that is essentially the same as a paper that is already published or accepted for publication?"

NO *

  "May I substantially change the content of an accepted conference paper after peer review?"

NO *

* Unless it is disclosed to, and permitted by, the PC/editor.


Do I need to translate Works Cited at the end?

You need to keep the reference in the original language, so that people can find it if they want to look for it. However, it's also useful for the readers to have the titles translated into English, so they can understand what they mean. Many journals specify exactly how you should cite foreign-language references this in their style guides, and many do say that you should include both translated and original titles.

To take an extreme example, Google translates the book title

  Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays

into German as

  Gewinnmöglichkeiten für Ihre mathematischen Spiele

(which, with my limited knowledge of German, I think is a reasonably good translation). Looking these words up in the dictionary might then produce the literal translation back into English of

  Profit Opportunities for your Math Games,

from which it would be moderately hard to identify the correct source.

Another answer suggests (especially if it your own article you're translating) replacing foreign-language sources with equivalent English ones. I think this is intellectually dishonest, as a source that's cited in the original should also be cited in the translation. However, I don't see anything wrong with adding equivalent English sources, along with a note that they were added in translation. (There isn't any requirement that you do this, of course, but it would be of help to the reader.)


Choosing an email address/provider for academic work as you change positons

After some of my personal e-mail hopping (also as corresponding emails on papers), I'd recommend getting a domain name and linking it to one of your email accounts. That is, only if you do not get to retain your academic email indefinitely if you have one (the uni I used to be at has the regulation to delete the e-mail and do no forwarding...)

By having your own domain, you can move services but keep the actual email consistent over time. I.e., you can use name@domain.org and where that points to just changes.

Any kind of service (and domain) that you cannot move around nor have any assurances for longevity on, are to be avoided IMO. I made that mistake with both my university and a corporate account so I learned the hard way...


Improving my PhD application for math programs

In reading through your comments, I couldn't help but get the feeling that you are "all over the map" when it comes to what you're looking to do in graduate school. If this is similar to the way that your personal statement read to the committee, it could help to explain some of the challenges you faced in applying to graduate schools.

For instance, after reading what you have written, I can't tell if you're looking to do algebra or bioinformatics—or if you're in an "I'm happy with either" situation. If it's the latter, this can make it harder for a committee to accept you: algebra readers might think they'll admit you, only to have you wander off into applied math, and vice versa. You may find it better to concentrate on one area—or, better yet, show how the different topics you're interested in are actually related to one another.

Another potential issue is the quality of your letters of recommendation. Is there anyone who can help you to evaluate your letters for you? Some colleges have career offices or academic counselors who can comment on the suitability of your letters for different kinds of programs (academic, industrial, etc.), although they probably won't "rank" them for you. If you had a very late letter, it's a good question as to how helpful it would have been, even if  it was from a big name (or perhaps that should be "in spite of" it being from a big name).  By this, I mean that the letter would only have value if it actually discusses your talents and skills in a meaningful way. A pro forma letter isn't all that helpful, particularly if you are from an "unknown" program. (This latter can also make your job tougher, since your school might not have  a track record at many graduate schools).

Finally, it also sounds like you have a rather untraditional academic history. This needs to be explained clearly somewhere on your application, in a way that shows thattaking you into a graduate program now would not be a risk. (Not doing this could again feed into the notion that you're flittering around from one thing to the next—which is not a good impression for an admissions committee to have of you.)


How can I fund my PhD after the first year?

In the US, various funding agencies (NSF, NIH, DOE, ...) have fellowships you can apply to for predoctoral students. They tend to be very competitive compared to internal sources (Teaching Assistantships, Research Assistantships, Graduate Assistantships), but they may offer a higher stipend.

Depending on your field, professional societies also offer fellowships: American heart association, Whitaker foundation, Gates foundation.

Industry also offers some in association with various schools: Siemens, Raytheon, Johnson & Johnson.


Is there a way to get the complete proceedings for an ACM conference?

As far as I know, NO. In the ACM conferences I have attended, I got one USB stick that has a single html file (page) that links to the individual PDFs of the papers of the conference. It is not like a conference with Springer proceedings, that provides a single PDF with the entire proceedings grouped together as a book.

So, as far as I know, there is not a official book-PDF with the entire conference papers for an ACM conference. I do not know if this applies to all ACM conferences, though.


Can my old supervisor publish my work without my say so

Formally, no.
Your former supervisor seems to be trying to coerce you into working on something you do not want to work on. "Getting this done shouldn't be too taxing" sounds like the kind of argument of a person who does not want to engage with your argument, but merely wants to get their way. You can choose to give her what she wants, but you can also choose to not do this. If the work is getting you down, why not just stop? You can tell your supervisor "no" in a polite way.
Your supervisor cannot publish your work without your input or consent. If your supervisor submits your work under her own name (without you as a co-author), this is a violation of academic integrity, and if you can show that she took things from your thesis, you can force a retraction of the paper. If she submits the work with you as a co-author (as she should), then you retain control: all authors must consent to the paper being submitted. A good venue will send all co-authors an email notifying them of the paper submission, and if you object to the submission, it should be removed from the reviewing process. It would be very unwise of your supervisor to try to sneak your work into a publication without your consent: if this ends up with a retraction, this will be bad for her reputation.
You worked for this person during your PhD, but that is now water under the bridge. You no longer work for this person, so you don't owe her anything. If she is wise, she will leave it at that. If she is unwise enough to try to pull a fast one on you, you have ways to fix the fallout. So, you should be fine.


Associate editor's dilemma with inconsistent first/second round review

The reviewers make recommendations to you, not judgements.  As the associate editor, you have to decide how to interpret those recommendations, taking your own judgement into account.

I think that it is actually reasonable for a reviewer to become peeved if issues that they think are important were not addressed, and therefore judge a paper more harshly.  Usually that goes Major->Reject, rather than Minor->Major, but if it was borderline for the reviewer before, it's not bizarre. The real question is: do you agree that those issues are important?

If you disagree with the reviewer, you can recommend minor revision or acceptance.
If you agree with the reviewer, however, that this paper has some real issues that need to be addressed before it get published, then it's entirely reasonable to request another revision, even a major revision.  In your editorial statement, you then say something like:

  In particular, Reviewer #1 points out that the following issues in the original manuscript have not been addressed in the revision, and these must be addressed for this paper to proceed toward publication: [key issues]

Now the authors have a clear editorial directive for what exactly must be done in their revision.  If they follow this directive, all well and good and they get published; if they refuse to follow it, then you have reasonable grounds for rejection.


How can I best approach journals and academics about paying to re-use content from their papers?

Many journals have a "Request Permissions" feature on their website. Open the paper of interest and look for a button with that label - often it's grouped with other options like downloading citations, setting up alerts, etc. Then follow the instructions given.

Although I've seen this in a lot of the major journals in my field, I've not done an exhaustive survey of how many journals have this option, so your mileage may vary. But it should be a good first place to look. To take an example from your comment, the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research is on JSTOR, and if you visit the page of an article, there is a "Request Permissions" button right at the bottom, below the abstract. Example here - I hope that the link is stable. If not, visit the latest issue and open any article.


How can I protect open research from being plagiarised?

Use a license.

Different open science journals/repositories/etc. allow you to license your publication(s)/data/etc. Some allow you to choose a license; others do not. Others may have different repositories.

For example, arXiv gives submitters a licensing choice:

  arXiv does not ask that copyright be transferred. However, we require sufficient rights to allow us to distribute submitted articles in perpetuity. In order to submit an article to arXiv, the submitter must either:

  grant arXiv.org a  non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article, and certify that he/she has the right to grant this license;
  certify that the work is available under one of the following Creative Commons licenses and that he/she has the right to assign this license:

  Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)
  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0)
  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0);

  or dedicate the work to the public domain by associating the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) with the submission.

The Royal Society Open Science journal has a different policy:

  All papers are made freely available under an open access model immediately on publication at the Royal Society Open Science website and are deposited in PubMed Central on behalf of the author. Under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), authors retain copyright for their article but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles provided the original authors and source are cited.

Once a license is chosen, all that remains is to enforce the license, which is simple enough. License enforcement is up to the holder of the license. If you choose the first of arXiv's options, then the responsibility is arXiv's; if you license the work under one of the Creative Commons licenses, then the responsibility is yours.

The enforcer of the license general is not required to enforce it if he/she/it so desires (see Are you obliged to enforce your license? on Open Source for more information, although that covers the GPL license, which is not applicable here). It's typically in the best interests of the license holder to enforce the license, but there is no requirement. If you want to make sure that the license is enforced, then you would be best off keeping the license yourself.


What are some red flags that even the professors cannot help in the admission?

What are the red flags that he mentions?

In general, a red flag is anything that makes the application look inappropriate or weak in comparison with other applications.  This is a vague term, as you've recognized.  It can mean something a little different to each committee member.  (I've been in discussions in which one committee member thought something was clearly a worrisome sign while another was completely unbothered by it.)

In practice, when you first look at a group of applications they come across like this.  There's a small group that should obviously be admitted, and a large group that don't look like good choices.  The latter are the ones with red flags.  Then there's a group that look like they could plausibly be admitted, but there are too many of them so further distinctions have to be made.  That's the group where support from a potential advisor would be most helpful.

  I have applied to a top school, to a leading professor, and they says that I "would be a terrific addition" to the group. Would this mean that if I'm trying to avoid the red flags, 100% that I will get an admission?

It's completely unclear.  First of all, it depends on how the admissions committee works.  For example, it sounds like support from an advisor helps much more in Wolfgang Bangerth's department than in mine.  Without knowing where you are applying, it's impossible to say what will happen in your case.

Furthermore, who knows what this professor's statement means?  Maybe they tell lots of people that they would be terrific additions.  Maybe you're special but someone even more impressive has also applied.  It's not worth spending a lot of time trying to interpret statements like this, since you just don't have enough information to say with any confidence what they mean.


Should I add profession name with my name in resume?

There are two different types of "titles" you could add to your name, and it is not quite clear which you mean.

The degree you achieved. Heading your resume with "John Smith, PhD" or "Dr. John Smith" is something people do in places where degrees are valued, like Germany. (And also of course on academic CVs.) It might come across poorly in other areas, e.g. I get the impression that US people think it looks "stuck up" or "full of yourself". For a Bachelor's degree, it would be odd to use "John Smith, BSc" simply because so many people have one, so there's nothing special about it.
The profession. Some professions are regulated, like in your example "Engineer". In many countries it is illegal to call yourself an Engineer unless you are registered with a professional association that regulates the exercise of your profession. (Acquiring the degree is not always enough.) In those cases, if you are in fact a registered Engineer, writing whatever your local equivalent of "Ir John Smith" is on your resume can be a quick signal that you fulfil this requirement for a job that you are applying for. If your profession is not regulated, there is probably no good reason to put it in your name - your job is whatever the person you are trying to get to hire you says it is, and it's probably best not to contradict them ;)


What steps should I follow in order to be able to start conducting research if there's no sign of support within my department?

It'll certainly be easier if you can find a professor willing to supervise you, so I strongly suggest that you keep trying on that front. But even if you can't, all is not lost! Here are the steps I recommend. Note that this may not be the only way to get started, but it's a way that works for many of my students:

Step 1: Start by identifying an area of interest

A good way to start is to identify a topic in class that interests you. Approach the professor for that class and ask him/her to suggest some related papers for further reading.

Step 2: Get a better view of this area

Thoroughly reading those papers may take a while, since this is new to you. Don't be discouraged by this! After you have a reasonable understanding of the papers suggested by your professor, start to branch out: look up the papers cited by/citing those papers to get a broader view.

Step 3: Reproduce some existing results

Somewhere in all this reading, you'll come across something that really interests you: a proof, a design of a system, a software implementation of an idea. See if you can reproduce this result (by going through the steps of the proof, writing your own software, running a simulation, etc.) Again, this may be more difficult than you expect; don't get discouraged.

Step 4: Do something new

Now that you've reproduced someone else's results, can you extend them? Is there a small variation on the system design that could improve the results, an interesting application in another domain, a stronger result you can prove? Get to work.

Step 5: Communicate your results

Congrats, you are now almost a bona fide researcher! Go show the professor who recommended the papers what you've been working on. A big part of doing research is communicating the results, once you have something to show. (And to get into a good grad school, you'll need to impress some potential letter writers.)

You should also consider writing a draft of a paper and soliciting feedback on it.


Is it inappropriate to ask department staff for syllabi previously used for courses I am to teach in upcoming year?

Actually, it is quite appropriate. You could also ask for a list of the professors who previously taught the course. You could then ask them if they are willing to share materials to help bootstrap the course.
In fact, the administrative assistant might not have easy access directly, partly due to the pandemic. But the professors would normally retain their materials.
You might also find recent course information online if each course has a website or if professors have websites with course material.


Greeting in cover letter to journal with 6 editors

Since you don't know for sure which of the six editors of the journal will handle the submission, a generic salutation seems most appropriate.

I would go with "Dear Editors", or "Dear Editors of Journal X".


You question has multiple elements, I will try to answer each of them:

I would advise against using first name. Just use Pr. LastName, which is formal, polite and concise
It is better to write him prior to the application and this can greatly affect your chance. By all means, it is likely that the central admission committee would contact your potential advisor or that your potential advisor could speak in your favor to the committee. You will lose nothing out of asking him beforehand. If I were a professor and I got an applicant that put my name as potential supervisor without asking me first, I would be slightly uncomfortable.
The answer you have quoted gives sufficient information I believe. A concise statement of your research interest, some articles of the professor you have liked to show you have read his work, your grade transcripts and your CV. All this combined should be perfect, just do not write an overly long e-mail and always remain polite and formal.

Like I said, you can only gain from writing the potential adviser beforehand.


Is there a unified platform that lists conference/journal deadlines?

WikiCFP offers this. To use this feature, you are required to register and sign in to your account.

Once you are logged in, find the Calls for Papers (CFPs) you are interested in and choose "Add to my list". (You can add multiple CFPs at a time if they appear in the same search results or "recent CFPs" list).

Then, from the sidebar, choose "My list" or "Timeline" to see all the deadlines for the conferences you have selected in your preferred format. Timeline view is pretty nice; it shows you the registration, submission, notification, and camera-ready deadlines, as well as the dates of the actual conference. Here is a screenshot:

However, WifiCFP relies on user-submitted content (for both original CFP submissions, and updates e.g., for deadline extensions). So the usefulness of this for you will depend on how active people in your field are on WikiCFP.


Given the subject you are teaching, I'd say that question 2 only adds a little information about "learning outcomes", over question 1.  Students need to learn to recognize when a given technique is even viable, and then to choose the method that is most appropriate (simple, straight forward) if multiple methods are viable.  Question 2 is somewhat more informative about this than Question 1.

I say "somewhat" because there are other possible questions and approaches that could be much more informative, if you really think it is important to measure other "learning outcomes" (i.e. what students know, and what they can do with that knowledge).  For example, you could ask them to explain why the chose the method they used, and to explain why they chose not to use other methods.  You could ask them to compare and contrast the alternative methods.  I realize that it's rare that math tests include essay questions, but that is only a cultural norm.  There's no reason that they could be utilized more.  (Too often, math students simply "plug in the formula" to get the answer and have little idea why it works or what they should do in some uncommon circumstance.)

For another example, what if you gave them a test question where none of the existing methods was an ideal or even good match.  The question might be: "How would you modify this differential equation so that it is solvable, and also that the solution is approximately correct for the original equation?"  I realize that this question may be beyond the reach of students who are just starting to learn differential equations.  But I offer this as an example of a test question that really would measure a learning outcome different from the skill of identifying the appropriate method and then following the solution steps.


Teaching Online at US Universities without a proof of authorization to work in the United States

If the job advertisement mentions that proof of authorization to work in the US is required, that means you should obtain a visa to work in the United States before you apply for the job.  Your application will probably not be read if you do not have the visa and are not a US citizen.

It is not worth obtaining the visa to teach one course.


I can go back as far as 1995, when I started my master's thesis, but if you want to dig like an archaeologist, you should probably go back a bit more.

In fact, in 1995, when we submitted my first work to a conference, we already did it by email (we submitted a camera-ready abstract).

For journal papers, in those years, the peer-review system transitioned from using the ordinary mail to the electronic one, and at the time there was an intermediate solution (at least in my field): you would submit the papers by email and you would receive the reviewer's remarks by ordinary mail (if I recall correctly: you know, memory sometimes fail us dinosaurs!). The peer-review process was managed by the editors by email. Below, you can find a picture of a handwritten reviewer's form which I received, by ordinary mail, in 1998 during my PhD (sadly – at the time – a rejection!).

Manuscripts should have been typeset in a one-column double-spaced format, to allow the reviewers to write corrections between the lines. Note, in fact, point 13 from the form above which says: "I have marked the manuscript and am returning it with this review". Some journals still require this format (which I don't like) nowadays, even though no one sends back corrections in this way anymore.

A few years later (probably around 2000), the first websites for the electronic management of submissions started to appear. I recall that at the beginning these were very fragile systems, which frequently crashed near submission deadlines, when the number of connections increased dramatically.

I don't know what was like before those years, but I suspect that a mixture of phone and mail communications was common.

Notes

As an aside, it might be interesting to note that, at the time, we didn't have personal email addresses for all the group members: there was an email address for the PI and one email address for all the others (indeed, the common email address allowed the group members to know each other's private facts). It took a couple of years more to have a personal email address for each person at my university.
Before the advent of emails, if a researcher wanted to ask for a copy of a paper (while reviewing a paper or for any other reason), they would have sent a letter. Some institutes had preprinted postcards exactly for that purpose. Here is a picture of such a postcard that I found in the drawer of my desk, a relic from another era.


Which email address should a student use in a publication?

It depends on many things, which I tried to order by descending priority:

Possible journal policy: in most cases, they don't have one
Possible employer policy: my own institution forbids the use of gmail.com addresses in lieu of our professional ones, because of a national policy forbidding use of commercial email providers for state-paid positions (prohibitions which my institution extends to students)
Which email address you'll keep longer: students email is temporary, but gmail.com may also be (it may not be hard to imagine that, in some near future, you become infuriated by Google's (or any company's) behavior and close your account). On that note: if you graduated from some institution, you may get a permanent alumni email redirection, which may last longer than all those individual accounts.
Which email looks more professional: smurf19@gmail.com sure doesn't do any good for your reputation.


Where should I host a (simple) personal academic webpage?

This doesn't sound like your website will have special requirements that an all-purpose CMS couldn't handle. My advice is to go for one of those "all included" packages by a mainstream provider with something like Wordpress, and find a nice-looking template. This is the easiest choice, it will guarantee up-time, and you don't have to spend valuable time to administrate or design the site. It is also not very expensive: Perhaps around 5-10 USD/month, plus a one-time expense for the template (5 USD and up). Two alternatives might be attractive as well:

Nerdy option: If you are familiar with GitHub, you can use GitHub pages to self-host a static website with Hugo, like so. Once it's set up, it's a breeze to update. Here's an example.
Thrifty option: Use google sites.

Details:

  My institution's personal webpages facility

Pro: Demonstrates academic credentials and shows your affiliation. Con: Not much leeway. Will you be able to use it after you leave the institution?

  My own web server at home

Pro: All the control you need. Con: Way too much overhead; perhaps you can't implement what you need after all.

  Some for-pay general-purpose webpage/website hosting service

Good balance between control and ease of use.

  Some gratis general-purpose webpage/website hosting service

Free comes at a price. Perhaps you'll have up-time issues, ads or no own domain, certainly less control.

  Using one of the specialty academic-webpage platforms (which apparently exist)

See here.


Is there any way to stop the one-way brain drain from academia to industry?

You mentioned one answer (pay). There're others. I once communicated with someone who left his position as a professor at a major North American university. That surprised me since I knew the job was in high demand. I asked him why, and he responded:

  Professor positions in major research university in  US require
  generation of research funds - a process of writing your best ideas
  and sending them to funding agencies. The process of getting money
  from funding agencies is worse than the lottery. You spent a lot of
  creative effort in putting a proposal together and then most of the
  time it gets thrown into a garbage can. It is a general state of
  affairs, not just my experience. I just decided that I've had enough
  of that. When I spend time creating something I want it to see the
  light of day. So  I switched fields and now work in a very dynamic
  industry, generating new knowledge or writing products that are
  actually used.

  If any postdoc ask me for advice now - whether or not to go into
  academia - I would answer why would you torture yourself? There are so
  many fun jobs and are even better paying.

There's more. If a fresh PhD graduate stays in academia:

You live a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from one postdoc to another. This is not only bad for any significant others and children, but also a great hassle. Each time one moves, one needs new visas, needs to find accommodation, and so on. To add to that, postdocs offer no job security, and one is virtually always looking for a new job.
After that, if you're smart / lucky enough to get a permanent position, you have to generate research funds, which is unreliable (above).
After that, there's no guarantee you'll actually get tenure. If you are denied tenure, what are you going to do next? One is probably already >40 years old at that point.

Taken together, only the extremely passionate (or extremely masochistic) choose an academic career. For further reading I suggest these two articles which strongly shaped my view on this: Women in Science by Philip Greenspun, and Don't Become a Scientist! by Jonathan Katz.

Having said the above - why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing. It's simply market forces of supply and demand at play. If more people took the option to shift, there would be less competition for permanent positions. Less competition makes the academic path more attractive. Eventually things balance out. It's further possible for society to reverse the brain drain whenever it wishes, simply by providing more funding. If society doesn't want to do that, I don't see why academics should try to force it.


How should undergraduate student respond when the PI of their lab asks them to provide feedback on a research paper?

A reply such as "Thank you for the opportunity to review this; I see no changes that need to be made."  is appropriate.  This confirms that you

Read the paper and
Are in agreement with the content and presentation.

As a participant in the work and especially if you're listed as a co-author, point 2 is important.  However, point 1 lets the organizer know that you've completed your task so that they needn't wait any longer on your feedback.

An additional thought:

  Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give.

Don't let age or experience of other team members influence how you perform your review.

You have every right (really, a responsibility) to raise any issue you identify so that it can be addressed.  Furthermore, I've often found that less-experienced team members tend to make very rigorous reviews of all the details, often catching details that others miss.  Take this as an opportunity to dive into the work and learn the intricacies of it (especially the parts you weren't involved with).  This will allow you to gain understanding of the field and allow you to more effectively perform another type of review: that of the overall nature of the work and the cohesiveness of how it's presented.

Also, as you perform the review, you should bring questions to your team members.  They understand you have little experience (you're an undergraduate, that's expected).  However, displaying interest in the work and gaining knowledge in the field is a good thing.


Is writing short proofs inline bad form?

Maybe this is "opinion based", but here is what I prefer, and I think it is pretty standard.

I would only use the QED box  at the end of a proof environment (which started with Proof) which is preceded by a numbered Theorem / Proposition  / Lemma / Corollary etc.  That way, there is a clear statement of what is being proved, and the statement is clearly distinguished from the proof.  Subconsciously, I think of Proof and  as matched delimiters.

I don't think "too simple" is the main consideration for whether to use Proposition or Remark.  Rather, I think Remark should be used only for statements or discussions which are a digression from the main argument of the paper.  If you have a statement which is important to the paper, even if the proof is very simple, make it a Proposition or Lemma or Corollary (with a number), and follow it with a Proof.  (You might be able to get away with saying something like "we have the following proposition whose proof is obvious", and then omitting the Proof environment, but this can be annoying.)

In a Remark, if discussing a particular claim, you might include a short proof or sketch or outline.  Generally this would be written into the prose of the paragraph and not set off as a separate proof, and I would not use the QED symbol here.

  Remark. The previous result raises the question of whether every snark is a boojum.  In fact, the answer is yes, and this can be seen by noting that cheese is green and the sky is mauve.  However, it is still not known whether every boojum is a snark.

This would be an alternative to:

  Proposition 6.37. Every snark is a boojum.

  Proof. Cheese is green and the sky is mauve.


As it says on the page you linked it, attribution is required. So, all you need to do is add the author's name under the image in your presentation.

The important thing here is that if you do not include the author's name, you are implying that you create the graphic and if you did not, then you should attribute it to the true author.


How does peer review assess the validity of experiments carried out?

Does the peer review process ensure experimental data being reported is accurate and how so?

At very least, the peer review process is not designed to catch intentional fabrication because reviewers are only asked to read the manuscripts.
That being said, intentional fabrications sometimes get caught during the review process if reviewer go above and beyond the call of duty.
The real check on fabrication is replication, which usually happen after publication.


At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'?

First, I'll remark that (at least in fields close to me: physics and chemistry), the process for submitting review articles is typically handled in a different way than other articles (which I'll call “research articles”). Review articles take a lot of effort to write, and that their publication may depend not only on intrinsic quality and scientific criteria, but also on editorial policy: if the journal has already hosted a review on a given topic, it is unlikely to publish another soon afterwards. So, the common practice is to come to an agreement with the editor before writing the full article. Either the editor contacts a scientist to offer him to write a review on a given topic, either an author sends an abstract to the editor asking if the journal would welcome such a review (with no guarantee as to the results of the peer-review process, of course).

This has an important consequence for your question: you can actually ask the editor of the journal of your dreams if a review by you and your co-authors would be welcome. Practices may differ between fields, journals and editors, but asking exactly the person who is going to make the decision is the right course.

Then, we come to what I would call the “customs”. It is indeed typical to gain some authority in your field before writing review articles. This usually means working for a few years in a given field, publishing some articles of your own, in short: getting noticed by your community. As such, it is not a typical thing to do for a graduate student. Maybe at the end of your PhD, jointly with your adviser. Most probably, later in your career: either as an experienced post-doc, or after having gained a faculty position.

With more than a few years of experience, my personal experience is that you perfectly write reviews (and the editors will accept if the work is good). However, it gets easier with seniority, as you will (i) more easily have your work accepted in more prestigious journals, and especially (ii) more easily get invitations to write reviews.


Drawbacks of making public which journal a manuscript is submitted to, while it is under review?

I think a main reason why many find it preferable to not list the journal name is because it can come across as presumptuous and doesn't really advantage one over not listing the journal name, anyway. For an established researcher (such as, probably, your advisor), the few papers in submission probably do not bear too much influence on his/her reputation, compared to an early-stage researcher for whom these comprise a large percentage of the publication record, so there isn't much to gain.

Two alternatives that may allow you to list your submitted publications in a manner that is consistent with your advisor's are:

Do not mention the journal, but mention that the paper has been submitted. This shows most of the important details of the paper and allows you to record it on your webpage without explicitly naming the journal. E.g.,

  Student A and Doe J. (2016) "Our awesome paper." Under review. 12 pages.

Depending on your field and the journal to which you submitted, you could post an archival version online (say to arXiv). Then you can reference this on your webpage until it is accepted in a journal.


Our research is being ignored by other research groups

Continue to publish your results in journals that will accept them.  After a while people will be able to see for themselves whether the US group is ignoring your publications.


How to inform a student about my appreciation of his/her original solutions

Just write the student an email and express your appreciation. Don't overthink this. Then again, don't go over the top ("you are the best student I ever had") - you never know how he will take this.

Depending on how well you know the student and on whether you would actually be willing to do so, inform him that you would be happy to write a glowing recommendation for him if he ever needs one, e.g., for admission to grad school.

And as Compass comments, think about how you can help the student develop even further. Do you have any follow-up courses, maybe even advanced ones that the student would usually not take but that you think he would be able to follow? Tell him. Can you give him a research project? Take him on as an Research or Teaching Assistant?

At some point, this turns from "helping the student grow" to "nurturing your own future grad student", and that's OK. This is a mutually beneficial thing, after all. And it's never too early to snap up the promising students. If you don't do it, others will.


Do Publishers Search Academia.edu for Potential Articles etc.?

There's a role in publishing called acquisition editor, sometimes also called commissioning editor (the roles of these two are, strictly speaking, different, but they're almost synonymous). The job of these people is to find things to publish. This could, for example, be an otherwise unpublished paper suited to the publisher's [journal], or perhaps commissioning an author to write a review on [topic].

How does one go about doing these things? Different acquisition editors will do things differently. Searching academia.edu is definitely a reasonable way. If one finds an unpublished article on academia.edu that's 1) a good paper and 2) suited to one's journal, one could certainly write to the authors asking them if they want to submit. So although I don't know any paper that went through the process you describe, it's possible.

Caveat: these papers still have to be peer reviewed. I'd be skeptical any paper went directly from being discovered to being published.