How to get a list of researchers ranked by their h index?

Supposing that the h-index could be used to measure researcher influence (which is debated), I would strongly suggest, in addition to @Significance, to use at least the three main sources: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. In What do bibliometric indicators measure?, 2007, Kermarrec et al. showed the high disparity in coverage and results, and the sensitivity to errors (same names, duplications).  This information can be complemented by Which h-index? – A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar, 2008, Bar-Ilan. The bias observed with Google Scholar is highly dependent on the field.

Using a measure with three different tools (after some cleansing), and plotting the profiles on a 3D axis might help to avoid "missing" influential authors who lay off the main diagonal (data from Bar-Ilan's paper):

A pending issue is the difficulty to get authors assigned to a field.  Journals can be associated to differents fields, and you could make a rule like: "an author who has published at least x papers in a journal from the field is taken into account". A drawback is that an author in that may have an high h-index mainly  because of papers published in different fields. So although "influential" in your sense, he might as well not be influential at all in your field.

A solution could be to collect DOI of papers, and then use retrieval tools as the ones described in Scientometric/bibliometric data retrieval from a list of DOI.


Why are CS researchers reluctant to share code and what techniques can I use to encourage sharing?

Why researchers might be reluctant to share their code: In my experience, there are two common reasons why some/many researchers do not share their code.

First, the code may give the researchers an important advantage for follow-on work.  It may help them get a step ahead of other researchers and publish follow-on research faster.  If the researchers have plans to do follow-on research, keeping their code secret gives them a competitive advantage and helps them avoid getting scooped by someone else.  (This may be good, or it may be bad; I'm not taking a position on that.)

Second, a lot of research code is, well, research-quality.  The researchers probably thought it was good enough to test the paper's hypotheses, but that's all.  It may have many known problems; it may not have any documentation; it might be tricky to use; it might compile on only one platform; and so forth.  All of these may make it hard for someone else to use.  Or, it may take a bunch of work to explain how to someone else how to use the code.  Also, the code might be a prototype, but not production-quality.  It's not unusual to take shortcuts while coding: shortcuts that don't affect the research results and are fine in the context of a research paper, but that would be unacceptable for deployed production-quality code.  Some people are perfectionists, and don't like the idea of sharing code with known weaknesses or where they took shortcuts; they don't want to be embarrassed when others see the code.

The second reason is probably the more important one; it is very common.

How to approach researchers: My suggestion is to re-focus your interactions with those researchers.  What are your real goals?  Your real goals are to understand their algorithms better.  So, start from that perspective, and act accordingly.  If there are some parts in the paper that are hard to follow or ambiguous, start by reading and re-reading their paper, to see if there are some details you might have missed.  Think hard about how to fill in any missing gaps.  Make a serious effort on your own, first.

If you are at a research level, and you've put in a serious effort to understand, and you still don't understand ... email the authors and ask them for clarification on the specific point(s) that you think are unclear.  Don't bother authors unnecessarily -- but if you show interest in their work and have a good question, many authors are happy to respond. They're just grateful that someone is reading their papers and interested enough in their work to study their work carefully and ask insightful questions.

But do make sure you are asking good questions.  Don't be lazy and ask the authors to clear up something that you could have figured out on your own with more thought.  Authors can sense that, and will write you off as a pest, not a valued colleague.

Very important: Please understand that my answer explaining why researchers might not share their code is intended as a descriptive answer, not a prescriptive answer.  I am emphatically not making any judgements about whether their reasons are good ones, or whether researchers are right (or wrong) to think this way.  I'm not taking a position on whether researchers should share their code or not; I'm just describing how some researchers do behave.  What they ought to do is an entirely different ball of wax.

The original poster asked for help understanding why many researchers do not share their code, and that's what I'm responding to.  Arguments about whether these reasons are good ones are subjective and off-topic for this question; if you want to have that debate, post a separate question.

And please, I urge you to use some empathy here.  Regardless of whether you think researchers are in right or wrong not to share their code in these circumstances, please understand that many researchers do have reasons that feel valid and appropriate to them.  Try to understand their mindset before reflexively criticizing them.  I'm not trying to say that their reasons are necessarily right and good for the field.  I'm just saying that, if you want to persuade people to change their practices, it's important to first understand the motivations and structural forces that have influenced their current actions, before you launch into trying to browbeat them into acting differently.

Appendix: I definitely second Jan Gorzny's recommendation to read the article in SIAM News that he cites.  It is informative.


How much administrative experiences help for a faculty appointment?

In general, being a university administrator (e.g., Dean or Provost) is good experience for being a university administrator. I do not recall any high level administrators changing countries, so my guess is that the experience is country specific. For traditional research and teaching faculty positions, prior experience as a university administrator is not helpful. While hiring committees try and take into account the "lost time" associated with being an administrator, in general, I think administrators trying to switch tracks are at a disadvantage.


How to advertise a paper to increase citations?

Aside from giving excellent talks at important conferences, here are several other ideas.  I've seen all of these work (although rarely all for the same paper).

Maintain a freely available copy (or at least an arXiv link) on your personal web page.
Keep your CV up to date, including links to freely available version of all your papers.
Make sure Google Scholar and similar indexing services are indexing your paper.
Announce / brag about your paper on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, LiveJournal, etc.
If you have pages at clickbait sites like Academia.org or ResearchGate, upload copies (of the arXiv version) there.  (But if you don't, don't start now.)
Write a blog post about your paper.  Better yet, convince someone else with a well-read blog to write a blog post about your paper.
Give invited talks about your work at other universities/labs.  If necessary, invite yourself.
If you are a student, ask your advisor to brag about your new paper.
If your paper significantly extends the work of other authors, or applies it in a novel way, contact those authors directly with a link to (a free version of) your paper.  (But don't send a copy to someone just because you cite them.)
Whenever your paper provides an answer to a question on (for example) physics.stackexchange, answer the question and include a link to your paper.
Develop a reputation for stellar work, so that people in your field regularly check your web page / arXiv / indexes / journals for your newest papers.

The last method is by far the most effective.


Is it possible to get a PhD grant in Europe/US with the research focused on Kazakhstan?

I think your chance would be higher with professors focusing on a specific area geographically and also check professors being interested in migration or integration. I think it is not impossible. Just develop a proposal. If it does not work, change your focus.
I am not sure about a scholarship or grant. They are highly competitive. Good luck with it.


Applying to a new position after a few months?

The solution to your predicament lies, as I see it, completely in how you approach your reference writers.

I would approach them from the point of view that a great opportunity has presented itself to you in a very untimely fashion given that, "I already asked you to write a reference for me a short time ago. I hate to ask you to do this yet again, and I'll completely understand if you decline." That sort of thing.

Hopefully you saved a copy of their prior recommendations so they can use them as an easy guide. Offer to help them if they are pressed for time.

A great opportunity should not be ignored simply because someone might have to do a little bit of work for someone they've believed in very recently.

This just happened to me recently. A friend asked me to be a reference for him. He got hired. Two months later, another, better opportunity came up. He asked me again to be a reference. I didn't hesitate to say "yes".

A reference is nothing more than asking someone to attest to whether or not somebody can do a job adequately. There is nothing unethical about someone wanting to move to a better position. Good opportunities don't grow on trees.


notification e-mail and invitation letter

I don't want to presume, but a quick look through the conference website makes me suspect that it may not be the top of the line for its field. Take a look at the program committee, are they reputable people that you know? If you're a student, can your advisor comment on the conference's value? Can some expert comment on the conference's quality?

Did you receive any reviews?

Were you asked to pay a lot of money to attend?

If any of the above hold, this raises some red flags.

If it's indeed a disreputable venue, I would avoid publishing there. Retract the submission and thank them. There are some places where you wouldn't want your work published.

Again, I'm really not from the field, but not getting reviews, the general look and feel of the conference website (conferences that go out of their way to tell you that they're indexed by all of these libraries is not a good sign) etc. would make me think twice.

As my own advisor wisely said: there are some conferences with a negative impact factor...

EDIT:

This conference is sponsored by WASET, which is almost certainly a predatory publisher. Do NOT publish there.

See here. It is also listed on Beall's list - see here.


What can I do when a manuscript is Completed Reject after 5 months of the submission

You can certainly submit to another journal. You don't even need to make any changes to address the reviewers' comments, though it would certainly be advisable (otherwise you're likely to get similar reviews again).
Whether or not you can re-submit a revised paper to the same journal will depend on the journal's policy. The journals I know tend to treat outright rejection (as opposed to 'revise & resubmit') to mean no resubmission will be accepted, but this may not be universal. Of course, there is a grey area: at what point does something become a new paper rather than a revised version of an old paper?


Which google scholar citation format is IEEE standard?

None of the "standard" citations that they provide is IEEE format.

Instead, you should use one of the links at the bottom to take the format for your preferred citation manager, such as BibTeX, which can then be used to format following any publication venue's guidelines.

For IEEE in particular, the best option is generally BibTeX, because IEEE strongly pushes its authors towards preparing their publications via the IEEE LaTeX package and its accompanying BibTeX style format.


Reviewer signs name on review. Should the editor censor?

If the journal is structured with a blinded review process, as most are in my experience, I would censor the name as an editor.

Only if there is some sort of explicit journal policy allowing reviewers to unblind themselves would I consider not censoring the name.


Would it be ethical to resubmit a research paper to a different conference, when the original venue gave false informations?

If your paper was submitted to a scam publication venue, because that scam venue had willfully misrepresented itself as a legitimate venue, then it is perfectly reasonable for you to withdraw your paper and resubmit it to a legitimate venue instead.

Actually doing so, however, may pose some challenges, so I would recommend the following procedure:

Get in touch with X and confirm that you really are being scammed, and that it's not just incompetent conference staff.
Assuming you are being scammed, contact the scammers and withdraw your publication, cc'ing the contact at X who has confirmed the scam.
The scammers will likely fail to respect your request for withdrawal, likely publishing without your consent.  You can't do anything about this, because they are fundamentally dishonest, and you don't have the resources to fight them.  X might choose to do so, however.
Submit your paper to a legitimate venue, and get it properly published.

Now, if the scammers publish your paper without your consent before your paper is reviewed, there is the possibility that somebody might notice it and think that you are self-plagiarizing.  It's not clear to me whether it's better to address this head-on with a note in your cover letter, or whether to wait until it comes up (assuming that the reviewers will discount a fraudulent site).  I suspect that it is unlikely to come up, but you should decide whether you would prefer to speak about it in advance or whether you want to wait and respond if necessary.


Needs for ethics approval required on service evaluation for quality improvement in NGO? How to obtain ethics approval for small NGO?

Any reputable scientific publication venue will require some sort of IRB certification of almost all research involving human subjects.  There are certain circumstances where the data is anonymous or incidental enough to not need approval (see for example these US HHS decision charts).  Your research, however, sounds like it will definitely need IRB review.

You've already hit on the main avenues for getting review---partnership with university or contracting with a commercial IRB.  I would suggest a few others to consider:

Your country may have a governmental IRB or equivalent that you can work with.
There may be a larger NGO that you can partner with, which would be able to support IRB review internally or externally.
Some commercial IRBs might have a "reduced price" option for developing countries.

IRBs for research in developing countries are indeed a challenging issue: this document has a nice summary of some of the challenges and approaches.


Is a research thesis (report) with zero contribution to human knowledge acceptable?

I assume that by negative results, you mean non-significant results.

"It is an expectation that the PhD would make an original contribution and/or advance knowledge in a given field." Yes, this is true. And "X doesn't work" is a contribution to the field.

(To use an example from my area). Health practitioners are constantly dreaming up things that might work to treat various ailments (illnessess), and using them. The job of health researchers is to find out which ones work - and most of them don't work.

We used to joke that our role as health care researchers was to say no. "Nope. That doesn't work. Don't do it. No, that one's not effective either. No, don't use that. No. No. No."

Pressure for positive results just means you tweak models and data until you find them - using 'researcher degrees of freedom' (see http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/11/1359). Your results are therefore significant, but worthless.

My PhD thesis was trying to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between stress and psoriasis symptoms (many people say "stress worsens psoriasis" - it's taken as a given truth, but it's never been empirically demonstrated). I was trying to answer things like what kind of stress, how long does it take, does it differ between people? I never found any evidence that stress did worsen psoriasis. Nor that psoriasis worsened stress (or any other psychological symptom).

A PhD is an educational process. One should demonstrate that one has learned. The most important thing about a PhD is showing what you know, what you have learned, and what you understand. If anyone gets to the end of a PhD and says "Well, those results were all positive, just as I expected", they've learned little. At the end of your PhD (or any research project) you should want to start again, and this time do it properly.


You need to contact the editor as soon as possible and get your mistake rectified.

If you have waited too long then it may not be possible for the versions already made public.


My PI is publicly humiliating me: Why would a PI do this and what can I do to mitigate the damage from this?

The best way to mitigate the effects of his behavior is to be really, really clear on what's happening and stop making excuses for him. This will help you separate out blaming yourself for something you have no control over: his bad behavior. It's your best chance at preserving your mental health while you have to work with him.
This behavior you describe from him is toxic, and it is very likely intentional. He has demonstrated that he has the self control to not make you uncomfortable in one-on-one interactions. He chooses to make you uncomfortable in front of an audience.
Also, teasing in any context, but especially in professional situations, isn't fun anymore when the target repeatedly shows discomfort. Teasing is only acceptable at work when all parties are benefitting from the relaxed atmosphere.
Finally, his sensitive/negative reaction to you asking him to stop has the following effect: it creates as much friction as possible so that you won't keep complaining and will allow him to continue enjoying making you uncomfortable and embarrassing you.
He is an adult and should be able to handle hearing, "hey, this was all in good fun at first, but I'm not having fun anymore, and I'd like you to stop." A person managing a lab should have the capacity to listen to that. If he can't handle that conversation, he is the problem, not you, OP.
Also, I would try to avoid speculating about why he's like this or what's going on in his head. It's getting you more wrapped up and emotionally invested in keeping the peace with him, which will make it more painful when he decides to be cruel. Try to decouple from his thoughts/emotions, and just focus on behavior. His behavior is unacceptable. You've asked him to stop, he refuses. That means he's wrong to be saying these things to you. Try to keep that in mind, and hopefully it will help you stay less stressed out and not internalize the negative and inappropriate things he's saying.
ETA: Upon rereading your question, it looks like you may not have directly asked him to stop teasing, but that you know him well enough to know it will go badly. You have the higher moral high ground if you directly ask him to stop, and I would try it once, but you know him best. If he's created an environment where you are sure speaking up will just cause more difficulty, he's still the problem and my advice stands.


Does one have to list all publications on a CV?

If the CV is for job applications, you can certainly omit publications.  If you omit a lot of publications, you might want to title your publication list "Selected Publications".

If the CV is for a grant application or a promotion, there may be more specific rules about what can and cannot be included, so you should check those.


Is it acceptable as referee to contact an author on a paper you review?

I am reviewing the second revision of a paper and am getting tired of this incredibly slow process of me pointing something out that requires clarification just to hear back from those authors two or three months from now (at the earliest).

You don't need to e-mail the authors directly to get the information you want.  The several month delay you are talking about is the time it takes to collect all the reviews, send them to the authors, and wait for a revised version of the paper.  However, in the journals I'm familiar with you could request clarification by asking the editor to send a short message to the authors now and relay the response to you.  Going through the editor might slow things down by a day or two, but not by months.

  Do you think I would insult gravely the academic spirit and / or authors of that manuscript if I just e-mailed the corresponding author saying "Look I still don't understand X because of Y can you please explain?"?

The phrasing of your question is hyperbolic, but yes, this is something that could be considered offensive or unethical.  Sending queries through the editor slows things down only slightly, while it avoids various difficulties:

Reviewers might bypass the editor on requests they would rather not call to the editor's attention (for example, suggesting that their papers be cited).  Along similar ethical lines, announcing to the authors that you are reviewing their paper might help you pressure them for favors elsewhere.  For example, it would be unethical to write "Dear X, I'm a reviewer for your recent submission to Y.  I'm having trouble understanding it, so I fear it might take a while to arrive at a decision, but it could help to know blah blah blah.  Can you supply any additional information?  Regards, Z  P.S. Have you reached a decision about participating in the joint project I proposed?"
It's important for the editor to be aware of all relevant information.  If several reviewers request clarification about something, then that is itself informative about the clarity of the manuscript, even if they all agree in the end that it is correct.  It's also valuable for the editor to see and judge the response itself (and not just to know whether it convinced the reviewer).

As Daniel Shub pointed out in the comments, you can always ask the editor whether it would be appropriate for you to contact the authors directly (it may depend on journal policy, customs in your field, or the editor's judgment of the particular situation).  If the answer is yes, then you are all set.  However, if the answer is no or you don't ask, then you should relay all communication through the editor, and I would expect that to be the usual answer.


Can I publish photos or reconstructed drawing of the internal part of a patented instrument?

Following up on the answer of HairyBlob, you are also safe from copyright issues (a separate thing) if you are using your own drawings, especially if they are an abstraction of the ideas in the patent.

There is no restriction on public discussion of patents (most places). In fact the patent process requires disclosure. But you can't republish copyright material. And your description suggests you aren't doing that.


If a college/ university made false claims on its website, should you still consider studying there?

Are you sure this isn't a mistake or misunderstanding from either the university or the association?

I would recommend contacting the department or university. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt with this type of thing but are you sure this is a reputable school? Accreditation is a vague thing and varies wildly in how it is regulated and who accredits it, especially across different countries.

I'm a little surprised that you contacted the association directly. I myself never pay attention to professional associations and don't know anyone who does (at least not enough to investigate the claim).

But again, if this is important to you, I would recommend giving the university a chance to clarify by contacting them. You must remember, the people making the website or handling the accreditations most likely aren't the professors teaching the courses. I would also recommend looking into the reputation of this university more if this is indeed true.

EDIT: Many diploma mills/for-profit schools are "accredited" but that doesn't mean they are reputable, so beware.


Studying in the UK for a Master's degree, still worth it?

Brexit will not affect the quality of the education you receive from UK universities, at least in the short term. (Longer term things are not clear, as it may become harder for UK universities to recruit faculty.) That is the main factor you should consider.

Potentially the exchange rate will make it cheaper (measured in euros) to live in the UK. Potentially it will be harder and/or less desirable to get a job in the UK after graduation. However, I can only speculate about such other factors and this is not the right place to discuss them.


How to make sure that my lecture notes do not infringe on copyrights?

In the case of using problems from a text book, you would not need to worry about copyrights as long as you cite it (whether you change the numbers or not). It would be good to include a references section with the bibliography information of the book included in it.

Edit:

Academic textbooks are generally meant to be reusable for educational purposes. Having stated the above, depending on the country and the copyrights explicitly mentioned in the textbook, you might have to obtain prior permission from the publisher or author. (Please refer the discussion in the comments for details)


What do those evaluating fellowship candidates look for before accepting them to join their research group/department?

I would say several points related to the candidates such as

How much in average do candidates publish per year?
Where do they publish?
What conferences they presented their papers in?
What are the impact factors for journals they publish in?
What new research questions or directions do they have?
How much citations did they received?
With whom in the group they can collaborate?
What funds do they have or can bring?
What experience in writing proposals do they have?
What are some similar proposals that received funds?
Where their research is going in the next 5-10 years?
What industry or academic experience do they have?
What skills do they have?
Can they enhance research group diversity?
Can they teach, present and discuss well?


What is the name of the style where research papers are written in a story-telling fashion?

One word for this is an experience report. This search on Google scholar reveals that many experience reports seem to have a similar purpose to the paper you ask about.

An experience report relays some important, often qualitative information about the authors' experience in deploying a method, hypothesis, or idea in the real world, whereas a regular research paper focuses more on proposing a new method, hypothesis, or idea, and arguing why it advances the state of scientific knowledge.

Also, I think we should separate two things here: the style of the article, and the style of the writing. The style of the article is accurately described as an experience report. On the other hand, many experience reports (see the above Google scholar list) do not have such a flavor of a story -- unlike your article, which begins

  I remember sitting on the green couch...

I would say this is more a matter of writing style than actual content. I have read articles in my field (computer science) that are like this, but it is rare and unorthodox. It likely varies by field, and in some fields (I would guess that philosophy and comparative literature are examples), storytelling is a standard and accepted style of writing.


Should I contact potential recommendation letter writers if I only have vague plans about applying for a PhD?

This is easier if you can have a face to face meeting. Tell them you are considering it and ask for their advice, and especially about your likely success. If they seem supportive, you can say that you aren't quite ready but would probably want a letter from them in the future.

For a supportive prof they would possibly make a few notes to themselves about what to say before they forget your face and accomplishments. Professors see a lot of people and some things start to run together after a while. But after the heads-up they are, perhaps, more prepared to write a supportive letter.

But it is much less effective if you have to do this by email or such.

And if they seem discouraging, then there is probably no need to ask, thought they may still have valuable advice about how to prepare yourself.

I've had to ask students, looking for recommendations, to remind me of a few of our previous interactions if it has been a few years since we last spoke.


How to deal with professors who don't respond to emails?

I cannot give an Asian perspective, but the situation you describe was quite common in many universities thirty or more years ago, at least in my country. Students were not supposed to have rights, and many professors would simply ignore most of the students queries or requests, whatever the medium used to deliver them (emails were not so common in those days). And the situation was even worse in the humanities where I had some friends (and I've been told that a few bad habits have survived to the present).
Since also the university was unresponsive to complaints, the most common solution at the time was to ambush a professor at their department, frequently sneaking into the department (since one wouldn't know when the professor was in, students would sometimes take turns to avoid missing them). Indeed, this is not a fix to the problem: it's just a survival strategy, which would hardly work and be recommendable in these COVID-19 times.
I'm afraid, though, that alone you would not be able to do more then the above survival strategy. In my experience, the only thing that works—at least partially—when a university shows such generalized level of unresponsiveness is when students unionize en masse and make a strong action (common actions are occupation of the university, contacting media and such). Indeed, the possibility and the chance of success of such an action depend on the political climate in your country, in the willingness of all students to participate in such an action and in the possibility of finding a strong leadership within the union.
A base action, suitable for these unlucky times, would be that of preparing a document describing the problems, and signed by as many students as possible, to be presented by your representatives at the class meetings. The representatives should go well prepared and should be able to choose the right time to present the complaints (in my experience, students frequently miss the right moment and are frequently out-of-phase with respect to the agenda of committee meetings). Send your document also to the Dean and, possibly, also to the media, finding someone who would be willing to side you and follow your cause if nothing happens. Indeed, before doing any of the above, you should estimate the probability of success on the basis of your knowledge of the situation, the chances of retaliations for those involved and whether it's worth it, taking also into account the time that doing all this would take: pick your battles carefully.


After posting in arxiv the author finds that proof technique in the paper has some similarity with some discussions in a math forum

It's just an independent discovery.  That it was on the web versus a journal is just a detail (could have even be neither, like from a verbal talk).  Although the informal nature of the other work does make it a little more understandable that you missed it when you did a background search (even so, obscure archived articles can be missed also).

I wouldn't feel some need to update the arxive paper.  These things happen all the time.

If you do an update of the arxive (which I see more as a preprint server, but this is a different debate), into an archived real journal, I would cite the other work at that time.  I personally think it is possible to gently note that the other work was noticed after your discovery.  (Buffy disagrees--too personal.  But I think you can adroitly manage it.)


Are the Newton fellowships (UK) prestigious enough to warrant low post-doc pay?

Where did you get your idea that the lower end of the post-doc pay scale starts at 28 - 29k? Most sources I've seen gives 28-29 the average pay in 2010 and 2011, and the low end near 23 - 24. (High end 35). The numbers are a bit field specific (biology tend to be around 25 - 29 for first postdocs) so I don't know whether the national average applies.
According to the UCL webpage the Newton is tax free. Your stipend would fall into the 20% band were it taxable, so you should compare it to a roughly 30K starting salary for normal PostDocs.
At effectively 30K, the pay is extremely competitive for early career (read first time postdoctoral position) holders, provided you don't live in London. (Oxford is not that bad.) London allowance is usually worth around 3 - 4k, so if you live in London your pay would be comparable to the lower-end of a reasonable post-doc salary (with London allowance included).


Isn't the job prospect in theoretical/mathematical physics too bad to justify doing a PhD in it?

Your question assumes that the only possible job destination for theoretical and mathematical physics is in faculty positions. This is not the case. There are many additional fields (finance, consulting, computer gaming, medical imaging, and so on) where the demand for PhD's with training in mathematical analysis is growing.

Now if your goal is a faculty position, that may be a different matter. But clearly the overall demand is still great enough that people continue to get doctorates in the discipline, which suggests that people are still finding employment.


How much does the PhD degree name matter when landing in a job?

In many cases it would matter only a little if at all. Many job offerings call for a degree in "X or a closely related field". Physics and Hungarian Literature probably don't qualify, of course.

But in any case your application for a job consists of more than just your list of degrees. You have a chance to tailor your materials to the job at hand and so can say (must say) why you are appropriate for the job.

However, there are exceptions. Some countries, notably Germany, have laws relating to the required degree for a job. Some professions, notably medicine, have expectations that are rarely ignored.


"Awaiting AE decision" has lasted for nearly four months. What should I do?

It could mean they're overworked or disorganized. Four months seems substantial.  Maybe you could try a phone call.


Will a conference paper submission have greater credibility if a teacher is a co-author?

Authorship should not and, apart from inherent human bias, is not taken into consideration when evaluating a manuscript for publication. If the conference is reputable, you should trust that the committee will attempt to minimize this kind of bias by choosing equally reputable reviewers.

Rather, what you should be pondering is whether your department head has contributed sufficiently to the proccess for them to be granted authorship. Conventions vary by field: see this and this.


Chances of entering a graduate program in Germany at the age of fifty

I'm from Germany and have a Bachelor and Master Degree from a German university. Over the years I have seen a number of students who were in their 40's and 50's who applied for a Bachelor's or Master's program. Age shouldn't be a concern when you consider applying because you can't be discriminated because of your age. For some Master's programs being older can actually be benefical!

With some programs there is the possibility to outline special circumstances in the application why you should be given the opportunity to enroll. You could describe your reasons there and might get a few extra points which could help your application. Previous working experience and training might get you some extra points too. Make sure you read the admission regulations (Zulassungsordnung) for the program.

Good luck!


Publishing PhD thesis at another university due to not being able to afford high publishing costs?

Emphatically, I don't see how this could happen in any subject in the U.S., nor, to my knowledge, in Europe, though I understand that there, in some cases, the actual work can be viewed as somewhat disconnected from a university.

But the point is that, in most subjects in the U.S., for example, one is not required to "publish" one's thesis in any fashion that would incur great expense. A handful of required copies, often printed nearly-for-free, and everything else is optional. Not "page costs" to journals, for example.

Further, in the U.S., it would be essentially impossible to "change universities" for any reason whatsoever, without re-doing many required activities, time-in-residency, and such. So whatever other advantages, there'd be something like a two-year delay, tuition, other things.

I really think that the question's hypotheses are iffy, possibly due to a misunderstanding of how things work. Certainly in the U.S., most likely in Europe, and I'd be surprised to hear that the questions implicit assumptions made sense anywhere in the world (though I'd certainly be interested to hear about such a thing).


How to teach an undergraduate course without having taken that course formally before?

The more I think about this, the less I like it.  A summer course is SUPER ACCELERATED.  You blink, and the course is half over.  The opportunity to fix problems that arise is tiny.

I hope this is a low-credit course, as I really encourage you to stick to a workshop-style approach.  Teach by example.  This will essentially be a "getting started" guided tour.  Pick a problem, and walk the students through that problem during the summer session using a number of the tools you're trying to teach.

If you can find somebody that's taught this before, make that person your best friend.


Is salary of a faculty member increased automatically year-by-year in the US and Canada?

It's a regular job, more or less like any other, and the way raises work is also the same.  When there is ample money, people get raises.  Sometimes everybody gets the same raise; other times, it's based on merit (or perceived merit, at least).  Which was it happens depend on the particular institution, the department, the recent history of raises--pretty much anything.

When you are promoted to a higher professorial rank, there is usually a prescribed step-up in salary.  It might be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage--again depending on the institution.  This is just like there is a raise associated with getting promoted at any other large employer.


Is having your hand in your pocket during a presentation bad?

If you want a short and binary answer, it is likely yes — keeping a hand in a pocket during the presentation is not the best habit, because:

You lose yourself a chance to use that hand for communicating with the audience via gestures.
Your body language and posture is more likely to be perceived as you can't be bothered with what you are doing.

Having said that, there may be examples of excellent use of almost anything which is normally not recommended in a presentation, if you plan for it and do it consciously. For example, if you ask your students the famous Bilbo's question: "What have I got in my pocket?" — and put your hand in your pocket, your gesture is playing nicely with your explicit voice communication to create an interesting and intriguing setting.

A binary answer to your second question is likely no — students acted inappropriately by interrupting the presenter and commenting on the presentation style, rather than topic of the presentation. Unless, of course, the whole aim of the exercise was to receive comments about the presentation skills and strategies. From your question, we cannot tell.


Is hiring a proofreader beneficial in the long term?

What improves most your English level (or help you maintain it if you have reached a certain level which you deem satisfactory) is usage of the language in all its forms: listening, speaking, reading, writing. This is especially easy in this age of globalization and technology: just keep reading texts of all kinds, listening to the radio, watching TV programs in original language (BBC news, series, …), professional podcasts or videocasts, etc.

In addition, comparing the proofread text of articles with your original version can help you better understand some of the mistakes you make, the invalid constructions you may use and
the shibboleths that give you away as a non-native speaker. However, unless you write (and get proofread) a large number of papers, this might not be enough to improve significantly.

Another possibility is to pay a teacher to actually review with you, on a regular basis, texts that you have written. Although it takes quite a bit of time, I believe it is one of the best ways to improve your written English, along with reading a lot.


Towards the end of PhD with just one publication. What are my options?

Well, your options are the same as everyone at the end of a PhD :)

If you are interested in continuing as a postdoc, you should definitely apply.

As Buffy said, you should mention your work in progress in your applications. If possible, you can also give a link to a preprint version of your papers.

The only problem with a low publication record is the competition for a particular position: if in your field PhD students usually publish significantly more than you, all other things being equal a PI will choose another candidate who published more than you. But all other things are rarely equal in research, the PI usually wants to find the right person for the job, not only somebody who has published a lot.

Obviously a position in a major university or with a famous researcher in your field will attract many applications, so it's mathematically harder to get accepted. So
in the unlikely event that your publication record proves to be an issue (something you will know if your first batch of applications are rejected), you could try to adjust and target some less competitive positions.


How to deal with radically different prerequisite preparation?

This is a problem which is very, very common and unfortunately has no good solution.. Let me write just a few hints here. (I will assume that "GPA" is some kind of grade.)

1) First of all, please make sure that Class B is "worse than avarage" and not that Class A is "better than avarage". I want to say that if it is the case that by the syllabus, after course 1, students are expected to have level B, you should teach for level B (even if teacher A was especially motivated/good and did more than expected). This is especially important if you are both teacher A and the teacher of the second course.

2) If your insitution has meetings about teaching quality, mention this problem here. (Try to be diplomatic: do say "A and B teach different topics" instead of "B's students are unprepared." (In fact, it could be that B teaches different things than A and your course is about A's topics.) Try to find a solution together: Maybe one teacher can teach all three courses? Or all can follow one book and cover the same topics? Or at least all teachers teaching those courses can come from the same "group"?

3) Use the first course hours to make a recap of the first course and to determine student's levels. Give them material to study the first course on their own, tell them which topics are especially important. If time permits, make addditional sessions/additional homework for students of level B to bring them to a good niveau.

4) Be as transparent as possible about what you expect. Create a syllabus and, if possible, a course homepage. Make them accessible as early as possible to the students so that they have more time to learn the material.

(I implied here that if (1) does not hold, really teach for niveau A. I think you have an obligation that your student have learned after the course what the syllabus says.)

Ultimately, it is the student's responsibility to learn. (At least where I come from) students know this and will be angry against teacher B rather then against you. From my experience, there are many bad teachers/useless classes in university - students usually learn soon that they have to learn by themselves. Sometimes, they take other courses before and just take course 1 again next year - but this time with teacher A instead of B.


Listing publications for a non-tenure track teaching job?

A PhD is a research degree. To earn it you need to publish, even if just the thesis, that is considered a publication. If the job requires a doctorate then they are explicitly asking for trained researchers who want to switch to teaching. They consider it valuable to the job, presumably. And it probably is.

Either way though, your CV should include everything you've done. It does not have to be tailored to a job. You do that with your cover letter, and research/teaching statements if you want. At least you will show, that while you weren't getting specifically-applicable experience, you're a productive worker who will devote yourself to whatever you do.

Teaching positions at universities and colleges are also typically very competitive, and you will have a disadvantage versus those who already have teaching experience. You need to highlight everything that helps you. Including your research. For example note how you would like to leverage your research experience in your coursework in some way, such as help provide motivation or course projects. You need to give this kind of thing a lot of thought and show that you have done so. Consider the specific courses and the syllabus you would create (perhaps create some materials to show them). This will help even if they will provide you with materials to use.


I'm thinking of delaying my graduate school application, but how to tell my recommenders

Depending on your field, it's quite possible that delaying your application a year would significantly HARM your chances, not boost it as you seem to think. Rather than trying to guess whether your chances are good now, why not apply and see what happens? If you aren't offered any positions, you can always apply again next year, or decide that you prefer another career path.


How should I prepare myself for a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford or Berkeley? If I am already working as a Software Engineer?

Whom should I ask for letters of recommendation for a Master's degree in Computer Science?

See if someone remembers you from your undergrad.  You can send an unofficial transcript as an attachment to jog their memory.  Also ask someone where you work, if unveiling your plan to that person isn't too awkward.

  How should I prepare myself before I apply?

Pick a couple of programs you're interested in applying to. Read the program of studies carefully, then check the courses you would be signing up for in your first year, to see what the prerequisites are. This will guide you in your course selection, and give you a fair view of how well prepared you are. Make sure to look at the textbooks used, to gauge the level of difficulty.

Notes: The cost of living is much lower in a less built up place, such as, for example, Madison, WI; if you get a TAship, which shouldn't be a problem in CS, you won't be paying tuition, and you'll get a stipend, which will cover slightly a frugal but not spartan life, but not many plane tickets to California.  However, if you prefer to stay in CA, I would think there would be plenty of opportunities there.

I'm not sure how fresh the GRE needs to be.  The application instructions should make that clear and if not, you can email your question.  Don't worry about your verbal GRE.  As long as you didn't embarrass yourself (which you didn't), for a CS master's, that doesn't matter; especially since your nonverbal score was strong.  When applying for a geek degree, it's fine to come across as a geek.


Does the symbol "&" in author list mean anything?

Is writing Author A & Author B the same as writing Author A, Author B in the author list? (when publishing a paper)

You don't have a choice, the journal's style guide will do it for you. In cases where there is a list and not a block (or otherwise separated), an ampersand will be used for the last author in every case I'm aware of.

Original answer

In citation formats I'm familiar with (e.g. APA), using a comma with only two authors is never correct.

In other words, Author A., Author B. (2020) looks like a mistake, as if the third author (who would be separated by an &) were missing.

It makes no difference with regards to who is the "first" author.


Why do some professors not post their long list of publications?

Your question contain several implicit assumptions that make the question difficult to make a generalised answer.

Firstly, the use of web pages for university faculty varies from country to country and institution to institution. There is no generalised understanding of what a university or faculty members web page should contain, and this is often influenced by cultural norms. Further, this can vary from discipline to discipline. Some academic areas value public lists more than others - academia is such a broad church.

Secondly, you seem to be assuming that professors may have any control over the content of their web pages or published academic profiles. In some places they do, and they may be free to edit them themselves. In some places these are centrally controlled and populated from some form of content management system database. In some places these are managed by a marketing department as part of the institutions advertising and public relations; further some places might use an external public relations agent to populate the pages.

Thirdly, you underestimate the amount of internal politicking and petty squabbles that go on inside large institutions like universities. Professors, particularly senior ones, go in and out of favour like pop chart hits. It is not beyond the bounds of pettiness for someones entries to be deleted out of spite and recognition of their unfavoured status. Their existence cannot be expunged, but their bibliography can be.

Fourthly, you assume that universities have a degree of capability or competence. In my experience there are plenty of incidents university staff (support or academic) being incapable of rendering edits to obviously incorrect profiles.

Fifthly, you assume that perhaps everyone there actually cares about it. Perhaps the professor or the support staff don't really care about this particular part of the profile and have no plans to change it.

Sixthly, you assume the professor or the faculty actually know that the list of publications is missing. In a large institution with many many faculty; even in a caring place, it is possible for errors to slip through unnoticed. Not every faculty member would be egotistical enough  to regularly read their own personal profile.

There may be more reasons, but that list should do for starters.


What are your responsibilities if a student announces their intention to commit a crime?

what is the right and legal thing to do

I think this question mixes two different concerns: The right thing to do is a matter of personal ethical judgement. The legal thing to do is, well, a matter of law.

One might argue that the ethical concern is more fundamental than the legal one, since "I will do whatever the law requires me to do" is already an ethical statement -- and, depending on the case, a highly problematic one: History is full of examples where laws were set up in a way that was clearly not right -- from our view as citizens in modern societies today, and from the view of ethically-minded individuals who initiated changes to these laws.

One's personal ethical judgement, however, will depend on the case at hand, unless one takes the shortcut of just doing whatever the law requires one to do.


Prospects with a Computational Social Science degree

Generally, if this is a relatively new cross-disciplinary area, this will start as a very small group of institutions. If it's a fruitful area, that number will grow quickly, and among  the early adopters might well be some of the best universities.

And yes, to set up these programmes in the first place, does indeed require buy-in from professors and top-level university administrators, so there are tenure-track professorships interested in applicants with those sort of cross-disciplinary backgrounds

What is it like to study in a new cross-disciplinary area?

There are a few things that make it different.

You might find yourself building the foundations. A lot of the work might be much more exploratory. It can be the wild west, with few established paths and no signposts; and you may end up making up the rules as you go along.

That is to say, established fields tend to have well-defined protocols for things like data collection; and a proven set of tools to work with. Whereas in a new cross-disciplinary area, you're more likely to be building the basic toolkit from scratch: writing your own protocols starting from bare bones.  There will be things you can take from each of the disciplines that you span, but combining them will be untested ground.

Some of the papers you write may end up being foundational for the new cross-disciplinary area, and highly-cited for years to come. Even though the work they contain, might seem fairly basic to you.

It can be lonelier. Scarier. More exciting. Harder to get funding. Or easier to get funding. Your reading will be broader, as it will span journals across more than one discipline, and you won't find enough journals or conferences that are closely-enough targeted at your field. You might end up starting your own conference, just to help build the platform.

disclaimer: I do work in a new cross-disciplinary institute, but I do not work in computational social sciences (though one or two of my colleagues are indeed computational social scientists)


Is there a UK PhD scholarship for international students that pays as much as a particular city's average annual salary?

Among many studentships provided by Universities in the UK and major research councils (through Centers for Doctoral Training), most programs will only cover student fees and some moderate living expenses which may not be comparable with the median salary in the region. However, you should bear in mind, that the stipends are usually tax-free, and there are significant discounts for students (e.g. train tickets, council tax) helping to reduce the expenses.

To answer your question formally, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions PhD Funding provides about €3,110 per month for living expenses, which will exceed the median salary in almost every county in the UK, expect the greater London perhaps.


No, it's not a good thing. With reservation means that there is a some reason not to recommend you.

However,  "recommend with reservation" is an odd turn of phrase. I suspect it is a typographical error and should read  "recommend without reservation" - which is a good thing. If this is a typo, it is a seriously unfortunate one and you should definitely ask your recommender about this (particularly if you don't know what his reservation could be).


Working as a Lecturer / Assistant Professor in UK vs Canada

I do not know exact details of the UK system but I have colleagues there so at least I have some general idea of the UK system.  My impressions of Quebec come from doing grant committee work for the provincial government.
In Quebec the dominant language is French: it may or may not be a requirement to learn it but if you don’t you’d miss out on much the vibrant cultural scene.  Quebec also runs a French-inspired system of education (unlike English Canada, which is much closer to a US-based system): I don’t understand the UK system well enough to compare, but salaries are lower than the rest of Canada (although the prestige is greater).  The provincial tax burden is not light (although it’s not the horror stories you read compared with other provinces, except Alberta), but the quality of live is quite high: you can expect to have the means of buying a house within 5 years of your appointment (something not so clear if you are appointed in Toronto or Vancouver).
Quebec is culturally more creative than the rest of Canada: the joke is that the graduating theatre class in Quebec always puts on a new play at graduation, whereas the graduating class in Ontario always puts on a Shakespeare play.   This creative drive trickles to the research level: there are more funding opportunities in Quebec (the provincial government runs its own funding scheme, on top of all federal scheme).  Tuition is low compared with other provinces: it is a very attractive research environment, and many in other provinces are quite jealous of the additional government funding opportunities.
Of course there is “true” tenure.
My sense is that the UK is much much more complicated.  Quebec universities do not run on full-cost accounting (I know some UK universities do) so the paperwork required in applying for and managing grants is an order of magnitude lower than what I’ve seen in the UK.  Many federal grants are individual grants (there are also some team grants and some industry grants) and these individual grants are very flexible, with minimal oversight and simple rules (v.g. no business class flights).  If you use this $$ poorly (nothing to show for it at the end of the grant period) nobody will care but you’re unlikely to have a strong enough file to get your grant renewed: by and large the system works reasonably well.  Overall, my sense is that the Canadian and Quebec systems are much less business-like and penny-pinching than the UK system.  “Big grants” aren’t so frequent: the Canadian system tends to distribute its resources over individual researchers rather than concentrate resources in a few big centers.
I do not know what you have in mind, but - say - McGill is not called the Harvard of the North for nothing.  It has a history of excellent research: I don’t know about biomedicine but I know that there’s a lot of hospital-based research there (same as UK as far as I know).
Side note: I have a colleague who took a job in the UK and came back to Canada simply because the funding environment in the UK was so much more restrictive compared to the Canadian system.  I suppose this is anecdotal but it does align with my own experience with the UK system (through international team grants).
Nota: you can check funding levels for federal (NSERC) grants here: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/index_eng.asp
Public employees salaries in Quebec are not public but they are in Ontario (if you make over $100k).  Faculty salaries in Quebec are lower than Ontario and I do not know the x factor between the two, although I would guess ~0.8. You can get some of the public sector salaries in Ontario from this link.
You might have to download some stuff to search by university or sector.
Montreal has an excellent public transport system (including subway, with subway stops at all major universities).
My impression is that teaching loads are quite acceptable.


Every country in Europe is different when it comes to PhDs. What exist at most is the recognition of a PhD delivered in one European country as nearly equivalent to a PhD delivered in another.

France, Germany, Italy, Poland have more or less different notions of PhD and a huge lot of facilities delivering PhD (in France, be aware of our Grandes Écoles: some of them, like École Polytechnique or ENS, deliver PhDs). French CIFRE is pretty unique, even if of course you have near equivalent in other European countries.

I've got a French PhD in AI (in 1990). The formal title is Docteur de l'Université. Stricto sensu there is no PhD in France.

  Should I think first a viable project, or should I stay flexible? Should I just look online for some position in the research fields I like most, or should I maybe focus my attention on professors, institutes, or should I even select the country first? Should I rely on the contacts of my bachelor and master universities professors, or should I try by my own means?

A PhD is mostly a human adventure. Not all PhDs get a job in academia (after it). Not all PhD graduates are paid for their PhD. A good PhD depends upon the people you are doing it (more than the institutions you are doing it).

You forgot to explain the most important.

why do you want to start a PhD? In what scientific domain?

In France, rules are different for a PhD in philosophy of science (or in medieval history) and for a PhD in computer science: in practice, you are required to get funded in computer science, but not in philosophy of science. I guess the rules are also different in Italy or in Germany (even the formal title is different).

The german Doktoringenieur title has no exact equivalent in France. Of course you do find near-equivalent.

The European research funding programme like H2020 have hard time defining what approximately is an European PhD. In practice they are funding many PhDs.

My opinion is that you should look for PhD advisors (so persons and their scientific work and reputation, not institutions).


Deletion of author when submit the revised version of the submitted paper

Is this third author willing to give up authorship?  If so, the third author should contact the editor and explain that they want their name taken off of the revised paper and explain why.  In my experience, this is not a problem if the departing author has requested that their name be removed from the paper.


Frustrations about my master's program and how I should cope

This sadly does not surprise me very much, especially if you are in a field like public policy or international studies, and especially if it is a graduate-level interdisciplinary program that is not directly run by a department with its own undergraduates and doctoral students. (In the U.S., at least, undergraduate programs have very strict accreditation, and doctoral programs are a point of pride for faculty. Masters programs often get lost in the middle, especially if the masters students don't have classes with the undergrads or doctoral students.)

If you want to stick with this degree, you will have to rely on yourself, as YakovK suggests, to get the most out of this program.

It's at the top of rankings because highly qualified students attend (and vice versa). Make the most of your classmates' knowledge and enthusiasm, and work on side projects with them.
Try to take the maximum number of classes with full-time professors, even to the point of petitioning for graduate classes from other departments to replace your requirements. See if you can do an independent study with a few other motivated students and a willing full-time professor.
Make the most of the entire campus you're on. I am guessing that, for this program to be so highly regarded, it is part of a busy university, so get on the mailing lists for departments you're interested in, try to discover funding sources for research projects open to you as a student there, and/or try to find a professor to do research with (for a limited number of volunteer hours, for course credit, or as a job).
Does your program have a capstone project or thesis? Figure out how to make that serve your career goals. (If you're interested in further academic study, then try to make the research as well-thought-through as possible; if you're interested in working in a particular company or industry, find a topic that's in demand there.)
If there's a campus writing center or tutoring center or statistical consulting center, use it as much as you can to improve your project/thesis.
If there are career counseling resources on campus, use them. You may be able to be part of the campus alumni network.

If you don't see this "self-driven" option working out, you could also find something related to do for a year and ask for a leave of absence. (E.g., if this were a public health school, you could find a relevant job in some level of government somewhere, or a job at a health-related NGO/non-profit.) See how necessary it is to finish your degree to advance in that world, and give yourself time to make that decision. (While you may have to live with low wages or no wages while doing this, it may be a better choice than paying tuition and living expenses toward a program you are not seeing much value from.)

Good luck!


You can either:

Include this as a footnote.

Use this website https://www.bibme.org/bibtex/website-citation to generate website citations for the Bibtex generic citations.

The following is I generated for the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020.
@misc{stack overflow, title={Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020}, url={https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020}, journal={Stack Overflow}}


When Submitting Code To Publisher Must It All Be In The Same Language?

The reason to ask for code is that the journal cares about reproducibility and quality of the science. The language of the code does not matter much, and normally it does not matter if two languages are used. A journal also accepts papers that use both fluorescence and mass spectroscopy, and there is no reason why they would refuse the use of two programming languages.

Of course it may be possible that your particular journal has additional requirements for code. If that is the case they probably say so in the author guidelines (you can check their website). If not, you can submit your code and they will let you know if something needs to be changed.


What If the announcement for a Tenure-Track position in a research-intensive university does not request a research statement?

Yes, a three page letter of interest would not be abnormal in these circumstances. Please keep the font size large given that the faculty on search committees have aging eyes.

My guess is that they've gotten over 200 applications for a single position in previous years and are attempting to do a first cull before asking for more details and letters. They should be commended.


More or less sections/subsections in a journal article?

As you point out, this is likely field specific and also depends on the type of article you are writing within that field. The old saying of "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" applies here too. If your article doesn't need a lot of subsections and subsubsections, then don't use them. However, if they are needed, well, then they are needed!

I have found that the STROBE statement and the CONSORT statement are very useful for helping structuring articles that are of the statistical type. Perhaps similar documents are present in other fields too?

But, as JeffE pointed out in a comment to your question, pick the structure of the article that makes it easiest on your reader to understand your results and how you arrived at them.


My best advice would be to look at the faculty who are signed up to teach the program.  A program is likely to be good if:

The faculty are of scientific high quality in their field, and
The faculty are also generally well-regarded in their student evaluations

The first years of any new educational venture are likely to have a lot of glitches, but also have some compensating advantages: it is also the time when a program is likely to be most flexible and when the faculty are likely to be investing especially hard in their students as they try to get the program off the ground.


Can corresponding authors include their personal website to be contacted?

Instead of including a personal website, why not just include a permanent e-mail address?

Simplest would be just get a Gmail account (or any free webmail provider) for your work correspondence.
If you want a more professional looking account, sometimes professional organizations can provide to dues-paying members e-mail forwarding services. For example, the American Mathematical Society offers precisely one such service.
Also, if you have a personal website, maybe you can set up a mailbox under its domain that you use to receive work correspondence?

One other thing you can do is to sign-up for a digital researcher identification so that your publications are properly linked to each other. That way readers may be able to track down your more recent publications and find your contact info there.

But to the question you actually asked: I am sure it depends greatly on journal and publisher, so you are much better off asking them than us.


Conjugation: Do we cite authors or papers?

I would say that it depends of the citation format, and the point is to look what is the subject of the sentence. In the examples you present, the conjugacy would be with the authors and the parenthesis only provides a precision about which paper is concerned.

In math we usually cite like that:

  It is proved in [Doe15] that ...

  References

  [Doe15] Jane Doe, "paper name" Journal name, 2015

Therefore, we tend to cite the papers. However I often write

  In [Doe15], Jane Doe proves that...

where the conjugacy is obvious.


Can FERPA or privacy laws be used to censor medical information on my college transcript?

I shared my question on avvo.com, which is a website that connects individuals with experienced lawyers amongst other things. Two education law attornies from Colorado and Massachusetts responded to my question on avvo.com:

No, FERPA does not give you any authority to control what appears in your educational records. It limits who the school can release your records to, but it does not direct what information the school keeps in your records.

No. A medical withdraw is not, in and of itself, a type of confidential information as that status is generic in nature. The school would be prevented from disclosing the specific nature of the medical issue (that is more a [HIPAA] issue). As stated in the other answer, FERPA control who can see your educational records, it doesn't necessarily control the content. The issue is like credit reporting. A person's credit report can contain medical debt that is in collection. The mere fact that a person sought medical treatment or has medical issues is not confidential.

Reference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200819212608/https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-ferpa-privacy-laws-be-used-to-censor-informati-4958767.html


No response to after PhD interview, Germany

I was a candidate in an application process at a university in Bavaria a few years ago. After the interview, more than a year went by without me hearing anything from them. I wrote them a letter formally withdrawing my candidacy, since in this time I had already found a good job elsewhere.

I later learned through the grapevine that someone else was ranked first in the process, but negotiations between them and the university took forever. Once negotiations were finished, the official job offer still had to wait until the faculty council approved the offer, and this council met only every second month. Thereafter, the offer had to be sent out, and the offer had to be accepted. All this bureaucracy made things take forever.

"Thanks for your patience" tells me that you are still on the reserve list as a suitable candidate; you're not (yet) rejected. However, it's quite likely that someone else is the preferred candidate. Negotiations with this candidate are ongoing, and unless they don't manage to work it out, the job will not be yours. I would start looking elsewhere.


Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs?

The recommended way, according to the International System of Units (SI), is to write t/s (SI brochure, §5.3; see also this guide, §7.1). And the SI is the only system of units that should be used to report experimental results.
The rationale behind this notation is the following: a quantity is the product of a numerical value and a unit, so that the ratio of a quantity (e.g. time) and the corresponding unit (e.g second) is a numerical value (a pure number), which can be used to label axes, tables, etc.
In any case, don't use brackets around the unit, like in "t [s]". The reason is that in quantity calculus brackets represent an operator which means "unit of" (not "dimension of") and should only be used around quantities, not around units. So, for instance, you can write:
[t] = s
but not [s]. For completeness, I also mention that braces are also used to denote the numerical value of a quantity. So, in L = 5 m, we have [L] = m and {L} = 5.

References
For those interested in learning more about quantities, units, their typographical conventions, and quantity calculus, here is a list of references with a few notes:

J C Maxwell, "A treatise on electricity and magnetism", vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. Online. Note: Here Maxwell introduces the concept of quantity and the bracket notation.
International Vocabulary of Metrology - Basic and general concepts and associated terms VIM, 3rd edition, JCGM 200:2008. Online. Note: This is the official dictionary of metrological terms where it is possible to find definition for terms like quantity, system of quantities, system of units, etc. On p. 13 there is note which explains the bracket/braces notation.
I M Mills, "The language of science", Metrologia 34, pp. 101-109, 1997.
B W Petley, The fundamental physical constants and the frontier of measurement, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1988.
I M Mills, "Physical quantities and units" in Recent advances in metrology and fundamental constants, Proceedings of the International School of Physics E. Fermi, Varenna, 2000. Online.
J de Boer, "On the history of quantity calculus and the International System", Metrologia 31, pp. 405-429, 1995.
M J ten Hoor, "Quantity calculus for chemists", Chemistry in action n. 57, 1999. Online
M L McGlashan, "Physicochemical quantities and units: The grammar and spelling of physical chemistry", Royal Institute of Chemistry, London, 1971.
E R Cohen et al., "Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry", IUPAC Green Book, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, IUPAC & RSC Publishing, Cambridge, 2008 Online
Nayuki, Handling physical quantities in math formulas. This article is a lively little gem on quantity calculus with lots of practical examples.


What does potential PhD adviser want to see from a candidate that is applying for a second PhD/restarting a PhD?

You should continue to apply for postdoc and industry positions and not consider quitting or applying for a second PhD.  The things you've described here are not atypical for someone working on a PhD.  It is expected you will work independently and in a self-guided fashion.  As a PI, I have little sympathy for a student who runs out of RA funding and now has to TA.  Being a TA is valuable job experience that you should be proud of and having an RA position is a luxury to all graduate students that you should not play off so lightly (it is very difficult to get soft money in grant funds to support RA's in the first place).  Your description of working 80 hours per week on holidays and weekends sounds very typical of a student trying to finish their PhD (I did that for many months leading up to graduation).  Going back for a second PhD would not necessarily increase your chance of success in finding a postdoc or industry position.  It sounds like your are simply discouraged by your situation and have not searched for positions long enough.  Keep at it and stay positive.  Finish your current PhD.


Likelihood of an undergrad publishing from home

At the beginning of my PhD, last year, I had several ideas, so after thinking long and hard about them, I suggested them to my supervisor. His most common answer was "that is a nice idea, they tried that in the 90's, it didn't work".

Later, I finished my first manuscript. I was quite proud of it, and I gave it to him for review. It came back with more red than black.

Also, don't forget the resources a professor can give you. As an undergrad, I had an idea for which I needed a couple of hours in a student lab using non consumable and safe equipment, but I wasn't allowed. I then suggested the project to a professor, and a word from him gave me full access to whatever lab I would need. Depending on your case, this may mean data, computers, or having a conversation with an expert in something you may be stuck with.

So, chances are that if you work by yourself, you will have the same problems. Either you will work on something irrelevant or some known dead end; and when you get a result, you will have a hard time putting it in a publication ready form. Take as an example your own question: you wrote one paragraph, and three people have already considered your post unclear. A several pages research article, where not even the researcher fully understands what is going on, is significantly more difficult.

You can, of course, go ahead and try to research something you find interesting on your own, but your chances of getting published are significantly lower than if you have a mentor. You would have to jump many more hurdles.


If the status of a paper under review changes, should schools I applied to be notified?

Short answer: no (don't bother).  More nuanced answer: it depends.  Is your paper of earth-shaking significance in some way?  Is it going to appear in some renowned journal (Nature, PNAS, Lancet, Journal of the ACM, etc.)?  If not, it is little more than a waste of time to try to add the information to your application.  Late information is rarely added to application packets (which these days are anyway handled almost entirely online -- convenient in certain ways but makes for an additional hassle when it comes to adding to or correcting an application or supporting documentation).

However, if you have corresponded with some professor you would like to work with at the grad school that you are applying to, and have reason to believe this professor might be interested and able to influence the admissions committee, then I would certainly take the time to send a polite e-mail to this person indicating that your paper was accepted in such-and-such notable journal or conference.  I would however avoid bringing up a rejection, and would also not take the trouble in case of acceptance of a less important article (or one in a less-respectable forum; e.g., an op-ed in your college newspaper).


If it is impossible to compile a thesis from all your publications, I suggest focusing on lesser publications in the thesis and if it is possible to expand your work, focusing only in one direction. Since your work is already published, there is no reason why it wouldn't be accepted by the reviewers. The content of the thesis counts less in applying to post-doctoral jobs, what is important is your papers. Of course, the thesis must be well written, rigorously, etc. There are many people who receive PhD diploma with few publications, or even no publications at all.


Should I take a student loan now, if I intend to become a mathematician?

Before answering whether you should take the loan you need to ask yourself some basic questions.

Would I go to the school if there was no loan available?
How would I pay for the school without the loan?
Are you good at budgeting your money?

If you would not go to the school without the loan, the answer to the big question depends on why the loan influence's your decision. The answer is almost always that debt is bad. If you would go to the school without the loan, have a means of paying for school and are good at budgeting, then take the loan and put it in a secure investment. At the end of the 3 years, cash out the investment, pay off the loan and pocket the interest. If you are bad at budgeting, you want to be careful about taking on debt and the answer is almost always debt is bad.


How prestigious is a Microsoft Research scholarship

Instead of worrying about how prestigious the award is on its own, ask yourself what type of research you're going to conduct using the funds. In the end, nobody will care that your research was funded by Microsoft or Google or the NSF (or whatever the UK version of that is); they'll care about the contribution you're making to the field.

Nobody is going to stop you at a job talk and say, "Well, your research is amazing, but I think you should have applied for funding from X-Company."

Barring any ethical issues, funding is funding. As long as you put it to good use, you should be in good shape!


Should I include having taken free online courses without credit or certificate in an application for a master's programme?

There are many masters programs where programming is not formally required, but still very helpful. Beginning programming is definitely not a masters level skill (nor is it final year bachelors). From that perspective the most interesting questions from an admissions point of view is first of all: do you have affinity with programming (many people, even computer science students) hate programming.

To know that you did additional work shows that you know what programming is and that you are willing to invest some effort into your studies. If you fake this will make you miserable on the course.

The course will however not be relevant in assessing your intellectual abilities (your bsc will) as not only is it hard to verify, it was not designed to test them in the first place.


How to avoid disrupting the narrative in a scientific paper when you have done too much work

My field is biomedical so comments may or may not work for you. In our works, sometimes protocols did change along the way and occasionally I need to explain that in the paper. Hopefully these comments are general enough to be useful to you.

The primary goal is to think from the gain of the reader and maximize the gain:pain ratio. You want the ratio to be high: transferring the most to them with them going through the least amount of effort to understand your work. With that reason in mind, here are some suggestions:

Really, very few people reading scientific journals are interested in the step by step saga in how we reach there. I know it may come off harsh but what matters to the researchers during the development process can be drastically different from what matters to the readers. So, cast a critical look and weed out details that are not bringing any gain.
Minimize the "we wanted to do this, but then we ended up with that..." frequency. Try not to start every single sentence with this kind of structure because they sound trivial and never-ending. Instead, I'd suggest setting up a section called "original plan" (to hint that something was changed) and give it a good introduction. Then, you can have a section called "Modifications" to briefly but sufficiently explain major design changes.
One device I found very effective is a graphical schematic. You can consider a graph of the original scheme. Then in the Modification section, use the first graph as blueprint, slightly grey out the contents, and then insert modified components in 100% black. Consider indexing the changes on the graph, and then in the text you can simply explain them sequentially.


Master student pursuing PHD: how to spend summer break?

I think what you're asking is fairly subjective, might depend somewhat on your field, and also, your options and opportunities can differ greatly according to the country in which you're doing your Masters.
The most I can offer, as somebody who just started a PhD, is to tell you what I did during my Masters (that was outside of regular program) and, more importantly, why and how I think it helped.
I did two research internships abroad, one before my last year of classes, and one during my last semester that played out as co-supervised research for my Master thesis.
What I got from that:

I saw what research entails in other countries where research is important and valued (research in Croatia, where I come from, is at mediocre level at best)

I experienced working in two very different labs, under very different supervision, different lab dynamics and approaches towards research

I discovered which setting works best for me and which setting I work best in
(e.g. I prefer a relaxed, flexible environment and being advised/supervised by somebody openly helpful and talkative (it's just a thing for me) as opposed to strict working hours, getting tasks without understanding the importance and when the feedback (especially the negative aspects) is constrained because of inherit cultural politeness)

I made valuable contacts who are at various levels in the research hierarchies - some of them gave me ideas, others encouragement, and some even gave me recommendation letters

in informal settings, I exchanged concrete ideas as well as general attitudes towards research and science (and life) with people that come from different cultural and academical backgrounds

I found out how (very different) PhD students think of their "jobs" and what they think of their career choices and I was free to make my own assessment about how happy and fulfilled doing the PhD made them and why, so my guess about how happy it would make me was more educated

the proximity to the location where I finally applied for a PhD got me the PhD grant - I would have never gotten that particular one if I wasn't there to have a few informal talks and give my grant presentation

To summarize, what you should be aiming to get from your summer activity is diversity. Diversity in attitudes, approaches, contacts and ideas. You're allowed and encouraged to work and thrive in an environment best for you for anything more permanent (several years long), but you can't really know what you prefer if you never tried anything different.
I'm not going to tell you which activity to choose, but I would go to the one that had the potential to expose me to most new people, ideas and attitudes. You can always sacrifice some sleep to do extra work, but no amount of work in the world can measure up what you get from formal and informal interactions.
In my (a bit Utopian) view of the world, that's how science progresses: scientists travel and during those travels, the best of many worlds collides. By the end of those travels, hopefully, all the worlds are a little bit better off. When you're old, wise and grumpy, you travel to give back to the community and spread the ideas you spend a big part of your life to shape. But, since you expect to be giving back later, that entails you to travel when you're young, curious and perky, and get the most of what the community has to offer - little, baby ideas, and chisels to shape your own ideas.


Is it a good idea to send multiple GRE scores?

I doubt that sending the second one would make any difference. The ETS seems to consider a 3.5 and a 4.0 on the AW test as nearly equivalent.
https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/score_level_descriptions/
Assuming this is the US, the GRE scores are only a small part of any decision in any case.
At the moment, also, coronavirus is making the GRE both less useful and less used.


It is indeed considered best practice nowadays to search publication databases for literature rather than only individual journals or conferences, typically combined with some snowballing. Scientific fields are manifold, and it is very easy to miss relevant publications if all you do is look through a pre-defined list of journals (independently of whether they are listed in Scopus, WoS, or whatever). Essentially, for a literature review to add value it needs to be able to make a case for completeness, and it is very hard to claim that without a fairly clear and comprehensive search procedure (along with rather objective acceptance criteria for papers).

  I am in the last year of my thesis and I have to publish my work in an indexed journal. How to do so?

I should also say that this is, to no small degree, also a failing of your supervisor. Your supervisor should have told you early in the process that your research methodology has a good chance of not surviving peer review.

However, that doesn't really help you now. If you have repeatedly received this comment there really are only two ways forward:

Do as you have been told, i.e., search the standard publication database(s) of your field and extend your review with any new material that may pop up.
Lower your standards, i.e., go for a lower-ranked journal and hope that the reviewers there will be more happy with your approach.

As a sidenote:

  every time I send my article to the journals I receive either major changes or a rejection

In my field (Computer Science), "major changes" is qualitatively different from "reject". A request for Major Revision is typically the first step towards getting accepted - it actually happens to most manuscripts. You really should not back out once you have received a request for major revision - usually, you address what can be addressed and argue about changes that cannot be addressed. In the vast majority of cases such papers end up being accepted.


Further questions/information on letters of recommendation

In my experience as a letter writer and as a member of graduate admissions committees, it's very rare for graduate admissions committees to contact a reference.  On the other hand, it's quite common to contact references in hiring situations.


Is that proper to get messages about your work from your lab head at the early dawn?

It is entirely proper to send emails at whatever time anyone wants to. It is up to the recipient to read them as they see fit.


Acknowledgment as technician. Do I list them in the CV? How?

Employers outside academia usually aren't interested in publications but rather in your abilities and any deliverables you can associate those abilities with.

How specifically you highlight those abilities completely depends on the job you are applying for. For example, if you were applying for a position where you would be doing LC/MS, you could write in your resume that you "processed LC/MS samples in support of three projects leading to publishable papers."

If you were applying for an academic job, I'd be more likely to suggest including the papers your were acknowledged in, along with a note about what you were acknowledged for.


Preventing leaking exam papers/cheating using phone cameras?

This is not the answer you want but I have to get it out of my chest. (My background is engineering).

The best, most effective and easiest way to completely avoid students taking pictures of exams, selling them and making a profit out of that is:

Publish online all previous exams as an exercise book.

The questions in an exam and the exercises done before the exam should not be more different than an exam and a previous exam, actually old exams make for perfect exercises and practice.

The point is that studying the courses and making a few exams/exercises to practice should be easier and lead to greater success than checking the whole compilation of past exams, which should anyway lead to a good knowledge of the contents of the course (in a more tedious way than reading the theory and checking this with a few exams).

Personal story: When I was in high-school the homework would be much harder than the exams, anyone making the homework (optional) would get good qualifications and the qualifications would reflect actual good knowledge about the subject. In the university there were exercises, but they were explanatory and very basic, the questions in the exam were much harder. This made the exercises useless, students needed exams from previous years just to practice in answering the questions, and I hated that.


According to Overleaf, yes. The top of their gallery page states:

  Here we provide a selection of academic journal templates for articles and papers which automatically format your manuscripts in the style required for submission to that journal.

For what it is worth, the IEEEtran template looks identical to the one that one would download from the IEEE for the Computer Society. Given how easy it is for Overleaf to keep the template file up to date and the loss of users they may suffer from providing invalid templates, there isn't really a strong reason to suspect that they do not have the correct version for use there.


Could citing a database like libgen get one into trouble?

The databases are illegal in that they violate copyright law. The owner of the database is clearly in violation of the law, but users of the database are generally not. That said, I can imagine some authors would be upset to see a published link to a pirated version of their book. Why not just go to the library and confirm that the printed version matches the online version.


How commonly do researchers spend a long time (>10) years on soft money?

In the U.S., at least, long-term careers on various forms of "soft money" are a lot more common than it looks from inside the "core" academia of graduate school and tenure-track faculty positions.  In reality, the research ecosystem is very complex, with all sorts of niches that aren't necessarily apparent from the outside.  My own experience as a grad student was that I didn't even know any of these options existed until a colleague reached out and invited me into the non-traditional side of academia.

I know of many people who have had long and fulfilling careers, all the way to retirement (if they ever really retire), entirely on soft money.  Some of them have been with a single university or company for that entire time.  More often, they shift around from position to position over time, between university, government, small company, large company, consultancy, foundation, non-profit, standards organization, etc., in patterns dictated by the evolution of those organizations and how the research opportunities are shifting.  Unlike with postdocs, this often doesn't require moving, particularly near a high-tech hub: Boston and the Bay Area are obvious examples, but many large cities have research sectors that interact with the local universities in all sorts of non-obvious ways.

The distinction between "soft" and "hard" money is not always as obvious as it appears, either.  For example, there are organizations that pool soft-money risk, or have core positions that are effectively hard because they are pooled between many external grants.  Even university professors can often have the option to "soften" their positions by buying out of teaching responsibilities.

From my experience, it seems that there are three main classes of soft-money researcher, showing up in all of these environments:

Primary investigators: just like normal faculty PIs, but with a higher cost and no teaching commitments.  A PI who can establish a strong research direction and funding stream can hold a position nearly as secure as tenured faculty.
High-skill implementer: these are people who don't necessarily lead their own projects, but who work full-time for PIs in executing projects.  Engineers, analysts, programmers, lab technicians, etc.  Really good implementers are always in high demand for research, and can have a long and productive research career when teamed with the right sort of PIs.
Exploited labor: these are either implementers who haven't developed/proved their skill, people trying to become PIs who haven't made it yet, or researchers who are stuck in an exploitative environment.  This is the type of soft money that seems to be most common in certain parts of traditional academia and can be "eternal postdoc limbo" (or its fake-hard-money cousin: "adjunct faculty limbo").  Unfortunately, it can often be hard for a researcher to tell if they're in this category and whether it's a passing stage or a trap they need to break out of.

Life in these worlds can be very different than in the teaching-centric parts of academia, but an awful lot of interesting things happen in them, and it offers much more variety in career options for a graduating Ph.D. with an inclination to research than I think most people know about.


Trouble finding advisor with same research interest

While it would be ideal to have an advisor who has some interest and experience in your area of research, it is not strictly necessary. The most important things you will learn from your advisor, such as how to write papers, how to write a thesis, how to approach research, and how to design experiments are not domain-specific.

One option is that you look for an advisor that will be supportive, that you trust, and that you "click" with. If later on you need help from someone who knows your specific field, your advisor can probably put you in touch with someone who can help. That person might even be at another university.

It might also be possible for you to have two advisors; one in your university or programme that helps you with non-domain-specific stuff, and another in your field of expertise that might be at another university.

When you meet with potential advisors, ask them if they think it could be a problem that your field of interest is different from theirs. They may suggest one of the options I've mentioned above, or something else useful.