Should I mention a published paper in a disreputable journal in my resumé for admission to a PhD scholarship?

I understand your conflict.  On the one hand, you have produced a manuscript detailing your hard work.  On the other hand, you don't want to appear associated with a fake/predatory/otherwise questionable journal.

My suggestion is that you do include this work in some form in your CV. For example, you might have a few sections:

1) Peer-reviewed publications

2) Publications in-press

3) Other work / manuscripts / manuscripts in progress, etc.

If it were me, I might consider including this paper under #3, potentially withholding the journal name if I felt so strongly as to question whether it might even be called a journal.  Alternatively, you might include a note underneath that line item stating "submitted to non-peer reviewed journal without author's knowledge".  While this would be fairly strange to see, it would at least offer a discussion point, while giving you credit for work performed.


How to find funding for your PhD? (Canadian university)

The best option is to contact prospective supervisors as the scholarships available and rules that apply will depend on the province, university, discipline etc. There are situations where you will receive monthly pay during the PhD from your supervisor as a Research Assistantship, or the University as a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. Generally, the less funding available from supervisors and scholarships, the more Graduate Teaching Assistantships you need to do. In Ontario, there is a competitive scholarship called 'Ontario Trillium Award' for international students. But you need to have a supervisor in mind who will suggest you as a candidate, which is often the case for scholarships at the PhD level. A big funding body for science in Canada is NSERC (equivalent to NERC in the UK). There are scholarships available for internationals, but they are very competitive/very few.

I suggest you think about what it is you want to study and contact professors who have a similar focus. Also keep looking online for funded PhD's on specific topics. If you find one, contact the Principle Investigator to find out your options.


How much does it cost the publisher to publish a book?

Here is one story on it from US News & World Report... Their example was a Calculus textbook selling for $289 at the bookstore.

Where does all that money go? According to figures from the National Association of College Stores, an average of 21.6 cents of every dollar spent on a new textbook will go to the bookstore, whether for personnel costs, operations, or income. For Kadue's $289 textbook, that's around $62. Another cent of every dollar pays for the freight of shipping a heavy book around, so subtract another $3 from her cost. That leaves around $224 that goes to the publisher, or around 77.4 cents for every dollar.
NACS no longer receives information from publishers about where textbook money goes, but as recently as 2008, they provided that cost breakdown. At that time, around 15.4 cents of every dollar went toward marketing the textbooks, 11.7 cents went to the authors, and the largest chunk—32.2 cents—went to the basics: paper, printing, and paying publishers' employees.


How do deal with low self-confidence after a failed research rotation?

As suggested in a comment, ask your present PI to sketch out explicitly the goals for this rotation.  Take the initiative by writing a first draft, but ask the PI to help you refine your list.

Send the PI regular progress reports.

Try to find a support group.

It's fine to let a PI know of your diagnosis, but unless this person has personally demonstrated his or her trustworthiness, over a significant period of time, I suggest you draw some clear boundaries in your own mind, between what personal information you will share with a PI, vs. what personal information you will share with a support group or a therapist.

Read what I wrote about figuring out which educational accommodations would be helpful for you in this other answer.

Consider having a few sessions of EMDR about the specific trauma of the recent failed rotation.  Here is a link to get you started reading about EMDR: https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/


Differences in the culture of writing and publishing papers in various fields

I would say all good research follows the general scientific method, or a tailored version thereof. In some fields the type of experiment and types of analysis are different but I wouldn't say this changes anything major. Research is research after all. The science buddies website is a good starting point to read up on the scientific method.

The answer by @Hosea is a mini version of the scientific method. I'm in the field of engineering and the same process pretty much applies (though in industry you typically do work and then see if you can also publish a paper on it).

In short the scientific method is as follows (from the science buddies website):

If you are aiming for a certain field or journal, read some of the most cited papers over the last year or two in that field or journal, and extract the style, outline, argument and logic flow from there. Your supervisor should also be able to advise you there.

Where you would see a big difference to the scientific method are in the "soft sciences" like humanities and languages.


What is the role of a PhD advisor after a student has graduated?

Once a person have graduated, there is not generally any remaining formal role for the Ph.D. advisor.  In theory, a Ph.D. qualifies them as generally capable of independent scientific research, and they have no requirement to depend on their academic "parent" any more.

In practice, however, no person is an island.  Most researchers do much better as part of a network of like-minded colleagues who can serve as friends and allies.  The Ph.D. advisor is a natural starting point for building such a network, both as someone likely to be a like-minded ally and also by helping build connections based on their own existing network. As the more junior colleague in the relationship, the benefits of interaction are likely to flow more more from the advisor to the former student, but the relationship is likely to grow more peer-like over time.

Just as with a biological parent, even after formal independence, this connection is likely to last a lifetime (but may not if the relationship is not good).  Also like biological parents, however, Ph.D. advisors (and others) often have a hard time adjusting their perspective and seeing their former students as fully "grown up."  This is part of why it's important not only to maintain a connection with one's advisor, but also to clearly establish a separate research identity.


Etiquette for whether to send a follow-up email to a professor who will not have a reliable internet connection?

First, I am an undergraduate student in math who started working under a professor last Fall.

Congratulations!

  During January I sent him an email with a question though I did not expect a response until he got back. Given that he has presumably been back for 2 weeks, is it appropriate for me to send him another email with a follow-up or should I wait for a response.

That is a long time to wait for a response to an email! Definitely you should send a follow-up.

Old emails often get lost in professors' email inboxes. In general, anything that has been sent at least 2 weeks ago is probably lost forever unless you send it again (and in this case it sounds like it was 3 months ago).

I usually send follow-ups 1 week later.

  I am sorry if this is a ridiculous question.

Not a ridiculous question, but you are overthinking it :) Professors are just human; they aren't usually sitting around cursing anyone who sends them an email. Any question or concern you have you should go ahead and send -- as long as you can keep it polite and try to make it as easy as possible for them to understand and respond.

And since they are your advisor for your research, you need their feedback in order to progress successfully. Therefore, it is especially important to email them often (or connect through other means if email is not the best way with this individual).


Are hand made posters acceptable in Academia?

You should present the best poster you can make

It is far easier to make a professionally looking, high quality poster using LaTeX or any other software than by hand-drawing it.

However, there are some really good artists out there who can manage to do a hand-drawn poster that looks better than a printed one could.

So don't use hand-drawing as a way to save time or money. A good hand-drawn poster is more work than any printed one.

If you are 100% certain that you can get your message across better with a hand-drawn poster, then go for it, otherwise use a printed one.


What's the meaning of "first-page-first order"?

I am pretty sure this is just a ridiculously dated instruction. On some older printers, the pages were ejected print side up and new pages were added to the top. This means that the first page printed would end up being the bottom page of the document when you picked it up. If you then wanted to staple the document in the correct order, you needed to reorder everything. With these printers it was much more desirable to print "back-to-front" such that when you pick up the document from the printer everything is in the "correct" order. Some computers provided (and maybe some still do) the option to print "back-to-front" to avoid this. Some people conceivably, though I have never seen it, produced documents in a first-page last order to help with the printing. I think this instruction just means that the pages should go in the order you expect them in: the first page of your pdf should be page 1 and the last page N. In a first-page-last order the first page would be N and the last page 1, which would be really awful to read on screen.


How to publish the design of a low-cost alternative for an expensive equipment?

Have you tried Review of Scientific Instruments?


What should I do if I want to withdraw my paper from a journal but they ignore my request?

One possibility to put this to an end would be to submit to another journal by an e-mail where you would explain the situation (the paper has been submitted elsewhere, you withdrew it when you realized it was not handled properly, and you got no acknowledgment of this withdrawal), and with a CC to the editor-in-chief of the first journal. That way, the editors of the new journal would know for certain that you withdrew before submitting again, and you would be covered from possible accusations by the first journal. However this corners the first journal in a difficult situation, so it might make them react violently; I would warn them before hand, and only use this as a last recourse.

You can also try to get advice and help from a senior in your field, who will know the editors and might help smooth things out.

A third possibility would be to contact a relevant committee in an academic society (EMS has an ethics committee that could be contacted about a publication in a math journal for example).


Reliable Asian university rankings datasets suitable for evaluating applications to a graduate program

I believe that using university ranking as a criteria for admission is fundamentally unethical.

Extremely good students end up going to middling or poor undergraduate institutions for any number of reasons. To downgrade somebody's application just because they went to a mediocre institution is actively going against the academic ideal that merit should be able to rise, and even poor institutions generally have at least a few students of excellent potential.  Complementarily, pedigree is no guarantee of quality: rubbish students graduate from elite institutions all the time.

Now, there is, of course, a strong correlation between the quality of an institution and the quality of the students that it produces, and there are, of course, basic matters of accreditation: nobody should respect a degree from Trinity Southern University.  In general, however, you should judge the students and not the institutions.

So, how do you judge a student from Asia? The same way that you judge a student from an unfamiliar university in Europe or North America, by the accomplishments for which they can give evidence.  To judge classwork, one of the methods is to ask which textbooks were used (this is what some MIT departments do).  To judge other work, look for the concrete products, such as research papers, code or web pages online, etc.

Students from universities you do not know will still be at a disadvantage, and doubly so for students from a very different environment and who may lack English communication skills, such as will often be the case for many Asian universities.  But you can at least take steps to not prejudice yourself unduly by sorting their universities by their ability to game semi-arbitrary ranking systems.


Papers differing primarily by examined dataset, not analysis technique

In fact, the main contributions in your field are "algorithms", however, data sets are just a bunch of inputs for testing those algorithms and assessing their functionality or efficiency. If the outcomes of your new tests with data set A are exactly the same as dataset B's ones, you might not claim it as a new contribution. But if the results acquired from dataset B lead to some different interpretations about your algorithm's computational capabilities or something, you can consider it as a new contribution.


Is it okay to suggest a Professor Emeritus as a mentor when applying for US mathematics postdocs?

Here is roughly the way it works in my department, and I imagine this is fairly typical for math research departments in the US.

People apply for postdocs.
The faculty review applications.
Faculty who are interested in certain candidates push for them.
Some committee and/or the chair decides on a ranking of the candidates individual professors are excited about.
Offers are made.

For 4, typically getting a postdoc for an emeritus professor will have very low priority, and unless the emeritus prof is active, they probably wouldn't push for you anyway.  I believe that emeriti typically don't even have permission to look at applications.

However, I think it's a little weird that they require you to name one faculty with common interests.  I don't remember ever seeing this when I applied.  (Is it exactly one?  If not, you could mention regular and emeritus faculty.  If so, maybe that is to assign that faculty member to review your application.)  My suggestion (say if you can only name exactly one) is to choose a regular (non-retired) faculty member, but possibly mention the emeritus professor in your cover letter.  If you think the emeritus professor is still active and would be interested in having you there, maybe send them an email to let them know you applied.  Then they might discuss your application with other faculty.


Generally speaking, you can't publish something without the consent of all authors, so yes, it can happen.

This person is behaving badly. Perhaps there is a common authority you can appeal to so that the bad behavior stops. Even a threat to appeal to higher authority might make a difference.

It might be necessary, actually, to abandon the paper if you can't find a solution.

But don't work with this person in the future. If it is a PI/advisor, then you have a different issue, of course, as such people have power that can overwhelm justice. But, to the maximum extent possible, ignore the opinions of this person who is trying to optimize their own record at the expense of others.

But if it is a PI/advisor doing this, say so, and I can supplement this response.


"Academic time": why is 110 minutes called two hours?

The 10 minute interval given here seems to be common in the US, while in Europe 15 minutes is also in widespread use, but some universities also use 5 minutes.

It is to solve a rather practical scheduling problem: If one lecture ends on the hour sharp, and the next begins on the hour, you would have only zero time to walk an often non-zero distance to get to your next lesson/lecture/exam/whatever, requiring asymptotically infinite velocity to cover that distance - a theoretical and practical impossibility.

In order to solve this, European universities invented the so called "academic quarter", which is in use at some universities until today. It means that events start 15 minutes after their scheduled time.

The abbreviations c.t. (for cum tempore, en. "with time"), which means 15 minutes after the scheduled time and s.t. (sine tempore, en. "without time") which means exactly at the scheduled time stem from this. In some European universities (especially german), times are assumed to be c.t. unless stated otherwise.

Berkeley calls this 10-minute interval "Berkeley time", and MIT seems to prefer "academic time", although I have never seen it been used with intervals, only with instants in time so far.

There are many variations of this scheme, and many universities have their custom practices. Some start at the hour sharp and end five/ten/fifteen minutes early, some start five/ten/fifteen minutes after the hour and end sharp, and at some universites lectures both start five/ten/fifteen minutes late and end five/ten/fifteen minutes early, and maybe some universities use even other schemes (a comment refers to seven past the hour).
At my university, the academic quarter is used both at the start and end, since our campus is rather large and for some locations, you actually need almost 30 minutes when walking, and 20 when talking public transport in between those locations.

From personal experience, universities tend to move away from using c.t. times, and rather list actual (s.t.) start times on official resources/documents (e.g. 10:15 as start for a lecture), while students and professors would still refer to those lectures by their time slot (in this case 10 o'clock lecture) and make use of whatever length their university uses as "academic quarter" in colloquial speech.

(Addition from comments):
At some universities, the academic quarter is also used as the time students have to wait for the lecturer. If the lecturer is late, but does not arrive within the academic quarter without any more information, students may assume the lecture is cancelled and can leave without the fear of missing any material.
(I recommend not leaving without being sure this is policy at your own university as well)


No, you shouldn't. Not yet, anyway

In general, I think it's perfectly fine to list that information on a CV for an academic position. Depending on the profile of the position itself, I would feature it more or less prominently. Say, if you apply for a scientific programming position (or a position with heavy coding), you could list it under a “Skills” section where you would say:

  C/C++/Fortran with a focus on shared-memory and distributed memory parallelism (OpenMP/MPI)
  Received formal training at XXX National Lab, taught parallelism course at University of YYY, involved in StackOverflow (username: zzz) on this topic.

(if the format allows it, like a PDF, consider including a hyperlink)

If the position is not one heavily involving code-writing, you could tone it down, or even list it in a “Hobbies” or “Personal” section. Many people like to list hiking or book reading or civil war reënactments, so why not list Stack Overflow!

But… in all cases, only do it if your account is of the wow! type. You don't have to be Jon Skeet (it may take years of therapy to accept that, but that's the sad truth), but you don't want someone to look up your profile and think “meh”.


Top-down vs Bottom-up approaches in describing an algorithm in a research paper

The answer depends on personal preferences, as well as on the algorithm itself. Consider the following two descriptions of SOLVE_PROBLEM:

Top-down: We want to solve problem A on input. Function SOLVE_PROBLEM solves the problem. There are two cases, depending on condition B, which we can check with function CHECK. If the condition holds, we solve the problem with FUNCTION_1. Otherwise we use FUNCTION_2.

Bottom-up: We want to solve problem A on input. In the general case, the problem can be solved with FUNCTION_1. The general solution assumes condition B, which we can check with function CHECK. If the condition does not hold, we can solve the special case with FUNCTION_2. This completes function SOLVE_PROBLEM.

I personally prefer the top-down approach, if the algorithm has multiple equally important parts. Bottom-up approach becomes preferable, if one part of the algorithm attacks the core of the problem, while the rest just deals with special cases and administrative stuff.


Is the the peer-review process different for special issues?

Yes, there's a difference in the peer-review process for general submissions and special issue submissions. That's because very often, the special issue involves a guest editor who's not otherwise a member of the editorial board.

In your case I suspect the journal administrator is acting on behalf of the guest editor. That is, the journal did not register an account for the guest editor. The guest editor is still making the decisions, but the journal administrator is inputting those for the guest editor, which is why it appears as though the journal administrator is "awaiting recommendation".

It's unlikely your paper's being desk-rejected. It's been three months. If you do indeed get a desk rejection, that's a black mark against the journal.


How can I transfer to a different Ph.D. program after experience with a bad advisor?

To be perfectly honest, if a student came to me wanting to transfer, with the complaints you have stated above, I would want to hear the other side of the story.

Yes, there are bad advisors out there, and sometimes personality clashes just happen.  This can be a reason for switching to a different advisor.  However, there are several things that would cause me to be concerned here.

You are giving up on the program very quickly.
You seem to be immediately going to the option of changing institutions, rather than the more common approach of changing advisors within the institution.  Why is this?  Does it mean people closer to the situation don't agree with your take on it?
You have lots of very bad things to say about your advisor, yet few specific complaints. What are the actual inappropriate things that your advisor did?

Many of the complaints seem to be about style: "negative reinforcement", "harsh".  It can be quite hard to work with someone whose style doesn't match yours.  However, in all but the most extreme situations, this is something you should learn to work around, rather grounds for refusing to work with the person.
Many of the complaints are attacks, without any substance: "[she] makes me sick", "[she] destroyed my positive side".
The one concrete complaint you have, that the advisor is "trying to get into my personal life", is potentially a serious breach of professionalism.  But again, without specifics, the merit of your complaint is hard to judge.  Has she crossed a line, or are you misreading an attempt to be friendly (e.g. chatting about non-work subjects)?

Your initial stance is to 100% blame her for the situation, but after further discussion in the comments you admitted that you were not fully prepared for the program.

I'm not saying that you are wrong.  Maybe you are right and the advisor is just terrible.  Terrible advisors do exist--but people who wrongly blame others for their situation also do exist.  Someone who doesn't know you is not just going to take your side of the story at face value.  They will also want to find out more about the situation.

The new institution contacting your current institution and current advisor would almost certainly be part of any transfer during a PhD program. This doesn't imply that your advisor wrongly inserted herself in the middle of the situation.  It is normal.  If there was a sudden switch from verbally agreeing to accept you, to your application being declined, this may well explain it.


It will be very difficult to do so. Several European countries have rules about how long someone can be employed in "government" positions without a permanent contract. For instance, in Germany, if you do not have a unbefristete (permanent) contract after a given time, you are required to leave university employment. Other countries almost certainly have similar rules, as mentioned in the comments.

Now, there are positions above the postdoc level where one can remain indefinitely. For instance, in Germany, there are positions like the Akademischer Rat or Oberingenieur or außerplanmäßige Professor, who act in a secondary role supporting the head of an institute. Such positions involve substantially more administrative work than a postdoc normally encounters, but are also not subject to the time limitations. In other countries, such as the US, you can have "soft-money" positions that go by titles such as "research assistant professor" that are not formal tenure-track positions, and are dependent on the supervising faculty and the RAP raising sufficient funds to "pay for itself." I know multiple people who have had careers in such positions.


Using native language for research discussion in an English-speaking country

Yes. I see this all the time in my school. Although some professors avoid doing so. I believe it can loosen some faculty/student boundaries. Also, it is advisable to use English language when accompanied by other students/faculty who can not speak that native language.


What does "All deadlines are: 11:59 PM UTC-12:00" mean?

"UTC-12" is a timezone 12 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, which is (more or less) the time in Greenwich, UK. Nobody actually lives there, though.
A day is 24 hours, and the Earth is divided into 27 major timezones from UTC-12 to UTC+141, with the UK in the middle(ish). Therefore, someone in UTC-12 is the very last person to reach a time. At the time it is 12:01 AM UTC-12, it's 12:01 PM UTC+0, and 11:01 PM UTC+11.
So by setting the submission deadline to 11:59 PM UTC-12 on a given day, it ensures that anyone anywhere in the world who submits on the appropriate day will be on time. Hence, "anywhere on Earth."
New York is UTC-4 during the summer, which means the deadline is 7:59 AM the following day.

1: It would seem like only 24 timezones would be necessary, but a few regions chose to move to UTC+13 and UTC+14 for their own reasons. Someone in UTC+13 is 25 hours ahead of UTC-12 (so 1:01 AM the next day). The details aren't important, but in case you'd like to do your own reading.


Checking the uniqueness of a new journal's name

Consult scholar databases such as Scopus, Web of Science / Journal Citation Report, Scimago...

(This in addition to googling, of course, not instead of it.)

If it's neither on Google nor on these databases, it's effectively like it has never existed.

Another thing that you may want to check is that there is no journal with the exact same name but in another language. For instance, you don't want to end up with a journal called "Annals of Mathematics" and another one called "Mathematische Annalen"; that's just unnecessarily confusing for German speakers, right?


How to become committee member of a conference workshop?

Organize that workshop
Be invited by the organizers to be on the commitee
Ask the organizers while the committee is still being formed (and be known and respected by them)


What should you do if you learn after posting a paper to Arxiv that it is not a novel idea?

Adding something like "After submission of the initial version, it has come to our attention that our main result is a rediscovery of a prior result by XXX (citation)." to the comment section of the arXiv metadata and the frontpage of the article itself should be an elegant way to handle this.


I find it worrying to see so many questions like this. They make academia seem like a terrifying place. It really isn't. Standard rules of engagement  apply (pun intended).

  So, someone (A) introduced me to someone else (B) via email, so that I can ask B questions and get advice. The email is directed at B, and I am copied. Should I wait for B to email me, or should I email B first?

Unless cultural rules say otherwise, you should email B first. Beyond saving B time (in emailing you unnecessarily), you can ask for what you want.

  If the latter, should I reply to the original email and copy A, or should I just open another thread with B?

Reply to the original email, do not copy A, perhaps blind copy A, maybe mentioning you've done so to avoid bombarding them with further mail, e.g., Thanks for the kind introduction A (bcc to avoid further inclusion).

(Don't start a new thread with B. That thread wouldn't include the introduction and B may forget who you are.)


Are PhD scholarships and assistantships taxable?

Taxation does depend very much on the country, as well as the type of award you receive. The amounts similarly vary from nation to nation. To give two examples:

In the US, scholarships and fellowship stipends are taxed as ordinary income. However, in some cases, for externally funded awards, you need to be careful, as the university might not withhold taxes. In that case, however, you would need to make estimated tax payments, as you are still responsible for paying the tax "on time!"
Don't forget that your tax burden may also include state and local income taxes, depending on where you live. Making matters even more complicated, cost of living fluctuates wildly: you're probably better off with a $25,000 award in the midwest than a $35,000 or $40,000 award in New York City.
In other countries, the system can vary. In Germany, for instance, graduate fellowships are not taxed, while "standard" graduate positions, which are considered employees of the state, are taxed. At the same time, however, people receiving the taxed positions receive health benefits and pay into the social security system. Stipend recipients are responsible for their own health insurance, and do not accrue time in the social security system.


Setting up a Mathematical Institute of Refereeing?

I'm an assistant professor of mathematics and while I regularly referee papers (in fact, I have a few papers I'm supposed to be refereeing right now), I have to say that joining a Mathematical Institute of Refereeing sounds awful. It's right down there with joining a Mathematical Institute of Departmental Meetings.

Perhaps it's just me, but the aspects of my job that I love the most are being able to teach mathematics to and mentor talented students, working alone or with collaborators on research projects, and writing up / publishing papers. Although I definitely get something out of refereeing papers (and seem to referee ten or so a year), this is mainly something I do in order to be a "good mathematical citizen". That is, I expect that when I submit a paper it will be competently refereed, so it's only fair that I referee the papers of others when I'm qualified and able to do so. There's no way I would give up all of the aspects of my job that I love in order to focus full time on refereeing. (If such a thing were even possible. I'm not sure how my college would react if I told them that I'm going to be refereeing papers full time for a while but will be back in time for the Fall 2024 semester.) At the end of the day I think what it boils down to is this. I also enjoy doing yard work. But I'd never consider quitting research and teaching in order to focus on it full time.


I'm 23, completing a Business BSc, should I start a Computer Science BSc?

You can work in the technology industry with a BSc in Business, you don't need a BSc in Computer Science. That said, it depends what exactly you want to do. Regardless, rather than acquiring two bachelor degrees, consider a MSc in Computer Science, rather than a BSc. That's the more common approach.


Credibility of non-journal online publications

One problem with the blog and the website is the quality assurance. A peer-reviewed article guarantees that your research at least meet the quality of that specific journal. Of course some issues exist with the peer-review system but at the moment it is the common way. Everyone can open a blog and popularity does not imply good research. I would suggest submitting the work to a regular journal, and write a shorter blog entry for communication and discussion.


How common is it that publishers withdraw a paper due to incorrect conclusions?

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) have recommendations for what circumstances should lead to retraction of papers. Retraction is considered a very severe action and is not generally done lightly. In a document from COPE on retraction guidelines you can see what they recommend.

Clearly that does not answer your question but the problem about being general in academia is that the effects of problems in written articles differ between fields. What is wrong is obviously wrong, but if the effects are risking lives  or is harmful in some other direct way will be more likely in some fields than in others. Hence retraction is probably far more likely in life sciences than in, say history or philosophy (feel free to disagree or add other better examples).


Is it fair to offer students a chance to improve their grade on an assignment

You don't indicate where you are, but I'm going to assume the US or places with similar systems.

What is the meaning of the final grade in a course? You can generally look in your handbook or catalog for the definitions. You won't find "was better than classmates" in the definitions, I'm quite certain. (Which is why I detest curve based grade assignment.)

Instead, grades are supposed to indicate a level of performance or degree of learning. Say a course had only two exams. A midterm and a final. If someone gets an F on the midterm and an A on the final, how do we reconcile those grades? If the course is progressive in nature like mine, I may be inclined to assign a grade of A because that represents the final mastery: I don't care, actually, that someone couldn't do X at the midterm if at the final they demonstrate X and Y.

A different student who made an A on both might be mad, but why? In both cases, at the end of my course, they demonstrated X and Y which was ultimately the point of my class.

If a professor allows students to redo work, in effect they are saying "well, you didn't demonstrate proficiency, but for this course it is necessary for you to do so, so let's see if you can on a second chance".

At the end of the day, if you feel your performance was better than theirs, and make the same or higher grade than them, why should you be concerned?


I have not enough reputation to comment. So, we will have to go with an answer. I disagree with Cameron Williams and I agree with your supervisor. Your thesis is not a textbook and front loading in a thesis will not have the intended effect. Frankly, if you start with basically a set of definitions, it is quite likely that your assessors will only cursory read that section. They might then be confused when they read the actual solution chapter because they don't have the necessary understanding of the concepts you thought they would have.

I think you should follow your advisor. Think of your thesis as telling a story where you introduce new concepts at the point where you need them. You can always have a glossary at the end of your thesis to gather all relevant terminology in one place.

The exception to this advice would be if you are writing in an area where there is a lot of confusion around terminology and names of concepts. If your goal is to argue that prior literature was sloppy in naming its concepts and you want to clarify the literature, a discussion of definitions at the start could be warranted.


What factors should I consider when deciding between a general MBA vs. a specialized MBA?

Because you already have real world experience in IT but are unsure it is where you want to stay, a general MBA should be fine.

If you want to stay in IT, what most companies care about is actual experience - and it seems you have that. Having an MBA and experience in IT is a great combination and having experience in IT is far more useful than having a specialist MBA in IT.

Another issue is that IT management is usually not a challenging place to get to if you are interested. I've worked with quite a few people in IT and it was the rare one who wanted to be in management. Most wanted to keep their hands in the technology. For this reason, IT management is different from many other fields in business.


Lectures are way ahead of the planned schedule for the course. What should be done?

Generally, when a course is assigned a certain number of credit hours, that means that students (and professors) can expect a related number of contact-hours via lecture, tutorials or labs. Your students and dean will likely be upset if you cancel classes for next 3 weeks.

If you don't want to introduce new material, there are several things you could do.

Review material or go further into depth
Have students work on their projects
Have students work on homework or small projects


I am starting an assistant professor job this fall. What do you recommend me to do during this summer before a tenure-clock starts?

Take some time for you. If your dissertation is solid and ready to go...no time like the present to get started and get it published in a journal! As far as beginning a new research project - I think it depends on your area and your expectations for research (see below).

Since you are teaching, take a look at fall semesters teaching responsibilities. I found it important to take the summer to update my syllabus, review new textbooks, update my learning management system (e.g. canvas, blackboard), and even prepare some presentations and lesson plans. Then I took a look at my semester and blocked out a day or half a day every week to write, read, & research. I put deadlines for research conferences on the calendar and would back up however much time I needed to make sure the work was getting done. If you're mentoring undergraduate/graduate student research plan a weekly meeting with them and get it on the calendar. Then when the semester starts and the meeting requests start coming in, you already have your calendar ready to go.

I have a majority teaching appointment, so I spend a lot of time on teaching. We have a large graduate program so most of my research is co-published.

Once you get to campus, take advantage of meeting people in other programs and departments. Find others on campus who you might be able to collaborate with on a research project or grant. Find a mentor in your program! Even if it is not a formal mentor, just someone who you can visit with and talk to about what you are doing is a great help in getting settled. Meet with your department head and find out what your expectations for teaching and research are...for example at my institution, with my % of research, they recommend two research articles a year and grant applications. With my teaching % they want to see consistently "similar" or "high" student evaluations, teaching innovations, and improvements to courses based on student feedback.

I actually found my first year somewhat exciting. I was getting to teach courses that I enjoyed. I met people who had similar research interests and developed great collaborative projects and I found the best mentor around to help me navigate those first few years.

Best of luck!!


Quitting PhD for a job, how to tell advisor?

Whenever a professor takes on a grad student, there is no guarantee that the student will be able to complete the program.  The vast majority of people (advisors included) understand financial hardship.

Ask to have a face-to-face meeting with your advisor.  Be honest about your reason(s).  Your advisor is likely to be willing to keep working with you as long as you are able to.  If you're worried about how to word what you will say to your advisor, something like "I wish I could have completed the program, but, due to financial burdens, I won't be able to.  I've enjoyed my time and got a lot of out the experience."  (Expand and reword as needed.)  And then give details about dates and answer questions.  If you've maintained a good working relationship with your advisor, they will likely be able to help you navigate dealing with the university.


What are the differences (if any) of the tenure-track job hunt if you're a professor compared to a PhD student

The difference is that when you are a PhD student, everybody knows you won't be around for long, and everything is (or should be) planned accordingly. You are assigned duties knowing that you will move on relatively soon.

Someone with a more permanent position is assumed to be around for much longer. They can take on longer time duties, and other people may start depending on them actually sticking around.

So, if a faculty moves to another place, some people are likely to get upset. Now, people upset with you across the country is not a big deal; but if you advertise it and fail to get the new position, you will have upset people in your own corridor.

Another factor is that, as soon as faculty announce they are likely to move away, people are going to start dividing up their loot: I'll take half of your lab, because you are leaving anyway; I'll teach your favourite course, because you are leaving anyway; we won't buy you the new equipment because you are leaving anyway... Again, if the deal is off and you have to stay, you have lost part of your lab, teaching, and opportunities for equipment or funding. Note that the second factor is also true for positions on soft money, that understandably, no one should count on them sticking around.

And lastly, the good old pride: "so, you think they are better than us?"


Should I offer to pay (some of) the travel cost from the UK to the US for an interview?

Would the potentially high cost of flying me to an interview lead to some institutions passing me over?

I believe many universities, especially smaller universities, will balk at flying overseas candidates in for interviews. Often they will move down their short lists and only if they are unable to find a suitable candidate that is higher than you on the list, will they be willing to fly you in. This isn't a huge disadvantage, but it is a disadvantage. In my experience candidates often hurt themselves during interviews and rarely perform so well they substantially move up in the rankings.

  If so, would it help if I offer in the cover letter to (at least partially) pay my way?

I would not offer to pay for an interview directly. This would in essence be calling out the search committee for being cheap. A better strategy would be to mention in your cover letter that you will happen to be in the States, possibly even states/cities near by, on a couple of dates and you would be happy to extend your trip and come to them for a visit. It would be nice if you have an academic pretence for those visits (conference, seminar, or visiting colleagues), but even saying you will be in the States for personal reasons is fine. If you do not get an interview, you do not have to go to the States.


There is a wiki devoted to call for papers (http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/).

Googling can help you find earlier editions of conferences and so forth. Make a list of the ones relevant for you and when they occur – each edition of a conference will occur at the same time of year. Keep this list on your wall, perhaps sorted by month of conference (or better, month of deadline). Google will help find the current edition.


Winter internship for Indian students (computational physics)

Yes!

Keep in mind though that most such internships at places like IIT, IISc, ISI, TIFR etc. are likely to be unpaid and you will most probably have to bear costs on your own.

The way to getting them is to email appropriate professors that you like and then ask them if you could, given their availability, work with them over winter.

I do not know if there are industrial research internships in India over winter. Most of them seem to be restricted to summer.

Source: When I was a graduate student in ISI, there were 2 students from IISER who worked in our lab for a couple of months over winter (Dec-Jan)


Should I inform the people that I acknowledged in PhD thesis?

Ask yourself, which message do you want to send them?

You do not want to simply inform them about the acknowledgment, you want to THANK them! It's not about your thesis, it's about their help!

How you approach them depends on several factors; do whatever you feel is right.
If it is possible to meet people in person, I prefer this, especially if they have contributed much. If they are further away, perhaps do at least a phone call. You should offer to them send your thesis via email or maybe even give them a printed copy.

In my personal experience, people are always very happy about a "thank you" and it also gives you the chance to stay in contact afterwards.


Did MSCA supersede MCA or do both still fund new projects?

The MCA page is indeed out of date.
See e.g. http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about-mca/actions/iif/index_en.htm
where if you click on "How do we apply", there is a link to "People Work Programme 2013".

The name MCA was changed to MSCA with the end of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7), and the start of Horizon 2020.


Who should I ask for references when applying for PhD, after a 4 year break since graduation?

I agree with the other answers that you should ask old professors. I was in your situation after a break of five years, and while I felt awkward approaching people I hadn't seen in so long asking for a favor, the particular professor I asked actually did remember me and was happy to help.

I'll reiterative the general advice I was given (by a current friend who is a professor in another field, both of us in the US):

Try to get at least one recommendation from a professor who's had you as a student. Not having an academic reference would be a disadvantage, and having a recommendation that speaks to your ability to do research is an advantage.
Recommendations from industry are fine, normally your first choice would be an immediate supervisor. Your approach will depend entirely on your relationship with your peers.
Recommendations from friends typically aren't great, but if they're in the same industry as you, have collaborated with you on stuff, and can speak to your professional competence then they're probably good.


Choosing my name as an author when publishing a scientific paper, can I use my "unofficial" first name?

It depends on the field, and in particular on the venue in which you are publishing. It's possible that some journals and conferences might have policies about this, which would of course override anything you read here. But in general: nobody checks (or cares) whether the name you put on a published paper matches your official name. So if you use an informal variant of your name, e.g. if your name is "Stephen" but you publish as "Steve", nobody will bat an eyelid. If you use a nickname or publish under a pseudonym, it would be a little odd if the nickname is something that sounds very informal, but still, it probably won't cause problems.

What people do care about is building a record of your work, and putting a face to the name if they know your face. So you should (1) be consistent with the name you use to publish, and (2) make sure other people in the field know that it refers to you.


Is the "meal plan" chiefly a North American thing?

This is not unique to North America and the idea of a meal plan exists in the UK. In the UK halls (i.e., dorms) are either self-catered or catered. Catered halls usually provide breakfast and dinner and in some cases either lunch, a boxed lunch, or points that can be spent on campus.


Someone asked me for advice on their paper a few months ago. I pointed out an error. I received no reply. What should I do?

It's tempting to become emotionally involved here, but you need to resist that temptation. If the student (or their advisor) wanted to involve you more, they would have done so already.  If would be courteous to write back, and if they remember to thank you in a final version, that would be nice, but discourtesy is not a big deal.
If you did, indeed, find a significant error in their work, it may have been an easy fix (and they are just not courteous) or it may have been a serious problem that could have undermined the entire result. They might be scrambling to fix it, might have even decided it is unfixable and moved on to something entirely different. Moreover, the situation you describe may have other non-scientific factors in play, as a student would typically not reach out unsolicited to an outside expert without in some way involving their advisor (even if just as a cc on the email). All of which is a long way of saying that you have no idea what might be going on with the student right now.
So, what about the other reasons you express for involving yourself?

Should you be concerned about a manuscript with an error being publicly available on a preprint server?  No, you should not. Preprint servers are filled with unreviewed work that is, indeed, likely to contain errors, and anybody accessing them should assume as much.
Should you worry about an incorrect proof getting through peer review? No, you should not. They have your information, and if they choose to publish anyway and if then reviewers don't notice the problem, then that is not your responsibility. A correction or retraction would indeed be warranted and an unfortunately appropriate embarrassment to all involved.

All that said, if you are genuinely interested in making use of their results in your own work at this time, then you have an actual appropriate professional reason to contact them on that basis --- along with their advisor, who should be better versed in typical scientific practices. Say exactly your interest, and that you would like to know their progress for that reason. At that point, either an updated preprint or an offer for you to become more involved should be forthcoming --- and if not, I think it would be appropriate to consider yourself released to work in the area without constraint.


Why should footnotes be avoided in scientific publications (natural science)?

If you don't stop/discourage researchers from adding footnotes, you will end up with articles with huge amounts of footnotes. As you are doing research you will learn a lot about a specific topic, and most of that will not end up in the final article. The temptation is to add that to footnotes. However, a good article is one that has a very specific aim and does only that. So you should resist that temptation. Such rules are there to help you.


What's the point of "CV available on request"?

Doing this does convey useful information: it signals that the individual has made a conscious decision not to post their CV online. If you come across this statement when looking for someone's CV you know not to waste more time searching. I think this is the real reason people do it, rather than any concern that people might otherwise not think to send an email.


Visit to a different university - is it OK to bring my girlfriend along?

It is perfectly reasonable. I have done it a couple of times and I know colleagues that frequently do it. Her presence at work/social events depends on the event and how well you know the host and the events. Often the work/social line gets blurred. I am friends with a number of my colleagues partners and my partner are friends with them and their partners. Sometimes my partner will join me for social events when we have a visitor.

That said, while it is not inappropriate, the trailing partner at academic events never has worked well for us. I have been both the leading and trailing partner. The person working is often tired at the end of the day and not really in the mood to be a tourist. We find it is a better use of our time and money to travel both as tourists and really enjoy our holidays.


I want to remove an article in IEEE, accepted but not published yet

So, the issue here is that you submitted a paper without the consent of one of your co-authors? Write to the editor of the journal explaining that, and ask for the paper to be retracted. Even if you’ve agreed to give them your copyright, your coauthor hasn’t, so they wouldn’t be allowed to legally publish it anyway.


In some fields it is possible to publish long papers, in which case something very like your dissertation might be acceptable.

However, you seem to suggest you want to divide out parts of it for separate publication. This can be a good idea, of course.

The best advice I can give is that each paper should be complete without being pedantic. You still need to cite everything, but those things that are generally known to professionals/academics needn't be explained in a paper as they might have been in a thesis.

Can a working professional be expected to understand your paper without spending too much time chasing references? If the answer is yes, you are probably pretty close to the mark.


Do academic reviewers have a duty to critique authors who submit questionable research?

My feeling is that rather than explicitly telling the authors what to do in a context other than the present submission, it would be better to explain your objection to their present submission in a way which would make clear to any moderately receptive party that the advice would apply more generally.  E.g. something like

  In my opinion, the authors overestimate the significance of their work to a degree that becomes actively misleading: virtually no work in the field has the level of significance claimed by the authors here.   In general, work which is described in such hyperbolic terms can be hard to take seriously.  Those who do make major breakthroughs tend to describe the advances in more sober, factual ways.

This is plenty heavy-handed.  Anyone who is listening will get the message not only to tone down the language in this submission but that such language is never appropriate.  Still, you aren't telling them what to do, but only giving your (expert) opinion on the consequences of their actions.


What to do when there is 'full-text request' in ResearchGate.net

Work out if you can post pre-prints Many journals allow you to share some form of pre-print online. In some cases there is ambiguity as to whether posting pre-prints to ResearchGate is allowed by an agreement. For example, some publisher agreements limit sharing to personal websites, institutional repositories, etc.  Nonetheless, most take-down requests that I've heard about on researchgate pertain to posting the publisher's formatted, full-text, version. Sherpa ROMEO provides general guidance about publisher policies.

Post your pre-prints in a range of forums.  So, it makes sense that where possible you should provide the pre-print in a range of forums in order to facilitate the distribution of your work to those who do not have institutional access.  There are many discipline specific repositories where you can post pre-prints.

Post the pre-print to ResearchGate. If you are on ResearchGate, then you have indicated a desire to use the system. So you should consider adding full-text pre-prints where you feel comfortable. That way, you wont get these requests because the full-text is already available.


Is it OK to contact conference chairs and volunteer to review (specific to Data Science Conferences)?

There seems to be an explicit question, why you have not been invited to review papers, and an implicit one, why you have not been invited as a PC chair.

Reviewing papers

As a PhD student you should have been given papers to review, but these papers will not be given to you by the PC chair but rather PC members who may delegate one or two papers to you. The most likely people to delegate paper reviews are your supervisor(s), you could ask them.

Becoming a PC member

Since you mentioned volunteering to be a reviewer, it seems you might have being a PC member more in mind. Typically, you can only be a PC member after obtaining your PhD. At this point, people who know you should suggest your name, such as your current supervisor(s), people you meet at a conference (this has happened with me) or your new colleagues (e.g., a PI) if you move on after your PhD.

For the specific question, if you know the general chair quite well, then I think it is okay to ask if you can help out as a PC (once you have your PhD). If your supervisors or other close collaborators are SPC, you can also ask them to suggest your name. But I suspect once you have your PhD you will be asked anyway.

This is only based on personal experience, no-one can say for sure whether a given person will mind.


Length of statement of objectives [mathematics / MIT]

Most statements of purpose written by applicants to math PhD programs in the US are 1-2 pages (single spaced).  So 1000 words sounds just fine to me...as does 995, of course.

If you write a statement of purpose that is any longer than two full pages, the likely outcome is that it will be read rapidly or skimmed.  Much the same will happen if your statement is shorter, by the way.  In short: what you propose is a very reasonable length for me. (It may help you to know that I am the Graduate Coordinator of the math PhD program at UGA.)  I don't see any problem here.  If you wanted to make it a little shorter or a little longer, you can, but don't worry so much about it.  This statement of purpose is probably not the most important part of the application anyway.

By the way, I interpret the more specific instructions given by MIT (as opposed to many other programs) more as helpful advice for writing an effective statement of purpose than as asking for something much different from other statements of purpose.  It is actually quite difficult to write a statement of purpose that really grabs an admissions committee.  Most commonly students seem to want to declare their ardor for mathematics and tell the narrative of how that romance began.  That is more than understandable (probably I wrote something like that myself, many years ago) but when you start to read these by the hundreds they run together pretty quickly, and I expect that most faculty essentially mod out by that part of the statement of purpose.


Is consistent disregard for students' time "normal" in undergraduate research?

No, it's not normal. You deserve respect like everyone else. Canceling on you repeatedly at the last minute is disrespectful. "Personal reasons" can happen once in a while, sure. (Although at some point you have to wonder what's real and what's an excuse.) However, department meetings are never planned at the last minute. We are all extremely busy, and if you plan something last minute, the answer you will get from 50%+ of potential participants is "I can't, I teach/have another meeting planned/am not even in the country that day". Me and most of my colleagues try to adhere very strictly to already-planned meetings, and those who don't acquire very quickly a reputation of being unreliable. If a professor has scheduled a meeting with you and decides to go to a department meeting instead at the last minute, it's insulting.

There are at least two possible reasons for the professor's behavior.

The first is that he has abysmal organizational skills. This can happen. Talking about it can sometimes help, but you have to be careful about how you phrase this. It's possible that the professor does not even realize that canceling last minute is terrible for your own schedule; some people are just self-centered and have a lot of trouble putting themselves in another's shoes.
The second is that you are so low on the professor's priorities, and the professor values you so little, that he doesn't care about inflicting this kind of behavior on you. This is not the kind of person you want to work with. Being busy and senior is not an excuse for being an asshole. But you are now reaching the point where you have to choose your battles. Do you want to complain to the professor and risk retaliation? Do you want to switch advisors and also possibly face retaliation or bad will, or work on something that is less interesting to you? Etc. There is a huge power imbalance between an undergrad student and a professor, so unfortunately I have to advise you to tread carefully.

You can adopt palliative tactics such as the ones described in Buffy's answer. But overall, no, it's not acceptable for someone to do this to you, and in an ideal world you would not put up with it. But we don't live in an ideal world. Academia has a bigwig personality complex, and many (not the majority fortunately) believe that they live on a superior plane of existence, wayyy above commoners, students, and underlings.


Department policy possibly affecting inclusion and diversity

It's an interesting problem, and wanting a fairer representation is a noble goal. But the goal of fair representation does need to be balanced against another goal: giving students a good education. The first goal of having TAs is to help educate students, not to provide people a career stepping stone to the TAs.

  The problem arises when it comes to wanting to teach a second time. It seems like whatever metric is being used to decide who gets the job heavily favours a specific ethnic group. This is, the vast majority of students who get to teach a second time are from a specific ethnic group, while people from other less represented groups seldom seem to get a second chance.

There's a lot of uncertainty here. If you want to successfully challenge your institution on the facts, you need more facts.

If you go to them and say "you seem to hire a lot of X", they can just say "well it may seem like that to you but we don't recognize ourselves in that feeling". If you come and say "group X is represented as 20% of first term TAs and 70% of second term TAs", it's a lot harder to turn you away at the doorstep.

But make sure you get your ethnic classifications right. For example, a pale ginger guy from Argentina with Spanish as a first language, would you classify him as Caucasian or Latino?

The other thing you need to know is what metric they actually use. If you try to argue that their decision-making process is flawed without knowing how they actually make their decisions, you're not going to achieve much.

How are TAs evaluated? Professors are typically evaluated at least partially on feedback forms. But I don't often see specific TA feedback forms. Do other departments/universities do it differently (and do they have a different/fairer ethnic spread)? Can you point to a best practice that your institition could adopt?

The article linked by @PatriciaShanahan points out the value of blind auditions. Once feedback from students has been acquired, how is it processed? To find that out you're going to have to talk to some insiders in your institution. I would recommend finding some progressive-minded professors and asking them if they can explain to you how the internal process actually works. Not accusing them: just asking to explain.

  Clearly the department's argument for this is that these people get better teaching evaluations,

Sure.

  but in part this is an echo chamber resulting in the exclusion of members of other less represented ethnic groups in the student body.

Well, maybe. What if this ethnic group really has a property that gives them an edge in teaching? For example, they speak the local language better than other ethnic groups (such as foreign exchange students). If, as a student, I have to rate two TAs and one is easier to understand, and therefore I learn more from that TA than from the other one, is it really unfair that the first one gets a better evaluation?

  My (perhaps naive/biased/egotistical) conclusion is that the department's criteria is flawed and it should be modified in some way to reflect this in the future.

I think your conclusion is logically flawed. You don't like the outcome of the process, therefore you assume the process must be bad. But what if the process is okay, and the favored ethnic group really did have some advantage that makes them better TAs?

Are students better served by having the best TAs, or the fairest ethnic spread of TAs?

So yeah, your reasoning is noble, but naive. That said, a system which seems to produce ethnically biased outcomes should be viewed with suspicion. So you need to dig deeper into the causes, before you try to convince people to change it.

  Who should I talk about this first? I think the best idea is to talk with the person in charge of assigning the positions, who inherited the criteria from the previous person in the position.

Asking them is a possibility. But I think I'd start with a progressive-minded professor who'd been there for a couple of years already. The professor would have some idea of what happens behind the scenes, but not be as directly challenged, and might become interested themselves. Could result in you gaining an ally for your cause.

  How should I approach this person? I think this can be treated as a potential opportunity to improve the department, but I feel like I need to be careful on my approach so that no one feels threatened or accused of anything.

In the beginning I would focus on gaining information, not on insisting on change. You don't have strong enough evidence (yet). Ask how evaluations are done. Is there any broader analysis of evaluation results, that give you a picture of the ideal TA? For example, if students mention "good English" as an important criterion, you can look at your non-favored TAs and ask if there's a noticeable difference in their English.

Another question to ask is whether TAs receive any kind of training to prepare them for the job. Does the training match the evaluation criteria? Maybe the training doesn't contain something that already comes naturally to the favored ethnic group. So by evaluation time, they do fine on that criterion, but others struggle because nobody taught them.

  What should I expect? Let me be clear: I don't expect to get a teaching position since I'll be graduating soon, but I'd like this issue to stop and I'm willing to make some noise and bother some people if necessary.

That's going to depend on a number of factors, such as how progressive your institution is/wants to be, and what the reasons are that this ethnic group seems to be doing better than the rest, and on how diplomatic you are/whether you manage to find the right allies.

TL;DR -

You need more facts about ethnic representation. Numbers.
You need to know more about how the evaluation is done, what is it testing and how.
You need to find out why other ethnic groups are being evaluated worse. Look for causes, don't just complain about bad people with biases.
You need allies on the inside.
Remember that the institution can always say "our primary goal is to give our students the best education, so we prioritize having the best TAs over having the most diverse TAs". And they're not entirely wrong. You need to find out why more ethnically diverse TAs are being rated as "not the best".


What to do when paper is deemed in scope for the conference but not for the proceedings?

Should I formally submit the paper as-is. Would it be better to simply
  try to find a more appropriate place to publish? Or should I just
  consider it a lesson learned, forget about this paper, and move on to
  the next one.

In academia, you have to fight for papers you believe.  Reviewers can vary wildly in their assessments, and their assessments can be wrong.  Ultimately, if you feel that this is an appropriate place to publish, I think it's worth submitting it anyway and rolling the dice.  I have two caveats:

If possible, ask a third party in your field whom you respect about their opinion of the paper.
Think hard about why you think the paper belongs in the proceedings and, if possible, add a clear motivation to the text.

  Is there something I could have done up front to establish whether the
  paper was in scope or not? Perhaps in future it would be better to
  only submit to conferences where it's very clear that the paper is a
  good fit. This issue is likely to arise again for me, because my
  research is sort of at the boundary of two fields.

In general, you can write to people on the technical program committee of the conference (or the chair of that committee) with a brief explanation of your work and a request for an assessment of suitability.  It is important not to get discouraged from rejections ... they are common, sometimes for good reasons and other times for utterly stupid reasons.  The key is to learn what you can from the reviews, improve the paper, and resubmit where appropriate.


Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code

One of the reasons Science has been so successful is that scientists treat knowledge and tools as public goods. We don't hoard knowledge, but rather we write papers, share techniques, offer suggestions, etc. There are certainly cases in which sharing isn't beneficial, but these seem not to apply here. So of course you should share your computer program! You should share it with people you like, people you don't like, and people you don't even know.


Should I include this information in a cover letter for a journal submission?

The cover letter is indeed optional. In the cover letter you include:

What is done in the paper.
Why do you submit the paper to this journal (the journal published a paper to which your paper is related).
Possible referees.

Do not include info about who suggested what.


Paper submitted with repeated sentences in the introduction

Regarding the repeated words, most people would not notice the the repetition at all. Regarding the sentence, they might be confused for a second, check back, see it's written twice, and continue as if nothing had happened.

Most will add a short note to the review, among those of other typos, that the sentence "..." appears twice. Nothing to be worried about, this alone will never cause a rejection of even major revision.


What are the inputs and weights for US News grad program ranking?

The US News ranking algorithm is proprietary. They don't say what it is.
A few years ago some Reed College students attempted to reverse engineer the undergraduate program rankings.
See
https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/usnews-discrepancy.html
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/07/29/reed-students-challenge-us-news-formula


Becoming a Professor in a Developing Country after a PhD in the US: Feasibility and Challenges

There are two distinct circumstances that occur in regard to your question. Either A) the developing country is your home country (or a country that you once lived in) or B) it is a country you have not been extensively to. This will, I believe, affect the outcome. I'll try to answer for the two cases in my experience (and from what I have seen / heard from friends who went back to North Africa/Middle East/China)

Q1 : STEM Ph.D. from the US, especially if they arise from a good university or research group, are generally well seen outside of the US and, more specifically, in developing country or in China. As such, if there are position available in that country, when applying  your candidacy has high chances to be considered. However, for that, there has to be positions available. Some countries are really low on budget for academia and as such do not hire as many professors in research/teaching position, but mostly solely on teaching positions.  If a position is available, you have good chance if you know the custom (language, culture, etc.) of the country where you would like to work. However, position opportunities might be more rare.

Q2: I can only speak from experience of friends. However, what I have seen is that in some developing countries, professors at university have a much higher teaching workload than in the US, they have less funds and they have less opportunities to hire/pay international Ph.D. students. Therefore, it can greatly affect your capacity to do research because A) you have less time/money to dedicate to it and B) it's harder to find students.


Is it appropriate to email a professor saying you enjoyed their class, after doing well in it?

As my experience of being a TA for multiple courses with various profs, such personal gestures of appreciation are welcomed by the professors. I have actually heard professors refer to the email as something that "made their day". As long as you don't refer to your grades, I don't see a reason why someone would misjudge your intentions, especially after the course has finished.


Withdrawing my application for a research fellowship when getting a job elsewhere

It is customary to withdraw your application(s) as soon as you have accepted a post elsewhere. By doing so you increase the chances of fellow applicants to be shortlisted / admitted to the next stage.  Also, non-attendances and late withdrawals create a considerable mess at the interview stage, and it is better not to annoy your prospective colleagues, with some of which you may need to collaborate in future.

Actually, prompt communication is typically a win-win situation, and unnecessary delays in communication usually give nothing good to anyone (despite maybe some illusion of control).


Easy proof of a big conjecture based on possibly faulty paper – what to do?

It seems that you have found an easy one-page proof of a very interesting result along the following lines:

  Theorem 1. The results of Papers A, B, C imply Conjecture BIG. Therefore if those papers are correct, then Conjecture BIG is true.

(In the rest of the answer I will assume that your proof is correct since you said it is short and was looked at by experts, but to the extent that you still have doubts, it's obviously advisable to very thoroughly vet the correctness of the proof by going over it yourself and showing it to more people with the relevant expertise.)

Now, normally one would go directly from here to the statement that you've proved Conjecture BIG, but the twist here is that Paper A is complicated and has missing details (hmm, never seen that before...) so you are doubting whether it is correct and are reluctant to declare yourself to have proved Conjecture BIG. However, it's worth pointing out that there's already quite some cause for excitement, since you have already proved the very interesting fact that

  Theorem 2. Either Paper A is incorrect, or Conjecture BIG is true.

Given that Conjecture BIG is, well, big, and Paper A is a published paper, it seems almost certain that this is already a publishable result, and in any event (even if you don't care about publishing) one that the scientific community will be very interested in. Precisely how exciting it is depends of course on whether you can go even further and figure out which of the two scenarios applies, and if so, what you discover, and, in the event that you discover that it is the first scenario (Paper A is incorrect), whether you are able to correct the results of the paper by completing the missing details or by correcting whatever errors it contains.

Now let's discuss what you should do. I see three main options for how to proceed:

You can write up Theorem 2 and its easy proof (along with an explanation of why you are formulating it in such a way rather than simply saying you've proved Conjecture BIG), put it on the arXiv, then submit it to a journal, and let others take it from there.
You can wait before publishing your findings and first of all spend time studying Paper A so that you understand it well enough to determine whether it is correct. While doing so you will also attempt to fill in any missing details. Once you have determined whether the paper is correct, and (if it's not correct) either managed to correct it (by filling in the gaps and/or correcting erroneous reasoning) or failed to correct it, or convinced yourself (e.g. by finding a counterexample) that its results, not just its proofs, are actually false, you will then be in a position to write a paper that contains a proof of one of the following results:

  Theorem 2 (same formulation as above - in the event that your study of Paper A didn't lead you to any meaningful conclusion)

  Theorem 3. One of the results of Paper A is false (because its proof is incorrect, and you have proved that the result is also incorrect).

  Theorem 3'. Conjecture BIG is true (because you have ascertained that Paper A is correct and your initial doubts were misplaced).

  Theorem 3''. Conjecture BIG is true (because Paper A is essentially correct, but has some missing details you've managed to fill in).

  Theorem 3'''. Conjecture BIG is true (because the result of Paper A is correct, although the proof in the original paper has an error in it, which you have managed to correct).

A variant of option 2 above is to recruit professional help in studying Paper A, either privately by approaching someone you know who may be interested in becoming a collaborator, or publicly, for example by posting your thoughts on the paper on MathOverflow.

As for which of these options is the best one, that depends on how difficult it would be for you to try to pursue options 2 and 3, and whether you want to maximize the amount of fame/glory/credit you get from this discovery. The point is that each of Theorems 3, 3', 3'', and 3''' would be a stronger and more interesting result than theorem 2, so if you prove them your discovery would make a bigger splash, and conversely, if you leave them for someone else you are giving up a potentially very useful opportunity for professional credit and possibly (if this interests you) career advancement.

Thus, if you want to publicize your discovery with the least amount of effort and in the least amount of time and don't care about maximizing the credit you get from it, you should pursue option 1. If you are willing to take the time and trouble to look more in depth into Paper A, you should pursue options 2 or 3, with option 3 being a better approach if Paper A is technically too complicated for you to study by yourself. One additional concern in that case is the issue of priority, so if you are worried that someone else may discover your one-page proof while you are busy studying Paper A, you should make sure to document your discovery including relevant dates, show it to a few trusted people, and limit the time you are working on this to a reasonable amount of time (say, no more than 3–6 months).

I should add finally that you have no ethical obligation to determine whether the results of Paper A are correct (emailing the author to ask them their thoughts is certainly a nice thing to do, but you said in the comments that you tried that already and it hasn't led you anywhere). So from an ethical point of view, any of the options I outlined above is completely acceptable.


How to properly cite/include meeting discussion in a doctoral thesis?

Look up the citation rules for "personal communication" for whatever reference style you are using. This would include meetings etc.


If I have a PhD in computer science, could I contribute to philosophical outlets or would I need a philosophy PhD to do that?

You don't need even one doctorate to contribute to any field. Publications accept or reject papers based on the papers not the "qualifications" of the authors.
Just write your papers and submit them. Of course you might also work to develop some collaborative relationships with philosophers who can also give you advice on things.
And at any large (and some small) universities, you can just wander over to the philosophy department, find their coffee lounge, and start up a conversation.
Doing actual research in philosophy, however, probably requires a somewhat different skill set than in CS, but you can develop that.
And don't confuse Opinion with Philosophy. In any field, you need a basis for what you write for it to be publishable.


Statement about previous doctorate applications

Don't lie. But make sure you understand what exactly they are asking.

Most likely, they are concerned that you might already have submitted a thesis elsewhere that was rejected. Of course, universities don't want you to go "university shopping", submitting your thesis over and over until it gets accepted somewhere, so you will need to sign a declaration when you submit your thesis that it has not been submitted elsewhere. (This may be helpful.) I very much recommend that you don't lie here. If you do double-submit a thesis and this becomes known, you will lose your Ph.D. at the very least.

However, they most likely don't care whether you have applied and been rejected from other doctoral programs.

So: make sure you understand what exactly they are asking. If you are unsure (and German official documents can be confusing and intimidating), ask them.


Bad GRE subject test scores in Brit/Am Lit---any chance at PhD admissions to an English Lit program?

The OP is asking about the GRE subject test in English, not the GRE general exam. The verbal score for the general exam is arguably relevant, and I can say for certain that the subject test score is definitely important.

This question was asked a year ago as I write this, but for those who see it in the future, I would recommend using a test prep book or similar to do some crash studying for the subject test. I took it twice, myself. The first time, with no such preparation, I got a 530. The second time, after reading the Princeton Review book, I scored a 680 (above the 90% mark, in percentile terms, which is more important than raw score). Both scores were reported to the schools I applied to. Someone at the one I ended up going to told me they were impressed by how quickly I was able to increase my score. I was impressed by how little this test must actually mean if I could just flip through a study guide and practically nail it. This was in 2001, by the way. Things may have changed. But I doubt much.

I should add that I was, in fact, an English major. But I didn't have broad exposure to all periods and studied very little theory as an undergrad, so I was in the dark in that respect. The Princeton Review guide was very good at getting me up to speed on material likely to be on the test (as well as offering a useful test-taking philosophy). It's better and more efficient than reading the entire Norton Anthology, that's for sure.

You have to realize that the top programs in English receive in excess of 300 applications a year, maybe more, for annual classes of a dozen or so students. To say that the GRE isn't important is suggesting that overworked members of admissions committees aren't looking for any excuse to trim the pile, which in fact they are. Everything is important.


PhD in GIS after Bachelor Degree in Computer Science

When you go to a mainly geographic department, you will have to study courses for projections, spatial databases, geo-servers and mapping frameworks, which you already probably know through your job. Geographic departments have people without a programming background and therefore these people have to be trained almost from scratch, so they can do this type of research. On the other hand, many of these departments have some relatively young professors with a CS background who are really looking forward to work with CS people like you (instead of geographers) to mainly progress their research. In that sense, I am sure you can be accepted at such a program but prepare to have to take courses on things you are already familiar with.

On the other hand there are many "pure" CS professors, working on "pure" CS departments, who also do GIS related research. If you look at more CS focused GIS conferences, like ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS you will find many papers by mainly CS people on GIS related subjects. So, you can search for possible advisors there, by looking at the papers that get published in such venues in the last 2-3 years. If you find some papers that deal with subjects that you are interested in, you can find out in what universities the authors work, perhaps contact them (advice on how to approach potential advisors is scattered everywhere on this site) and take it from there. It does not always matter the "title" of the PHD (if it says GIS or not) but IHMO it is more important to work with people that do interesting things, close to your interests. So, do not exclude the possibility to do GIS research on a pure CS department.


Is it ethical to ask a graduate student to help me with my paid external research?

Before anything else, you need to be certain about the legal ground on which you stand:

Is the external work that you are doing bound by any sort of non-disclosure agreement or other agreement to which your interactions with the student would be subject?
Do the university's terms of employment for the student state anything that whether a student can work externally and under what conditions?

If it's clear from both sides, then if the student will be doing a non-trivial amount of consulting work, they should get paid just like you are getting paid.  Almost certainly, they should get paid by the company you are paid by, and not by you (unless you are doing your own work as an LLC or some such entity).  A good litmus test is: would I be doing this work for free?  Clearly, you aren't.

If it were five minutes of work, that might be different.  But if it's complex enough that you are struggling with it, it's likely to take hours, maybe many hours, and could impact your students progress in classes or other research projects.  In that case, pay is clearly deserved.


If you wrote the original Acknowledgement page, and you still feel the same way about the help you acknowledged, then I believe that it is perfectly appropriate to use the same text. You are re-expressing sentiments that you had in 1997, using your own words. It is perfectly ethical to use them.

Beyond that, though, this would be a great opportunity to update the acknowledgements. "When I first developed the work in this volume, I was indebted to the following people ... ¶ Since then I have further benefited from ..."

Your decision to publish now, was it informed by your professional experience? Has your initial vision evolved since then, thanks to a stimulating work environment? Did anyone encourage you particularly to publish the manuscript?


Is the reputation/prestige of the scientific journals where you published a paper really important?

I can say for sure that the prestige of a journal can help you, particularly if you are a young academic!

I was applying for a position at a university several years ago and ended up being the second-choice candidate. Even though my publication record was larger than the other candidate's, and I had been publishing in good journals such as Journal of Physical Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Physics and Physical Review—all of them highly reputable journals in their individual fields, I lost out to someone who had published several papers in Nature. (I learned this after the fact from one of the members of the search committee.)

So, yes, publishing in good journals is very important when you're starting out.


Combinatorics or Linear Algebra for Computer Science/Applied Mathematics Degree?

I'd go for "Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory" as you'll need that if you ever need to do any machine learning or computer graphics, both of which are increasingly common "tools" for modern software systems.

Learning a bit about graphs too wouldn't hurt.


Is Publons a reliable reference to show peer-review experience in a faculty application?

Then, I felt it was better if I did not mention Publons at all (it
  would look more normal). Was it a problem of my interviewer OR it is
  not common to include a peer-review profile in the application?

I have seen a number of people (myself included) include a peer-review profile. In my case, it simply lists the journals I have reviewed for. At this point, it's actually more the list of journals I frequently review for.

I think the issue is more with Publons - in my experience, there hasn't really been a strong need for tracking credits the way they want, and I found it was more hassle than it was worth to keep it up-to-date (as if you have a Publons profile and highlight it, the implication is that it's accurate).

Essentially, I trust what you've told me. Because specific reviews, rather than the abstract concept of being an active reviewer, isn't really much of a consideration for me. It's a nice thing, and I appreciate seeing it mentioned as I do consider it a professional obligation, but Publons inherently wants there to be a quantitative impact based on volume and I...simply can't be bothered.


What are some altruistic reasons for submitting to top-tier journals/conferences?

Wrzlprmft's good answer hints at this, but I want to make it explicit:

If you are doing beneficial research, your self-interest and the interests of beneficiaries of your research are aligned.

If your work is important, then the visibility of your work and your own career success benefit others, since they maximize the impact of your research and ensure that you will have resources and freedom to do the best work going forward.

Ambition is neither good nor bad.  What matters is: to what end is your ambition directed?

I agree that simply getting recognition, as an end in itself, is not a worthy goal.  But if you are in your career in order to make a difference in the world with the research you conduct, then trying to advance your own career to achieve that goal is worthwhile (and necessary).

What about submission to top journals specifically?

There are pros and cons of aiming for the top, in terms of maximizing the impact of the work.  The pros are well covered in other answers, but in summary, the main ones are:

Wider visibility.
Better basis on which to build your own future work.
Higher review standards.

However, there are also downsides to aiming high:

Delay in publication.  If you aim for a top journal, and then try a sequence of high impact journals until you find one that accepts it, this can delay publication by many months.  Meanwhile, your work is not being read by anyone and not having an impact.  And you can't apply for further funding based on the work until it is out there.
Perhaps not the best use of your time.  Is it a good use of your time to endlessly revise a paper and tweak your analysis in response to reviewer suggestions?  Or would it be better to get on to the next research question?
Papers may be less accessible than if published as open access.  Some top journals are not open access, and publishing in a lower-impact (but open access) journal may increase the accessibility of your work.

Ultimately, you have to weight the costs versus the benefits, particularly in light of the likelihood that your work will be accepted at a top journal.  Personally, I don't like the all-too-frequent practice of starting at the top journal and working downward, even if the paper has little chance of success.  I think this is a big waste of time and resources.  But for a result that is really noteworthy, it may be worth submitting to high-impact journals (not just for your sake, but to maximize the benefit of the work).


What date goes on your hardbound PhD thesis?

This is the kind of question which is best answered with actual evidence. Many American universities have their thesis formatting rules online, and you can find them with relatively little effort. British Universities (Oxford and Cambridge, in particular) often seem not to give as detailed rules. From these examples, it is clear that the rules for which date is used depends on the university.

Harvard University:  "[Month and year of the submission of the completed dissertation to the department, division, or committee and Dissertation Acceptance Certificate was signed]",
MIT: "the date the degree(s) will be conferred (June, September, or February only)",
Stanford University: "(Date should reflect month and year of submission to the Office of the University Registrar.)"
University of Michigan: "year of degree conferral not year that dissertation was finished" (they don't want a month).
University College London: no date seems to be required on the thesis (none is mentioned in the guidelines, and there are theses without dates in their archive).
University of Edinburgh: "Year of presentation.
In the case of a thesis which is resubmitted, the year in which the
thesis is resubmitted should be shown as the year of presentation." What do they mean by "year of presentation"? From their website: "At some point between submission of your thesis and the viva, you are encouraged to give a final presentation of your work to the School, often via a research group seminar series."
University of Leeds: "the year of submission
for examination (Or resubmission where the thesis is submitted following re-examination after referral)."


How to counteract poor academic instruction and demanding workload at German university?

There is already an answer for your question on how to change the situation. I add another to your other question on how to improve your strategies in dealing with it. My view is from teaching mathematics in Germany, so its not clear if it applies to other fields as well.

What you describe as "very poor teaching quality" does not strike me as "objectively poor". You describe short "classroom teaching" and "heavy mandatory homework". I may go as far and say that this is not a bug but a feature. It is on purpose. German universities generally work like this in that "teaching" does not happen so much (few hours per course per week), and "learning" happens mostly outside the classroom. Students are considered adults and they are suppose to plan their time and allocate enough time to learn the subject.

For example, when I teach mathematics, the whole "module" usually consists of four parts:

The lecture. There I am at the blackboard and present things. I explain definitions, state theorem, put them in context, prove them and provide some examples. That I "spend time at the blackboard actually showing how a problem is being solved visually step by step" usually does not happen. I work through examples that may be similar to homework questions but this is slightly different. This is about 2 to 4 hours a week.
Self-study. The students do this on their own, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups (which I encourage). This happens whenever the students want to. The students are supposed to work through the lecture, check if they got everything right and probably fill in some details. This is also about 2 to 4 hours per week but this varies individually.
Homework. I give problems for homework. The students have to learn to use mathematics and not only know it. The problems vary from "standard calculation" to "tricky calculation" to "simple application of a definition" to "tricky proof". The student can do homework whenever they want, they can ask me or a TA basically any time if they have questions or get stuck but they have to hand it in on time. This should take roughly 4 to 8 hours a week and is the largest chunk.
"Exercise classes". Here a TA works work with the students on the homework. Students present what they have, can ask questions, get additional explanations. This is about 2 hours a week.

You see, a small lecture of 4 hours a week will indeed mean about 18 hours work per week. Also, all four part serve their own purpose: In the lecture students shall learn the content and see how the theory in built up. In their self study they strengthen their understanding and "learn to learn mathematics on their own". In the homework they learn mathematical skills, i.e. to actually use mathematics to do something. Also they learn to write down mathematics. In the exercise classes they learn to communicate mathematics (orally) and also to present mathematics.

The lecture is the only place where an instructor has the lead. In the other parts the students are responsible for their learning. Not everybody can do this. Some people fail because than are not able to plan their time, do not have the discipline to work on their own or just don't manage to come to office hours to ask questions.

So in short: I as the lecturer are responsible for good teaching but the students themselves are responsible for their learning. That's sometime tough the realize but once you do, it may really help.

Problems start when the lecturer does not take his responsibility for good teaching serious, does not answer questions, give bad lectures…

So how to deal with this: Take the responsibility for your own learning. Demand good teaching but not expect that the lecturer will show you how to do your homework. Do not come to office hours and say "I have no clue where to start" but ask "I am stuck at this point. I tried this and that but I still stuck. I can make this technique work."


Does tier 1 or tier 2 depend on hardness of problem?

Is it true that publishing anything in theory in tier 2 ( let's say ) is equivalent to publishing something in tier 1 in application side?

Answer: No. It is not true.

I assume that you mean to say "Theory" means "Theoretical Computer Science" that includes areas such as Automata Theory, Algoriths, Computational Complexity, Learning Theory. And, "application side" meaning to "some areas that uses concepts" such as Machine Learning, Computer Vision etc.

Such a comparison is not possible. And, as far as I know, there is no venue or organization that compare two people from two different research fields compare on the aspect of their publishing venue. That would be highly ambiguous.

These conferences are meant for their own fields. For example, application side of Computer Science such as Machine Learning or Neural Processing have their Tier-1 conferences such as ICML, NIPS etc. For Theoretical Computer Science, we have ICALP, SODA, MFCS.