Is my irrelevant field of work experience a negative when applying for higher studies?

If you are applying to schools in Germany, your work experience is largely irrelevant whether or not it is in the discipline you want to study at the master's level. This is because the prerequisites for master's study at German universities is generally an equivalent bachelor's degree at the undergraduate level. However, if your bachelor's degree was not completed at a German university, you will have to petition to have your degree recognized as "equivalent" before being allowed to enroll.

There are some exceptions for "international" programs and special master's programs that do not require a specific degree program but their requirements and procedures must be investigated on a case-by-case basis.


Motivation letter for tenure track position

The purpose is rather to convince them why you would accecpt it and that you are the right candidate for exactly this position offered (research, teaching) and that you have the right mindset for tenure, a professorship with its possibilities and duties and that you will become a successful and happy professor at that place in the netherlands (especially if you were not born in the netherlands and are no native speaker).

Therefore I would outline and epxlain:

why you apply for exactly this position (goals (though this should be described in detail in the research statement), chances and perspectives, interdisciplinary local collaborations with colleagues and industry you see, link to your previous work)
what is your philosophy of teaching, research, team work (international corpus of students at the local university, furthering female researchers,...)
do you plan to engage in administrative work at the university, improving the strategy of the university
what do you like about this place, local culture
(what is your marital-status (not mandatory), language skill)

The last point should be covered in your CV. But based on your CV no one can judge your motivation for exactly this position! So don't underestimate the importance of the motivation letter. The lenght of this letter depends a bit on the number of applicants and you should know this number roughly and what the attention span for the letters will be. Of course it should be longer than a recommendation letter.

A cover letter is obligatory and always added for applicaton to academic positions from PhD up to tenure. A motivation letter must show and deliver arguments why apart from other candidates with similar publication record, grades, qualification you are the best match for this position.


Advancement to Candidacy, PhD in Computer Science

The only goal of the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to convince the committee that you deserve to pass the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam.  The passing criteria differ, sometimes radically, from one university to the next, from department to the next, from one research area to the next, and even from one committee member to the next.  It's the academic equivalent of Calvinball, only you don't get to make up the rules.  Do not question the mask.

The only way to determine how to prepare for the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to ask your committee members directly.  Individually.  In person.  I strongly recommend scheduling a one-on-one meeting with each committee member at least a month in advance of the actual exam.

Same goes for the thesis defense.


Sending pre-application e-mail to two professors who are close friends but at different universities

There is no issue here. You're not going to burning any bridges or make anyone upset if you talk to other professors. Your job right now is to find the best university that will take you. The professors at these universities understand that. If they don't, you don't want to work with them.

Personal story time: When I was applying to grad school, I ended up chatting with a husband and wife who were professors at different universities. They had different last names and didn't let on they were married so I didn't find out until another professor told me. I thought it was hilarious and they didn't care that their spouse was also trying to recruit me.


Would you consider a very short, non-standard thesis that lacks a research questions, a thesis?

You're comparing PhD theses and Master's theses. They are nothing alike and you shouldn't expect a Master's thesis to be on the level of a PhD thesis. At least where I'm from, and since you mention math I'll say it's in math, a Master's thesis has no requirement for originality or length. I've seen students graduate with theses 30 pages long. There does not need to be a research question in them, it's essentially an exercise in writing something in an academic style about current research.

You're also comparing science with humanities (here, fine arts). Again, nothing alike. I'm a scientist so I have no idea what the expectations are in the humanities, but again, I wouldn't expect them to be even remotely similar to my expectations for a scientific Master's thesis. My layman's impression is that in the humanities the author's personal style and ideas count for much more than general established standards of form and structure. Things are much less uniform. I am vaguely aware of how things work in architecture and this certainly seems to be the case there.

The college found the thesis good enough to award the degree, apparently. Calling the thesis a "hoax" is more than criticism of your acquaintance's work, it's an insult. You can make up your mind about the quality of the college's degrees if you want, but without being particularly knowledgeable about general requirements of master's theses in fine arts, this would not be a very well informed opinion.


Can someone change PhD topic within a department after admission?

There might be exceptions, but generally in the US it is possible to change, though doing so might cost you time. The exceptions would be if you were being paid by a particular group (through a grant, say) and then, while it would still be possible, you would have to arrange funding.
But, for the most part, you are accepted into a department, not a specific group within it and you can probably change within that department. You would need to find an advisor to accept you, of course.
Most students start doctoral studies with only a BS/BA and little immediate research focus.


Impact of type of institution (public vs. private) on long-term tenure track career perspectives

It is often held that the strongest determinant for career is the strength of a university in one's particular sub-field.  We might then reasonably guess that we can coarsely evaluate the strength of "public" vs. "private" by comparing the ranking of graduate schools (bearing in mind, of course, all the well-known problems with rankings).

Considering a test case then, the current top 10 American engineering grad schools, according to US News, are:

Private: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, USC
Public: Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Purdue, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, UT Austin

Yes, that's 11 schools in the top 10, because they list ties in their rankings.  The breakdown appears remarkably balanced, and scanning further down the list it appears to stay reasonably balanced.  Amongst elite universities, then, it appears that public vs. private makes little difference in this case, and is likely to make little difference in others either.


Should I discourage using messaging apps for research group communication?

No. If you are worried about your colleagues being able to delete the messages from Facebook / Whatsapp, how do you cope with them calling each other? Or worse: actually talking, walking to their office and just copying files?

I'm all in favor of making communication easier, as insufficient communication between researchers is wasting millions of hours every year. But it should be with the goal of facilitating communication, you'll never get an environment that's completely traceable. That a wiki will have some kind of versioning or history will be an additional benefit, not a reason to use a wiki.

And besides, who's going to check all that communication? Scientific literature is full of fraud and misconduct that's in plain sight and not corrected. Errors in literature are there because people do not care and have no time, not because they lack the forensic tools.


Proper etiquette for withdrawing from an undergraduate research lab?

Just tell them, politely and with appreciation for what they've offered you. Sooner rather than later, so that they can plan for your departure and maybe have you prepare a useful contribution in your remaining time there - wrap up whatever you've been doing, document your work, train another student to continue your project, or whatever else they need.

It is understood that students are balancing a lot of competing interests and opportunities; as long as you handle yourself professionally (give plenty of notice, remain engaged and work hard during your remaining time there even though you know you won't continue, etc.), there is nothing to feel bad about.


Proper way to include student evaluations for job application?

I've been involved in three searches over the last three years.  We typically only request teaching evaluations from candidates who've made our short list for phone/skype interviews since it generates an immense number of pages of material to review.  We want a .pdf of all of your teaching evaluations.

If it becomes apparent that you've edited or selected evaluations the people reading them will have good reason to discount what you sent them.  The only way to avoid this is to include all of your evaluations for every course that you've taught (or for more experienced folks all evaluations from the past three years or some similar period.)

You should take whatever was given to you by your institution, and convert it to .pdf format.  Don't transform it in any other way.


Honestly, you just have to do the old Google search and linkedin trawl for everything you can think of. It's never easy, and there aren't any shortcuts.

I'd suggest asking around if you could volunteer your time with a smallish research organisation that fits nominally into your plans. It might be a local organisation, but you can always look abroad for centres that might value your native language skills.

It doesn't matter if you're just proofreading some of their work or helping sort files - it'll help get your foot in the door for future positions. More than that, most places will give you more responsibility as soon as they see you're trust worthy.

Lastly, when applying, you must always, always apply personally, and not with a blanket email. This isn't just about changing a few lines - take time to read about their research/organisation and say specifically what you can do to help. Talk about a particular project they're doing, and discuss how it aligns to your plans.


Where can one find jobs where companies hire mathematicians where they can do (not necessarily mainstream) research?

Industrial jobs are announced on different basis than academic ones. Typically, there is no a position to be filled. Rather (larger companies) are hiring on semi-continuous basis, and assign people to groups internally.

Sometimes there are more research-oriented openings, for example Facebook: Data Scientist, Product Science. Just bear in mind it is mostly very applied science, and in fields like Machine Learning, Statistics, maybe some Graph Theory or Cryptography.

So look at big companies (smaller companies may not have such specialized positions or money to invest in long-term development) in technology (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, ...) and their openings. When it comes to direct positions, usually you can choose only after interviews (you rarely see research positions being on the front page).

If it is nice research, or building webpages in a disguise, the only way is to ask people working at the company. Or look at CVs of your colleagues in your field who did internships in these companies (especially ones that you know are pure mathematicians or computer scientists).


When is it appropriate for a PhD student to discuss personal problems affecting his productivity with his advisor?

As soon as possible. Problems are made to be transcended, not pushed over time. You already said your adviser is a cool guy, right? Go ahead and talk with him, say the truth.

It's a long said term, even cliche sometimes, but the first step to change is recognizing that you have a problem. You already recognized you have it, so now it's time to fix it. Don't be afraid of what he'll think about you, what really matters is that it's true. If he can't understand your situation, then he doesn't really know how to be a adviser.

Also, you're a student, you're there to learn. Better learn now where you can be mistaken with no serious consequences, then out there, where your problem can really damage you financially and/or much more emotionally, since people don't know how to handle with other people's problems, or know and just don't care.


How can I keep my scholarship when I am in danger of failing to meet GPA requirements?

First: Go talk to someone about this. Your advisor would be a good start. They will know the policies of your university better than us.

Second: You may be able to replace those grades by repeating the courses (you obviously need to anyway), in which case your GPA could potentially be 4.0 by the end of your next semester. This is how it worked at my undergrad but you'll have to check the policy at your university.


does pursuing a research career in artificial intelligence requires deep understanding of higher mathematics?

I believe it depends on the sort of research you want to do.

If your goal is to better understand machine learning models, then you'd benefit from a solid mathematics background. Mathematics is necessary to understand how models work, intuit potential improvements, and prove various properties about the models. Researchers that rely on a foundational understanding of machine learning models are typically trying to push the state of the art regarding existing problems; they want to solve problems more efficiently, with more accuracy, with less data, with more explainability, etc., than the current best solutions.

If your goal is to apply existing models to solve novel problems, then it won't be as necessary for you to have a strong math background. It will be more important for you to have a general understanding of how different models work and when you'd pick one over another. Researchers that don't rely on mathematics as heavily will often attempt to push our understanding of what machines are capable of, rather than trying to make the machine better at a known problem.

This is my understanding from my experiences in the field. Hopefully it helps.


Can a scientist meaningfully be an author of more than 1000 papers?

It seems like a single person could make a meaningful contribution to 1000 papers. Assuming 40 years of high publishing productivity (35-75 years old), 1000 papers requires 2 a month. With an 80 percent time commitment on a 50 hour work week, that is 80 hours of contribution per paper. I think 80 hours is enough time to make a contribution to a paper worthy of authorship. Simply discounting papers because someone has published a lot seems unfair.


Does a PhD student get paid without a TA/RA job?

Can a PhD student be paid simply for doing research?

Yes, in the US, this is often called "being on fellowship," when the research is your own, and an "RAship" if you are paid to work on another project at a professor's discretion. Fellowships are often prominent national opportunities, but can be funded locally by the university, college, or department.

If yes, is it applicable right from the beginning?

This is entirely dependent on what the program offers you. It may be, it might not be. Some departments offer first-year fellowships so that you can get settled in your program.


What are potential hassles of publishing papers with family name preceding given name?

family names precede given names in Eastern Asian culture

... and in Hungarian, and possibly some other languages.

  As an Eastern Asian who just started my career in academia, I am seriously considering publishing my future papers under Li Lingfeng instead of Lingfeng Li (just an example).

I am not sure this is possible: I have come across various paper styleguides that explicitly requested the given name to come before the surname (or, equivalently, to list the given name first, but then add a comma, to indicate the "original" order of name parts has been changed). For example:

Springer says: Chinese authors should write their given names in front of their surnames, i.e. Linfeng Li
Nature says: Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names., i.e. Li, L.
Elsevier says, at least for some of its journals: Author names should be in Western format, with family names (surnames) last., i.e. Linfeng Li

Now, if you switch the order based upon whether adherence to a specific order is required, this can easily create more confusion than always going with the given name - surname order.

  I don't think nowadays Westerners will have problems identifying my family name is actually Li. I guess they are already familiar with this name format, given that in mainstream news (such as BBC or CNN), Chinese names always appear in its original form, e.g., Mao Zedong rather than Zedong Mao?

While BBC and CNN might do so, there are many news outlets that are "mainstream" in their respective countries or language areas. Are you sure they all follow this convention?

In any case, I am not convinced this is evident at all to a "Western" audience. I wouldn't be surprised if quite some people interpreted a mention of "Mao Zedong" to mean that "Mao" is the given name and "Zedong" is the surname, thus remaining oblivious to the (from their point of view) "unusual" ordering and getting the name wrong.

  Citation Li et al., 2016 is way less distinguishable than Lingfeng et al., 2016. It's every researcher's dream to get famous. I think this at least helps clear some ambiguity?

I am not sure about famous as such (which somewhat implies a general audience), but let's say most researchers would wish for their name to be known in their community and associated with certain findings.

While I agree with the issue you outline, my understanding is that you use the surname in citations, no matter in which position it is shown. So, the citation for a paper by "Li Linfeng" would still be "Li et al., 2016". (And then, some might not recognize the ordering and indeed cite "Linfeng et al., 2016", thereby creating confusion again).

To conclude, I fully agree with the problems you outline1, and I do think this is a problem that to date does not yet have a satisfactory solution in the academic publishing world. However, just using the surname - given name ordering as an individual will probably just create new problems rather than making everything nice and tidy.

1: with the restriction that I find terms like Asian and Westerners overly generalizing in this context. As mentioned above, there are also Western cultures with the surname - given name ordering, and also, while many Chinese surnames may allow for relatively little distinction, I am not sure the same can be said about Thai surnames, for instance.


When and how often is an associate editor not starting review process?

I'll give you my perspective as an co-Editor-in-Chief and previously an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (ACM TOMS):

As Editor-in-Chief, I take a brief look at each paper and decide whether it even makes sense to move forward with it. I would say that between 10 and 20% of the papers are already filtered out at this stage: They are not within scope of the journal, or are obviously not at the level we expect -- we get our fair share of submissions from second and third world countries (and some from first world countries) that are at the level of semester projects for advanced graduates.
As Editor-in-Chief, many submissions I get are not within my research area. The ones already filtered out above are obviously not acceptable, but then there are many that I suspect are not good enough, but where I don't know the area well enough to make the call. These get handed on to the Associate Editors, often with a note that they should take a look whether I'm right or wrong in suspecting that the paper does not meet our criteria.
As Associate Editor (before I became EiC), I then reject another ~15% or so based on my subject area knowledge.

So I suspect that for this journal -- a fairly reputable one with one of the highest impact factors as far as math journals go --, about 1/4 of the papers get rejected without being sent out to review. Of course, then another 1/3 to 1/2 or so of the rest get rejected after review.


I got a way worse grade than my classmates for equal performance. What should I do?

Easy answer:  Go talk to your professor at office hours.  You should escalate to your department chair or the dean only after you've tried in good faith and failed to resolve the problem directly with your instructor.  Don't escalate unless it's genuinely serious.

Try to be open-minded toward the possibility that there were deficiencies in your work that you may not have spotted that explain why your grade was lower than you think it should be.  Your fellow students' opinions are not reliable indicators of anything nor is it helpful to cite their complaints or opinions as justification for yours.  Go with the expectation you will learn something, not with the sole goal of getting more points.


What to do when your research interest changes to a new topic half way into your PHD?

First, I've yet to meet a single PhD candidate that actually did what he proposed in his research plan in the first place. Unless he entered for some particular project (and still)

Is not uncommon to look for different topics and think that it may suit you better, and in all fairness, you should be doing something you like, not some topic other person imposed on you.

Now, switching topics, specially if they are unrelated, will have the consequence of delaying your PhD graduation considerably. I switched topics on my PhD 2 year, but I mostly changed the application, while the most fundamental part (in my case, it was the math) was pretty much the same, so I got to use most of the foundations I learned over the first couple of years.

I hope it helps.


Msc Thesis: Drowning in knowledge and ideas, whilst my supervisor is not answering my emails

You don't have to arrange a face-to-face meeting to meet your advisor face-to-face. Just go to his office when he's in and knock. Start with "Are you free?" If he says yes, you're gold. If he says no, ask him when you can come back.

It might sound pushy, but if you're not making progress at all, you're wasting time. Your time may not be as precious as his time, but it's still precious. Don't rely on email; arrange a meeting.


University subscribed its entire community for a mailing list which is impossible to unsubscribe from

It's normal for universities to require all staff and all students to be on a mailing list.  This is how university leadership attempts to communicate what it is doing to everyone.
It would be odd if alumni cannot unsubscribe.
I think you will find the university is actually sending emails to email accounts it owns.  There will be no regulations restricting that.


Taking year off after PhD and focus on research? Does it look bad?

This sounds like an incredibly poor decision to me:

the job market in the humanities is very bad, even compared to the rest of academia, and very "lumpy."  There are relatively few jobs, and they tend to have fairly specific concentrations.  You are taking a huge risk by passing up a year of chances to apply; the set of jobs in your specialty, even the set of cities where jobs in your specialty are available, will likely be totally different next year.  The opportunity cost is enormous.
It will look bad on your CV.  Some people will just find it an amusing eccentricity, but many people will not really believe your unemployment was voluntary, and some may wonder what sort of person they'd be hiring into their department (most academic departments feel they have enough odd characters as is).    Discussing the matter will just emphasize that you feel like teaching and service are a burden, which doesn't make you sound so appealing as a colleague.
There's a much better solution!  Get a job (if you are so lucky), and find some excuse to take an unpaid leave. I'm sure attitudes about this vary from department to department; in my field (mathematics) this would be very easy to do, and indeed in many cases you could arrange a visit somewhere that might pay some of your expenses.  I don't think this is the same in every field, but it's still surely much better to be in a position first, rather than waiting.


Startup funds and lab space when leaving tenure-track faculty position

I left my former R1 for another university last year. Like you, I had research funds and two labs. I'm in the social sciences so your mileage may vary.

I spent down my research funds as much as possible. In the last months, I asked all my grad students what books and equipment they wanted and bought them whatever they needed. I tried to reimburse their conference travel where I could.  I'm pleased that I left with just a small balance remaining.

I did not give instructions to the disposal of my labs. They both reverted back to the department which I'm sure has its own plans, but I thought it best for my own mental health not to try to dictate what would happen to them -- and I haven't inquired since I left. That path would just lead to frustration and tears. But I was in full control of the lab until the very last day they were in operation.

If you're a PI on a grant, you could ask the agency either to: 1) let you transfer to the new university; 2) assign a new PI or co-PI at the old university to take over the grant; or, 3) terminate the grant if neither are possible.


Without any contribution from my supervisor, is it reasonable to write my papers all by myself?

@Lighthouse keeper made a very good point about finding a co-advisor. I strongly agree with the comment of @astronat, since the research doesn't always happen (doesn't often happen, never happens, shouldn't happen) in the closed system student-advisor. Finding a less senior but more responsive colleague to work with is a perfectly normal way to go, even at the end of the PhD.
Of course you can start with a frank discussion with your supervisor that you need more supervision/feedback/structure in your relationship. I've seen that work - PhD advisors often develop a mental image of a person that needs to be corrected: "this person will benefit from a liberty of doing whatever they like" is sometimes a great assessment, but sometimes it is a complete misreading on the advisor's part. Do note however that in such a discussion the advisor may become defensive, and even if he agrees there's no guarantee that they'll actually change their behavior. Humans are complex and so are supervisors.
In short - it's good to raise the issue with the supervisor as soon as it starts to bother you, but also not to rely solely on them changing their approach, and reaching out to other people (from fellow students to the faculty of other universities that work on the subject) to discuss your research.
But this is fairly general advice. To be a bit more specific (although you don't write, if the feedback you need is about language/experiment design/methodology/useful resources/books... so the following might not really apply) about your situation right now, I would suggest presenting your work at seminars/conferences (the pandemic at least made that easy - you don't need to travel to speak at a seminar anywhere in the world). You might get a fairly decent feedback, if you mention that you are preparing the presented work for publication (at the very least you may be able to find out who else would be interested in your research = where to submit it). Ask your colleagues and supervisor if they can set you up with their acquaintances in this way.
Lastly - but this is the main point of my answer - don't overthink it. I was alarmed by you writing about shame, because the reviews were non-blinded. I cannot stress enough that this is no reason for any sort of embarrassment: depending on the field it is already a win for a PhD to a) get to the review stage, b) get some constructive remarks out of the reviewers (instead of "me no like, reject"). I certainly would like to see how minuscule a percent of users here can boast that their first paper was solo and accepted outright. At this stage, for the most part, the publication proces is unfathomable and one rejection (several rejections) don't say anything about the quality of your work, needles to say - even less about your quality as a researcher. The advice "make revisions, submit elsewhere" is spot on.
Moreover, it is highly likely that the quality of your work will increase over time, and the corollary is that it won't probably be great at the beginning of your career, and therefore that should not be a reason to doubt yourself. That the people fail to acknowledge that we all learn how to conduct research/write papers/write readable papers in acceptable style and language as we go, and are not expected to start with inhuman levels of competence - is the single most common (and heartbreaking) reason people drop out too early from research. While it would be splendid to have an advisor that teaches how to be a scientist, it is so very often not the case and it's perfectly OK to write your first papers with a "how to write research articles 101" book in hand (in maths we have Jerzy Trzeciak's booklet published by EMS, and I am very fond of it).
So the second piece of advice would be to consult your colleagues if your field (or any adjacent) has such a book, they often have a copy:)


Ask for a letter of recommendation after 11-year hiatus?

First of all, congratulations on completing your second bachelors degree online, while working, 11 years after finishing a Masters. In my opinion, this is a bigger accomplishment than might meet the eye, and certainly a bigger accomplishment than you get credit for on paper.

There is nothing wrong with asking for a letter of reference 11 years or 50 years later. However I do very much sympathize with you that it is a little bit embarrassing that you did not maintain contact for 11 years. I have had the same experience, with more than one reference writer from the past. One of them did not even reply to my email saying that I wanted to re-connect with him (I did not even ask him for a letter of reference, just wanted to meet him since I was back in town briefly); another took forever to reply but did remember me and said he was willing to help in anyway; and another one replies to me immediately every time I write to him (once was after 5 years of no contact and once was after 4 years of no contact). In every situation, I am embarrassed that I didn't stay in touch, and it takes me a long time to write to them, and I feel guilty for it afterwards.

However professors often have hundreds of former students, so you can imagine they have a wide spectrum of experiences: from people who they generously provided thousands of hours of time and love and care and resources to, who show no appreciation and never speak to them again, and even might backstab them at some point in the future; to people who stay in touch monthly by email even if they were barely acquainted.

It is not going to be the first time that this professor has been asked for a letter of reference from someone who he doesn't know very well, since we often get asked for reference letters in some of the strangest circumstances, so don't worry about that. It is also not the first time this professor has had someone not stay in touch wtih them, just think about the thousands of students he's had in the past.

The professor will probably be happy to know that you are pursuing an academic career like he recommended 11 years ago, he might be happy to see that you still remember him and considered to ask him rather than someone else, and maybe he will take the opportunity to help you (which often leads to you helping him, later down the road). It has certainly been done before, with gaps much longer than 11 years.

You probably don't want to go in right away asking for a letter of reference though.

Get back in touch with him as soon as you can, with an email reminding him of who you are and which thesis he advised.
Make the email personal (make sure it does not look like a copy-paste job): Tell him some of the ways in which he influenced your life, for example quotes of his that you still live by everyday.
Update him on where you've worked, and that you did the second bachelors degree
Tell him that you now wish to pursue the PhD just as he originally recommended, and why the recession caused you not to do it before.
Keep it short, please !!!

The last point might seem a but surprising, considering everything I recommended for you to do. However you just need 1 or 2 sentences for each of these points. If you go into too much detail, he might feel obliged to do the same in return, and then you'll never get any reply, because it will be a reply that requires a lot of devotion on his end.

He will either not reply at all, in which case you can tell me and I can try to help you with a follow-up email. Or he will most likely reply saying that it's good to hear you are pursuing a PhD (maybe even with some advice, but don't expect too much). At that point, you may thank him for his kind words, and say that you are happy to know that he supports you, and would find it helpful if he could convey that in a short letter of reference. Make sure your emails are pristine and very polite and respectful.

There's still a good chance he will not reply or will not be helpful, but there's an even better chance that you do get some positive support/encouragement, so it is most certainly worth a try.


Joint authorship for rewriting and extending an existing article

This is an absolutely normal and exemplary case of collaboration.

Work together on the final article and, if you meet the normal criteria for authorship in your field, then you should be an author. If not, you can be in the acknowledgements.

As for the preprint: if it is a separate standalone document like a tech report, then cite and state that this is an extended version. If it in a service that supports updating like arXIv, then you should end up with an updated preprint with your name on it in any case!


How are scientific research projects planned? In particular computer science, but possibly there exists processes for all research?

Scrum, Agile: sound like necromantic spells to evoke the spirits of the netherworld [yes, I know what these are]. This type of stuff is perhaps useful once you know what you want.

But in science, that's usually not the case. You do not know what you want, when you do, you do not know how to get there, and if you think you know how to get there, you may be quite off estimating how long it will take and which obstacles you will stumble into.

So, the way to proceed is to ask/do the following:

what is out there?
what are the techniques?
What am I interested in?
What do I enjoy doing? [No, it's not the same as 3!]
Acquire knowledge. (what's out there, what's known? Literature!)
Acquire skills. (how do I do stuff)
Acquire expertise (i.e. knowledge how to use skills, not the same
as skills)
Play around.
Find loopholes, open issues, improvements, gaps, etc.
Can you fill them?

And the most important one: talk to people who are good in the field.

As you acquire expertise, you will be able to plan further into the future.


Telling my bachelor thesis supervisor about my mental health issues

It was ... advised to me by the "student advisor" to let my thesis supervisor know about my problem.
However, I am not sure how to go about doing this in regard to how specific I should be in describing my issues.

I'd say you've done the right thing by speaking to somebody in an official capacity. That first conversation can be the hardest part! Assuming that this "student advisor" is a member of staff (in your department?) I would suggest speaking with them again, and discussing some of your concerns about "how specific" to be.
If, however, I am misunderstanding the term "student advisor", and the person you spoke with was instead somebody in a counselling/support role, I would suggest speaking with an appropriate member of academic or administrative staff -- in my experience, that would be a "Director of Studies" or similar, but the Dutch system may differ!
Either way, "the university" should be able to tell you what is an appropriate level of detail, especially if you have concerns about putting your supervisor into a conflicted position with regard to your grade.
When it comes down to actually talking to your supervisor, I would suggest that beforehand you set yourself a minimum level of detail that you feel is necessary to convey, and a maximum level that you feel comfortable with. That might help you feel a little more in control of the situation. As for what exactly you say, you can then go with whatever seems comfortable (for both parties) when you're having the actual conversation.

One possible option would be to let him know that I have some sort of mental health issue. The benefit of this would be that he might be somewhat more receptive and understanding of my decreased productivity (and possible other problems).
On the other hand I'm afraid it might be a bit harsh on him, because he might me reluctant to mark my thesis as insufficient or to have tons of negative commentary.

If I remember rightly, when I was in a similar situation to you my supervisor was wise enough to ask me what would be (un)helpful in terms of negative commentary etc. Your supervisor may also volunteer to have that discussion; however, if not, you can always bring up the topic -- if you fear that he'll be reluctant to give you (constructive) negative comments, you can say explicitly "I don't need you to be gentler with your comments; I just wanted to let you know that this is the situation, and that accordingly I am having some difficulties" (or whatever wording best addresses your concerns and desires!).
As a quick personal note (which, hopefully, helps anyone having doubts about talking to their university regarding mental health issues) I should say that after years (and several degrees) dealing with these kinds of problems, I've never regretted talking to a member of staff about my mental health; I do, however, regret the occasions where (I now know) I could have let somebody know that I was having problems, but didn't. It's very easy to be nervous about these conversations, but they're often the best way forward.

N.B. While I have been in a similar situation, I should note that in my case it was/is a PhD thesis (and is in Britain), so my supervisor is not the one responsible for final grading of my thesis. However, your concerns regarding what level of detail to go into sound very familiar to me, as does your worry about putting your supervisor in a difficult position with regard to his comments on your thesis. So, hopefully, this answer remains helpful.


Switching university after master's to do PhD somewhere else

Trying to hold you hostage by withholding a letter of reference is highly unethical. If they would do that to you, you're probably better off leaving without a letter from them than staying. Otherwise they may be willing to take advantage of you in other ways if you stay for your PhD. Besides, would you ever really be able to trust each other after such behavior?

In the end, they may be disappointed, but if they've gotten several good articles with you during your master's, you've held up your end of the implicit deal in getting a master's degree. Lots of folks (in some countries and some fields) move between master's and PhD. This is normal. They will probably be willing to write you a good letter after they have some time to reflect.


Do students have the right to see how their papers were graded?

I doubt that this is a case of a student "offending" an individual professor and more one of rules in place that may not make sense and that you may not approve of, but still, rules.
I don't like, personally, such rules. I think they are wrong, but an individual professor has little actual control over rule making. They may not be willing to break the rules, especially if they are a junior faculty member.
Personally, I probably wouldn't give back final exams, though I did give back all others. But I would certainly let a student look over the grading. But I was bound by no such rules.
And, note that, depending on the scale of the institution, it might be very difficult to permit students access to final exams. When I was a TA, we graded Calculus finals as a group, with each TA grading only one problem. So, a student's grade was an amalgam of judgements. We were guided by a rubric, of course. But the professor didn't grade the finals and so might find it difficult to respond to exactly why a point (or ten) was lost. Smaller institutions can "afford" a more personal touch and usually strive to do so. It should be (perfect world) possible for larger ones to do so also, but often don't. And if there were a few hundred students, it is difficult to respond to individuals, just for the time it takes. Ideal? No.
Intermediate exams are a different matter, in my view, since they can and should be used to guide the student's learning. But, Rules.
And usually, by enrolling in a university, the student makes an implicit (at least) agreement to abide by the rules in place.


How to correct errors in proofs of an accepted paper

Here is my method of correcting proofs.  I write my corrections in a text document.  You can also use the review mode of a PDF viewer.

The copyeditor provides a numbered list of questions.  I respond with a numbered list of answers, with one answer for each question.
If there are repeated errors, I list those first.
I give a numbered list of corrections.  These go from the start of the paper systematically to the end.  Each correction begins with the location, including page and line or figure number.  Each correction quotes the error and correction explicitly.
If figures need to be replaced (which does not happen in practice) then I prepare those as separate files.
I verify author names, affiliations, and grant numbers in acknowledgments.
I ask the copyeditor to send me a second proof, if the corrections are significant.
Everything is submitted according to the instructions, which are different for each copyediting company.  Usually there is a web form.


How to get feedback on a paper most effectively

The answer is really "it depends".
What kind of feedback do you need? If you're worried about the overall structure and the correctness of the results, sooner is better, but don't make your reader struggle with fragmentary work. Make your best guesses, write a draft, and provide marginal questions ("do I need more detail here?", "should this section be omitted, or merged with an earlier one?").
If you're comfortable with your second or fourth draft and want just polishing, send the paper when you think you are nearly finished.
If you know the potential reader well enough you might ask what kind of feedback they are willing to provide.


My supervisor won't accept that I won't stay in the lab for a PhD

"I am happy to polish the paper for publication as agreed; however, unfortunately, I cannot accept your generous offer. I have already accepted the other job and committed to it." - repeat and rinse. You agreed to the publication, which is fair enough. It is not your job to satisfy your supervisor's wishes outside of that.

You are perfectly entitled to choose your future. Don't feel bad about that. You have your reasons to leave. Trust your gut feeling and accept you won't change your opinion. Once you accept that you won't change your opinion, it will be easier for you also radiate to your (former) supervisor that you won't change it.

Do not budge. Repeat your formulation. Only when they realise that you are not going to change your tune, they will relent.


Should you place accents on letters in academic writing in English?

Do you like reading papers with misspelled words, grammar errors, uncertain syntax, badly formatted equations, unreadable graphs and unclear pictures? Probably not.

Modern typesetting systems and careful proofreading allow writers to avoid, as much as possible, the above unpleasantnesses and, moreover, allow them to typeset all sort of characters. Furthermore, macros and shortcuts can be defined for quickly repeating difficult words. Thus, with modern typesetting systems there's really no excuse for not using diacritical marks, regardless of practices which date back to an epoch when typesetting systems were not as flexible as modern ones.

Academic papers and books are not only read by native English speakers, but by people from all over the world, where a missing accent can be cause of confusion or, in case of many missing accents, considered a sign of sloppiness (which typically does not put the reader in a favourable mood), especially if the accent is missing from a proper name.


Turning down a scholarship...with the hope of getting more funding?

"I appreciate this opportunity and would love to attend, but, unfortunately, cannot afford the tuition" - that's pretty much the situation according to your description. It's not flattery, it's not manipulation, it's the fact, isn't it? It sounds just right.

It gives the commission full discretion to decide whether they consider you worth being helped over this hurdle.

Just don't decide to join, after all, at this support level without having a very good idea how to justify where your suddenly newfound riches have come from.


Travel grants for International students in the US?

Usually the best place to ask for a travel grant is the conference itself. I see, for example, that the APS DFD 2012 meeting had a travel grant program (sure, now it's too late to be useful). Many big conferences have such programs and those that do not may have "fellowships", which give a reduced registration fee for select students.

Otherwise you want to look at framework programs in your field encouraging the mobility of students. It is true that it might have been easier if you were actually located in India, because of binational exchange programs and such, but you also have to realize that the travel costs would then have been greater!


What to write in "outline of research program"

This depends on the purpose for which the scholarship is designed and also on who typically applies for it.

In either case you should describe both where your research has gone up to now and where it will go as you complete it, but the emphasis might be different depending on the intent of the scholarship. You should also say something about what you expect to explore after you finish the degree - problems yet to solve.

If the scholarship is intended for final stage support then the emphasis should be on the final stages and less (but something) on what got you to this point.

But if it is a general scholarship and is open to beginners as well as people like yourself, then describe the whole program from start to end, saying where you currently are in that process. In other words, more emphasis on the earlier stages than in the other scenario, but indicating that much of it is done.

Don't give the impression, however, that you are so close to the end that support isn't needed. Your entire degree is just a part of a "research program" that you can continue after finishing the degree.


Did my instructor somehow pass the buck to me?

Generally, unless the mark is extremely, obviously wrong, the professor should support the decision made by the TA. However, this means that when there is a grading dispute you cannot resolve with the student, you need to refer the student to the professor, but also talk to the professor yourself, explaining your marking scheme and reasoning behind the grade. Then the professor is equipped to explain to the student why they got the mark they deserve. You cannot expect the professor to moderate a dispute unless they actually have the grading scheme and your side of the story.

Also, you shouldn't immediately pass the student on. Let them present their case to you first, and explain to them why you assigned the grade you did. Nine times out of ten, the student is happy with that. You should only refer the one out of ten who refuse to see reason to your professor.


Clarifications on American graduate school for an European student

Speaking as a long-time graduate program director and adviser in a mid-level US department (at a big public university), I'd emphasize that most of our Ph.D. students in past years have had a less-than-adequate preparation in some basic areas.   This is true especially for US students coming from a typical 4-year college math major but is also true for some international students.   On the other hand, most of our students aim for a college teaching career, or perhaps a non-academic job, rather than aiming for a research career in some kind of mathematics (or statistics, part of our department).   At the most elite departments, it is taken for granted that everybody plans to do research.    But my own contemporaries in the 1960s Ph.D program at Yale actually went in many different directions.

Like most other US departments, we have had an evolving procedure involving written (and perhaps oral) qualifying exams.    Anyone applying to one of the top few programs should certainly ask questions about how and when such exams are administered, and how they are evaluated. Typically no one wants to hold back a talented student, but sometimes a student overestimates his or her own talent and knowledge (and future job prospects).    Even Harvard and MIT Ph.D.'s sometimes end up teaching at small colleges or out-of-the-way universities.

In any case, identifying a potential thesis adviser (or two) is equally important, though obviously it's difficult to predict one's future interests precisely or to predict the future logistics of an active faculty member (sabbaticals and other leaves can upset plans as can personal crises).   Good luck navigating the US system, including the evolving immigration rules!


Citing line numbers of a one-page text in MLA format

A few things:

MLA doesn't require in-text citations to have the author's last name and the title of the article. The format is simply (lastname #pagenumber) or, if the author's last name isn't present, the first thing which occurs in the citation (article title, etc).
MLA also doesn't require line-numbers, nor really allow for it. In text citations are primarily there to help your reader understand the text, and adding line numbers would just prove confusing to readers. Given that it's only 1 page of material, you don't need it either, as the quote will likely be super easy to find for readers.


Is there a stigma in computer science toward too many postdoc positions?

There are multiple simultaneous trends which are working against one another:

The number of PhD recipients is growing at a much faster rate than the number of available tenure-track positions.
More and more locations have been instituting term limits on the length of postdoctoral positions.
Hiring committees are not as receptive to applicants who have done too many postdoctoral positions.

This leads to a lot of challenges for many academic aspirants. Personally, my impression is that the dangers are as follows:

Remaining in any single postdoctoral position for more than about three years.
Accepting more than two postdoctoral assignments.

Once either of those thresholds have been crossed, I think it starts to hurt an applicant later in their career. The exception to this might be "research professorships" and "staff scientist" positions that are seen to be more permanent than a postdoctoral position. Even in these positions, however, there is always the challenge that it can be difficult to transition to a different position afterwards.


Is it ethical for a lecturer to require students to purchase an online learning kit where kit is used for course assessments?

I'll start with

  How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?

For one, politely express your displeasure to the professor.

Some professors aren't in tune with the cost of textbooks, and may not realize what a burden it is to shell out $90 for their course, when it's $90 that you can't recoup by selling back the text, or avoid by using the library's copy of the text.

They may even think they're doing you a favor by offering this "interactive" system, not realizing that you don't find it useful.

If the professor isn't interested in hearing what you have to say, you can further express your displeasure in the end-of-course evaluation (my university's specifically ask about the textbook) and possibly in a respectful letter (signed by your classmates) to the department chair.

  Is this ethical?  Wait, is it even legal?

As the other answers have pointed out, it's not universally considered unethical or illegal.

As unpleasant as the result is in this case, it probably would not be a good thing to set too many bureaucratic rules on what textbook or other educational resources a professor can assign. Given that the cost of tuition is usually many times higher than the textbook price, it is generally desirable for the professor to assign the textbook that will (in his/her opinion) offer you the best educational experience and therefore, the best return on your tuition investment.

Of course, students tend to appreciate when the professor can find a low-cost option that is also educationally sound. But that's generally considered a bonus, not a requirement.

In this case it sounds like the extra content doesn't contribute anything useful to the educational experience - in which case, you should let the professor know. (Again, politely and non-combatively.)

I also want to point out that requiring "bundled" course content that goes along with the textbook is closer to assigning a required software package (which, unlike textbooks, you can't buy used or re-sell) than assigning a textbook. I agree with you completely that it's substantially different than being asked to pay for a textbook.

For every class I've ever taken that required specialized (non-free) software, my university installed the software on my laptop for me for free (given that I was registered for the course in question). In most cases, instructors try to use free software or software that comes with a free student license, because they realize that a software purchase is different from a textbook purchase. Or they'll provide the software on lab computers that students can use during set hours.

Imagine if you had to buy a new non-refundable software package for almost every class you were enrolled in, including buying the same software multiple times for a sequence of intro classes on a subject.

Yeah, it's a waste of money, but your professors might not see that unless you point it out.


Zoom Polls: Why do I not see the option?

I had the same problem once. It worked for me once I had a poll prepared in advance (in the Zoom web portal before the meeting starts).


Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose

Your research statement (not "statement of purpose" as university administrators strangely insist on calling it) should be a description of your research experience, interests, and goals, as a supporting case for your potential for independent research.  If you were applying to work in my research area, I would much rather read about your research ideas than mine.

Here's what I like to see in research statements:

What have you already done? What problems have you solved, or at least worked on?  What independent projects have you been part of?  What were your key contributions?  What did you learn?  What did you teach the world?  How do your results compare to what was already known?  What original ideas are you most proud of?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  Refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details: preprints, project reports, source code, videos, etc.
What are you working on now?  What problems are you currently trying to solve?  What are you currently trying to build?  What are the open research issues?  What intellectual tools are you using, or learning to use?  What are you reading?  What prior results are you building on?  How are you building on your own earlier work?  What is your current favorite half-baked idea?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  If you have partial results, refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details.

You ask whether you should worry about the feasibility of your ideas.  No more or less than if you were actually doing research.  Ideally, I'd like to see both that you have good ideas and that you're not afraid to have bad ones.

What might you want to work on in the future? What problems you would like to solve?  What would you like to build?  Do you want to push your existing projects further?  If so, how?  What new areas are you interested in exploring?  What are your long-term career goals?  Convince the reader that you are  knowledgeable about your target area(s), but be honest about your ignorance.  Be specific, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).

No one will hold you to your stated plans.  You don't need to do an extensive literature survey (although it certainly can't hurt; put a copy on your web page), but at a minimum you should have had a strong undergraduate course on the topic.

How does my department fit your research goals?  (If the rest of your statement is well-written, the reader already knows the answer to this question, but you also need convince the reader that you know.)

A few sentences about motivation are worthwhile, but don't talk about how many programming languages you know, or about how you were a child prodigy, or how many contests you've won, or how many A+s you got, or how Alan Turing was your childhood hero, or how your research area will Change The World.  Write in simple, direct, flawless English.  Like Suresh, I have seen many phrases like "my first trembling steps", but never in successful applications.

The only credible reason to "target a particular professor" is if that professor's research interests already mirror your own.  If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.

Yes, that means you have to have well-developed research interests.  That's the point.


Mendeley: how to add document from bibliography entry?

If you go to Add --> Add Entry Manually you can populate the fields for the PMID or DOI of the paper you want to add to the library and Mendeley will populate all the other fields accordingly. You simply need to find the correct entry for the paper in a search engine (e.g., PubMed, GoogleScholar, Journal Webpage, ...).


Regarding hiding depression during application

You are under no obligation to share your medical history in an application, but you are under obligation to be truthful -- so no lying about the date of your accident.

It seems like you actually made the best out of your decision to drop out of the program back then. It's legitimate to say, in an application, that you felt at the time that the program was not the right fit for you, and that you wanted to pursue other opportunities -- which you could then describe by saying that you founded a start-up and worked on your MSc project on the side. If you phrase this right, it actually looks quite good, and it's not even a lie: You did leave to pursue other opportunities.


Cover letter: "I" or "we"? I did almost all the research and most of the writing

Use the plural when referring to the paper and its content. No exceptions.  "Our paper", "we used", etc.

I have never seen a multi-author paper referred to with the singular.  Readers will either think that it is a mistake, or that you are referring to a different solo paper; if they realize it is intentional it will come across as extremely arrogant and disrespectful to your coauthors.

Before using a plural pronoun, it is a good idea to make it clear who your coauthors are, so that the pronoun has a clear antecedent.  "In a 2016 joint paper with A. Smith and B. Jones, we showed that..."

You may certainly point out that you were the first author.  "In a 2016 joint paper with A. Smith and B. Jones, of which I was first author, we showed that..."  But you may not write as though your coauthors don't exist.  They must have made significant contributions to the paper; if not, they shouldn't be coauthors at all.

If you have space in your letter or other application materials, then after you summarize the content of the paper (using the plural), it is fine to describe in more detail your own specific contributions using the singular.  "I designed the experiment, analyzed the data, and wrote the majority of the text of the paper."  Note carefully the (sometimes subtle) distinction between the results and achievements of the project as described in the paper, which are collective and take the plural ("we showed that X", "we performed a placebo-controlled trial of drug Y", etc), versus the specific work you did in order to help accomplish those things, which illustrate your personal skills and take the singular ("I analyzed the data").

If you think it is starting to sound like you did everything while your coauthors did nothing, you can clarify briefly: "...while my collaborators worked mainly on gathering the data and developing the statistical methods, and wrote the corresponding sections of the text".

However, the very best way to "claim" your contributions is to have a recommendation letter from one (or more) of your coauthors, in which they explain how the paper was primarily your work and they just contributed bits and pieces, and then go on to praise your capability as an independent researcher.  This saves you from having to brag too much, and serves as verification that you really did all this work and aren't just lying.


Is there a network map of subjects and how they connect with each other?

Here is a subject map of science:

It is taken from the following paper, freely available from Plos One:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464?imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039464.g001

I think that this is the sort of thing that you are interested in.

N.B. I am not a co-author, nor have I read the paper, so I make no judgment on its quality.


How to contact a potential supervisor when I don't know if I am a good enough candidate?

I'm currently looking for a PI to take me as a student ina PhD program. So, I've contacted the student's affair office and they told me to introduce myself to the PI like this:

Hi Professor ABC,
My name is X and I am currently doing BLA BLA BLA at the Z Institute. I am interested in applying for a PhD at BLANK in the area of BLANK and was wondering if you were interested in taking on more students/have room in your lab for me.

Simple as that, he will probably ask you for a more detailed profile of yours with your cv.

Good luck!


Reviewing test answers with students using a Course Management System

I'm assuming the following:

Students are taking an online test, with questions entered into the LMS
The LMS produces some sort of visual output
You meet with students face-to-face

I've used our in-house LMS, Moodle and Coursera. In all cases the software offers the students randomized versions of the questions, but produces a view for the instructor that shows student responses that are aggregated (sample given at end of post).
If my assumptions are true, you can pick perhaps the three most often missed questions from the test, make a screenshot, and present this to the class.
Or better yet, offer an often-missed question on a slide and have students work in groups to provide a higher-quality group answer.

We might be able to help you more if you correct my assumptions and provide which LMS you are using.

Sample screen shot:


Undergraduate resume for PhD application: Include publication in preparation?

I would definitely include the (future) publication in your applications. Add a section for publications to your CV. In this section, simply write

  [Title of your Paper], Author A, Author B and Author C, in prep.

This is a common shortening for "in preparation" that is used in academic CVs, talks and even published papers to refer to a work which is nearly ready for submission to a journal. You can talk about the work and your contribution to it in more detail in your personal statement.


How can PhD student repair relationship with supervisor after PhD student engages in independent research without supervisor?

It's reasonable for your professor to want some input as to how you spend your time, and it's customary for students to keep their advisors informed about other things they are working on. You have perhaps committed a slight breach of etiquette by not telling him about this project earlier.

However, in my view, it is deeply inappropriate for him to ask you to take your name off the paper. He is your advisor but he doesn't own your life. You have done the work and as an academic it is your right to publish it. An interaction like this would have me thinking about looking for a new advisor, quick.

If the professor has technical concerns about the quality of the paper itself and thinks that it is not ready to appear in the scientific/academic record, then he should discuss this with you, and you should share those concerns with your coauthor and come to a decision on their merits. But I feel it's not appropriate for your professor's reputation to be part of that conversation - just decide whether the paper is good and publishable or not.

Your second question is unrelated but I'll address it here anyway. Do not add another person as author (your advisor or anyone  else) just so they can present it at the conference. In order to be an author, a person must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the work, and it's unethical to "gift" authorship for any other reason.

In many cases, conferences allow a paper to be presented by someone other than an author. So if you know someone who is attending the conference and willing to present your paper, they may be able to do it without you unethically making them an author. But if the conference really requires one of the authors to attend and neither of you can, then I suppose all you can do is withdraw your paper and resubmit to a conference which you can attend.


What can you do to supplement low grades for admission into masters programs that don't use GRE or GMAT?

As far as I know, such programs will consider your GPA, GRE (general and/or subject test) or some equivalent tests, letters of recommendation, research experience and personal statement, or a subset of this list. Thus, it is really more precise to say that all of these factors supplement each other, rather than simply saying that only GRE and GPA supplement each other. Unless your GPA is lower than the cut-off line, which some programs impose, then it follows that good letters of recommendation, research experience and personal statement will help with your application. This will especially be true if you have exceptional academic achievement that is not reflected by the GPA, in which case the admission committee will likely overlook the low GPA.


Is it legitimate to present self-developed, but commercial, software within my dissertation?

It depends on your actual area. In general, I believe that it is acceptable (I'm in Electrical engineering). However, you need to justify your scientific contribution. How is the work you did in this software a contribution to your thesis?

Also, as a thesis examiner, I would expect a detailed description of the algorithms / methods developed for this software to be able to assess your contributions. Are you willing to do so? Does the company you work for allow you to disclose this information?


My french-to-english translated transcripts and certificates use the term Computing instead of Computer Science

It might matter more or less, depending on the particular subject in question, as well as the given translation. Even though the terms that designate "Computer Science" were changing multiple times throughout its history (the name of the field has a rich history and interesting etymology itself), there is a standardized set of terms that people usually go by.

Unfortunate translations that might lead to using terms that are not widely accepted or using terms in a wrong way, might make a difference, depending on the situation. Therefore, even though they might not make a big difference in what they convey, they might make the overall interaction (e.g. a university application) look less professional and it is best to avoid them.
As for the concrete example you've mentioned, even though a degree in "Computing" probably can be easily disambiguated as a degree in "Computer Science", it would still be better to make sure the translation matches such widely used term, due to reasons of thoroughness and professionalism of the applicant in preparing an application.
("Computing" has a more general meaning, which does not imply science of computing, as mentioned by Dave Kaye.)

I had a similar experience with translations of my academic transcript, where the sworn translator incorrectly translated terms like "network" and "security". (I think these terms are ambiguous in multiple languages.) I resolved the issue by explicitly checking whether the translations matched "common sense" and pointed out the right translations to the translator.
(It's always good collaborate with the translator, which might not be familiar with the specific technical terminology, as mentioned by aparente001.)

Of course, this also depends on the person, the institution that evaluates your academic transcript and its translation, as well as the context. My personal opinion is that in most cases of university applications, these should not matter too much overall (unless they represent a sign of things like negligence and misconduct): 1) translated names of subjects in Computer Science cannot get too ambiguous; 2) you usually get a chance for explaining any potential misunderstandings (e.g. during an interview). Also note that, as far as I know, in most cases, universities require original transcripts as well, thus any "alarming" ambiguity might get resolved without further intervention of applicants.


Is it necessary to add email address to paper?

You should put your email on your paper.  Not doing so means people who want to contact you can't, and it's obnoxious, non-collegial, and extremely unusual in science.

As for what address to use, I see two main paths: "permanent" and "traceable":

For the "permanent" path: many universities have a permanent alumni email address, which you can set up while still there and which is an excellent choice for long-term usage.  If you don't have access to such, you can get a free address (Gmail is a good "professional" choice, but others can be as well; don't use AOL, Hotmail, or others with a poor reputation).  The advantage of this approach is that your address need never change; the disadvantage is that you may not be using an email associated with your primary affiliation.

For the "traceable" path: it is worth recognizing that even when you have a "permanent" position, such as a tenured faculty post, that it may not be permanent.  People relocate away from long-term jobs for all sorts of reasons, and an email address thought to be forever is not.  Everybody who wants to contact you will understand this.  Thus, rather than use Gmail, you might instead just make sure you always maintain an easily identifiable web presence that includes information about your former affiliations and papers.  Thus, when somebody searches for you, they can easily link you and your paper, even if your email has changed.


A faculty member turned me down because of lack of funding. If the university announces funding is available, should I apply anyway?

Maybe he meant that he didn't have funding to hire you directly. Or perhaps the university funding details are not known to everybody outside of the corresponding committee until they are out. Or even he was just oblivious to the existence of this.

There is no way to know without specifics, and there is little risk in just applying.


How can an undergraduate student conducting mathematical research with a professor expect to contribute?

It's very reasonable to wonder how you, an absolute novice, could "help" experienced experts. Some people are fond of claiming that somehow "just trying hard" or "being smart" can make this possible in some way, but those are needless (and doubtful) claims that miss the mark about what the real question could be.

That is, many or most faculty are happy to mentor beginners and introduce them to the subject(s) the faculty know and like. It need not be the case that they "need help", and, if they did, sure, recruiting novices is not the best gamble. But that's not the point! The point is that experts may enjoy (and find stimulating) introducing beginners to their subject. So you help them by allowing them to do so.

It's not at all surprising that you have trouble reading their recent papers, and, again, that's essentially irrelevant. (The internet mythology about young people becoming world experts in a few weeks or months is invidious... In particular, no, you should not expect to "read those papers and then go talk to them about them.", contrary to much advice given on-line.)

An astute expert can find interesting "starter" projects for novices. It may happen that such a project produces something interesting to the expert. Or, it may be that the expert can so well foresee the outcome that the element of surprise evaporates. But that doesn't matter. Little kids don't have to immediately play sports (or whatever) with world-class professionals. But they can be coached by such professionals, if both parties are interested. I do think that's the correct analogy, though many other people on these sites are adamant otherwise.


Preprints conflicts between Research Gate and Journal

While I think it unlikely that you will have a problem, that is up to the journal - assuming they even notice it.

Of course, if they use automated systems to scrape preprint information they might know. But you will also, likely, be asked if the paper is available elsewhere. Phrased like that you can honestly say no, but if the phrasing is different (has it ever been available...) then you will need to explain to them what happened.


when should I stop searching the literature?

The facile answer is you don't stop searching the literature. Even as the review evolves, you should be including new references if they are noteworthy in addressing questions within the field. This process should continue as long as you are working in the field of the problem.

Of course, from a practical standpoint, you do need to select a cutoff. There should be a reasonable point in time in which you've set the outline of the review, and decided on the main topics and questions to be discussed. At that point, it would be fair to set aside adding more references, and stick to what's been published. However, you should continue to monitor the field, and if further revisions or updates of the text are necessary, then you should include the papers published in the interim as part of your updates.


A research validity issue and a work around

If you're going to publish a scientific paper, you need to give information on all of the significant methodology required to achieve the result.

It sounds like you are being asked to publish a paper that would be concealing vital information about its methods.  That may be legal, but it is clearly scientifically unethical, and reviewers in a quality venue would likely call you out on that failure.

If you're just doing the research for internal use (or informal publication, e.g., as a corporate technical whitepaper), then there is no expectation of methods disclosure, and there is no ethical barrier to being as vague as you like about your methodology.


Is there scientific value in recreating existing papers in natural language processing for further languages?

Yes, there is scientific value in the project you describe. When writing the paper, be sure to highlight any special handling you had to do for Albanian (or whatever language you choose). It will be interesting to compare the accuracy of the approach applied to Albanian vs. English.
It is possible (though I suspect it's unlikely)  that you might end up with results that simply validate that the approach works the exactly same in Albanian as well as English, and there's nothing more to say. That would still have scientific merit, but might be a little more difficult to publish in the higher-tier venues. If that happens, you could publish in a lower-tier venue (nothing to be ashamed of, as long as it's a legitimate conference/journal). Or you could make the topic more interesting by applying the approach to more than one language.


BAföG financial support for European students?

EU citizens can get Bafög but you have to fulfill some requirements that link you to Germany, for example:

have been living in Germany for over 5 years
your parents or spouse is working in Germany
you have been working in Germany before

You can find the full list here: In german though

If this is not applicable for you, you can try the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Program) which has an extensive selection of scholarships for students coming from or to Germany.


Asking admission committee to confirm if they received my application and letters

Yes, but you should ask whomever it is that you emailed the documents to. You can either ask them to respond in the email with the attachments, or follow up later asking if they received everything. A polite way of doing so might be something like:

  Hi Prof. Dexter,

  I wanted check that you received my transcript and personal statement which I sent on Feb 30. You should have also received three letters of recommendation for me from Profs Dyer, Ellery, and Freeborn. Please let me know if any of these have not arrived and if there are any other documents you needed from me. I'm very excited to be applying to Miskatonic U.

  Thank you for your time,

  Ululu


Is it possible to request withdrawal of authorship almost 2 years after the publication?

I wouldn't retract authorship, science is all about revising research based on new data or a better explanation.  I'd suggest publishing a new paper, and explaining what you disagree with or have found better interpretations of from the old paper.  A withdrawal of authorship (even if possible) would be interpreted as some form of manipulation of data in the prior paper.


No PhD research group during my PhD. How do I handle it?

Besides the obvious answers (try to move closer to the place where your supervisors and their groups are and meet them more often) I suggest

try to find or initiate a seminar close to your interests.

This would provide a regular meeting point for you and your supervisors (besides meetings directly related to your PhD) and hopefully other people with interests similar to yours. Your supervisors may help to find a theme and spread the word (and probably take formal responsibility for the seminar) but you can and should offer to organize the schedule and the collection and circulation of abstracts.


Are very small departments necessarily sub-par?

If you're talking about MIT or Caltech, then the answer would be that their degrees in the humanities and social sciences are equally as respectable as those from any other colleges and universities in terms of graduate admissions (in social sciences/humanities).

Part of this is that we realize that folks who fall out of the mainstream at these schools merit some attention. It takes more of an effort and commitment to do sociology at MIT than it would at U-Michigan. For example, in order to get the credits to graduate, you've also undoubtedly taken courses in that discipline that were offered outside of that institution -- in MIT's case, you'd be taking classes at Harvard/Radcliffe. That takes dedication and forethought.

Finally, we realize that students choose their undergraduate institutions based on limited knowledge and choice. We weight their accomplishments based on what they were able to do with the resources that they had.


Does ''recommended for publication subject to minor revision'' implies aceptance?

It would depend on who made the "recommendation". If it was a reviewer, then, no, it doesn't imply acceptance. It makes it more likely, but not assured.
An editor can, and sometimes does, reject a paper even with positive recommendations. That might be for business or space reasons, perhaps.
I think the "future steps" is to wait for a final decision from the editor. Or, ask the editor if there is anything more to do.


How does one pave his way out of academia?

Ideally you will want to get a non-academic job. You should start listing possible careers which you might consider. Contact friends or former lecturers who have quit academia and learn about what they have done. Maybe get involved in something on the side. For example, a friend of mine, who is now a lecturer at a university, previously did an internship at an investment bank while he was a postdoc in the US. It gave him some credentials for his Plan B, even though he didn't execute it.

It is important to have non-academic connections. Maybe go to some meetup groups in different areas. I got my job while I was a visiting lecturer because one of the profs at the university at which I was working took pity on me and mentioned to a friend of his that I was looking for a job.

  What skills are useful to
  develop in order to have good chances to make a successful transition?

In STEM areas, computing is essential. If you have never coded, learn how by trying a small project. If you have, consider learning more languages. Look at job ads to see what skills they are looking for.

  What strategies to follow and which behaviors should be avoided?

It is perfectly possible to work on a Plan B without committing yourself to leaving academia. I've seen a lot of people do this. For example, one of the best graduate students I've ever seen used to attend seminars to brush up on his mathematical finance, in case he needed it. (He never has.)

For me, the biggest obstacle was the sunk cost. All those years of study and the sacrifices made in order to do a PhD in "my" area wasted.


What to do about an unprofessional instructor?

Well, my answer is twofold:

First, the teaching method ssems like a misunderstood version of inverted classroom teaching - maybe an explanation how the teacher could support the students better might help. But it would be best if this comes from the course members or some students organization and not from an "outsider" not involved in the class.

Second, the "bad coding style" - it's hard to tell what is good or bad without context. Some problems are obvious (e.g. "unpythonic" using of space characters, typos) and you could point to the official coding guidelines which are worth reading for any programmer anyway. Maybe you can suggest those as course material.

All other "probelms" you identified could be part of the teaching concept and there are rationales for each:

I would not introduce string.digits (and any other library method) to beginners unless they see a need for it. The task given could be a step towards generating such a need.
The mix of ' and " could have educational purposes as well (even though I would have used an example like my_string = "let's say 'Hello'").
List comprehension is hard to understand for beginners. It is a powerful concept for intermediate or advanced programmers, but usually beginners are having trouble understanding the nature of a loop.

Maybe you can offer to support the course as tutor / student teaching assistant or else, with this you could influence the course content and improve the overall situation.


How do I explain my poor grade to a grad school committee?

I've been a straight A student before university all my life.

Great!  You're finally among your peers, who have also been straight-A students their entire life before university.  Finally, schoolwork isn't just a trivial boring exercise in pencil-pushing!  Finally, you can actually test your limits!  Finally, an opportunity to be challenged, to be confused and frustrated---in short, to actually learn something!

By definition, only a small fraction of your class can be significantly above average.  Fortunately, graduate admissions committee know this.  We don't just look at your grades; we also look at the institution that gives them.  A perfect GPA from a school that typically admits weaker students is worth significantly less than a merely-pretty-good GPA from a school known for admitting strong students.  A 3.2 from MIT or Harvey Mudd is worth more than a 4.0 from the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.

Do not under any circumstances make excuses for your grades in your graduate school application.  Write about your accomplishments.  Write about your expertise.  Write about the challenges that you overcame.  Present the evidence that you will thrive in your target graduate program(s).  Sell yourself as a mature, hard-working student, ready to hit the ground running.  Do. Not. Make. Excuses.  No matter how unfairly you believe you have been treated, admissions committees will read your complaints as whining, and they will admit some other student with a mediocre GPA from a hyper-competitive school instead of you.


How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards" without mention of any errors?

When a journal rejects a paper because it is not of sufficient interest for them or it does not meet the standards of the journal, it generally means exactly what they said.  They thought the paper wasn't interesting or important enough.

Journals vary enormously in how selective or prestigious they are.  Some journals will accept any paper that seems to be correct, original, and at least somewhat interesting. If a journal like that rejects a paper for this reason, then either it's not a very good paper, or they are being unfair (perhaps accidentally - peer review isn't perfect, so occasionally you just have to try again), or you submitted it to the wrong sort of journal (the line between different subfields can be blurry, but if you choose the wrong side it decreases your chances of acceptance).

Other journals impose extremely high standards and only want to publish papers on exciting breakthroughs.  In that case, there might be nothing wrong with the paper at all, and the only issue is that they have received other submissions they like even better.

And, of course, there's a whole range of journals in between these extremes.  Depending on where the journal is in this range, it will shift from a statement about your paper to a statement about the journal's high standards, and there's no way to be more precise without knowing more about the situation.

The best source of advice is a trusted mentor in your field, but I wouldn't get too worried on the basis of one rejection.  Look over the paper again with fresh eyes, make sure the introduction and conclusions are compelling, choose another journal, and resubmit.  If you run into this problem repeatedly, then something's wrong (either the paper needs work or you need to choose more appropriate journals) and that would be a good time to seek more detailed advice.


Note: This was going to be a comment, but then I realized it actually answers the question that was asked.

The following 2004 Ph.D. dissertation at Utrecht University has a preface on pp.
 xi-xviii, so the answer is YES.

Ideas and Explorations : Brouwer's Road to Intuitionism

However, the question you possibly want answered is whether a Ph.D. dissertation at YOUR university can have a preface. To find the answer, you can ask someone knowledgeable about the specific dissertation format rules at your university, or you could visit the library shelves where recent Ph.D. dissertations are shelved and spend 20-30 minutes quickly flipping through the first few pages of the 100-200 most recent dissertations, keeping in mind that for some universities the answer might be department-specific.


Advice: How to prepare myself for Adjunct Teaching

I am a biology education researcher at a large public university, which means I spend a lot of time reading about teaching techniques and analyzing student outcomes. I teach college biology courses regularly. I say all this to emphasize that teaching well is a difficult skill set in itself. Being an expert in a field is only tangentially related to being an expert teacher.

So, I am assuming that you not only want to get hired, but want to become a good teacher. I'll suggest three ways to become an effective (and hireable) adjunct.

Read a book on university teaching. Most are geared toward new faculty. Some examples are: Teaching at Its Best or How Learning Works.
Google for the journal on education research in your specialty. For computer science, it looks like Journal of Computational Science Education. Read through several articles to get an idea of what the current issues in teaching in your field are.
Get practice teaching. If there is a community college, liberal arts college, or university near you, email some of the faculty and ask if you can assist for free during recitations/labs and help grade exams. Effective teaching requires understanding how confused students think and lots of practice helping guide them over hurdles. There may be legal issues to overcome here, but hopefully someone will appreciate free support.

It's easy to Google "how to write a teaching philosophy statement," but a good statement requires you to have some teaching experience to use as examples.

To summarize -- read up, get practice, appreciate that this is a new skill.


What is the correct form of conferences/proceedings/transactions name in a citation?

I suspect that the reason citations are done this way (and now we're verging on english.se territory) is to allow for meaningful alphabetical ordering/indexing.

In this case, the "IEEE transactions on" is the generic part of the name, and should not be used for alphabetical ordering/indexing. This is analogous to how in indices you'll often see things like

  Korea, Republic of

rather than

  Republic of Korea.


How to use copyrighted images in an article?

The images are copyrighted. You are not allowed to put it in the article unless you obtain an explicit (and preferably written) permission by the copyright holder to use it there. If you obtained a permission to use it for research and you would like to consider it a permission to publish it in an article, you better consult a lawyer, but the odds are that you can't do that. As well, do not forget to check whether the journal's copyright transfer is not conflicting with the permission you obtain from the picture's copyright holder. You'll very likely need an exception from the Editor to be allowed to use the image.

To see that this is an issue, remember that the usage of the famous Lenna picture led to legal complaints raised by PlayBoy who is the copyright holder. They decided to cancel the complaints, but it was just their choice. (Source: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/lenna.shtml)


How to approach the dean and/or provost about a years-old two-body problem?

Unfortunately, I doubt this will be easy.  You've already set the precedent that you are willing to work as an adjunct, and the administration is probably hoping that this continues as long as possible.  They might not ever have to hire you long-term, and even if they do they'll at least have saved some money in the meantime.  If they were going to do something out of sympathy for the difficult position you are in, they probably would have already.  That means your only real line of argument is to convince them that hiring you would be better for the university.  This means establishing either that the status quo cannot continue (so keeping you ad an adjunct isn't an option) or that hiring you would be better for the university than keeping you as an adjunct and spending the money on something else.

  In other words, by securing the stability of both "units", one also works toward the stability of the whole.

Your best shot may be if you or your wife gets an offer elsewhere.  This may or may not work, depending on the local culture: at some places, getting outside offers is viewed as a sign of disloyalty.  However, the worst case scenario is having to take the other offer, and it's not clear that that would leave the two of you worse off than you are now.  Without an outside offer, there's no clear evidence of instability.

If you're going to seek other offers, it's probably better to do it soon.  Once your wife has tenure, getting another tenured job (or giving up tenure) would generally be harder than getting a tenure-track job.

  Included in the proposal would be a host of benefits:

I'd focus on the "(badly needed) teaching professor" part.  That sounds like it has the greatest potential for making an argument to the administration that the department is understaffed and really needs this position.  By contrast, they are much less likely to go for the argument that they should hire you on research grounds.


zotero: can I manually change a citation style

Yes, you can. Zotero stores citation style information in a file format that is called Citation Style Language (CSL). You can download and adapt style files in this format from several repositories, such as this one, or create your own style files form scratch.

In order to add a CSL file to Zotero, follow these instructions from the Zotero wiki:

  CSL styles (with a “.csl” extension) can also be added through the Style Manager, found under the “Styles” tab of the “Cite” pane in the Zotero preferences panel. It shows you which styles are already installed, and also allows you to add (by clicking the + button) and delete (by pressing the - button) styles. Another installation option is to drag-and-drop a CSL style file onto an open Firefox browser window.

On changing available citation styles within Zotero, the manual says:

  When you click the “Insert Citation” button for the first time in a document, Zotero opens the Document Preferences, where you can select the citation style you want to use in your document. You can change the citation style at any point later by clicking the “Set Document Preferences” button.

I'm not familiar enough with the CSL syntax to explain which changes you would have to make in order for primary documents to appear the way you want. However, you may be able to find an adapted version of the Chicago style that suits your needs on a repository; or you can use the online CSL editor to tweak an existing Chicago style CSL file without having to deal with the syntax.


How to remind a professor about sending papers to read?

Dear Professor X,

  during our meeting last week, you mentioned that you wanted to send me links to a couple of papers. Would you mind?

  Best, Y

I often find students agonizing over the exact wording of totally normal emails. The text above took me 10 seconds to write, and that's the amount of time you can expect the typical professor to spend on the typical email. You're not going to be held to a much higher standard either. Be polite, formal, and above all brief. Address the person at the top, sign off at the bottom. That's all that's being asked for.


Should I ask to work on professor's project?

Yes, you should ask! Don't be shy -- there's nothing at all to lose. In the worst case, he'll point out that the logistics of collaborating remotely are hard, or something like that. No one is ever upset that someone is enthusiastic about working with them. If you're worried about the lost opportunities of doing research with someone more local: having a project you like and an advisor you work well with seems far more important than local convenience here -- it's not like you're in a field that needs a lab and hands-on training.