Backing out of accepted post-doc position in favor of a permanent faculty position

Getting a permanent position is the goal of every post-doc. That a post-doc is applying for such positions and will leave as soon as an application is successful (which is a quite rare and lucky event) is expected. No need to delay applying for post-doc positions or telling anyone about your plans to apply for permanent positions. You also won't tell them about that lotto ticket you plan to buy, will you?


Postdoctoral references asked to provide recommendation letters - does it indicate the candidate passed a screening?

While every university has its own processes it is likely that you passed at least some initial screening. But it might not be terribly significant. It might be nothing more than that the university wants to communicate directly with your references rather than some other way to obtain the letters.
If you get invited to an interview then it is much more likely that they find you "interesting". But at the moment, it probably just means that they put your application in a pile of folks not to be immediately rejected for reasons of obvious ill-fit. Good luck, but don't read too much in to it yet.


Why do university campuses have glass blowing services?

If you make enough use of them, it's cheaper and more efficient to use in-house services. That's why most universities will also have a mechanical workshop, to make one-off items mostly for the physics and engineering departments.

Everything is streamlined: the glassblower is an employee, not a business owner. He can spend more of his time on his products, thus his services are cheaper. The University will also make some profit from selling their services.
It makes things easier for the academic staff, and there's less bother with accounts or purchase orders. For routine jobs (if these things aren't outsourced), just visit the workshop and ask for another 1L boiling flask.
The academic staff know that he will always do a good job: a low turn-over rate means the glassblower(s) develop a strong rapport with their frequent customers, and have a good understanding of their needs. If more jobs are outsourced, this personal touch can be easily lost.

Of course, it seems these days that ordinary items are usually outsourced -- a big factory is more cost effective. It's for the one-off custom items that it still makes a lot of sense to keep things in-house.


How does having a PhD from Latin America impact an academic career in mathematics in the US?

The institution from which you have a PhD is of minor significance compared to:

What you've published
Where you've published
Who you've published/worked with (particularly, your advisor)
Who can recommend you to others

With all of those being equal, a PhD from a better-rated university (not country) will improve your evaluation as a candidate to some extent, I suppose.

However, I believe you're thinking about this the wrong way. I would suggest trying to find specific potential post-doc hosts - researchers whose work is related to what you are interested in - and contacting them directly rather than thinking of "applications" in the general and the abstract.


How to set goals when the challenge is to continually, gradually improve?

I think this is a very good question. Goal setting - as you mentioned - is a very useful tool to achieve milestones. The smaller the goals ("microgoals"), the more these follow the characteristics of a continuous growth curve. However, if I understand your question correctly, you might be looking more at something like "values" that you want to teach.

If lifelong learning is part of the curriculum, you face the question how to evaluate the process (?) and maybe more meaningful, how to teach something that ends up as an understanding of a useful value in the arsenal of a modern-day student. I'd suggest, the best way to achieve this is to 1) lead by example and to 2) provide further examples. Examples should come from someone whose achievements can be traced back to them learning specific new skills throughout life without which they could not have achieved what we currently perceive as their main achievement. You should by now have a few examples in mind of people in your specific niche that would be examples for this. Talk about them and how their willingness to continually grow and learn enabled them to achieve what they did. Doesn't have to take long, but should stick in students' minds.

Hope this helps!


Is it appropriate to informally address my supervisor in the thesis acknowledgements?

This is going to vary a lot by the country and customs of your university, and your relationship with your advisor. But I'd say, if you relationship with your advisor is good, then in the UK it would not be seen as out of order to refer to your supervisor as informally as you like in the acknowledgements sections of your thesis. In the theses I've read, these things are often a lot like best man speeches - often written in a jovial and cheeky style, while staying just the right side of the appropriateness line, but also often cloyingly sentimental at the same time.


Does the NSF support researchers with no academic affiliation?

Another answer quotes the Grant Proposal Guide, which is of course the essential resource.

The NSF does solicit proposals (like other agencies) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

But I'd also say that whenever you have questions about NSF funding for a research idea, I'd figure out an appropriate program officer and send them an e-mail. For example, I'm in chemistry, so I go to the NSF chemistry website and guess an appropriate sub-program.

In general, I send an e-mail saying something like:

  Hi, I have a research idea that I think might fit in your program but I have some questions. Would there be a good time to talk this week? [etc.]

Sometimes I'll even get a call back promptly from the program officer, or a polite message that program X might be a better fit, etc.

In all cases, the NSF program officers want to fund the best research they can, so they are very helpful at suggesting appropriate approaches (e.g., if it's possible for them to fund your idea).


what are the best tips on how to market yourself for both academia and industry

After you get an academic position, you can get in touch with people from the research branch of the companies that interest you. Doing it before you get a job may not get you as much attention.

You can do this kind of networking at conferences (both academic or more engineering related ones, such as Strata, QCon, StrangeLoop, Grace Hopper, ...).

You can also write directly to a research scientist in the company, mentioning that you work on problems X and Y and you think they are interesting for the company and would love to talk more, and you are also willing to give a talk. People at companies like it (source: I'm a research scientist at a company).

A young CS academic who wants to be visible must have an up-to-date website with all their publications, CV, links to github or other software repositories, a news section with list of upcoming talks/travels, and so on. Thus, get a website and keep it up to date. Exactly as you do with your CV.

You may want to be on Twitter and tweet about your work, and be part of the conversation. Please have a mostly-work-related-only handle.

By the way, if you get an academic position, think about postponing the start date to spend some months at a company. Doing this can have a beneficial effect both in the short and in the long term (networking, source of problems, source of funding, ...).


How important is to include an acknowledgment in the poster presentation?

It is acceptable to use one or both ways unless there is a restriction policy from your organization or the committee of the event, at which the poster is going to be presented.

However, a poster is very short to present your work and ideas and you want to properly invest in the space. In my opinion, a logo is enough to acknowledge the funding agency. The assumption is that there are no other reasons to put a logo of any organization in your poster if it does not support the work in one way or another.


Should I prepare new homework exercises each year, 20% of the final grade is homework?

The main dilemma is that the homework is part of the grades, therefore you should prepare a new one each semester.

I solved this for my programming course in a radical way (after struggling with a similar issue for a few years): I made all homework optional, and only the exams count. I make it very clear that the students will fail if they don't do the exercises (and some prove me right each year which is motivating for the others). Students are getting feedback on their submissions and they can even submit revisions. I'm using the homework results (anonymously) for the course where I'm discussing common errors and best practices.

What I did instead is to build dependencies in our course management website (in our case Moodle based): The students only get access to the next chapters if they at least submit the mandatory (minimum) exercises. Yes, they can submit crap, but it's hard to evaluate each submission in very little time so I'm willing to accept this loophole, and at least up until now, students haven't used this option.

The second thing I do is have three live programming sessions where the students have to solve little tasks (in general quite simple exercises) without an internet connection. You have to pass all three of them. Since this happens during the semester, they recieve a feedback about their progress quite early. Each test can be repeated once during the semester.

The combination of thoses measures results in high participation rates and people have no more motivation to copy solutions since they don't have any benefit from it.


Am I rational to be hopeless to have an academic career after my mental recovery?

(this answer is based not on my personal experience, but I know a number of people struggling with depression, some of them also in academia, and some quite close to me)
I don't think it's rational to decide that your academic career is hopeless. You are on a PhD track after all. You are still in a position where you can do good work, make people notice you, and ultimately get a good career going. Especially in Germany my feeling is that where you do your PhD is not very indicative of how well your career will be going afterwards - I know professors graduating from the smallest universities that I have never heard about in other contexts, and I know plenty of graduates from TU Munich that went nowhere after graduation.
What you need to do - and I am aware that this every difficult - is to let go of what happened in the past and focus on the future. How can you bring yourself into the best position? If your advisor does not have too many contacts you will need to work on these contacts yourself (honestly, this is nothing particularly unusual - this is the situation that at least 2/3 of PhD candidates find themselves in, not every advisor is an international superstar). If you can't get a postdoc via reference, keep your eyes open for posted positions. Go to conferences, meet people, make people be aware that you are or will be on the job market. And even if your academic career plans indeed do not work out, there will still be plenty of other opportunities for a PhD holder to pursue. Don't get married to one specific career path, and don't tie your self-worth to whether you make one specific thing work or not.

That said, the elephant in the room is that you also need to take care of yourself. Self-treating a depression with "sports" is dangerous - maybe what you are actually doing is distracting yourself without actually working on the underlying problems, and this has a tendency to only work for so long. I strongly recommend you to give therapy another shot. You don't necessarily have to agree to take medication (although, as I said in a comment above, not all anti-depressants make you tired, but it is true that pretty much all of them potentially come with some problematic side-effects), but some therapy or treatment is long-term really the only way forward. That said, you are perfectly in the right to be picky when choosing what psychologist / psychiatrist(s) to work with - many are frankly very bad at their job, and even the better ones may be a bad fit for you personally.
Again, your focus needs to be looking forward how to improve your life, not looking backwards at what went wrong before. This isn't easy for anybody, and I know that depression only makes it harder to focus on a positive outlook rather than things that went badly in the past. A lot of this has to do with acceptance - accepting that you have in fact a medical condition, and that you will need to do and deal with some things that people without that condition don't have to bother with (and some of them may indeed be impacting your ability to perform in a workplace). We accept this to be the case with non-mental medical conditions, and it's also true for depression.
Ultimately, you need to remember that long-term your health is more important than your career. You can certainly still have both, but if you decide to ignore your health because of your career there is a good chance that 10 years from now you have neither.


Can I tell the authors I was a referee for the same paper for another journal?

I suggest copy-and-pasting your entire review, after double-checking nothing has changed, i.e., your review is still current. You should make your position clear to the editor and I suggest opening with a statement such as: I reviewed this manuscript a week ago for another journal. The authors have not addressed my comments and my opinion remains unchanged: ... Unlike another answer, I see no problem stating you were the reviewer to both the editor and the authors, since it'll be obvious to the authors anyhow.


Required reviews completed vs ready for decision elsevier

From the outside, it's difficult to tell. Two possibilities that spring to mind are:

The journal requires two reviews, but regularly invites four (this makes sense because reviewers decline to review, never respond to the invitation, agree but don't submit a review by the deadline, etc). Two of the reviewers have completed their reviews, but as long as there's a reviewer who did not explicitly decline still invited, the status remains as "required reviews complete". However if all the reviewers have either submitted a review or have declined to review, then the status updates to "ready for decision".
The journal is set up so that the handling editor makes a recommendation which is then forwarded to the associate editor/editor-in-chief to make a decision. "Required reviews complete" would indicate that the handling editor hasn't made a recommendation, while "ready for decision" means (s)he has.

Either way there's nothing to do except wait.


If I delay my graduation for one semester and get accepted to a Phd program, can the submission be delayed?

If you are not officially graduated from a degree which is required for beginning a doctoral degree, you can ask your new graduate program if you can defer your start, explaining your situation.

In some cases, they will simply say no - some departments have a standing policy that they do not defer unless there is a medical emergency, and otherwise you are just welcomed to re-apply the following admission period (some departments do that only once a year, but some allow rolling admissions or once every semester).

On the other hand, in many cases they will allow you to defer and start the PhD at a later date. The main issue here is that some departments have strong policies in favor official cohorts - sets of students who enter all together in the same semester. Other departments have strong policies that you can only start a doctorate in a given semester each year, so you'd have to wait 1 full year to start (so if you planned to start fall of 2020, you'd have to wait until fall of 2021, etc.).

These should always be used as a last resort, because departments are generally free to change their policy and often decide on a case by case basis, and that sounds like an unpleasant amount of stress to volunteer to have to deal with (if you can avoid it). If you are still in the position that you have a choice of whether or not you need to be in this position, it is better to contact them in advance to see what kind of option you might have - or, if possible, just don't be in that position in the first place. If you only need one course, check with your University what option there may be to get credit for an equivalent course taken elsewhere, or take an online equivalent, or take a class in a summer/interim period (if your University has such a thing).

So you have a number of options, and be sure to investigate the most conventional ones (being able to graduate on time) while checking on the others as a fall-back plan, just in case.


Should definition of terms section be included in the introduction or the literature review chapter?

I've often encountered this type of problem in my own academic writing (and not only in theses). The problem is that it's often difficult to talk about something before you've defined what it is. But at the same time, it's awkward to write so much expository material before being able to talk about your own stuff. It's up to you to work out, for your document in particular, the best way to present these necessary definitions.

Given that you want to say what your work is about as soon as possible, you can't avoid mentioning at least a few of these technical terms before introducing them formally. For one thing, you may well have to put them in the title! Often, you can present just enough in the abstract and introduction to allow readers to get an idea of the technicalities, but not overwhelm them with detail. The trick is to make sure your presentation is accurate and useful. If you make it too vague ("the Riemann Hypothesis is a very hard problem") then nobody is helped.

A literature review chapter is often a natural place to put definitions. It's hard to say anything meaningful about the literature if you haven't introduced the terms that the literature talks about. Also, exploring the past contributions to your subject certainly includes identifying who came up with particular definitions, who disagreed, how they adapted the definitions, and so on. This is the case for the dissertation in your first link, which defines "research" in the literature review, in the context of conflicting definitions of what research actually is (p19). The author still talks about research in the preceding pages - but that is the point where she sets the scene for her own work, using that definition in particular.

Material which is more basic or less contested could be introduced earlier, if you like. If it is general background, which readers need to know in order to understand anything you've done, but which the thesis is not particularly "about", then the introduction is a fine place for it.

Equally, definitions could be in their own section - either towards the beginning, or as an appendix. I often see this in documents where the definitions are basic reference material. Some readers will know them already, and skip the chapter; others can read in more detail. Again, this option separates the definitions from the literature review, on the basis that the definitions are simply fundamental to the field.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, unless your institution tells you what to do. I hope these thoughts will be helpful as you consider which option is best for presenting your work.


Do academics in the UK usually have to declare other jobs (e.g. consulting) they take on and is it public information?

Regarding (1), whether they had to declare depends entirely on a) the agreement with private businesses (in particular, the agreement between the private business and the academic might actually be between the private business and the university) and b) the terms of the academic's contract. I believe that many contracts permit UK academics to work for private businesses during part of their time, but I don't know how widely that holds.

Regarding (2), it is always possible for others to find out about relationships. You could rephrase your question to: can a third party find out about these relationships legally? It then depends on the contract between the academic and the private business. In particular, if the contract contains a non-disclosure clause, then someone must violate that clause to enable a third party to discover the relationship, hence, it cannot be discovered legally.


Applying to PhD programs; do I need to include transcripts from unrelated master's degree program?

"All university level courses taken" means "all university level courses taken", so yes, you should submit it too. Otherwise, if at any point they discover that you had been enrolled in that masters, you could be in trouble for lying.

Even if they don't require you to submit it, you will have to explain what were you doing during that time. And a bad master's is far better than sitting at home doing noting.

Now, you don't want it to hurt your application, so you should consider explaining in your cover letter why you did poorly. That shouldn't be too difficult, I think a good bachelor and a bad master is still better than just a good bachelor.


How to apply for professorship in another field?

With due attention to the fact that within that CS department, there might be many affiliated faculty members, are who proficient in programming and capable of teaching, your tendency might not, reasonably, lead to the desired outcome.

As the programming skills, nowadays, are essential for different scientific disciplines, I suggest you try to convince the department, in a proposal-based manner, to define a programming-driven course for students corresponding to your home department, you say, containing the fundamentals of the simulating chemical processes (If it has not been already existed, of course)...

Such scenario would sound more functional for you to follow your interest.


It is worth to apply for a postdoc position a few days after the deadline?

The obvious question in the mind of the potential employer will be: why were you not able to meet the deadline? I would suggest you have a good reason for this. If it's just that you were disorganised, this will not reflect well on you. While you could take the attitude of "I've got nothing to lose by trying - they can only say no", bear in mind that many fields of academia are quite small communities and you may well end up wanting to apply for another job in the same lab, or collaborate in the future. Therefore, making a good impression is important even outside of trying to get the job. You need to weigh this up against how much you want that particular postdoc.

On the other hand, if you have a good reason for missing the deadline, then you might as well get in touch and see what they say. Sometimes people don't receive enough good quality applications and are delighted to include an extra candidate.

I would agree with @VonBeche's recommendation to call beforehand to ask whether they could accept a late application, before sending the completed forms.


How to approach negotiating the start date of a tenure-track position?

Let me offer the perspective of a former department chair who was involved in hiring negotiations from the department side. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Hiring a faculty member is a long-term investment. When a department recruits a new faculty member, typically they expect the person to be around for the next 20-30. When viewed through that prism, any short-term concessions, especially ones that come without any financial cost like a deferral or unpaid leave of absence, are fairly negligible compared to the total benefit the department expects to get out of an otherwise-successful recruitment.
Leverage is important, but it’s not everything. An academic recruitment is not usually a zero-sum game where each side tries to exploit the other to the maximal extent they can get away with. Specifically, it is a repeated game where the reputation of a department’s recruitment practices matters a lot for its ability to recruit successfully in the future, and besides, the two parties are going to be working alongside each other for a long time, so it is in everybody’s interest that things are done amicably and in a way that leaves the other side generally happy and satisfied. For this reason, a candidate’s request that can be granted by the department for a relatively low cost will typically be looked at pretty favorably, even in the absence of leverage. (At least this is true in departments and universities run by rational, competent people...)
Keep your cool. From the language of your question it seems to me that you are approaching the discussion from a rather emotional place. For example, you say “I hate to do this”, suggesting that you feel guilty or apologetic about bringing up what you perceive to be a super-delicate or taboo topic. Relax! Such discussions are all in a day’s work for the people you’ll be talking to, and don’t carry nearly the emotional weight that you imagine them to carry. Nor do you have anything to be apologetic about. “Negotiation” in the current context is just a code word for you telling the department what your needs and preferences are, to which the department will respond by telling you what its needs and preferences are, and by a process of joint exploration you and your co-negotiator will arrive at the point in the space of possibilities that is reasonably agreeable to you both. Just bring up the topic of the deferral and anything else that’s on your mind, in a live conversation (ask for a phone/video call with the department chair), and do so in a straightforward, mature, honest and professional way, and you’ll be fine. The worst that can conceivably happen is they’ll decline your request and you’ll be no worse off than you are now.
You should bring up your request as soon as possible. Given the short deadline, any further delay weakens your position, since if you wait much longer, people will wonder if things that you say are important to you maybe aren’t as important as you say they are (otherwise why are you only now remembering to bring them up?). By acting fast you will appear more credible and your requests are likely to be taken more seriously. There will also be more time to explore possible creative solutions that will satisfy both you and the department.

Good luck, and congratulations on the offer, which I’m sure you worked extremely hard to get and is well-deserved.


How to find less-difficult-than famous unsolved problems?

Maybe the first thing to keep in mind is be patient.  Learning mathematics and finding good problems take time, and you're still very young.

In math, at the undergraduate level, the most important thing to becoming a good researcher is to learn a lot of math.  At this level, really the only reason to do research is for fun.  Your goal should not be to get new results--you might or you might not--but your goal should be to understand things and enjoy the process.

Thus my recommendation for doing research on your own is: just learn a bunch of things that seem interesting, and when questions naturally come to you, explore them.  You will probably stumble on to many ideas for research this way, and it doesn't matter if they have been studied/solved before or not (my experience: usually they have, but occasionally you find something new).

If you really want to do something new, it helps immensely to have an experienced mentor guiding you.  They can tell you what is known/what isn't, suggest relevant references and teach you some basic techniques.

It's unfortunate that none of your professors seem willing to work with you now, but there could be various reasons for that, such as being busy and not knowing your abilities/background.  I can't guarantee this, but there's a good chance that if you excel in their courses, one of them may be willing to provide you some informal guidance.

Finally, to directly answer the titular question here are some specific suggestions:

Try reading articles in undergraduate-oriented journals like The American Mathematical Monthly, College Mathematics Journal or Involve.  Many of the research articles are readable by undergraduates, and implicitly or explicitly suggest projects suitable for undergraduates.
You can use Mathematics Stack Exchange and MathOverflow to try find out what is known about a problem you're wondering about.  Also browsing some of the questions and answers will introduce you to some unsolved problems.
If you read an article you find really interesting, and you have some definite ideas about a project, you can try emailing one of the authors for their thoughts.
In the US, we have summer programs like REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at various institutions.  You might look to see if there are any similar opportunities in our around your country.


What are the working hours for full time PhD students in Germany?

You are typically paid for 50 or 65% to do work on some project, but that just means that the university graciously allows you to write your dissertation unpaid in the remaining 50 or 35%.

How much you really spent is hugely dependent on the discipline, the department, the advisor, and yourself. The best case scenario would be when there is a huge overlap between the project and your dissertation, both the department and the advisor are very supportive, and you are very disciplined and get a lot of work done in a short period of time. This does happen, but not everybody is that lucky.


Should I WX(drop) a class if the highest grade I can get is a B+? How badly would this hurt my PhD application?

I agree with Dave Rose that the most important aspects of your application will be your thesis and advisor recommendation, but I want to take a slightly more nuanced angle on whether you should drop your course.

You say that a B+ is the highest grade you can receive. Is it the likely grade? You should not be basing your estimates of what you are going to get in the class on statements like "if I get perfect scores on the remaining exams I can get . . .". If, in fact, you are more likely to get a C+, and the course is a "core" course, then an argument can be made for you to drop until the next time it is offered.


There are exceptions in some specific fields (for example accounting) where corporate jobs are much more attractive than academic ones, but, in general, an academic considers themselves very lucky if they can find any academic job at all, let alone one in a particular city.


Can you start using your married name on publications prior to getting married, but when the marriage is soon?

In general, there is no formal regulation about just what name you are allowed to use in your professional life.  As such, any reasonable interpretation of your current, past, or future name is acceptable.

I have, in fact, known at least one other person who did this, and it worked out just fine for her: they had a very solidly established relationship and two decades later they are still married.  Predicting the future is risky, however, and I know another person still using the name of an ex in her professional work.

There are other solutions that may work for some people as well, since your publication name is not required to match your legal name.  For example, you might choose to hyphenate or to keep publishing under your current name, even if you are planning to adopt your spouse's surname legally and socially.

Finally, it may be worth noting that ORCID aims to make these questions obsolete, but has not yet been broadly enough adopted and worked into people's thinking to effect such change.


Why should students be asked to register for a co-supervisor?

There are several reasons that the university wants you to do this.

The most serious is as a safeguard against possible problems that might arise if your relationship with your (actual) advisor deteriorates. For example, if your advisor asks you to do something that you think is unethical, or is making what you think are unreasonable demands on you, the idea is that you should be able to go to this second advisor to talk about these things. Whether or not this is actually realistic is another question.

This has nothing to do with authorship of publications, unless the second advisor is actually an author.


What is a teaching prep in terms of teaching load?

A "prep" is an individual different course you are teaching.  If you are teaching 2 different sections of the same course the same semester, that counts as only 1 "prep" but counts twice towards your "teaching load".

Given not-too-large class sizes, teaching 4 courses with only 2 preps might be less work than teaching 3 courses with 3 preps, since presumably you don't have to prepare twice to teach the same class twice.


Popular proprietary program or obscure open source substitute for reproducible research?

I think there are two kinds of reproducibility:

The ability of someone else to run your code and obtain the same output.
The ability of someone else to write their own code that does the same thing as yours based on your description and on examination of your code (reproduction from scratch).

The second kind of reproducibility is much more convincing, since the main point of scientific reproducibility is to verify correctness of the result.  For science that relies on code, it is usually impossible to include every detail of the code in the paper, so verification requires examination of the code.

If you use proprietary software, your code probably makes use of closed source code, and therefore it cannot be verified or reproduced from scratch.  If you use open source software, then all of the code that your code calls is probably open source, so it can all be verified or reproduced by someone else from scratch.

At present, it is probably true that the first kind of reproducibility is more achievable with proprietary, widely-used software.  I am optimistic that the current trend will lead to open-source software catching up in terms of wide use (consider SAGE, for example).

Addendum, in light of Epigrad's answer below, which I mainly agree with:
The problem with relying on closed-source code isn't that someone else won't know what that closed-source code is expected to do.

The problem is that if you have two closed-source implementations of the same algorithm and they give different results (trust me, they usually will), then you have no way of determining which (if either) is correct.

In other words, closed-source code would be fine for reproducibility if it were bug-free.  But it's not.


Literature search methodology for non-academics?

It can look daunting but don't be frustrated so quickly. Even academics are intimidated by the vastness of the system as well. The game's rule is to dive into the right partition of the literature to maximize the chance of finding what you want.

Before you start, browse the library website of your school for online resources first. Most institutes have online tutorial guiding students how to use different services. There could already be a workshop or video about what you want to learn.

One particular thing we need to know is that unlike public library which usually has one big catalog, academic literature is largely cataloged by their field of study. For instance, if we are to look for medical articles, PubMed would be a good starting database. For psychology, PsycINFO would be a good database. These databases group all related journals inside, and this can filter out a lot of unrelated articles.

Once the right database has been identified. Learn more about it by signing up for an account. Usually each of these databases has a tutorial and also an alert service for newly released articles. For example, this article talks about how to more effectively search PsycINFO.

For PubMed we have something called MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) which guides the use of keyword. For Psychology an equivalence is the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. You can try access to this through your school and check out the terms that may interest you.

False positive results always appear. That's why you should also learn the Boolean operators. They can help you refine your search. For instance, using your attention span example, you can try: "attention span" and "adult" or "attention span" not "educat*" (* is usually a wild card, it's to capture any words starting with educat~, including educate, education, educator(s), educational, etc.)

To look for some starting keywords, I will try Google Scholar and Wikipedia. Once you have some seeds, it should not be a problem to snowball for more.

Also, document your search processes. If you ever want to come back to this search, with all your keywords and database written down it'd be a lot easier. Lastly, since most databases allow us to look inside a particular journal, asking field experts for some recommended journal titles will also help you narrow down the search very quickly.

Remember this is not a one-shot activity. For most of the academics searching for information is an iterative process. So, spend some time to play with the search functions, and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Disclaimer: I am not a psychology expert but since OP uses psychology as examples I just rolled with it. If I wrote anything that's outrageous in this answer please feel free to post a comment, I'll promptly correct them.


Dealing with burnout from long review process

I can suggest two things. The first, and probably most important, is to have other things to occupy your mind and your time while the process goes on. Don't wait for replies on submitted work, but get the next thing into better shape.
The other thing is just to accept that the system is out of your control for all practical purposes. Editors and reviewers (especially) have their own work schedules and you have no control over that. The quality of the reviewers is not something you have any say over. When you do get a reply, respond promptly, of course. And if you find long delays between communications, ask about the status and ask for an estimate for completion of the current stage. But just accept that it is a fact of life, not unlike the weather.


Send a second follow-up to inquire about interview success?

You won't accomplish anything by sending another email. The department hasn't forgotten that they interviewed you.


How long should your answers be for a postdoc interview?

Try to behave as you always should try to behave: In a socially sensible and sensitive way.
Try to see if people want to ask another question, or whether they are happy with you to continue. Ask whether/offer that you can add more details, state that you will be happy to discuss X further ("I have also worked for a while on X, I will be happy to provide more details if you are interested"), and so on. Maybe make a short break/take a breath, and see if someone jumps with another question they have been waiting to ask since 30 seconds, or if they are waiting for you to continue. Attaching this to times seems silly.
Generally, it is better to err on the side of being a bit too talkative, as long as you watch out for (non-verbal) signals (i.e. people trying to find a point to interrupt, etc.): If you read the signals, you can easily stop.  On the other hand, having people in interviews who wouldn't say a word about themselves and just answer questions with "yes" and "no" is a pain, and also most likely not the profile of someone you want to hire (after all, postdocs should actively collaborate, supervise students, etc.).
Just keep in mind: People have (hopefully) read your CV.  If they say "tell us about yourself", they want to know things beyond what is in the CV, or at least get some hooks where to start asking questions about things which go beyond the CV.


How to know whether references, tables, and figures are included in journal word limits?

That depends on the journal. Therefore you should ask them.
E.g. https://aip.scitation.org/mmm/authors/jsprep (mirror):

Contributed MMM Manuscripts should not exceed 3500 words. Abstract, title, author list, references, and acknowledgments are all excluded from the 3500-word limit. Figures, tables, and equations, however, are included and must be accounted for by calculating a word count equivalent to the space they occupy.

https://jasn.asnjournals.org/sites/default/files/ASN/PDF/jasn_ifa.pdf (mirror):

Original Articles are limited to 3500 words (including significance statement, abstract, and main text, excluding Methods) and eight data figures. Methods, references, figure legends, and tables are not included in the word count

FYI  Why do so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions?


Journal allows me to choose whether to transfer copyright – why would I do so?

To expand a little on user2768's answer, the text provided by the publisher normally explains the benefits and implications of the different options quite well.

If you choose to retain your copyright, you are only giving the publisher permission to publish and sell your work, but all rights to your work remain with you. You are in principle free to give other publishers permission to print your work, but there still may or may not be a rider about exclusivity (for a specific time or forever) in the copyright agreement even if you choose to retain the rights to your work.

If you choose to transfer your copyright, the publisher becomes the owner of this piece of text, similar to if you had written a book through a contract with them. You cannot simply turn around and sell or give away the same work to another party.

The (theoretical) incentive for you to transfer is that if the copyright is with the publisher, the publisher has the legal opportunities and incentives to protect their intellectual property, for instance by taking legal action against plagiarized versions of your manuscript. If you retain your copyright, the publisher basically can't know whether you have given another publisher permission to reprint your work, and they also don't really care since it's your work, not theirs.
However, in practice a publisher is only willing to protect your work to the extent that they suffer actual financial damages. For instance, if an obscure spam open access publisher publishes a plagiarized version of your article, you may be very annoyed but the publisher is unlikely to take legal action (or at least none that goes beyond sending them an unfriendly email), since the actual financial damage for them is very, very limited. In that light I agree with you that for most people retaining their copyright is probably the more natural choice.


Will a post on arXiv as a high school sophomore hurt my future academic life?

I suggest looking into publications that specifically target high school or undergraduate students. An example, but one that unfortunately no longer exists, is The Mathematics Student Journal (sample issue from 1971). A current one is Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. An organization that I've been involved with both as a student (mid 1970s) and as a teacher (late 1990s) is Mu Alpha Theta. These are USA based, but your teacher should know some appropriate for you.


When citing a personal corespondence, is the full name always mentioned?

Continuously referring to personal correspondence sounds like a bad idea… if many parts of the discussion come from unpublished comments from your correspondent, he should probably be a co-author rather than simply cited. Otherwise, you can quote the personal correspondence once and explain its context at first point of use. Something like:

  Many of ideas developed in this paragraph were inspired by a series of discussion with cat expert Bill Bobson, over the spring of 2002. In particular, he drew our attention to the viciousness of cats and their unwillingness to comply to their master's will.


How to increase participation in tutorials, as a teaching assistant?

I often walk over to a randomly picked student and ask him/her a question. I do that randomly and unpredictably, including corners of the room or sides where students expect to be out of the action, and no student will stay inattentive. Under no circumstances belittle or ridicule, though, no matter how wrong they are, and if the student makes even a partial step in the right direction, give them credit for this. If they are stuck, you can then solicit help from others to further complete the answer.

For students avoiding your eyes, try to pick a question with unclear/ambiguous response. When you then ask the student, they are likely to respond with "I don't know" or similar, and you can then say that they are indeed right, that the answer is indeed unclear (and, of course, you discuss why). This gives them a confidence boost, and the next time you ask them they will be less worried to answer.


Despacito: the slow evolutionary changes in plant microRNAs.

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29448158)


I found another proof of my theorem. Can I present two different proofs in the paper?

If the two proofs are sufficiently different, then it's entirely reasonable to include both of them in your paper.  You might, however, want to think first about whether the proofs might actually lead (easily) to different generalizations of your theorem.  If they do, then you get two benefits: It's then clear that the two proofs are genuinely different. And you have some more general results.


Reference style where authors are abbreviated with long underscore

I don't really agree with the other answer. It's still used in recent publications, and not just in the US. I've recently seen this in the Annales Mathématiques Blaise Pascal (random French example) and all AMS publications until very recently (at least 2013, although they changed the style between then and now). "I've never seen this" doesn't really prove anything.


Publishing several research papers in the same journal

It would depend on the journal, of course. There should be no negative effect if it is a high quality, respected journal such as one associated with a professional society. A predatory journal would be a different matter of course. But the several papers in the same high quality journal have been reviewed by a fairly large number of independent reviewers.

Whether the editors would continue to accept papers from the same person is up to them, of course.


Is it bad if I don't feel like an impostor?

This professor was just trying to reassure the folks who are feeling doubtful or worried.

Bottom line: if you feel worried about something, that's okay, it's a common phenomenon, and feeling that way is nothing to worry about; if you don't feel worried about something, great!  No need to feel worried!


Can I take on an academic pseudonym while publishing research papers or take initials of my name? Is it possible?

The common way to publish is "Surname, N." (not the unique). So it will be read. How ever you should evaluate all the facts before, and consider why you think it's embarrassing.
There's no trouble about publishing with a nickname, in fact, many people has done it, but there's no guarantee that it won't bring you other problems:

accessing conferences. Many conferences wil ask for your passport to receive your access ID.
having to answer for two surnames
having accounts with different surnames
The most difficult: demonstrate that you are your nickname. There's no legal entity which does that.

However, at the Q3, Q2, Q1 conferences are not a high school. You'll find people from around the world, with high education, whose companies, universities or themselves have payed from $500-$5000 and will be looking for the contents of your article, not your Surname.
Decades ago, Chinese authors used nicknames and they had this kind of problems. They changed Peng/Yang/Ming/Wung, for Atkinson/Eastwood/Anderson/Banks. But, fortunately, nowadays you can find thousands of articles with asian surnames and shared without shame. The Academic community will look at your contents first. If it has quality contents, then look at the authors to remember it.


Why are contributions to the education of the broader public not valued much within academia?

Scientists not only need to discover new knowledge but also have to share the knowledge to others. For the former, we have things like universities, collaborate groups and journals to take charge. For the latter, we have various forms from teaching, developing and maintaining softwares to writing or translating books, writing and editing in Wikipedia, answering (and asking) in SE, joining an academic club, working on a academic-related project, blogging, etc.

I think this is not correct. Discovering new knowledge is the actual research (valued on all levels), "sharing to others" is writing publications (valued so much that the common criticism is rather that publications count too much).

What you mean is a different type of knowledge dissemination, basically the education of the broader public. This is indeed currently not widely valued, but I am not convinced that this is a fault of the system. Essentially, when an university hires a researcher, they want a researcher. They are specifically looking for somebody that generates new knowledge, not somebody that is good at breaking down this new knowledge for the layman (this would be a science journalist, or somesuch), nor for somebody that mainly collects and summarizes the knowledge on Wikipedia or Stack Exchange.

Hence, the answer to your question:

  When will contribution to community be valued?

If you understand this as "when will my contributions to community be comparatively valuable for applying to a research position as research results", then the answer will likely be "never".


Should citations be as detailed as possible?

Generally the citation styles for your field, and thus for your thesis, will dictate this. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) website is a nice and popular resource to refer to what the most possible information would be desired for APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian - but you ultimately should refer to the exact, up-to-date published version of the style guide itself.

As an example, for APA when citing a Journal or Conference paper/article, you would at most provide (formatting stripped):

  Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of
  article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages.
  http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy

If something doesn't have a DOI, the style guides say how to cite each type of resource. A book might be cited by ISBN, and if there is no DOI you might cite the arXiv in place of the DOI website - but you are never citing all of these things!

Cite only that which the style guide says you should, in keeping with the common tradition of papers in your field - no more, and no less.

When using reference management tools they often help do this for you, but they do not absolve the author of responsibility for ensuring that the citation matches the appropriate style of their field and that the data and style is followed accurately.

When You Don't Know Your Style

If you are unsure of what style applies to your field, a search for "{field name} style" can be helpful, but the Purdue OWL site linked above also provides further guidance on their Complete Discipline Listing. If you are unsure an adviser or your department office can provide further verification, and checking in with the department (whether that be the department office, chair, or secretary) is often a helpful technique.

Special Case: IEEE

I would note that the IEEE is somewhat of a special case (and is very common in computer, engineering, and various technology fields) in that there is a IEEE Citation Reference and IEEE Editorial Style Manual. However, they both specify that when the guides don't provide a specific answer to your question that you should consult the Chicago style guides. Thus the IEEE style may be considered a specialized version of Chicago style.

So in the case of this style you should first consult the IEEE guides, and if and only if they do not provide sufficient guidance you can consult the far more comprehensive Chicago guides.

Summation

So in conclusion: if you have 100 fields of information available, you don't include them all in the citation - just the ones that your field's style says you should. Any good style guide (all the ones I've had to read) gives rules of precedence and fall-back plans when certain information is unobtainable, with the information requested varying by the source being cited itself.


My advisor used my research idea and wrote a paper with another student, what should I do?

It's not clear whether you are still in the same research group. I suspect not, or you would have been aware that another person in the group was doing the work and paper. While it is morally questionable to use someone else's idea without asking them to be involved, there's nothing you can do in the sense of 'getting it fixed'.

But it may be worthwhile sending an email that is not accusing. The adviser may have felt that you were fully occupied, or that the project was too easy for you but was a good training project for a student, or simply forgotten about the conversation or any number of other reasons. An email like:

Dear Prof X - I saw your recent paper Y. As you may remember from our discussion (approximate time frame), I am interested in this idea and the paper looks very similar to what we discussed. I am disappointed not to be involved in the implementation so far and would like to participate in any future work coming out of this paper.


How to tactfully request removal of my name from co-authorship?

You have a third choice:

Do not forget that all the authors should sign a contract before publishing a paper.
I am not telling you not to sign it.
However, it would be a good approach if you told your professor

  I am sure that huge improvements can still be made on this paper.
  Could you please delay the submission and let me work on the paper for
  another period of time?

This way, you told that paper is not of publication quality and implicated that you're not comfortable with your name on it.
If the professor still insists on publishing, only then you may say

  It's not like I'm not trusting your judgmental skills but when I know
  that I can do better, I cannot do with less. So please do not
  misunderstand me but I don't want to be a coauthor of a work that is
  less than my potential.

If your professor is professional enough, he will hear what you say.

Maybe not the best solution, but I would go with this one.


How do I find or request a copy of someone's thesis if this person did their work in mainland China?

I am currently in China, as a postdoc. From my experience with the inner workings of Chinese academia and culture, I must say your objective is not an easy one. Most of my Chinese colleagues will only move by either by personal interest or when receiving an order. This thus is how you should approach this situation.

The proposed strategy of contacting a dean or some other local authority is a valid attempt, but you should make sure that person would be interested in helping you (by transmitting an order) for some reason. Otherwise I'd locate the respective advisor stating that you're interested in obtaining a thesis because [enter here something which will benefit that person, citations/publication/funding/collaboration/etc]. Try calling them directly while asking their name first-thing, which should put them temporarily in a responsive position.

Finally the last resort is to show up in person, where you will be treated like an authority while visiting.

The Chinese are quick to ignore communication on topics which they have no interest, and there is little casual chitchat meaning that the fact that you've written to some people about your request is unlikely to be mentioned to others.

Finally concerning availability and language, my bet is that the mentioned thesis is in Chinese with an English abstract, sitting in a cabinet full of others' theses in an office of the department. If you manage to get someone to help you, the easiest would be that a student takes pictures on a phone of every page and sends by Wechat or QQ.

Good luck!


Does the Online Learning Platform bring down the importance of Courses and GPA in terms of PhD Admits? (CS USA)

Since most doctoral level admissions decisions are made by humans, it is impossible to say in general. Some will consider online course grades less relevant, others won't. But admission in the US has always (in my memory) been based on a wide variety of things with letters of recommendation rated fairly highly. Grades need to be "good enough" but other things are also given heavy emphasis. What do you say in a statement of purpose? What exceptional things have you done (research, writing, ...)? What do your professors think of your likelihood of success.
Another factor here is that it is still too early in the general disruption of the pandemic for general policies to have emerged in lots of places. So, committees are "making do" with what they have.
But, yes, research and such is highly valued as it has always been.
The "complete picture" needs to be good. A few wrinkles around the edges won't be a big handicap for most. And professors hate having to depend on zoom as much as students do, I think.


How to properly reference a source when almost exact copy?

Copying is of course not good. But, it is always possible to use a quote. This can be done by either use quotes or in your case to state that you are providing a copy of the list provided by the author.. In your case I think you can easily say something like "Following "cited author" (yyyy) we can define the problem as ..." and then follow up by rewriting the list you mention. It should then be very clear that what you write follows what the cited author has written. The exact phrasing might be slightly different but along the lines I outlined.


How much can you trust a reference of a paper that is not available

Is there a way to express this (not as a citation format), that maybe this data is accurate, but not sure, since it is the only available source about that data.

How about something like: "X, measured by Jones in 1950, is commonly given as the value for Y (as cited in Smith, 1989 and Cutler, 1995). However, the original manuscript by Jones describing this result is not generally available."

  Or should I ignore it all together and pretend as if there is no data.

Don't do this. If X is cited often in the field, then by pretending as if there is no data, you give the appearance of not knowing your field.

Whether or not you should use X (knowing that it is unreliable) depends on your purposes.

If your work hinges on having an accurate value for X, then you definitely should not use X if you cannot track down a reliable source for it. (Nor should you make something up.)

If you are using X just as a "sane" value for something, and it isn't central to your work, on the other hand:

If you think you have a better value than X, and can justify why you are using a different value than everyone else in your field, go ahead.

Otherwise, if you need a value, you should just use X (unreliable as it is). A bit of unreliable data that is accepted in your field is still better than a bit of unreliable data that you just made up with no justification.


Professor won't give full credit for correct homework question

The professor may have sensible reasons for counting the alternate answer as inferior.  It could be that on the surface, your answer is strictly correct.  But in the context of the class, such an answer might indicate that you hadn't learned what you were supposed to.

I often give exam problems for which more than one technique will yield the correct answer.  (This is mathematics.)  But part of what I'm testing is whether the student, who should know both or all three techniques, can chose the best technique for this situation.  Naturally, I have students arguing this with me regularly.  They think that as long as they do a problem the right way, they should get full credit.  My response is that I'm trying to measure their learning and mastery of the material, and their poor choice of technique indicates less than ideal mastery.

Oversimplified example:  Suppose it's 3rd grade and the question says, "What's 314 times 256?"  If a student adds 314 to itself 256 times, that's a correct method, but it tells me that he hasn't learned how to do 3-digit multiplication.  He won't get full credit from me.

You might try asking the prof why he thinks your answer is inferior and see what he says.


I'm applying for a Master's program - can I include manually calculated GPA

Yes, you can manually calculate your GPA. Additionally, mention the method or the formula you used to calculate your GPA so that the application reviewers can evaluate your application better. However, there are various third-party grade conversion/calculation tools available for free of cost, which you can use to get a better idea.


Scientific publications and related software sourcecode

You could try to extract this information from the Related identifiers of Zenodo software records (the related identifiers that are marked as Supplement to).

Here are two examples:

https://zenodo.org/record/345130
https://zenodo.org/record/570830

This is the search for all software records in the database:

Zenodo offers data following the crawling protocol OAI-PMH. So harvesting this information should be managable.


What questions should I ask as a candidate during an interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position?

I don't think that most candidates are very good at faking interest. So, ask the questions you are genuinely interested in, and your interest will show through. It is true that you have to give the best impression you can during an interview, but you don't want to come across as fake or scripted.

I would start by reading the university, college, and department websites. That may give you some questions.

If you run out of questions, you can always ask other faculty in the department about themselves. It is rumored that academics love to talk about themselves.  You can also talk about your research, which is an easy way to make small talk and show off your communication skills.

Given that general advice, here are some questions that I think are common and "safe":

Ask about the tenure process. How long is the probationary period? What is the general process? Is there any form of mid-tenure review?
Ask about teaching. What courses do new faculty typically teach?  How tightly controlled are they? Will you have a lot of new preparations? Do faculty often teach over the summer? What process is used to make teaching assignments (seniority, rotation, etc.)?
Ask about benefits. They can tell you about the insurance and retirement benefits, which vary significantly from school to school.
Ask about housing. Where do most of the faculty live? How far from campus do they live? How expensive is it to live in the area? Are there any particularly nice locations to live near the college?
Ask about living in the area. Is it a lively place? A quiet place that's "good for raising a family"? Is there much nightlife? Is there convenient local shopping?  Is it good for biking?

Here are some questions that you have to think about carefully before you ask them:

Salary. Some prefer to talk about this during the interview; some prefer to wait until an offer is made.
Two-body problems (if your spouse is also looking for a job at the university or in the area). Again, some prefer to wait until an offer is made, others mention it early. See these questions: Should one disclose his/her family information in an academic job interview? and When during the application process should a candidate mention that their spouse is also looking for a job?
Unusual goals. For example, if you are being interviewed by department X, but you want to work mostly with people in department Y. In some cases, this sort of thing is a mark in your favor - in others it will doom your chances of getting hired.


I was caught having my phone out during a final, but I failed the test so would I still get referred to the dean?

Updated after clarification from OP

Your performance on the test will be irrelevant.  If you failed the test while cheating, it would just suggest you didn't do a very good job of cheating, but that hardly negates the action.

From the way you relate what happened, your actions are indistinguishable from someone cheating.  In fact, I'm very skeptical of your story... you were in an exam and had your phone hidden on your seat between your legs and you just happened to be looking down and tapping.  This is very odd behavior in an exam since you must realize it is indistinguishable from cheating.  Also, it makes the idea that you forgot you had your phone implausible since you had it out and on the seat right where you were looking.

I would certainly expect at least a zero on the exam, and depending on the professor/TA a report to the dean.  You must realize how implausible your story sounds, right?  Your typical exam taking behavior is to take your phone out, hide it on your seat between your legs and look down and tap on it?  No professor is going to buy this story.


Chances of getting R&D job in industry after PhD in AI/Robotics

You need to think about two questions, essentially.

Why do I need a PhD? - Do you really want to contribute something special to the field? Unlike M.tech where you are guaranteed a degree after two years, things are a lot more uncertain in a PhD, so unless you have the drive, it could be very difficult.
What is the nature of work of doctorates in your field? - This is much more important than knowing if you will get a job after PhD. Do try to contact people who are in good places in the industry and form an idea about the nature of their job. If you are enthused by that and you feel an industrial research position is where you seek to be, then go ahead.

A PhD from a top institution can never be "worthless". You learn some set of skills that are difficult to pick up if you are elsewhere, so that's a huge plus.

TL,DR: If you are happy being a skilful software or embedded systems engineer, then you are better off building your experience in the industry; if you really desire to contribute to the field as a researcher, PhD is a must, so hurry up with the formalities.


Can I invite myself to a lab to give a talk?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with making an outreach to a group you're interested in learning more about. Just make sure not to make it too hard of a sell: you could say something like, "I'd like to visit your group, and I could give a talk if you'd like." I don't think most professors would be put off by such a request.


Introducing myself to researchers from my dream school

That is called networking and it is about getting to know people and people getting to know you. It will increase your chances and that's exactly the point.

There is absolutely nothing wrong, immoral, or illegal with it, by the way, it is a necessary skill for all professional careers. Conferences usually have intermissions for that exact purpose, with snacks, refreshments, etc.

The "standard" way of doing that would be to walk over, politely introduce yourself (don't go all formal), from which school you are and briefly, very briefly, what you are working on. Don't be pushy, don't force the conversation. It is easier if a common acquaintance introduces you (for instance, another researcher that knows you and them). Bonus points if you are familiar with their work/field.

It's easier after they see your presentation, but that's not entirely necessary. The most 'busy' researchers don't usually attend the whole conference, so don't waste chances.

More importantly: forget dream, don't be starstruck. They are just people, it is a school, just like countless others. Something I saw people do wrong: don't get stuck talking shop, especially if you have more time (as in the formal dinner some conferences have). Again, professors/researchers are people, they do more with their lives than just research and certainly have some other interests.


Delay master's thesis: Appropriate to mention personal reason?

I don't see what would be inappropriate here. I would welcome it if my students would feel enough at ease with me to confide the reasons why their projects are running later than planned.


How to write a research statement for a math postdoc position?

Writing a postdoctoral research statement should not be a huge exercise. Unless you are applying for a major postdoctoral fellowship, I would not necessarily expect a huge research statement. In many cases, in fact, you may not need a research statement at all to apply for a postdoctoral appointment; a cover letter, CV, and list of references may suffice. (When I hired my current postdoctoral associate, those were the materials I asked for.)

Now, that said, your statement should provide a few pieces of information:

A brief description of your current project, and any major research skills or tools you have acquired as a result of your training.
A brief summary of the kinds of problems you would like to study as a postdoctoral associate. If these are aligned with the interests of the group you are applying to, this is even more helpful.

Ultimately, however, when you are applying for a postdoctoral position, you are applying to a specific individual, who will be the one reviewing the applications. What I am looking for is someone who has actually responded to my job posting, not just a job posting. That means I want to see a clear statement that the applicant has thought about what we do in my group, and how her skills will contribute to the project for which I'm advertising. If there's no such indication, I'm much less likely to take the application seriously, unless there are mitigating factors (lots of publications in top journals, strong recommendation letters from colleagues I know, and so on).

Finally, I should also point out that the quality of your written English could be improved. While this might seem to be a minor issue, a poorly written statement can be enough for me as an advisor to think twice about hiring someone, simply because I would worry about my ability to communicate with the candidate. (Furthermore, someone whose communication skills are somewhat deficient will have a harder time finding a position than someone proficient.)


Declining a fellowship opportunity for PhD research

You've pretty well answered your own question.  Be honest, and be swift so they don't waste time.  Simply tell them you received a fully-funded offer that needs an answer now, and can't afford to wait until March so you've accepted it.  Thank them for their time.

They'll understand, and be much more accepting of it now than they would be if you waited and let them put time and effort into considering your fellowship application.  Keep it simple and polite, then move on.

Also, congrats!


Is it necessary that lawyers receive a solid training in subjects that are related to their chosen field of concentration?

No one can be an expert in everything. Try and you'll likely end up mediocre at many things.

Like a general practicioner in medicine, lawyers need to know their field, have a working knowledge of the germane aspects of other fields, and to know when to call in an expert. It is my understanding that criminal lawyers routinely call in expert (subject) witnesses, both to inform the court and to provide a more objective opinion than the counsel of either side could.

Understanding criminal law is no mean feat, especially if we use understanding in the sense of "have it in my mind and can readily apply the relevant statutes to this case".

Tellingly, there is no prerequisite coursework for law school. If a layer had to master a body of knowledge outside the law to practice, then that other body of knowledge would be required for admission to law school or taught during law school. The exception which demonstrates this heuristic is patent law.


Expecting students to use a code base that is known to be buggy?

The answer to this question is "Sometimes."

Given that an instructor has roughly X hours/week to devote to this course (given their other responsibilities), sometimes the best way to utilize that time may be to write a code base for students to use in some fraction of those hours (even though it will be buggy and not up to best practices) and devote the rest of those hours to other things.

Sometimes improving the code base isn't the best way to utilize instructor time - sometimes that time is better used offering more office hours to answer students' questions, or writing better lecture notes, or something else that is of greater benefit to the students' learning than making the code less buggy.

It's usually up to the instructor to make that determination of what will best serve the pedagogical goals of the course.

(I'm assuming the professor isn't intentionally trying to give students some experience working with a buggy code base. But that's also a possibility.)

As a student, I didn't think about the time and resources my professors devoted to preparing their course materials. As an instructor, I gained a very different perspective.

For example, the first course I taught as instructor of record was a course that I was only assigned about a week before class started, in a subject outside my area of expertise, and I had very limited time to prep the first few lectures and assignments. I agreed to teach it despite knowing that my teaching would be underprepared (by my own standards) for the first part of the course, because I thought it would be better for my students than the alternative (the course being cancelled because the department couldn't find any other coverage.) As a student, I would never have thought about my professors being put in situations like that.


Creating an central multi-purpose dictionary / database

I would try http://termbases.eu/ a site that was mentioned under Software: Lexicons in Linguist List.

Broadly, what you have described is a lightweight variety of a dictionary writing system, software for developing a lexicon.

If you were translating digital documents, I would recommend translation memory software. Collecting and managing your multilingual context-specific translations is part of what translation memory software does.

Another possibility, if you happen to be comfortable setting up a wiki, is to create a wiki in the manner of Wiktionary.


If I had an average Bachelor degree and a year of working experience can I apply for a Master's Program?

You will probably need to take the GRE and get a solid score. It also depends how you did in particular courses. E.g. did you bomb all the hard classes and ace a bunch of easy ones to pass overall? In grad school they may all be hard classes. Not to discourage you too much though. If you apply far and wide you may be able to get in somewhere with just about any background.

The concern of the school admissions is not just some competitive cutoff for merit, but that you will fail out and waste your time and money. There are definitely benefits of working, and it will help you. Especially if you get a job that uses some of the skills you need for your Master's program, like programming. If you can get a job precisely in "Data science" it may help significantly.


Is it ethical to "arm-twist" a faculty-member into passing more students or improving the class average?

I think the ethics depends on a few things. First and most importantly, what was the intention of the department chair and dean of faculty when they “arm-twisted you” into passing those students? One can imagine two different scenarios:  in the first one, the chair and dean are greedy, amoral people who are driven by selfish, short-term considerations such as maximizing their institution’s profits and winning themselves a promotion, and are pursuing a strategy that they know for a fact is bad for the students. That would be pretty unethical. In the second scenario, the chair and dean are passionate educators who are looking out for the students’ best interests, and simply disagree with you about what is best for the students, and believe that the students you wanted to fail deserved to pass. In that case, you could argue that they’re wrong, but it would be quite unreasonable to accuse them of unethical behavior.

Of course, there are also situations between those two extremes that fall in a gray area where it would be hard to say much about the ethics of the actions. You simply haven’t given us enough information to say anything meaningful.

Another factor that I think matters is what you mean by “arm-twisting”. How exactly did they twist your arms? Did they literally command you to change your grading decisions and refuse to listen to any opposing arguments? Or did they leave you some room to argue the case? It’s clear that you think they behaved unreasonably, but it’s not clear to me if they also would agree to your description of your actions as “arm-twisting”. Could it be that their perception was that they had convinced you of the merit of their request and that you went along with it willingly? In that case, the responsibility for the actions might lie (at least partially) with you. It all depends on the details of what took place, so again I don’t think anyone can give a general answer based on the information you’ve provided.

Edit following clarifications by OP: I understand that you perceive that you were pressured to change students' grades, and that the department chair specifically is an unpleasant person to deal with. All of those things may well be true. However, ultimately I think that it is a mistake, both logically and from a strategic/practical point of view, to use the words "unethical" or “immoral” to describe the behavior of any of the actors in this story. These are very strong terms (stronger than you may realize, I suspect) that suggest the worst possible intentions behind the actions you have observed. It would only be reasonable to use these words if you had very concrete evidence that something truly nefarious is going on (e.g., the department chair taking a bribe from one of the students, or telling you to pass all the students because his own nephew was one of the below-average students who were about to fail).

A much more likely interpretation is that the department chair simply has a broader set of concerns than you and a broader perspective on the situation. Perhaps he feels that it is important to have consistency across all instructors, to avoid students feeling that they were treated unfairly just because they had the misfortune of taking a class from an especialy harsh instructor. Or there could be any number of other legitimate concerns or causes for disagreement between you and the chair. None of this involves anything remotely unethical - it is simply a professional disagreement between colleagues.

Finally, I will add that the mere fact that the department chair "put pressure" on you is also not evidence of anything unethical, or even bad. I was a department chair for several years and had occasions where I had to go to an instructor and have a frank discussion about their grading methods, and even suggest that they retroactively change a few grades. I never had to resort to any sort of direct pressure (I suspect because of a combination of my being fairly good at articulating my side of the argument on its merits, and dealing with people who were ultimately pretty reasonable), but it was very clear to me that by my mere presence as a party to the discussion I was exercising a kind of "soft authority" that may well have been perceived as pressure by the other party. This is unavoidable and sometimes necessary, and in fact I dare say that a department chair who hesitates to exercise his/her authority in this way is unlikely to be doing a very good job.

That being said, if the chair's behavior is indeed "borderline-toxic" as you say, then that's a problem, but it sounds in any case like a very different issue than them being "unethical".


Where to advertise a postdoctoral position to widen the diversity of applicants?

https://jobrxiv.org/ and twitter although I don't know how much math people use either. For my bio-related field they're pretty good.
You'll probably get plenty of diversity in your applicant pool but you'll end up removing most of it when you filter for prestige PhD institutions and advisors. You should try to remember that URMs from second tier PhD institutions are just as smart in aggregate as the population from Stanford or whatever, but are likely to publish worse and have fewer opportunities. Evaluate them based on who's outperformed for their grad environment and in general you'll probably have a bunch of applicants you wouldn't have otherwise considered. (This is also useful for identifying the halfwits from Harvard who have underperformed despite every possible advantage - don't hire them).


Co-author refuses to share final manuscript or list of submissions

Yes, your advisor behaviour is unprofessional and certainly against the ethical policies of virtually any serious publisher. I'd contact the other coauthor and write a joint email along the following lines (modify according to your knowledge of the situation):

  Dear X,

  We are disappointed by your refusal to share the final versions of the
  manuscripts and the journals which they have been submitted to. Journal policies require all authors to approve a submission, and not
  only does your refusal go against such policies but it also undermines
  the trust that should exist among coauthors.

  We kindly ask you to comply with our request. In case, we will take
  all the necessary steps to exercise our author's rights.

  Best,
  Y and Z

If they still refuse, contact the ethical or disciplinary office of their university, if there is one, or the Head of Department.


Should I add a person who left my group to my evolved paper?

It is good to minimize the number of academic enemies you have. Purely as a strategic move you might just want to ask them unless it seriously offends you. That seems better than making an assumption one way or another.

How much contribution is enough depends on a lot of things, including field and place, of course. But helping with "high level" direction doesn't sound like it is trivial.

Of course, in asking if they would like to be on the paper you could say that the "paper has evolved quite a lot since you were last involved".

Pick your fights for when they really matter, I think. Especially as a post-doc who wants to move up.


Can I defer a math postdoc for a year till I complete my current postdoc?

Maybe. You can't know in advance since it depends on the department's source of money, teaching needs, etc. If you apply for a position, you should at least be ready take it. You can bring up the idea of deferment, and you may get it, but you also have to be in a position to actually start when the job starts.


What to do when online instructor not giving meaningful feedback on research project?

I see three likely paths for you to take, depending on the quality of the program that you are enrolled in.

If you haven't already done so, explicitly ask the professor for more concrete feedback on your work.  You might simply be having a communications problem, where the professor assumes "no news is good news."
If the professor doesn't not respond constructively, escalate to somebody higher up, like a dean.  Approach delicately, as a student concerned and asking for help, rather than making demands.
If you don't get a satisfactory response from the dean, then it may be that the online program you are enrolled in is crap, and you should not bother investing your time and money in it.  Some online programs are quite serious and good, while others are essentially just for-profit scams, and yours might well be one of them.


Before beginning to email academics at other institutions, I would recommend talking to your tutor/ advisor/ referees first, to find out what route they think is best for you to take. It may well be that they know of certain professors or departments that would be a good fit for you. It would also help your letter writers to understand your goals and hence write a better reference.
Having said that, emailing other academics is a good idea. I have done something similar in the past, with very good results (the advice I received from one professor in particular directly led to me finding a supervisor for my Masters and an offer for a PhD place).
The best thing to do when writing such emails is to keep it short and simple. You are already aware of the time constraints professors have, and an overly long email may be off-putting. Aim to summarise your situation in one or two sentences and emphasise your interest in their field of research (looking carefully at a few of their most recent papers before clicking 'send' is a must).
The resulting email may look something like this:

Dear Professor X,
I am a senior Economics and Maths major at Y University. I have found over the past two years of taking physics and maths courses that my real interest lies in mathematical physics and I would like to do a PhD in this area, possibly at your university. I noticed that you have a recent paper on Z theory, which is something that really interests me. Is it related to the P theorem from this earlier paper of yours?
Due to my non-mathematical background, I am unsure whether I should apply to the maths or physics departments at your university. Can you advise me as to which would be the better fit for my skills and interests?
Many thanks and best wishes,
Junaid Aftab

Be prepared for some people to ignore your email entirely, or to reply with a very short response (e.g. "Thanks for your email, unfortunately I can't help you with this matter at the moment. Best of luck."). The key is to be persistent. Find someone else to contact. Keep trying.
If you are successful and someone replies with helpful advice, ask if you can follow up with a chat over Skype. I have always found face-to-face conversation more effective than email, and if you are seriously considering doing a PhD under that professor it doesn't hurt to get to know them a little better and get a feel for what they might be like to work with.
Above all, remember that quite a lot of people in senior levels in mathematical physics are interested in mathematical physics and are glad to find interest in mathematical physics in other people.


Do cheats profit from their dishonesty? How widespread is it? Are there any studies of this?

Yes, people profit from cheating, perhaps for a long while. But the jobs they enter aren't as cut-and-dried as claiming you are an olympic athlete and it can take a long time for incompetence to be noticed. And incompetence can arise from other things than cheating.
I don't have evidence about studies but would probably question them unless very well designed. What criteria would you use? Would correspondents honestly admit to it? Could you run a longitudinal study and still be able to check back for prior behaviors.
Some people who cheat actually wind up to be competent, also. They might have actually learned something, or taken jobs for which they knew "enough". Some people cheat once or twice out of panic, but are otherwise honorable.
It is a very complex question. But I doubt that a lot, even a majority, of cheating is caught at the time and those who are clever enough or misbehave seldom enough will get through any gates we might erect. Our processes are designed to discourage the practice, but they aren't perfect.
And, no, I can't prove people profit, but the imperfect nature of the systems and the possible rewards and the panic among students, etc. etc. certainly imply that cheating happens without consequence.

And if you want to assure that cheating doesn't happen, design the course in such a way that it is irrelevant. In particular, in such a way that it isn't necessary to feel that you need to watch people carefully so that they don't. Of course, your evaluation methods are a bit harder to manage in such a system and the things the students do need to require real understanding. Oral exams are probably ideal, but scale poorly, of course. But even in a large, say, calculus course it only takes a few minutes to determine whether a student understands. My old advisor did this, with a line outside his door and a question or two for each student.
My technique was to use projects rather than exams for the bulk of the grade.
It is probably more difficult in the pandemic age, but also more necessary to think harder about evaluation.


I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article?

You have two choices.

Either just use your given name, e.g., as in Matthew B. Dwyer, John Hatcliff, Robby, Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath: Exploiting Object Escape and Locking Information in Partial-Order Reductions for Concurrent Object-Oriented Programs. That has two advantages – it's formally and culturally correct – and two disadvantages – you will have to explain it to many people, and finding you in any search engine is awfully difficult.

Alternatively, invent some "first" name or initial, so for instance, you might publish as "S. Salman". That's formally incorrect, but probably more convenient in most situations.

Whatever you do, do it consistently. That's the most important recommendation.


What should I do if someone submit a review of a manuscript in journal system sooner than I know and I already prepared a detailed review?

I understand that this proxy review may be a cultural norm where you are. Nevertheless, it is considered malpractice in many places, and admitting to doing this can land you in trouble. Keep that in mind, because a publisher like Elsevier is massively cross-cultural, so they may take umbrage to something like this if it is reported.

Now, coming to what you get out of it. Your learning has happened anyway; I'm sure you expanded your understanding by reading all the references etc. At no point were you getting any credit for it - certainly not from journal,  probably not from supervisor (I understand this particular review was not done with his knowledge). So there's no reason to be upset. I would suggest conserving your energies. If anything, you could show your supervisor your review, just so he knows how hard you worked. But if he is as lazy and uninterested as the question makes him sound,  he may dismiss it.

Bottom line is, don't be upset. You volunteered to do the review by proxy and didn't inform supervisor what you were doing - so it's hard to find fault with anyone else. Learn from this incident and move on.


You will likely be judged differently in any situation, where you have to be present in person - that is, all kind of interviews (actually even via skype and similar).

Your skills become more important later in your academic life, but the documented skills of say a master student who applies for a PhD position are very limited - personal judgement plays the major role here.

Therefore, you might want to wait until you do a PhD, or even after that. By that time your publications and achievements may speak for themselves and all you need to do is to find a PI that is okay with your looks.


How should I ask for library services for literature review?

I don't believe that a public library would be a useful resource for an academic literature review.  You are likely to be better supported by a university librarian.  But, I am not sure why you would be relying on a librarian to assist with obtaining resources for a literature review.  My recommendation is that you develop the skills and knowledge to efficiently and effectively conduct a search for relevant resources, as opposed to relying on somebody else.  You presumably have more background and knowledge in your substantive area, and this is something you will be doing throughout your academic career.  Even if a librarian or somebody else culled sources for you, the burden is still on you to ensure the review was comprehensive.


Do I have to sign a copyright transfer agreement to publish an article?

It depends of what you mean by “an alternative”. If you mean an alternative to publish your article, you can certainly find other journals that don’t require that you grant them exclusive rights. Generally, that would mean an open-acess journal using the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). Prime examples are the major OA publishers: PLOS, BioMed Central, and Hindawi.

If you mean publishing in a particular journal that requires coypright transfer, the answer is that granting them exclusive publishing rights is a publication condition, so that you can’t avoid it.

So what you gain in signing is... to have your article published by that journal. What you loose is highly variable among publishers. Often, they (who are now the copyright owners by virtue of the agreement) allow you (the authors) to keep some “rights” (I prefer to speak of “permissions”). Some publishers are quite generous, others not at all; you must carefully read the copyright agreement to know exactly what you will be able to do with your article.

Note also that some publishers ask (or propose as an option) an exclusive license instead of copyright transfer. Sometimes, they describe it as an advantage for authors, who keep the copyright on their work. But the truth is that some of these licenses give the publishers about the same rights as a complete copyright transfer, so that copyright ownership becomes an almost empty concept. See, for instance, Wiley, offering both without any difference in the actual rights transferred. Again, one has to carefully read the publication agreement.

Finally, in theory, one can always suggest changes in a copyright agreement, for instance deleting part of the text or adding some. There is also the SPARC Author Addendum, that you can attach to the copyright agreement, asking the publisher that you want to keep non-commercial use rights. The publisher may then accept these changes (usually by not responding, and publishing the article anyway), or refuse them. From what I read, there are both success and failure stories in that regard.


Should I expect to be paid for post-graduation research?

You should ask the professor. However, in my experience, the default assumption is that you will be not paid (if not said otherwise). It is often hard (again, in my experience) for professors to obtain funds for short-term-positions.

Note, however, that you are under no obligation to finish the project without getting paid. So before working on this for free, think about if you have time for it and would profit from it in some way (e.g. if you like thinking about it or if a publication is good for your life/career).

So to make clear the answer to the question: Ask, but do not expect.


Finding it hard to find a Master's thesis advisor in mathematics, all the professors I've asked say they are too busy

In your situation, one might advise that you better forget about the elite faculty members, now, and the mere struggle to work with them. There are two potential options in my mind.

Firstly, expand your professor set to young fellows and try to grab their attention. You will be able to flourish by the indirect guidance of the elite professors, as your co-advisor; but right now, delay within pursuing the thesis might be considerably harmful for you.

Second idea would be taken into account, if even young and inexperienced fellows at the department, corresponding to your desired research field, show no tendency for your supervision. In this case, you may have to switch from your current research interest, in an either partially or fully matter, to be capable of cooperating with the people, who are looking for any graduate student.


Social science/humanities PhD in UK: Take partially funded PhD, or work for a year and reapply for full funding?

"self-funding" just means you're responsible for paying that part, whether it's fees or your day-to-day living costs. They don't care whether that's from part-time work or previously earned money, or from getting one of the other scholarships you're applying for.

I will add as a caveat they may ask for proof of your ability to self fund, but since you say you have savings / family support and the dept itself is offering teaching hours this shouldn't be an issue

PhD funding in the art/social sciences/humanities is difficult to obtain in the UK, getting full funding will be eye of the needle stuff from what I get told
I've never seen a CV where the phd funding source was asked for, I don't mention it (EPSRC) on mine
Can't make that choice for you. I can say I gave up a job for a phd (less money) and my circumstances sound similar - i.e. young and no family to support.

One question I have is what is the situation with tuition fees? At one point you mention having a tuition fee waiver - is that a full waiver or part? It makes a difference, if you had a full phd scholarship in the uk you'd expect your tuition fees paid and a 15K annual stipend. If you're say 50% funded, you'll get a 7.5k stipend which is tight (depending on where your university is, I did mine 20 years ago and the full stipend was then only 5K :-( ). Anyways, if the tuition fee waiver is only partial, they will expect you to pay half of it, that would be typically around half of 4K (2k). If that comes out of your half stipend, you're down to 5.5k - or what I was struggling on 20 years ago. Your 400 a month for teaching might buoy you up a bit, but bear in mind this will be term-time only. So this is the economic question. If you can afford that, then it's down to where you really feel you want to be - getting a phd or working. Don't overlook the fact social life is usually better at university - a big part of what made me go back.

Also re: the job, if your part-funded phd would start in october, well you'd be handing your notice in as soon as you arrived if it's a typical 3 month notice period. I'll hazard a guess though that they have a probationary period for new starters (most places do) so they could wash their hands of you at next to no notice at any time in the next 6 months or so. And guess what, you can do the same. My attitude is, if that's the case you might as well take the 3 months earnings.