Should I treat specialized wikis with the same scrutiny as Wikipedia itself?

I disagree with the answers that say "There's no difference."

In both cases, you should critically evaluate the content with respect to correctness, reliability, etc. However, there is a difference with respect to the nature of the content.

Wikipedia (for most topics) serves as a tertiary source. That is, it aggregates primary and secondary sources on a topic, but doesn't add original content or interpretation. (In fact, it is against Wikipedia policy to include original content or interpretation.) In these cases, you should find and use the original source, to verify its contents and to give credit to the real authors.

Dedicated wikis on pop culture often do contain original content. And quite a few Wikipedia pages on pop culture do as well, even though they aren't supposed to (see e.g., Mythology of Lost).

For example, the Lost wiki contains a great deal of interpretation and commentary (e.g.: an analysis of recurring themes in the series) - not just a rehash of the episode plots. This makes it a secondary source, not a tertiary source.

You can use this original content (having critically assessed its correctness and reliability), and of course if you do, you should cite it.

For example, suppose you are writing a paper on "Use of the flash-forward technique in early 21st century television" and you read the following on the Lost wiki (or on an equivalent page on Wikipedia):

  In Lost, the flash-forward technique was introduced in "Through the Looking Glass", although it wasn't made clear that it was a flash-forward until the end of the episode. The first episode to feature a flash-forward that was clearly shown to be one from the start was "The Beginning of the End". "Ji Yeon" was the first episode to intertwine flashbacks with flash-forwards, although the flashback element was only clearly revealed to be in the past at the end of the episode, making its temporality a plot twist.

Even if you then go on and watch the episodes "Through the Looking Glass," "The Beginning of the End," and "Ji Yeon" yourself, or read the episode scripts (i.e., verify the correctness of the claim by checking the primary source), you still cannot claim in your work that you identified the use of flash-forward in Lost all by yourself! The wiki page in this case is a secondary source with an original analysis and interpretation, and you should cite it as such.


Are Online First articles considered "In Press"?

My understanding is, online first articles are completely published except for the fact they aren't assigned to an issue. There's literally no production work left. They will also have a DOI. Therefore, although you can't give the full reference yet, you can list it in the application giving the journal name & DOI.


What to include in an "explanation letter" after being falsely accused of cheating?

Remark: I am NOT a lawyer and following are opinions.
Collective punishment is, to my opinion, lowest anyone can go. The event you describe certainly reminds this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbzJTTDO9f4&t=1s

There are few very inappropriate things here.

1) There must be a case, i.e. disciplinary hearing, for each individual (or for small groups of people if there is evidence that they collabrated in this act)

2)Presumption of guilt. They accuse you of cheating and you are asked to prove you are innocent. This is absurd. Presumption of innocence, i.e. innocent until proven otherwise, is a fundamental legal principle. It is the core of modern legal system.

3) "My lecturer said each student have a chance to write a letter or affidavit to share their side of the story but he said they are a few chances to win this case." They seem to decide what proportion of letters are going to "win" before recieving any. Again, very inappropriate.

What I would suggest, can't stress this enough I am not a lawyer:

1) Try to talk with higher administration about this. Don't skip levels. Communicate your worries including above that you agree. You may say it is unjust. You may say it is unmethodical. You may say this is defamation. Start with mathematics department head. Their answers or actions does not satisfy you try to contact the faculty head. Even that does not do it try to get in touch with the respective vice-president of the university. That probably would be the one in charge of student affairs or education.

2) Consider your legal options. I don't know your country's legal system. There seem to be enough to ask a lawyer if this would count as defamation or damages. If they don't have any evidence against you, they have no justifiable reason to defame you or damage your academic standing. Legal advice should apply to the letter you are considering to submit. If you have access to a lawyer or a law student, you might want to explain what is going on and possibly, at the very least, run the letter by them. Ideally, you would have a lawyer throught this phase and act within his/her advices.

edit: I forgot to point out. They are the sole judge on their accusations. That also is quite absurd.


How to suggest merging papers with a more senior author?

Let met just get some stray observations out of the way: "Professor Bigshot" publishes a paper with flaws that are obvious to a PhD student, who knows just how to fix them and happens to know information about the status of Professor Bigshot's submissions.  This "gossip" seems perhaps a smidge unseemly (although I don't want to claim that I never talk about this sort of thing myself).  In my field, well known senior researchers rarely write papers with an obvious shoddy aspect (they may make some kind of subtle, critical mistake -- everyone does sometimes -- but that's not the same thing).  I find it a bit curious, but it doesn't affect my answer.

Sure, if you and someone else have two unpublished manuscripts that would each benefit from being combined with the other, you should suggest the combination.  I would have given the same suggestion already given in the comment: maybe get your advisor to broach the subject.  The advantage of this is that your advisor is (surely?) much more senior and established than you, so if the request comes from him in the formal sense, it comes with his imprimatur.  Putting myself in the Professor B's place, knowing that your advisor has endorsed the action is at least useful information.  If your advisor is someone I know and respect, then that does put more gravity behind the request.

(By the way, you didn't just wake up one day with a "followup paper" on your hands.  In deciding to write the paper, you knew you would be putting yourself in your current situation.  I hope that when a PhD student decides to write a new paper, he mentions it to his advisor!  What advice did you get while you were writing the paper?)

I don't mean to insist that going through your advisor is a key point.  Given that you have already corresponded with Professor B, it most likely will not be.  Anyway, let me assume that you will do the asking yourself, because that's the more difficult case.

  How do I go about suggesting to Prof. Bigshot that we merge our papers?

Assuming you want to do it yourself (to be sure, there is nothing wrong with doing this), you write to Professor Bigshot, send him a copy of your paper, and ask for his feedback on it.  You mention that the possibility of merging them has occurred to you, and you would be interested to hear his take on that.

  I don't know what the etiquette for this situation is.

I don't think there is any specific protocol here.  In dealing with academics, especially senior academics, you want to be (i) informative, (ii) respectful and (iii) reasonably concise.  There are many ways to do so.

  I worry that he will think I am trying to take credit for his idea.

Suggesting coauthorship is not trying to take credit for someone else's idea.  It is possible that he thinks that the idea is so precious, even with its shoddy implementation, that he doesn't want to share authorship with someone else.  Okay, he can say no, but you haven't done anything wrong.  It would also be possible, by the way, to describe your respective contributions in the paper itself, in this case crediting Professor B with the idea and you with the implementation.  That is not done as much as it should be, but it is sometimes done.  But wait -- in this case you have separate arxiv preprints, so the origin of the contributions is rather publicly known.  I don't see that you have much to worry about.  If you wanted to, you could cite both preprints in the paper: this would be an unobtrusive, easy way to show any interested party the provenance of the paper.

  Should I just wait for him to bring it up? or should I actively suggest it?

You should actively call his attention to the possibility of the collaboration.  There is no prize for the meek here.


Received a mail from a collections agency

Here are some educated guesses:  B has a collection agency which they regularly use.  They sell their bad debts to this agency at a (deep) discount and now that agency owns the debt.  They're taking a gamble that they can collect the debt.  (It is very possible that this "separate" collection agency is really just an office on campus.  But that makes little difference.)

I would write the collection agency and tell them that I have never set foot on B's campus and that I don't owe any money to them.  I would make a sentence like, "As an international student, I could not be enrolled at an American university without an i20.  If B cannot produce my i20, that is proof that I never attended there."  I would guess that at this point the agency would realize they lost their bet and go on to the next victim.

If not, things have entered the "nasty" stage.  I doubt it gets so far, but if necessary, write a letter to B accusing them of fraud.  Your premise is that they know that foreign students are typically naive and apply to many American schools.  If they find that a student applies at B and but attends another American school, then they send a bill hoping the student is afraid of running afoul of obscure American laws.  They use scare tactics to try to collect tuition and fees to which they are not entitled.  Fearful of being deported, many of the foreign students pay the bill.   Something like that will at least get their attention and a human will check the records carefully before they make another move.   The last thing a university wants is an investigation.  At the moment, some bored peon is glancing at your letters or day-dreaming during your phone calls.  You need to get them to sit up and pay attention, and such a letter will do that.  If they look at the record seriously, that should be the end of it.

If not, send the same letter to the local county attorney and/or the district attorney.

Let me repeat that I'm just guessing my way through this given the data at hand.


Which countries have funding opportunities like ERC Advanced Grant?

I would think that almost every country with a well-developed academic system has funding opportunities for researchers applying from abroad. Depending on the level of the applicant, that may range from a post-doctoral fellowship to funding for a research group of several persons over several years.

Although it doesn't address the specific countries you mention, there's for example

the Newton fellowship in the UK,
various programs by the Humboldt foundation in Germany.

Generally, such programs require you to identify a host institution within the target country upon application, and to submit a confirmation by this institution that they're willing to host you (that's also how it works for the ERC grants, even for applicants from within the EU!).

In parallel to researching the funding options, I'd recommend to identify a host institution you'd like to work at and ask someone there what might be suitable funding instruments to apply for. Most researchers have a good overview of their national funding options, also those options that specifically address people coming from abroad.


Should I include my thesis supervisor as an author for new derived work?

If he hasn't participated in the new work he isn't really a co-author. Of course you cite the older work as usual and can also acknowledge his help in getting you started.

However, if you want to continue the work with his participation before publishing then he would naturally be a co-author.

Just working with you previously doesn't give him, or anyone, authorship on new work.


Does it make sense to list Ph.D.-level coursework in industry-focused CV?

My first job after my PhD was as a consultant. I suggest being selective with respect to what, and how much of your coursework to include.

Your degree speaks for your potential, and there is little use adding too much detail that is implied by it (in particular if you graduated from a reputable school). You want your CV to be one page only, so don't clutter it.

Begin with a brief executive summary, which generically could read like "Information system PhD with strong skills in (insert - say, system programming/data analysis/...) and communication (from X years as a teaching assistant)." Find something jazzy that you think fits you.

You can add relevant course work experience in a "skills" section, as appropriate, and further add anything valuable under "awards and honors" (if nothing else fits, don't shy away from mentioning performing well/near top/top of class in course work). It's also ok to maybe highlight some particularly relevant coursework (with grades). It would definitely help if your thesis work (which you should summarize) could be linked to the typical consulting job (bringing structure where little was before). At the bottom of the page, add three academic references if any of your faculty might be known in industry.

Two more points: I don't remember what the person's job name and description was, but in my case, I found someone at my school who proof-read my CV with lots of feedback (my initial version sucked badly). Secondly, you tend to read to de-emphasize your academic background in industry (eg, "list it after professional experience"), but this is simply not true for at least 2-5 years, depending, as your PhD will stay your greatest achievement for a while.

Take it with a grain of salt as I've been out of this for a while. Best of luck!


Googling my name reveals silly things from when I was younger. I am embarassed. How will this affect me in my future academic career?

I'm deeply involved in web technologies, including search results. The simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is to add other search results. The more "legitimate" and positive results found, the less likely the others will be seen. There are numerous factors in raising search results, but still:

Create another Stack Exchange account with your name and use it.
Create social media accounts with your name.
Join groups and use your real names (in addition to pseudonyms).
Create a Disqus account with your name.

You don't need to make many posts on each site, but place professionally enhancing content there.

If you really want to spend time with this - open other accounts with simple variations of your name thus creating even more false results.

A little work every day and soon you'll have 100s if not 1000s of positive results that will appear above the other silliness.


Should I mention potential collaborative opportunities in my research statement?

I presume this is job interviews in academic positions.

The appropriate place to mention such possibilities is only in your proposed research plan. When you do state names, state where the person is located and what role that person is to play in the collaboration.

Example

Defining the Role of Cats in Human Mental Health

For this project, I will ... bla ... bla ...

Potential Research Collaborations

Dr. Joe Smith, Sociology Department, Pet Friendly University, Cat Heaven, USA (123) 456-7890, j.smith@...
As a renowned cat psychologist, Dr. Smith will contribute his expertise to evaluate whether the cats are happy during the study. We plan to jointly supervise the graduate student on this project.
Dr. Alice B. Nice, ...

Potential Research Funding Sources

The Society for Improved Mental Health (SIMH)
...

Certainly, you will have vetted all of your statements that you make with each of the potential collaborators BEFORE you submit your document for the job applications. We on the other side of the interview will be contacting Dr. Smith as demands warrant!


Should I do a second PhD in Canada or the US?

As a general rule, if your current degree program is not serving your needs/goals, then yes, you absolutely should look for other options.  Hopefully the research experience you've gained in your current program will prove helpful in the future.

That said, you need to be careful in applying to a new program.  A PhD application from a student already in a PhD program raises a red flag, especially if they are already fairly far into the program.  Obviously the current program isn't working out for the student, but does that indicate a problem with the student (uh-oh), a problem with their advisor (but then why not change advisors?), a problem with the program as a whole (but then do we really want a student that was admitted to a dysfunctional program?), or something else?  And even if there isn't a problem, why should we give a slot to someone who already has one elsewhere, instead of giving a new student a chance?

The best way to ameliorate these concerns, in my experience, is to get strong and supportive recommendation letters from the faculty in your current department.  You also need to tell a convincing and positive story about why you want to move (for example: a shift in research interests that does not match the strengths of your current program).  One thing you absolutely cannot write is "I want to move because my current program just isn't good enough."


Is it always necessary to include a research question in the introduction of a paper?

If you are writing a research paper it is quite difficult not to have a question in some form. The purpose of the introduction is to set your study (question/gap of knowledge or what have you) in perspective, to narrow the focus down from a slightly bigger picture to the gap you are trying to fill or narrow even further with your study. Even if your paper is a review, you are doing a review for some specific purpose.

So, you may be thinking too narrowly if you think of a question as a sentence with a question mark, the focus of your paper will be your research question, usually a gap in knowledge where you through your study takes our knowledge beyond the current limits.


May I ask professors to reschedule two back to back night classes from 4:30PM to 9:00PM?

Academic timetabling is a notoriously difficult problem. Professors have several classes to teach, students have several classes to attend. There are restrictions related to classroom sizes, specific equipment (e.g. computer labs). Some professors may have individual restrictions, e.g. can only teach on specific days or hours due to other commitments.
Normally, Professors do not decide their own timetables, but submit their preferences to the Timetabling Office, which then generates a timetable for everyone. Students can also try to submit their requests, but usually as a groups (cohorts), not individually. If you are not happy with your timetable, it is definitely worth trying to change it, but bear in mind that it may not be easy.
However, if you class is scheduled up until 9pm, which is significantly beyond the core hours, you actually have a much better chance of having this class rescheduled, particularly if any of other students attending the same late class have caring responsibilities. Your Student Rep / Student Union Rep / Athena Swan Rep (in the UK) might be able to help you with the process.


Should I give my affiliation as "independent" to protest my institution's funding policies?

I'm not sure that I see an ethical issue here.  Ethically, I think you are free to omit your affiliation if you so choose.

But I don't see any benefit to you by doing so.  It may be a symbolic jab at your institution for not funding you, but it's not going to directly hurt them in any way: nobody is going to notice except you and them. On the other hand, it certainly can directly hurt you and your relationship with your institution.  As just one example, they might decline to consider that publication as part of your research record when they evaluate you (e.g. for tenure).  Or, more seriously, they might decide that if you don't want to be associated with them, they don't want to be associated with you; and therefore stop employing you (if your contract permits it).

Clearly you have some issues with your employer, and I hope you are able to improve matters somehow.  But what you suggest seems at best ineffective and at worst self-destructive.


How much do math professors get paid in the United States?

There are several sources for this data. There are general salary surveys, such as the one done by the Chronicle of Higher Education.  These often classify only by rank and type of institution, not by discipline.

There is a more informative discipline-specific survey done by the American Mathematical Society: their Faculty Salary Report. This lags behind by a year or two while they process the data; the most recently released report when I write this is from 2013. The AMS divides mathematics departments into several groups depending on specialty and whether the department offers a doctorate, master's, or bachelors degree as its highest degree.

For future reference, here are the mean (average) reported salaries for new hire Assistant Professors in the 2013 AMS report. The meaning of each category is described in the report, which has much more detailed information.

Public, PhD-granting Large: $83,242
Public, PhD-granting Medium: $72,284
Public, PhD-granting Small: $67,043
Private, PhD-granting Large: $88,080
Private, PhD-granting Small: $75,722
Applied Math Department, PhD-granting: $81,234
Statistics Department, PhD-granting: $77,759
Biostatistics Department, PhD-granting: $88,362
Master's degree granting: $60,355
Bachelor's only: $56,217

There is also data available from CUPA-HR (e.g. 2014 Executive Summary). This organization has much more detailed data, but most of the data is not publicly released (university administrations pay for the data, so they can compare themselves to peers). They do release a summary by field, including mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics.


Copyright statement (US Government) in acknowledgments - what to do as a reviewer?

The article (i.e. its contents and references) are within your remit as a reviewer.

Checking copyright details and investigating any the legal ramifications will not be relevant to the review you should be doing.


Experiments that produce "interesting" results or which fail for an "interesting" reason may well be worthy of publication. But the nature of the publication is quite different from that of a "successful" bit of research.

Research is about knowledge. if you and others can learn something about what has occurred then it really hasn't failed in producing knowledge.

If the "interesting reason" you mention is interesting enough, and your explanation is clear and informative, then an editor may want to consider it.

But it is up to the editor and reviewers whether it actually makes it into a publication. But you learn nothing unless you submit it.

Note that "success" in research isn't measured by whether the results match your prior expectations. That would be a wast of time. Success depends on what is learned - especially if it can be generalized and extended.

Another way to say this is that in research we don't set out to "prove" something, but to "learn" something. Oddly enough this is true even in mathematics where we do prove things. But that proving stage comes after the research stage when we try to provide a demonstration of what we have learned.


Any rate you can get the student you're tutoring to agree to is a fair hourly rate.  I've charged up to $80/hr for tutoring students in the US in the past (usually that rate paid for by a small group).  I've also tutored friends for just dinner or some beers.  Just make sure both parties agree, probably best over email or something with a paper trail.


Is it necessary to get a masters degree for industry jobs in Machine Learning or AI?

It depends, I think, on what sort of job you want. For people in the trenches, even at IBM/Watson, an undergraduate degree is probably enough to get hired. You would likely be a team member building things at the direction of a manager. Creativity would be in the "how to do this" rather than in the "what do we need to build" area.

However, at the level of doing research at IBM, and I assume others, the requirements look a lot like they would for an academic position. Lots of the people there have doctorates, actually. I don't know that a PhD is necessary to get hired, but the more education you have, the better your chances.

I know people at both these sorts of levels at IBM and at Oracle.

It used to be that at IBM the trench types could get a doctorate paid for at the company, but that option has disappeared for a while now. They might be a bit flexible about giving you some time-slack to do it, depending on the manager, but funding is unlikely.

At smaller companies and especially at startups it is probably much more flexible, but also risky. I also know people doing interesting things at such small software shops who have a more basic formal education though they are good at learning on their own and staying at the forefront.


Should I correct grammatically incorrect quotes when using them in a paper?

On both the original EL&U post and this one, people have asked "why do you believe that you cannot you use "[sic]" in a formal paper? On the EL&U post, you wrote:

I don't [sic] about other areas, but in science/technology where I work on [sic], [sic] would be considered a cheap way to discredit others. It is acceptable/understandable there will [sic] be editorial mistakes (the paper is about some other topic, and it is fine so long [sic] it makes unambiguous sense). In certain cases, [sic] where we see [sic] the result is indeed wrong, we say it politically correctly (e.g., we are not able to reproduce the same result [quotes missing in original]). In all likelihood, pointing out editorial mistake would be taken badly by the community.

So the perceived issue is not really about formality, but about offending the original authors. And indeed, quotes with many mistakes will require many instances of [sic] (as above), which hinders readabilty and, I agree, seems rather passive-aggressive.
On the other hand, you absolutely must not "fix" quotes. Even benign changes can cause problems; for example, think about how many well-meaning editors might change "iff" to "if" in a math paper. It is probably acceptable to insert missing words in brackets [like this], but that's probably as far as you can go.
So, to your question, I would suggest the following:

If there is a single mistake you could either use [sic] or (in the case of a missing word) insert the missing word in brackets. No reasonable author should be offended by this.
If there are many mistakes, you should probably not quote it at all. Instead, summarize it in your own words. As a last resort, if you absolutely cannot avoid quoting a lengthy, error-ridden passage, you could say something like "[spelling and grammar errors in original]"; this would at least reduce the awkwardness to a single sidebar rather than peppering the quote with [sic]s as I did above.


How to shorten the list of authors in case of joint first authorship?

For things like the list of authors at the top of a page, the authors don't put those into their own manuscript at all: they are added in by the publisher during layout. The publisher will work to their own style guide. That style guide may be based on some combination of tradition, design aesthetics and user feedback.

In those rare cases where the author is responsible for putting these in, here are the rules, in descending order of precedence.

Do what the style guide says.
If that's not clear, ask the editor (for a journal paper) or your supervisor (for a thesis)
If you still don't have a clear answer, do what other recent documents that are most similar to yours have done (so for theses, this would be the most recent theses in your department)
If you still don't have a resolution, use your own aesthetic judgement.


Should I warn a professor about his bad internet security practice?

If this was a one-time thing and you don't know this person very well, I would avoid bringing it up.

Once you know this person fairly well or communicate with them on a semi-regular basis, then sure, in your next email to the person just put as a note at the end of the email that they might be cautious about including the entire webpage.

The concern is that it might be off-putting to someone if they don't know you well and perhaps this professor actually verified that no personal info was included.


Why does grade inflation seem to be so severe in the USA?

There are a couple standardized tests used for undergraduate admissions that are generally taken near the end of high school. The ACT and the SAT are the most common ones.1 However, they are only part of the admissions package, and a relatively small part at that (varies by school, but my guess is they get a weight of around 25% or less at most schools).

There are many reasons not to base admissions solely on a single standardized test.2 One of the biggest is simply that standardized test scores often test studying and resources as much as they test intelligence and preparation. There's already a huge industry built around SAT-specific test preparation, and it's very difficult to argue that this extremely-targeted studying is doing anything beneficial for most student's academic preparation.

Also, keep in mind that the US is a much larger country than European countries, and there is a high amount of geographical mobility among the upper-/middle-class. Undergraduate enrollment in the US is around 18 million; that's larger than the entire population of The Netherlands. Because there is a huge prestige factor in going to a top school, almost all of the top students from that huge population will apply to the same 5-10 top colleges in the US. Even if the distribution of scores is the same as a European country, the much larger applicant pool means that top schools are inevitably going to be swamped with near-perfect applications.

1: The number of perfect SAT scores is actually quite low (I am less familiar with the ACT). In 2014, there were only 583 perfect scores out of 1.6 million test-takers. Though if you consider only the two more-important sections, there were 1,922 perfect CR+M scores. Even considering scores that are basically perfect (say, 1550+), less than half of 1% of test-takers reach that level. Source. However, that 0.5% translates into Harvard getting probably 5,000 applicants with 1550+ scores, which is already over 3x their regular incoming class.
2: The wikipedia article talks briefly about some of them, but there's a huge literature debating the advantages and disadvantages.


Data on costs of two-year colleges in the US, by state?

From people's comments and more web-surfing, I've found enough info to take some kind of stab at answering my own question.

California has the lowest community college tuition rates in the US. It appears that every state has some kind of community college system. Most states charge about 3 times more tuition than California. Roughly speaking, in most states a student paying full community college tuition (because they don't qualify for free waivers) is paying about 60% of the cost of instruction, with the other 40% being a subsidy from the state government. In California, it's more like 20% and 80%.

It's extremely difficult to give a clearcut comparison of costs. Various states have their own baroque rules. E.g., in California about half of students get fee waivers. These waivers used to be called BOG (board of governors) waivers, but are now subsumed under the College Promise program.

As an example of how complicated this can get, Pennsylvania has a system where some school districts choose to contribute to community college funding and others don't. If you live in a district that doesn't contribute, you pay higher "non-sponsored" tuition to attend a community college. The highest per-unit in-state tuition at any community college in the US seems to be $318/unit for non-sponsored tuition at Community College of Philadelpha; this is about $10,000/year, or about 7 times higher than California tuition.

College Promise is extremely complicated, and is implemented in different ways by different states. It's been sold to the voters as "free community college" or "free first year of community college," but it's actually both more and less than that.


Revising thesis into a publication : Can I use the same language or must I paraphrase?

Paraphrasing something that would otherwise be plagiarism does not stop it from being plagiarism. Similarly, trying to get the same thing published twice is a problem, whether or not it uses the same language.

However, at least in the UK it is normally fine for ideas that are in a MSc or PhD thesis to also appear in a journal article. I would not worry about using the same words, when it's appropriate to do so.

If you want to be sure, you could write to the editor of your intended journal to check. Either way, it would be wise to mention the situation in the cover letter when you submit your article, just in case they run it through a "plagiarism detector".


How not to lose confidence in front of supervisor?

I experienced something similar at the beginning of my PhD. It was mostly due to the fact that as I was verbalising my ideas, I'd realise their flaws, that they don't quite make sense, or that I hadn't it as figured out as I thought.

I suggest you try to verbally explain your ideas to someone else (if no one else, plushies are great listeners) before you talk to him, that'll give you extra confidence. It is important that you speak out loud, and from the beginning: don't skip right to the meat of the question, your problem may be in the fundamentals.

If this is your problem, once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly learn how to weed out some of these bad ideas, and gain confidence on your explanations.

Something I have seen my students struggle with (and probably myself too, but I don't notice it so much) is that when I ask them a question, they try to answer it as soon as possible, so they get stuck in suboptimal explanations, increase their confusion, get more stressed, and lastly blocked. He is giving you time, so take it, think carefully about what you are going to say, and explore different ways of expressing it before you start saying it. And furthermore, if you find a better way of explaining it, feel free to scratch what you just said and start all over again.

Another option is to set the the ground for a discussion by sending a long email taking your time to explain everything. And if you feel you didn't manage to get your point across, never hesitate to send it after the fact.

Lastly, for a few weeks I got the feeling that my supervisor wasn't really understanding what I am trying to do; but after I gave a 30 min presentation of my work in the department, from the bottom up, he got very excited, and now his comments are, I feel, much more spot on. The presentation included explaining my tools for people completely unfamiliar with them (to be specific, a specific technique built on deep learning for machine [but not deep] learning practitioners).

For your case, consider asking for some time, thinking on it on your own, and coming back with an explanation whenever you have it.


Admission to Ph.D. program at U.S. university without guaranteed funding

The way you are asking the question, the answer is a clear no: this is not common at every university, certainly not in every department at every university.  In my department (mathematics, UGA) to the best of my knowledge we have not had -- say for the last decade -- any PhD students without funding (occasionally from an outside source) that is sufficient for them to live on (albeit less than lavishly).  This situation is quite common in mathematics departments in the United States, and I think it is similar in other STEM fields.  In the social sciences and humanities, funding is distinctly more scarce, but certainly many entering PhD students get funding in these areas.

You ask for advice.  To get good advice you should speak to someone who knows more about your situation.  This advice is centered on the situation in mathematics, but nevertheless I think it is worth hearing: I would think at least twice before entering a PhD program that was not committed to supporting me.  The academic job market is very tight right now, but unevenly so: it contracts severely at every career stage, so that the majority of people who had a lot of success getting placed at one stage find themselves having more difficulties with the next.  Not just anybody gets funding for a PhD program: the resources need to be there, and you need to be (in the judgment of the admissions committee) worthy of them.  However, it is not nearly as hard to get student funding as it is to land any kind of post-PhD academic position (tenure-track or otherwise: actually, in many cases it is harder to land a research postdoc than a tenure track teaching job).

If you have a very specific plan -- worked out with at least one faculty member in the program -- for your success in that graduate program, then maybe things can work out well for you even without advanced funding.  Short of that: depleting your own financial resources to fund your graduate career is certainly, on average, a poor investment.  Please think carefully before you do this.


Why do academics frequently write very short email replies?

Beyond a certain point in their careers, academics (in particular tenured professors) are essentially a subspecies of managers.

And managers literally receive hundreds of emails per day. Some of these indeed require a more formal response, or a lot of work before you can even compose an answer. If you get 20 emails that each require half an hour of work, 50 more that only require a yes/no answer, and another 100 that are just FYI, you don't spend a lot of time on crafting replies to the yes/no mails... because the first category alone already is more than you can handle in a normal day, given all your other responsibilities.


Why reference articles from and/or submit articles to low impact factor journals?

What would be some reasons why researchers would use papers from a low-impact factor journal, say, a journal with IF = 1?

Researchers use papers that are relevant to their research, regardless of where they've been published. Being published in a less prestigious journal doesn't mean the result is less true - it usually means the paper is seen as less significant, usually because the authors/referees/editors think fewer people will be interested in the result.

But sometimes those people are wrong, and a paper is more significant than it appeared, and sometimes the paper may be obscure but it has exactly the thing you need for the work you're doing.

(Also, IF values vary dramatically by field.  The top journals in my subfield have impact factors between 0.6 and 0.7, so an impact factor of 1 doesn't sound low-impact to me at all.)

  Wouldn't all researchers concentrate their efforts on starting their literature search from the highest impact factor journals, and then develop their new work on this basis? That seems logical to me and also most beneficial to a researcher's career in academia.

No, they wouldn't.  Indeed, if everyone else were doing that, a researcher could get a big advantage by being the only person mining paper published in low impact-factor journals for ideas that other people were overlooking.  In my experiences, researchers skim pretty broadly, looking for papers that might suggest new ideas or ways to advance their work, and I've never heard of anyone restricting their reading to the journals with higher impact factors.


How to Direct the Reader to the Background and Terminology Section?

I personally don't like making presumptions about the reader's knowledge when I am writing.  Someone may, for example, be familiar with a term or concept but use it in a difference sense than the paper does.  This is especially true in cross-disciplinary work or when there are unsettled scientific issues in play.  I thus prefer a value-neutral statement.

For example, a general pointer might be:

  See Section 2 for a review of the background and terminology of this work

while a pointer for a specific element might be:

  We thus conclude that this snark is frabjous (for more details on frabjous evaluation, see Section 2.4).


Can most functions of universities be categorized as teaching, research and service?

Universities, and their students, do a lot of community service. While this might fall under your service category, I wouldn't describe it as service directly tied to the monarchy, state or "public".

At a minimum I think your list is missing

Social: At the undergraduate level many universities actively promote social interactions via greek life which I would not describe as teaching, research, or service. Even at the graduate student level the social networking that students engage in is a critical part of university life.
Sports: Many universities, especially in the US, also stress sports.
Fund Raising: Unfortunately a large portion, at least in the US, of the university function is to promote the university by raising funds


Can I submit two papers to the same conference event as me the first author?

Yes, unless the conference regulation specifies a different policy, it's fully OK to submit multiple papers as main author to the same conference.


Politicians and other students caught in plagiarism?

Actually, it is not just politicians. The media only report on politicians, though. I work with the VroniPlag Wiki academic group, there are over 200 published documentations of plagiarism, and many of these degrees have been revoked: http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht (sorry, in German, but you get the gist).

As others have noted, Turnitin and other systems are just a tool, not a litmus test for plagiarism. They can only find what their algorithms can find in the database they have been able to populate. There are very many false positives and even more false negatives. The reports are very difficult to interpret, to boot.

For your particular question, I know from my work testing plagiarism detection systems that very many repositories of dissertations are not indexed by the software. One reason is that they are very difficult to traverse (and each has a different structure). There only tend to be the dissertations stored in the databases that have previously been checked. So in your case, if the student's thesis A was not checked, it was not in the database when B was potentially checked. But if a human reader sees that the topic is the same and then compare's thesis A with thesis B, they can quickly see and document the overlap. And of course, not all theses are checked, for various reasons, not all of which are academic in nature.

If you want to know more about the work that goes into documenting plagiarism in (oldish) theses, I blogged about that ages ago:  https://copy-shake-paste.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-to-find-plagiarism-in-dissertations.html (in English).


The part of the degree after the "Dr." indicates the discipline in which you obtained your degree. Depending on potential future employers, it can be an important signal about your technical qualification. Especially university department can be quite selective in choosing only candidates with the "right" type of degree for post-doc or faculty appointments. It may also play a role in some industry positions, but probably to a lower extent.

Many university departments offer only a single type of degree - engineering departments the Dr.-Ing., natural science and mathematics departments the Dr. rer. nat., and so on. Sometimes there's multiple degree options in one department - in that case mostly the area that your supervisor is supposed to work in will determine which degree you can be awarded.

It seems the specific degree you are looking at, the "Dr. rer. physiol.", is a degree from a medical department. Doctoral degrees in medicine, traditionally the Dr. med., are a special case in the German academic community since they typically require much less work (a year) compared to other fields (three to six years). Therefore, graduates with a Dr.med. degree are often not perceived as fully qualified scientists, especially in international contexts (see e.g. the German Wikipedia article on Dr.med. degrees) for a short discussion of this point). On the other hand, many people looking for medical treatment would see any practicing medical doctor who does not have the Dr. med. degree as not fully qualified. And as far as I am aware obtaining the Dr. med. degree also requires that you get the full training as a practicing medical doctor, so it's not suitable for example for scientists with a biology or chemistry background who just want to do research in medicine.

In order to cope with this dilemma, the medical departments in Germany have introduced a range of additional doctoral degrees, among them the Dr. rer. physiol. (see www.zeit.de/2009/43/C-Doktor-Med for an article on that). The common feature of these degrees is that they don't qualify you as a practicing medical doctor, but on the other hand they hopefully will require more research work than the Dr. med. degree, and in this way qualify you better as a scientist. Nevertheless, if there is the alternative to get the Dr. rer. nat., it's maybe a safer way career-wise to go for this more traditional natural science degree.


Using equipment from research grant funding for both resaerch and personal use

Generally, the rules will say that the equipment is only to be used for research purposes. In practice, no one is going to mind if you watch a bit of netflix, or send some personal emails on your work laptop. No one will even check. I routinely use my work laptop (purchased on a grant) to edit holiday photos, and even have a couple of games installed. Similarly, no one is going to mind if you use your research camera for a few snaps of the research group's social lunch, but I wouldn't use if for your weekend side hussle of paid wedding photography. Its about being reasonable.
One important consideration is that these piece of equipment are often portable. This means that they can be lost/stolen, and no one is going to be very happy if your research camera is stolen while you are on a bar trip.
In both the last two places I have worked there have been schemes to purchase personal items of equipment like this when you leave the university. The  price is often only nominal because the university writes off the value of small consumer electronics after 3 years.


How do I handle my teammate who does his task related with project very late just before the deadline?

The question might be out of scope, but I will give you my opinion.

You can't control what your teammate does. Working in a group setting, you will different approaches to the work, people who are like your teammate, people like you, people who never show up for example. The goal here is whether or not it will impact the bottom line: making sure that the project is:

Turned in
Of high quality

If you work together in the future, address this issue and schedule team sessions ahead of time and manage your time well. What I did when assigned a group project was to literally schedule all of the meetings for the entire semester (or quarter for you) this way, they don't have an excuse for not showing up and doing the work. Weekly meetings will allow you to check in periodically with your individual contributions and direct how the overall strategy would look like.

If you won't, then it will not affect you. Move on.


How to aproach when thesis supervisor just "disappear"?

I had one of those issues when I was doing a PH.D.  You should contact your supervisor first and cc the department head. That way you have more people in the loop. In that email, make an appointment.  If the supervisor doesn't get back to you, that's a red flag. You will be able to then speak to the department head about it and he/she will have some context when you see him/her. In that meeting with the head, speak about your issue. They will solve the problem.

If your supervisor does get back to you, which I assume he/she will since the department head is now in the loop, don't be confrontational. Just have a normal discussion about how you couldn't get a response and that you need more help.

That's how I'd approach it.


Mentioning Professors in math PhD applications

This practice is likely, on average, to help more than it hurts.  It does mark you as somewhat more knowledgeable than the typical applicant, and somewhat more focused.  It also ties your name to Professor Z's.  Should Professor Z want you as a student, and should he or she be able to exert influence, that will give your application a huge likelihood of admission.

However, if Professor Z is politically unpopular or hated in the department (or by the admissions committee), this may actually hurt your application.  Further, if Professor Z is unimpressed with your file, then you might be rejected even if otherwise you would be accepted.

Mentioning a research area can only help, provided that the department is actually strong in that area.


Repeating courses and doing enriched courses as extras to help boost a torpedo'd GPA (math programs)

I largely disagree with the other answer.

The bottom line is that graduate school in mathematics is much more challenging than most undergraduate programs in mathematics, and the academic job market in mathematics is rather cruelly competitive even for those who excelled in their graduate programs.  So my first question to you is: what are your goals?  Do you know what you're setting yourself up for?  Sticking with something out of sheer determination can be commendable if you have a clear view of the situation.  If you decide that you're willing to walk on foot through the desert to reach your goal, that could show gumption...but first, find out how far you need to walk.  If it's 500 miles, you're not showing gumption, you're showing a dangerous lack of planning.

  I have a large desire to go to grad-school

Why?  What are your specific goals?  Do you mean that you want to get a master's degree in mathematics and then apply it to do....what?  Do you mean that you want to get a PhD?  That you want to pursue an academic career?  I have the sense that the answers to most of these questions are "yes", so I will proceed for most of the answer under that assumption.

Maybe it sounds harsh to wonder why someone who has not excelled in something at the undergraduate level wants to pursue it at the graduate level...but I think it's kinder to be a little harsh if it helps people properly perceive the situation.

  I am in the process of getting good grades in thisnlast year in my courses, but regardless of me getting A+'s across the board I would still not have brought my GPA up enough to apply to any masters programs. During my studies I took a few math courses that were beyond my mathematical maturity at the time of the courses and as such got poor marks in them. This was due to my over eagerness to want to learn advanced concepts without respecting the process one needs to take to get there. As such I have been taking those intermediary courses now and they are going better.

So in your last year in the major, you're retaking intermediate level courses and doing better in them.  This means that up until now your performance in all your coursework was not good enough to satisfy the requirements for an undergraduate major?  Realistically, that's bad news: I teach mathematics at the undergraduate and graduate level.  As the grades lie: some of the students who are getting mostly A's should consider grad school; other students who are getting mostly A's should probably not be.  Students who are getting the lower range of "satisfactory" grades have not really understood the concepts of the course, but we hope that the lack of understanding will not snowball too much into the next course so that they can get through the major anyway.  This is not any kind of preparation for graduate work.

In my opinion, in order to have a shot at getting into a reputable graduate program (master's or PhD) and for such a program to be worth your time, you really want to excel in the undergraduate coursework.  If in your last year you are taking intermediate level courses, you don't have a chance of doing that before you graduate.

I would consider spending another year in your current degree program.  If that's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars then that's a serious thing to do and I would think several times before doing it, but it still might be a good investment in your future.  If that is not an option I would suggest that you do "postbac" work and/or enroll in a "nondegree program" at a quality undergraduate institution that lets you take the advanced undergraduate courses for grades.

The alternative is to apply to a master's program.  But if you are applying to a master's program with a poor background you will probably have to pay for it, which could be just as expensive (or more so) than staying in your current program.  Moreover you may find when you get there that you are (i) poorly prepared relative to the other students, (ii) expected to do work at a level you've never been held to before (iii) in a new environment where you don't know anyone or know how things work and (iv) no one around is particularly invested in your success.

Finally, a really poor master's program could end up being....poor.  I've seen students enter into a PhD program with master's degrees who were clearly not as well prepared as students coming directly from a more reputable undergraduate institution.  Also a good performance at a miserable place is not much of a steppingstone to a good PhD program.

All of this is predicated on the assumption that your desire to go to grad school meant that you wanted to get a PhD.  If you mean that you want to get a terminal master's en route to a specific real world job: in that case, attending wherever you get in and sticking it out becomes a much better plan.


Will medical institutions reject an applicant based on being 28 years of age?

In the US, being 28, 30, or even 40 is not a problem for getting into med school. I was 26 when I was admitted, and I was far from the oldest in my class. In fact, by my senior year, they had admitted a couple of students older than my current age at the time! If you haven't been slacking off in between college and now, it could make you even more competitive because you can point to past successes and have interesting stories for the interviewing process. A typical medical school in the US could easily fill each class with biology and chemistry students fresh out of college with high GPA's and MCAT scores. Someone older might have all of those, plus the strengths of a rigorous career or valuable experience outside of medicine. You can differentiate yourself from the rest of the pool.

Now, to the main issue of age. By the time you finish the pre-reqs, ace the MCATs, and finish 4 grueling years of medical school, do you think you'll have the energy or motivation to do an even more intense additional 7 years of neurosurgery? Neurosurgery is competitive enough that they can pick whatever candidate they want. While not a given, you will likely face some "soft" age discrimination for intense/competitive residencies and fellowships. For this stage, you'll have to work extra hard to convince them you can physically compete with the youngin's, much less complete/survive the program. Once you finish your neurosurg training, you won't have problems finding a job. Once you're board eligible/certified, no hospital cares what school you went to, how old you are (to a point), or what you did in the past. All that matters is what you can do for them, ie increase billing by a zillion dollars.

You can get more detailed responses and support from the forums.studentdoctor.net website. There's even a sub-forum for the "non-traditional" applicant, which honestly, isn't so non-traditional anymore!


How do you re-learn a subject that you've started to forget?

If you took notes when you first learned the material, then start with those, and perhaps summarize them. Then, or if you don't have notes, I'd suggest going back to the exercises and doing them again, starting with the first chapter, rather than a random approach. Perhaps a few from each chapter. If you get stuck, then review the material enough to get to a solution.
If you really did know it, then it should come back with a bit of practice. Hopefully you weren't just kidding yourself on the first "learning". Then it is much harder.


Why do some documents have more than one DOI?

For the specific articles you gave as an example, the first DOI has an error in the article title in its metadata. The second has the correct title.

The DOI 10.1002/(sici)1099-1573(200003)14:2<118::aid-ptr493>3.0.co;2-p was issued first. In the metadata for that DOI, the title is given as Evaluation of antibacterial activity ofAsparagus racemosus Willd. root (missing a space between "of" and "Asparagus").
The DOI 10.1002/(sici)1099-1573(200003)14:2<118::aid-ptr493>3.3.co;2-g was issued a few days later, and in the metadata, the title is corrected to Evaluation of antibacterial activity of Asparagus racemosus Willd. root.


How to write in the SOP that I need funding?

Disclaimer: Your post lacks some important details (field, university, and your nationality) so I am going to make a few assumptions. In the past, I also applied to PhDs in the UK, so I will give you an answer based strictly on my experience and what I was told by my prospective supervisor at that time.

I am going to assume that you do not have British or European nationality, since most British and EEA PhDs are funded by the relevant funding bodies (ESPRC, STFC, and others depending on field). Your options as a person without UK or EEA nationality are unfortunately very limited where funding is concerned. You are restricted mostly to funding from the supervisor directly (which you mentioned that yours do not have), a scholarship from the university (e.g. Rhodes), or incredibly competitive country-based scholarships (e.g. Wellcome Trust, Fullbright and so on). Unfortunately, international students (PhD and undergrad alike) are considered a giant source of income for universities, and there are very few scholarships available for people in this situation.

Do you know how much your tuition will cost? Are you looking for funding for this plus a living stipend during the course of your PhD, or are you able to support your own living expenses?

From my experience, and what I was told by my prospective supervisors at the time, the SOP is not supposed to mention funding. I personally would not include this in my application at all. However I would bring it up with the supervisor and with the relevant department. If your supervisor specifically advised you to mention funding in your SOP, then don't listen to what I'm telling you. When I went through the PhD application process in the UK, every university had a question about my nationality and how I'd be paying my tuition. Most had a radio button to indicate that you would need a scholarship or bursary. It is my personal suspicion that many universities use this query to rule out those of us not rich enough to fund our own PhDs or who can't take out loans for them.

If you wish to know more about the funding which is available to students of other nationalities, I can tell you what I know. It just isn't your specific question, so I won't type that all out straight away. I also answered this extensively in another question (which you can see here).

As far as what you have written, I agree with the commentor on your main question; your sentence comes across as resentful or even antagonistic depending on how it is read. I also agree with the second comment to your original question posted by Nate Eldrege; what you are alleging in the sentence is also factually incorrect (and maybe it is correct in your field, but it is subjective and unnecessary here), which will come across poorly. If you truly do want to mention your situation in your SOP, I would do so as neutrally and factually as possible. Something more like:

  [Briefly summary who is the professor and his work] My desire is to be able to work with him, and it is my main motivation to apply to University X. I have contacted him and he is very interesting to work with me. However, Professor X, while interested in taking me on as a student, is unable to fund me at this time. Because of this, I will be applying in tandem for any funding available to students in my situation.

This lets them know that a) you have researched your options and your obligations as far as tuition/living expenses go, b) you have made good contact with Professor X, and c) you are exhibiting independence with respect to funding your work.

I can say that point c is very important, because being funded as a foreign person in the UK is very rare and you have to do a LOT of work and compete with many, many people to receive it.

All of this being said, the university may well offer you a place to study your PhD (it happened to me) but without funding. If you can't self-fund, you just have to decline the acceptance. It is a lot easier for an international student to get an offer of a PhD place in the UK than it is to get funded for it.


Why is the Grievance Studies affair considered to be research requiring IRB approval?

This article in NYMag answers pretty clearly most of your questions. I won't quote it all, you can read it on your own. Here are relevant excerpts.

For the purposes of Peter Boghossian’s case, three facts about IRBs matter a great deal: “study” is defined rather broadly in the federal guidelines; possible risks to humans — even ones that non-IRB nerds may view as negligible — are taken very seriously; and IRBs tend to look especially closely at studies involving deception. [...]
First, the definition of “study”: As PSU explained to Boghossian in a document it sent him December 17, the university determined that his work met the definition of “study” as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services in language that reads — this isn’t included in the letter itself — “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” [...]
Crucially, it does not matter that the hoaxsters didn’t attempt to publish their final results in a peer-reviewed journal. “Publishing in a magazine that’s not peer reviewed doesn’t matter if they’re reporting on their research,” said Celia Fisher, director of the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education. All that matters is that Boghossian is an employee at PSU, and that he conducted what the university deemed to be human-subjects research based on a plain reading of how that term is normally defined for this purpose.
[...] First of all, “if they believed that this was not human-subjects research, the process would have been to submit to the IRB an application that says I believe this research that I’m doing is exempt,” said Fisher. “And the IRB makes the determination if it’s not human-subject.” It’s not their call, in other words — it’s still the IRB’s. [...]
In the case of the grievance-studies hoax, the potential for harm came in the form of reputational damage and humiliation to journal editors and reviewers. And one decision the hoaxsters made — allowing accepted papers to actually be published rather than notifying the journals so they could be yanked before they were out in the world — neatly captures the sorts of ethical discussions often spurred by IRBs. [...]
Finally, as a so-called audit study [...] Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose’s scheme was more likely than a non-deception study to raise IRB eyebrows. “All audit studies require deception, and many social scientists who would like to see only a limited role for IRBs still consider IRB review appropriate when deception is required,” said Schrag. Deception is simply seen as an ethically fraught tactic, so even IRB critics aren’t necessarily in favor of them backing off entirely in situations where deception is involved. [...]
Pluckrose at one point mentions the impossibility of getting informed consent from journal reviewers — the implication being that to do so would be to blow the cover of the experiment. Again, though, that’s the point of an IRB: to gain permission to deceive, or to come up with some sort of work-around. The choice isn’t necessarily between obtaining informed consent in a manner that would blow the experiment and not running the experiment at all — plenty of IRBs have approved plenty of audit studies. [...]

The article was not particularly difficult to find (it was linked in one of the Wikipedia articles), and the way you phrased your questions casts some doubt about your good faith (it sounds like you have already attained a conclusion and only wanted validation, especially your last hypothetical question), but still, I think this deserved a good-faith answer. Now as for your hypothetical:

As an extreme example, if a university professor tells their colleagues a joke and counts how many people laugh, and later writes a post about it in social media, do they risk similar sanctions if the university doesn't like their post?

This is a systematic (albeit small scale) investigation designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge and the professor reported on it. It involves human subjects. If the professor doesn't inform the participants that their reactions are recorded and will be posted online, it also involves deception. I will let you reach your own conclusions as to whether it would require IRB approval. It sounds like you understood extremely well what especially was problematic with Boghossian's study, as you were able to construct a completely different hypothetical scenario that still presents the same three red flags.
You may find all this overblown or too cautious. But it isn't up to you (or a researcher carrying out an experiment with ethical ramifications) to decide. A researcher has a conflict of interest: it is in their interest that the study is carried out and completed. It is the role of the IRB to offer an external evaluation of this, to remove the conflict of interest. If the experiment is truly worth the risks, it will be approved.


First, your experience is not unusual for undergraduates, so you are in good company.

Your best course of action is to share these concerns with a faculty member or even one of the doctoral students in your program. They can help you make a realistic assessment of your chances for acceptance with funding in a doctoral program.

Do not rely on undergraduates for information about grad school requirements--there is too much guess work among those students for you to trust your future to it. Talk to people who are in a position to know.

Last, fear of failure is understandable, but look at this experience as a chance to learn how to overcome it. Students in graduate programs need to develop the ability to have an article rejected without being crippled by the experience. It takes time and experience (i.e. multiple rejections) to learn how to accept it as part of the process and continue to improve. If you want to go to a doctoral program, now is the time to begin learning how to keep working and doing your best, no matter what.

The fact that you are now asking these questions is a very promising sign that you are already on your way to overcoming your fear. Good luck!


Can one acquire "tenure" through teaching or being something like a Research Associate at a university lab?

No, generally speaking, tenure is not offered to teaching faculty, usually called lecturers, or research scientists at American universities.  The AAUP has long argued that teaching faculty should also be eligible for tenure and they report that a small number of universities have created tenure tracks for teaching faculty.  But it's rare.

That said, if you can get hired full-time as a lecturer, your job security is pretty good, mainly because (speaking from experience serving on the lecturer search committee here at Michigan) it's so hard to find qualified individuals who want the job, given that it's so dramatically less attractive to academics than a tenure track appointment.


Does providing textbook solutions benefit the student?

Why do you need "research in peer reviewed journals" for something you can easily figure out experimentally yourself in a couple of semesters using exactly the setup you are interested in? The students also provide you with a lot of feedback themselves if you bother to ask them and to listen to the answers. The typical answer to this question (coming from those who have no trouble with the subject) is something along the lines "Yes, I do need to see written solutions to exercises to have a sample of exemplary argument construction and mathematical writing I can follow". I buy this 100% and do not care in the slightest what the modern education theories say after that.


It sounds to me like you are trying to game the system by publishing Part A three times simultaneously with revisions to the wording to claim it is not self-plagiarized.

Assuming Part A is important, which it seems to be because you are describing it as a new technology, you seem to be trying to get three journals to think they are each the first to publish that new technology, when in fact they are not. This is unethical.

If all the applications are relevant, you should publish whichever your favorite one is with Part A, and then submit separate papers citing that paper that show the results with the other applications. These works will likely repeat some of Part A, but only as much as is needed to explain it for that application.

However, this is something best discussed with your academic advisor.


How should I respond to a worrying email from an ex student?

Campus police is in charge of keeping everyone on campus safe -- both from other members of the university as well as people outside the university. They're your first point of contact, and if the email can be construed as a threat, then they should take it seriously. If they think that they require help from outside, they will refer the matter to the city police. City police will, for example, be in charge of restraining orders that relate to your home, your SO, and everything else you do outside campus.

As for helping: As humans, we want to and should. At the same time, I don't think that you have a moral obligation, and certainly no legal one. The person is no longer under your supervision or care, nor do you really have any way to connect to the person: They're clearly not interested in listening to you.


Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?

Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed research publications, published in academically reputable venues such as research journals, conferences, books with reputable publishers, reputable preprint servers, ... If you get these publications from industry research, you get academic weight. A famous example for prominent research in electrical engineering done in industry are the Bell laboratories.

Codes and operational manuals are not academic publications, and typically carry little weight. In order to get that, you have to publish academic papers about the codes and manuals, or publish papers about research results obtained with them.


Is there a way to save my students money on a textbook?

An easy thing to do that can be very helpful to your students is to put a copy of the textbook (or two or three copies) on reserve in the university library.  Students can then photocopy critical sections of the book (e.g. the homework exercises.)  This is particularly helpful at the start of the semester when students are waiting for copies of the book that they've ordered online to arrive.

If you have control over the choice of the textbook, you should consider moving to a cheaper book or even an open educational resource (OER) that is completely free to students.


Why haven't we hosted research publications as repositories yet?

There are journals that do that. Here is one: https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submitting.html

In some sense, arXiv.org is also doing that, allowing to version preprints. It doesn't use a "repository" in the sense of git or subversion, but it allows you to keep track of different versions of a manuscript, and that's really what is key: Any system that allows you what's in a paper at a later time must allow identifying and accessing a particular version of the paper.


Scientific authorship: including a former lab member who collected (unused) pilot data?

There are two key questions, as I see it.  The first is whether the experimental design you used was originated by the former student.  If it was the PI's idea (or somebody else's), and the student merely implemented it, that the former student does not need to be an author.  If, on the other hand, the apparatus and techniques were truly originated by the former student, there may be a strong case for making them an author.  You should ask the PI specifically about who designed the experiment (as well as consulting them about the whether the previous student should be a coauthor; the PI is likely the best person to evaluate whether the student made a meaningful contribution to the current paper).

If it is established that the old student did originate the experimental arrangement, there is then a second question:  Was this experimental design already used as the basis for a published paper with that student as an author?  If there was already a paper on the older results, then the student has already received credit for designing the experimental setup.  In that case, you can cite the older paper as originating the methodology, and the former student does not need to be an author on papers describing further developments made after they left.


What is the origin of the "underwater basket weaving" meme in Academia?

The earliest reference known to Wikipedia (as shared by jakebeal) is from 1956, but I found a few that were earlier.
First, perhaps a hint as to how this usage evolved, here's a mildly sarcastic 1919 reference about universities that have abandoned the ways of the Ivory Tower to offer such "practical" courses as plumbing and basket weaving (which presumably was a useful vocational skill in those days):

Higher education is becoming very practical indeed. It includes everything nowadays - excepting, of course, Greek and Latin - from plumbing to basket-weaving.
Source: "Studying National Parks," The watchman and southron. (Sumter, S.C.), August 06, 1919. link

The earliest usage I found that was specifically for "underwater basket weaving" is from 1953. It's in an article about slang used by the "younger generation" (implying that the usage is new, or at least new again):

Any snap course in school is "underwater basket weaving."
Source: "In a Hepster's Lingo, the Girl Who Likes to Neck is a Giraffe," Boston Globe, Oct 4, 1953, pg. A50

Throughout the 1950s, there are many references to "basket weaving" in the context of easy courses taken by student athletes.
Here's one such reference from 1952:

These may include courses in life-insurance salesmanship, bee culture, square-dancing, traffic direction, first aid, or basketweaving.
Source: "Magna cum nonsense," New York Times, March 16, 1952, SM68.

Here's a reference in a quote from one of these athletes, from 1953:

A varsity baseball player said he had received offers from San Francisco University guaranteeing him passing grades.
"I hardly would have had to go to classes," he said. "They told me I could major in basket weaving if I wanted to."
Source: "Other Schools Made Bids, Spartan Athletes Content," Newsday, March 3, 1953, pg. 50

The 1956 reference with "underwater basket weaving" that Wikipedia cites:

Why should he be given a better deal than those students who are attending college in order to get a "real" education ... majoring in underwater basket weaving, or the preparation and serving of smorgasbord, or particularly at Berkeley, the combined course of anatomy and panty-raiding?
Source: "College 'Pro' Football Hit," Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1956, pg A4

There's also many about plain "basket weaving" that year. For example:

Several schools screamed to high heaven about the fact that these so-called students, or at least the majority of them, couldn't pass the basket weaving examination and that their grade transcripts resembled those of the village idiot.
Source: "Cronin's Corner," Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1956, pg. B3

and

It was explained rather superciliously that they had a stiff struggle to get minimum passing grades in basket-weaving, musical appreciation or Loaf and Sleep (Letters and Science) courses.
Source: "Sports of the World," Atlanta Daily World, Nov 13, 1956, pg 5

I found these by searching ProQuest databases, the results unfortunately don't seem to include permanent links. Hence the lack of links.


You need to consider what role you want the math professor to take: are you looking for a co-author, a collaborator, a consultant, or a service provider.

Since you lack background in one area and are working in a place that does not prioritize publications, I would consider bring the individual on as a co-author. If that is your decision you need to provide the co-author with everything you are planning on doing so that he/she can make an informed decision. This obviously puts you at risk of being scooped. This then leads to the question of how to minimize the chances of being scooped. The first thing to remember is most researchers do not want to get into a publish first race. Scooping tends to be accidental and a result of two people independently starting the same/similar projects. You can minimize your chances by contacting an established person who is known to play "nice". The second thing you can do is to bring the research along as far as you can without the collaborator. This means they will be starting from so far back that it is unwise to enter the race.


Ratio of faculty positions to applicants

At least in the US, I can't think of very many fields where there are shortages of applicants for available faculty positions, especially in this day and age with the current economy.

Even when times were booming back in the mid-90's and in the 2000's, you'd still have dozens or even hundreds of applicants for any available faculty position. With the economy still somewhat depressed, you still have lots of people chasing after an even smaller number of positions than before. So I still think that in any viable field of academia, you'll still see applicants outnumbering vacancies. It's only in subdisciplines or departments that probably should not have been separated out in the first place that would end up having gluts of available positions.


Besides salary, is there any difference between "classes" of faculty in France?

Generally speaking, it is financial. The responsibility difference is between HDR-holders and non HDR-holders (HDR = Habilitation à diriger les recherches).

Maîtres de conférences are not always allowed to supervise research alone (for example: you cannot supervise a PHD student alone).

To do so you need to hold an HDR: it is a university diploma, something like a smaller PhD thesis that proves that you can supervise others. It's similar to Habilitation in many European countries, like Germany for example.

All "Professeurs" have an HDR : it is a condition (but not the only one) to get promoted. Some "Maitre de Conférences" have an HDR, some do not.

Please note there are two fields in French universities where the "Maître de Conférences/Professeur" distinction is different, for historic reasons : Law and Economics. You become a "Professeur" by completing a competitive examination: "l'agrégation". HDR is this case is not necessary.


Given the situation as you describe it, in particular that there is evidence that the author could have corrected the presumably-small mistake themselves, I'd recommend that you quote the true assertion, and/while noting, literally, that there is an easily correctible error or typo in the proof as written.

Catching typos is important, but is not "research", of course. And, yes, once typos or silly mis-statements are pointed out, many authors can repair them without hesitation. So I myself generally consider "paper X" to be "paper X with all trivial typos and obvious blunders corrected". (Still, yes, sometimes the boundary of this is not clear...)

In particular, yes, I give credit to authors for obtaining a result who've slightly messed up the argument, both for observing what is true, and for at least approximating the proof.


Is publishing paper containing information acquired from sites such as Sci-Hub illegal?

I think you need to consult a lawyer for this, but it isn't the publishing that is illegal, per se. How you acquired certain information might have legal implications, and how you quote and cite might have ethical implications, of course. But both of those are independent of publishing.
Republishing copyright material is illegal in a lot of places, but I don't think that is exactly what you mean. Such republishing is illegal even if you obtain the original properly.
Answering such questions here is, however, a down vote magnet for some reason, so I hesitate to say more.
I will note, however, that copyright violation is almost entirely a civil matter. If you infringe someones copyright it is up to them to try to defend their rights via a lawsuit. And, then, they have to notice it, of course. There are some exceptions to this general rule, of course, and Disney would like to have anyone abusing their "Mickey Mouse" copyright thrown in jail until the copyright expires and which they also work to extend to infinity. Good luck with that.


The main difference with the publication process in the humanities is the emphasis tends to be far more on single-author works, and the primary publication venues are journal articles, book chapters in collections, and monographs (i.e. a book). The heavy difference is in the tilt towards books in many humanities fields, sometimes referred to as a "book culture", but this is not universal across fields (or even sub-fields). Journal articles are still pretty typical fare, even in book cultures - the main difference being "can an academic in that field get tenure without a book or two or three".

But yes, there are indeed philosophy journals, and this page gives a nice quick overview of what are considered a few of the top ones. As a general idea of the publication process, check the memo to authors for The Journal of Philosophy, or the Instructions to Authors for MIND.

These are not so much calls for papers, as they are open to submissions to whatever is considered on-topic and relevant/good for that journal (read the journals guidelines/author guide for starters, and if it seems of interest you'll want to read through previous proceedings of that journal to see if the type of work published there suits you). Calls for papers on more specific topics would be more expected of special editions that some journals put together on occasion.

But yes, looking over the author guidelines you see its all pretty standard fare in terms of process. Most use some form of blinded review (usually at least the reviewers don't know who submitted the paper), and some use triple-anonymous where even the editor doesn't know who submitted the paper. The rest of the process is pretty standard - the editors can desk-reject what the like, the remainder of interesting papers get sent out to reviewers and send back the reports, the editors review the reports and then decide on a course of action, there may be revision rounds, etc. If the paper is ultimately accepted they work it up and publish it in according to their schedule, which is usually once every X months.

Journals are less driven by deadlines in terms of submission periods, because of course if you miss the date for X proceedings there is always X+1. But overall, the humanities have a publication culture that is at least not completely alien to those of us who have most of our experience in the "other culture" (to reference C. P. Snow's formulation of two cultures, though in practice there are far more than two).


Author title for ex-student in research paper

For a definitive answer: check issues of the journal you will submit to, see what they do. If you still have doubts: contact the editor (I would wait until after acceptance of the paper, because it's not such a big deal).

My take on it:

First, it's very rare to mention the diplomas hold by the authors. Even the titles (Dr, Prof, etc.) are often not listed at all. The exceptions seem to be (at least in my field) some journals edited by German societies, academies or publishers (Angewandte Chemie lists all titles, for example, in a footnote along with full affiliations). So, I'd remove the “MS in XYZ”.
Secondly, your main affiliation is the institution where you carried out your work (or most of it). This means, list “University of Nowhere, Department of Procrastination” as your main affiliation.
Thirdly, you can indicate your “current address” in the author list. Depending on journal style, it might be a footnote or listed as other affiliations. It will start with: “Current address: University of Big Name, Department of Corrections”. But… given that you don't have a new institutional address, I would advise you to skip it altogether. Simply don't list your home address in the paper, it's not really useful for readers. If they want to contact you, they will use email anyway.
Finally: if your former university didn't provide an email address that will last, using your gmail address is perfectly fine.

I hope this covers it!


How do I response "accept (minor edits)" without suggestions? (IEEE ACCESS)

It is likely that the first reviewer was referring to minor issues of language and presentation, even spelling, typos, etc. Give the paper a careful read looking for issues and correct them. If you do this, it is unlikely that you really need a direct response to that reviewer, other than thanks. Many reviewers don't want to take on the role of "copy editors" and so will just point to that things can be improved without giving detail.

If your first language is other than the language of the paper, then it might be good to have a colleague make some comments on presentation - someone who is fluent in the language in question.

The other reviewer needs to be taken seriously, of course, and your acceptance will depend on how you respond, primarily in your edits of the paper. But that is the usual situation, of course.


Is there a problem with citing an article that cites a retracted article?

Ultimately, it doesn't depend on the retracted article, but on the one that you cite.
Is the science in the article that you cite valid, despite the retraction of its reference?  After all, most references are for context not critical dependencies. If it's still valid, there is no problem with the citation.  If the science doesn't stand, though, then it doesn't stand and you shouldn't cite it.


Transferring out of Rank 1 PhD program to another PhD program

Right around the first midterm of every course I feel like just throwing it all away (I have multiple degrees and working on another one right now). It's the same feeling I have right before I go out to a party that I want to go to but will have a lot of people.  I think it's just anxiety.  What's the worst case?  You have to take the course again?  You're concerned that you don't have enough background?  Think instead of all the cool stuff you still get to learn.  I had a CS professor who asked the class,  "who has heard of 3-SAT?"  No one raised their hand.  You could tell the excitement in her voice.  "I get to be the person who teaches you 3-SAT!"  Think of it that way.  Someday you will learn 3-SAT, and a million other great things.  Now go study!


How do i advance my research career and publish papers without university affiliation?

Short answer: Simply write your paper and submit it and wait for feedback. If it is good enough a conference will publish it.

Longer Answer: A contribution is a contribution, and conferences and journals are always hungry for a good content. Affiliation does not mean much, as most high ranking conferences only allow double-blind submissions; and after acceptance you can put your name, email and the company you are working for. You then will be considered an independent researcher on the subject matter. I have seen many submissions from big to small companies over the years, on subjects that were important to them and their work, who decided to submit their contribution to a research conference and get feedback.


Grad students/postdocs taking ideas with them, what's normal?

I think the main thing you should keep in mind is, did it seem like people in your old lab/group will be or would like to be working this?  You don't want to end up "stealing" someone's project, or competing with them.

There's a difference between an idea you've come up with completely on your own, and something you've come up with together with other people.  For ideas of the latter type, it's reasonable to suspect that your former colleagues may still be thinking about this.  In addition, if they contributed significantly to the ideas, they should have a chance to be included in the project.  If how the other parties feel about working on this idea is not clear from your prior interactions, just talk to them about it.


Should we chair a session in which we present?

If the conference has asked you, there is no reason not to. Of course, chairing can mean different things depending on the conference. It may be just introducing speakers or keeping them to a schedule, or it may be actually chairing a discussion. There are other possibilities, I suppose.

I don't foresee any conflicts in such a situation, though you may want to accept or defer any responsibility for it depending on your comfort level.


Are (computer science) workshops less prestigious than conferences in general?

Workshops are usually for new topics, and I do rank them lower than conferences. Moreover, workshops usually publish/accept papers rejected from their co-located main conference; often than not, they are used to prop up the number of registrations or to cover the cost of the main conference.  Also, because they are new, it is usually very easy to get a paper accepted as the standard is not there yet.  However, if the topics of interest grow and attract experienced researchers, then a workshop can be quite hard to get into, and hence, its prestige grows.


How to run a fiscally independent research department?

There are a large number of soft-money research centers that are essentially stand-alone - they have to bring in enough research money to cover their costs, and don't receive tuition support, TA lines, etc. I suspect the most common place to find them is in the biomedical field. I worked for one when I was a postdoc.

How does it achieve this? There are a number of ways to do this. A generous initial endowment can help. Patents, and the licensing revenue that comes from them are, for some fields, a major source of income. And then there are grants. Lots and lots of grants.
Do they have strategies that get them here? Yes. One does not get there by accident.
Is this model reproducible? Given there is more than one such organization, the answer is clearly yes.

Whether it's desirable or sustainable is, on the other hand, another question. In my experience, there is an immense amount of pressure on the senior leaders of such organizations, because if grant funding doesn't come through, there's no safety net, and you're immediately talking about firing people. And because the operating expenses for any academic unit are quite high, they often depend on a small number of large grants to support them (for example, where I was a postdoc, I don't think it was possible to write enough NIH R01-scale grants to cover things).

That's a very high risk position. If a program gets cut, funding falls through, etc. there's suddenly a massive hole in the budget.


How to find balance between overconfidence and lacking confidence?

1) How should I view the interaction? Should I assume I am probably wrong? Should I assume that he is wrong? Another option...?

Researchers should have differing opinions on topics such as whether non-explainable machine learning techniques should be used in healthcare.

  2) In the future, should I press the debate more rather than only asking a few questions and thanking him for the info? Would this be impolite at a conference? Would it be an unwise career move?

Such opinions should be debated, that's how research advances, and such debate should be encouraged, at conferences and elsewhere. Some researchers will be less willing to accept your opinion than others, only you can decide whether you want to engage with such researchers.

  Should I raise my disagreement when this occurs?

If you want to.

  How long should I debate the issue if we don't agree?

As long as the conversation lasts.

  If we don't agree in the end should I assume I'm wrong?

No. There doesn't seem to be any right and wrong here, just opinions.


Manuscript status changed from "Under review" to "Required reviews completed" and again to "Under review"

As @user2768 points out in the question's comment section, we can't know the internals of a reviewing system. However, I tried here to provide a possible explanation for this change from "required reviews completed" to "under review".
"Required reviews completed": This is a status which shows up when a minimal number of reviews for an article is received. For instance, some journals have required the minimum number of reviews being set to 2. So, when the journal office receives 2 reviews from the reviewers, the status is displayed. Elsevier provides this reference.
Note that the reviews sometimes be lousy and not detailed, and sometimes very conflicting reviews (e.g. review comments by two different reviewers are completely opposite to each other). In this case, the (associate) editor has a hard time making a decision. A possible way to resolve this conflict is to get another review, and therefore (s)he could send the article to a third reviewer. Then, the status changes to "under review" again.
Don't worry about all these. These things are pretty normal in peer-review system.


Is it ethical to buy noise canceling headphones with research funds?

Disclosure: we actually bought pretty expensive Bose Noise Cancelling headphones for our students recently, for the reasons you mentioned.

I think there is a very easy answer to this - will your funds cover the expenses if the purpose is reported truthfully, or will some "creative" cost reporting be required?

In the first case, I have a hard time seeing an ethical issue - as you say, equipment is equipment, and if whoever funds your research is ok with spending some of it on "potentially productivity-increasing even if ultimately not absolutely necessary" equipment, then why should you be ethically required to not make use of this option? The only case I would see where this would become an issue if you, for instance, would not actually be planning to be using the headphones much at all in the office, and are mainly looking to use them for a private purpose (but then again, if you wrote this in your expense report, whoever funds your research would probably not be ok with this expense anyway, making this more similar to the second case).

In the second case, it is pretty clearly not ethical to hack around whatever the criteria given out by your funding agency (e.g., pretending like you will need noise cancelling for a specific experiment so that it counts as costs for conducting a specific experiment rather than equipment costs, etc.).