As an academic working at a university, you do not have unlimited freedom to enter into arrangements of the sorts you describe, but are limited to what your university’s policies will allow you to do (which at my university would certainly not include the hypothetical secret agreement you described). And at established universities those policies have been carefully crafted to balance the university’s rights and its mission of public service against the academic’s desire and right to pursue side interests, including for pay, and also taking into account the fact that such side projects also often benefit society and thus advance the university’s mission.
So the answer to your question is more boring than you might imagine: that is, if you are following the university’s policies, then generally speaking it’s not wrong (unless you are being particularly crafty, misleading in reporting your actions or intentions, or are otherwise pushing the limits of what’s acceptable in a way many people would consider unreasonable); and conversely, if your actions clearly violate university policy, well, I don’t want to generalize too much since one can always think of exceptions, but that’s a pretty good sign that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.
Here are some relevant policies from the University of California system, in case you want to go deeper into this issue: 1, 2, 3.


Is it possible for someone with a PhD from a top-200 university to find a faculty position at a top-20 university?

I'll assume you are talking about tenure-track positions, due to the reference to an assistant professorship.  If you are talking about postdocs, then it really depends on how your field works (e.g., how many such positions there are and how they are distributed among different types of universities).

It's certainly possible to get a job in a much higher-ranked department than the one you graduated from, but a little arithmetic shows that it's very unlikely, assuming departments in your field aren't growing dramatically.

Let's assume a steady state, in which departments are neither growing nor shrinking, and let's make the simplifying assumption that they are all the same size.  Of course these assumptions aren't quite right, but they can generally serve as a first approximation.

What does it take to get a job at a comparable department to the one you graduated from?  In a steady state, each professor will eventually be replaced by one new hire, but they will typically train multiple Ph.D. students.  This means that there's just enough room to hire each professor's best student ever, over their whole career.  Of course the hiring won't actually work out that way, since the top students are not uniformly distributed among professors (and there will also be competition from students who attended higher or lower-ranked schools).  However, this sets a lower bound: if you aren't at least as good as the career-best student of a typical professor from a top X department, then you can't realistically expect to get a job at a top X department yourself.

Going up in the rankings is even harder.  The number of people who are their advisor's career-best student at a top 200 department is ten times the total number of positions at top 20 departments.  This means that 90% of them will fail to get such a job, since there just aren't enough positions to accommodate them.  In practice, it's even worse than these numbers indicate (generally much worse), but the point is that simple arithmetic guarantees at least a 90% failure rate even for these highly successful students.

So you shouldn't be surprised that your friend failed to go up in the rankings by a factor of 10: that requires either exceptional luck or exceptional accomplishments.

  What is taken under consideration when one makes such application?

It's really no different from any other application, with no special requirements or considerations.  You need to make the case that you are a better choice than any other available candidate.  Applicants from low-ranked department often face some initial skepticism, but hardly anyone would be silly enough to obsess over rankings while disregarding visibly superior accomplishments.


Is it possible to get a faculty position from a skype interview alone?

Possible? Yes, of course. Assuming your other materials are solid and you are high on the list of applicants. Not the common thing and not the best route, but if your restrictions are understood by the hiring committee it might be possible to get an offer if you come over well in such an interview.

But you may not have many alternatives, so it may be your best bet.


How to handle a paper by a reviewer who wants to be paid?

First of all: Is there a rule that you need to be available as reviewer if you want to publish in that specific journal? People decline reviews for all sorts of reasons (often lack of time, which may or may not be the case), and I never heard that somebody got "punished" for that.

Your reviewer wanted to get paid. It is very unusual to pay reviewers, but on the other hand, it is not per se unreasonable or offensive to ask for compensation for work.

I would see it this way: Either you establish a general rule that authors must be available as reviewers or you accept that some people do not review papers (although they publish).


Asking about how to apply to 2 open positions in same department in same group

At Australian universities, there are always selection criteria.  If the selection criteria are identical, you can submit identical applications.  If they are not identical, customize your applications to match the selection criteria.
Do address your letter to the correct professor.
If it is true, it would be fine to say in your application that you are equally interested in both positions.  It is quite likely X and Y know each other and are coordinating already.
$ $


It means they're inviting you to review the revision. If you accept the review, then you get to read the paper, make new comments, make new recommendation, etc. If you decline, they'll either find someone else or make a decision.

Based on your description, there isn't enough information to tell if there are other reviewers invited. You certainly are, but don't know about the others.


Difference between a "general" and a "generic" confidential letter of recommendation?

There is no difference.  They both refer to a letter that discusses the applicant's achievements and qualifications for a general type of job (postdoc, assistant professor, etc) without being tailored to the expectations of a particular employer.


Word choice for salutation in a formal email to your PhD adviser, Is *Dear Boss* appropriate?

In my view, in academia, the word "Boss" carries a large amount of semantic baggage that you probably don't want to invoke. Although you mean it to be polite and respectful, it also has an ironic context which you may not have detected. By saying "Dear Boss" can also imply that in your opinion they are neither dear to you or deserve the respect as a superior. It is safest to avoid such salutations altogether in emails.

As others have indicated this is very culturally dependent and I think you are bringing too much of your south asian culture to a european environment. Do what the locals do and emulate other peers is the safest and wisest approach.


How to include research with a professor on a CV after they have moved to a different university than the one I attended

You did the research at the institution you attended, so that's what you should list on your CV.
It's not typical to put contact information for a professor on your CV, but if you'd like to make sure they are easy to find you can certainly add a note.
I'd do something like:

Undergraduate Researcher, Dr. I. Newton lab (now at Apple University)


How to address Phd dissertation committee members in email?

At my place, they are called SRC (Student Research Committee) members, so that makes the acronym more usable. I always started my emails by writing:

  Respected SRC members,

The SRC members part additionally makes the context clear (in addition to the subject of the mail). I prefer Respected to Dear, and while that may (or may not) be culture specific, it never hurts to shower respects on these people, unless of course, they explicitly ask you not to do that.

Additionally, I deliberately avoided Professors. Even though these committee members could generically be addressed as professors, one of my SRC members was technically still not a Professor, but an Associate Professor. While the distinction might be a bit over-strict in this context, I preferred being technically correct too. (That might be a nerdy, personal choice.)

Hope that helps :)


Should I put in a job application email that I am interested in doing a PhD?

Research each company and tailor your applications to each. See what their websites say about training opportunities, and/or reach out on LinkedIn or similar to see if you can informally ask a few questions of friends-of-friends who have worked there.

Situations where it's valuable to mention your eventual Ph.D. goals:

"almost all PhDs are done in tight cooperation with a company" -- talk to PhDs or look at dissertations, and you see that this company has helped with PhDs in this way.
They rely heavily on people with Ph.D.s and it would be hard for you to move up in the company without a Ph.D.

E.g. my old employer mostly recruited undergrads & PhDs, assuming the undergrads would stay 2-5 years before moving on. They were glad they could fit into a trajectory that helps people into grad school (and some return to the company later with that advanced degree).

Other companies might help fund your doctoral study if you prove to be a worthwhile employee, especially if you can pursue it part time. Or they might give you a loan which they forgive if you go back to work with them afterward. (This is unlikely to happen for you unless the company has a track record of doing this. And if they do, they'll probably mention it proudly.)

Situations where it may be counterproductive to mention your Ph.D. goals:

Few people at the company have a Ph.D. in this field, and most of your coworkers (and bosses) have a Masters degree.
They expect people to stay for a "career", and many people at the company have been there for 10 or 20 years.
It's a fairly small company, so they're unlikely to be able to support your PhD trajectory in the same way a larger company might.

In general, when you apply you want to maximize the ways that you will fit with the company and not make them worry that there is a mismatch. A company that expects you to choose a different company may be less likely to offer you a job in the first place. But you want to have as many options as possible and make a choice between them.


How to reply to reviewers on an unintentional wrong proof in my research paper?

If the reviewers and subsequently the editor does not consider the error enough to warrant rejection, you should simply make the changes necessary and submit the revised manuscript according to instructions. Since the reviewers spotted the errors you should acknowledge their helpful comments (unless this is not the custom in the field for some reason).

It seems to me that you may be lucky to get the chance to revise the manuscript since the type of error you describe, I would think, would likely lead to rejection. But, with a favourable verdict you just revise the manuscript and return it as per instructions.


I know a variety of women who have retained their maiden names for publications (some because they started publishing before getting married and changing their legal name). If they had been publishing before getting married, one concern is making it easy to link all their publications under one author name, making it easier to see their whole record. (But, even that is not required, having seen publication lists where it rapidly becomes clear that there was a name change - I hope things like Web of Science figure it out, but I'm not sure.)

I also know a number that never changed their name legally to begin with. That is not uncommon, at least in the US.

Likely you know such people as well, or looking around your university would find some fairly quickly.

So, bottom line, do what you and your partner are comfortable with, the academic world has seen it before and is just fine with it.


After six weeks you can probably ask, but don't ask repeatedly. Just explain that the paper is important to you as a component of your dissertation. You don't need a long explanation or a plea for exceptional treatment.

Depending on the journal, six weeks may be an instant in time. But it is long enough that it is reasonable to ask. If they are overly busy, however, your question may take a while to answer.


How to communicate with reviewer who has waived his anonymity?

No matter what, I would suggest keeping all formal communications and responses within the journal system, even though the reviewer has waived anonymity.  That way, you keep a clear record both for yourself and the editor but also for the other anonymous reviewers (if the journal shares reviews between reviewers as many do) and for any other journal staff who might later need to audit the interaction.

Now, given that the reviewer has revealed themselves, you may or may not find it appropriate to communicate informally about concerns that you may have.  If the journal has approved the waver of anonymity (e.g., by the identity being revealed in the review that you were sent), then it's definitely OK. If it's come through a side-channel, however, then some might consider it fine (e.g., "anonymity is just to protect reviewers") and some might consider it unethical (e.g., "talking to your friend gives an unfair advantage").


The MA glass ceiling is real.

I can't talk specifically to the situation at a Canadian technical college, but the same thing happens in the DC policy world I work in.  A lot of think tanks and policy shops have researchers with years of experience who can't get promoted above a certain point that is practically entry level for incoming PhDs.  Some places are starting to address this, recognizing that a PhD is not better than years of successful research experience, but it's still a wide-spread phenomenon.

So, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out you don't have any recourse.  If anything it's likely to be a harder ceiling since you're actually at an academic institution.

As for whether taking the time off to do a PhD is worth it, which I think is the root of your question?  That's hard to answer.  You could run down some hypothetical bullet points:

If I did the PhD, and then got the SAME job at the same pay after, would it still be worth it?  That is, would the accomplishment on its own be gratifying?
If I did the PhD, and then got a better job but no more money, would it still be worth it?  That is, would getting through that glass ceiling be enough of a motivator?
How much more money would I expect to make after my PhD, and how much money would I be giving up by leaving the job market for 4-6 years, and would I be coming out ahead?  Also account for whether you can get funding for your PhD or would have to self-fund it all.  In other words, the pure economics of it (you say it would be a financial burden, but that's not necessarily so in the long run).
All other things aside, am I willing to make the sacrifices necessary?  You would likely have to temporarily give up lots of things to do this, like having disposable income and the ability to relax on nights and weekends.  If you have a family that can be a hard adjustment, though lots of people do it, myself included.

Good luck!  My overarching piece of advice would be that if you're not passionate for the subject you shouldn't do a PhD in it.  But if you can tick that box off, the rest is up to your preferences.


How to deal with an adviser that wants to force you to get his desired results?

The meaning of unexpected results

It is important to be skeptical about your computational approach. However, at the same time, computational approaches are (almost) completely worthless if we just ignore them when results are unexpected (unless you already have dominant evidence that the result is not only unexpected but also simply wrong). An exception would be if your approach is in the area of generative models, where a parsimonious model is suggestive of an underlying mechanism, which is not the area of your model: you are trying to do prediction for an unknown case (extrapolation).

The art is in determining whether your initial model of the world (i.e., expectation) is wrong or if your computational model is wrong.

In a long discussion in chat, I think we came to a conclusion that in your specific case, it may be that this is an issue of extrapolation to a condition where you do not have truly comparable training data.

How to stop worrying and learn to love the model

If you want to convince your advisor, colleagues, peer reviewers, or yourself that your model should be trusted, your next steps are to test the conditions that lead to your result.

Do all the appropriate tests for model convergence in the original training. Check for input parameters that are outside the range in the training set. Use graphical representations of your model to show how input are mapping to outputs. Remove or scale variables to test the sensitivity of your model to those changes. And additionally, as your advisor suggests, figure out what it takes to make your model fit the expected result. All of these approaches will help you find if something is wrong in the model or support you if something is wrong in the prior expectations.


What to put on my CV while I'm waiting to hear thesis committee's decision?

List your dates as each type of student, with PhD student as your current position. For the MSc, I would put the date you submitted your thesis, so it's clear that you have finished doing the work, and something like 'awaiting outcome' to say that you haven't been awarded the MSc yet.

Having said that, I'm curious why you need a CV right now at all. The main thing is that you should not imply that you have the MSc already, particularly if that's likely to influence whether you get whatever you're applying for.


Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.

Given that you already agreed to this extension, this is the only option you have. Do this.

Honestly, you should not even have agreed to this extension. I understand that you were under stress when you agreed to it, but students making a scene will happen more often to you in the future, and at some point you will get inured to it.

  I feel very bad failing a student in her first big project,
  especially since if she fails she probably need to study one more
  semester to finish her studies.

This seems to be your real question. Unfortunately, there is really no way around this dilemma. If someone persistently does not deliver assignments and refuses all offers of help, failing them is the only option. Anything else will make a mockery of the entire system of higher education. (And be sure that other students will notice.)

Look at it this way: if you pass her, and she gets a degree, what will her employer do with her if she continues this way? They will fire her, and quickly so.

It appears that this students needs some serious help and counselling. It appears like you already did all you could do in this regard. I would recommend that you wait for two days, fail her if she does not hand in the date, and write up an explanation like you did here. Send this explanation to her in writing. Explain that it appears she is not ready to take a course like yours. Direct her to any counselling resources available at your institution. Keep a copy of this explanation for your file, in case she escalates this to your department head/dean/whatever.

Then do not enter into any further discussions with her, unless she retakes your course.


What if I don't join someone for postdoc to whom I previously applied

If your situation has genuinely changed—six months or a year go by and you’re working as a postdoctoral or researcher somewhere else, why would you be expected to give up your position? This seems like a very one-sided transaction and unfair to you. Might the professor hold a grudge? It’s possible, but anybody who does hold a grudge in such a scenario is thinking primarily about their own needs rather than your mutual benefit.


Only one student answered an exam question - and I strongly suspect he cheated

I apologize in advance for my frankness.

  What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

Nothing.

  have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

You missed it, but it doesn't really matter: the student might have had a mate with a phone in the bathroom. Or not. The student might even have known the answer.

  I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide

In your career you quite probably have already let others slide.

I wrote in this answer that, on the basis of my (now sufficiently long) experience, if a student wants to cheat, they will. Therefore, one has to accept that, from time to time, a student cheats, and one doesn't notice or is not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the student cheated (and you don't want to accuse someone of cheating if you're not able to prove it, right?).

So, move on.

NB: As some have remarked in various comments, the fact that almost all students were unable to answer that question can be a major issue. In this answer, I specifically wanted to address the cheating part only, because I think that this other issue is a totally different matter, which can be also culture-dependent, and which is probably worth of a different (interesting) question.


Graduate School Admissions: Is it worth mentioning in my personal statement for PhD that I have a low (3.3) GPA but a higher (3.67) Major GPA in CS?

I don't know if I'm 100% suitable to answer your question, since I have never applied to a US university; however, I can tell you for sure that in all personal statements I've written for UK universities, I've never mentioned my grades. I don't personally see the point in writing about your grades, since they can find out from your transcripts and from the academic references.


If I notice an error in a figure after manuscript submission, could I be accused of falsification of data during review stage?

To answer your question, it sounds like the difference is so minor that this wouldn't be considered falsification but just a simple (and minor) mistake on your part.  You said yourself: the difference doesn't change the conclusions.

Addressing the issue is what the editor is for.  Contact them and point out that there was a bug that caused the figure to be generated slightly incorrectly (you are not the first person to have done this).  He/she will evaluate it and likely conclude the same as what you have: it is minor, does not affect the overall conclusions of the work, and will have you update it for final publication.

The reviews are complete but it sounds like you haven't gotten the comments back.  It's likely that any discussion you have with the editor can conclude with you rolling this image in with the reviewer comments.

Don't overthink it.  Everyone involved in this process is human, despite carrying titles like "editor" and "reviewer."  Those folks are in those roles because they have experience and know that these types of things happen.


My advisor signed a contract to hire me, but then external funding fell through. Should I force him to take me anyway?

Your offer is made by the University, not your advisor. Someone in admissions probably messed it up, but fwiw this is neither your, nor your advisor's problem. As soon as University gave you an offer, and you met the conditions, it's legally binding.
Many other answers are written under assumption that PhD is an employment and hence "probationary period" or "redundancy" can be applied. This is not correct. In the UK, PhD is considered "training", not employment. The University's offer for you is their promise to provide you with a particular service. Even if the industry partner goes bust (which is not impossible), the University is still under obligation to fulfil their side of the deal. If the University absolutely can not serve you (e.g. the only qualified professor has just left, the lab building collapsed, their license is revoken), they must find another suitable program for you and pay your tuition fees and relocation.
These obligations are not merely ethical, but can be and often are enforced. The relevant regulator in the UK is  the Office for Students. Obviously, I am not a lawyer,  so I can't give you any legally reliable advice. But I believe you are right and OfS will be able to support you if the University disagrees with your arguments in this case.


Post docs in industry do work similar to university post docs, but their research is a property of the company they work for. Typically, a position advertised as an industry post-doc is one that would allow for external publication (i.e., in scientific journals) of the work completed (but if publication is important to you, you should of course verify this before taking such a position).

Post docs in industry are typically fixed-term appointments, like in academia; there may be opportunities for continuing or for promotion within the company, but these aren't guaranteed, and you wouldn't have to be "fired" or "laid off" at the end of your term to be without a job - you would need to check with someone to see how this would affect your eligibility for unemployment benefits, etc, depending on your location.

I would expect that a company that is offering both full research positions and a separate post-doc program is expecting that applicants for the full research positions will have either relevant post-doctoral experience or industry experience: their post-doc program is probably intended for recent PhD graduates.

Lastly, although these generalities may help you, there is no legal definition of a post doc for these purposes, so you should be prepared to ask questions about everything that is important to you before accepting a position.


Ethics of making students purchase lecture notes

(This answer is based on US university practices.  I don't know if it is directly applicable to Canada, but the two systems generally tend to be similar.)

It's hard to be sure, but this might be a practice that's old-fashioned but not unethical.

First of all:

  Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?

Not necessarily.  If the course requires materials that have a non-negligible cost, then typically students will be required to pay for them separately.  This includes textbooks, lab supplies, and, as in this case, custom-printed "course packets" of notes or other reading material.

Now, normally the university has its own service for printing course packets and selling them "at cost" through the university bookstore.  However, it sometimes happens that professors decide that some other bookstore or print shop can produce the packets better or cheaper, and so they have them made and sold there.  This may or may not be technically allowed by university rules, but it may be tolerated, especially if it's actually saving money for the students.  Note that in such cases, the professor normally doesn't receive any of the price of the packet; it all goes to the print shop.

So this isn't a completely unheard-of system for distributing printed material.

You could certainly ask the professor why they've chosen to do it this way.  My guess is you'll get a response like "I used to use the university bookstore, but the packets were always late / fell apart at the binding / ran out of stock / cost twice as much."  So you could try and complain about the use of an unofficial distributor, but be careful what you wish for.

It raises the question of why the notes have to be distributed in printed form at all, instead of electronically (in which case there should be no costs at all).  I can imagine this happening if the professor is very old-fashioned and  hasn't ever realized that this would be better, or if the notes don't exist in electronic form (e.g. they are handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or just "has always done it this way".  But it would be reasonable to suggest, either directly to the professor or in a course evaluation, that they consider electronic distribution.


highly technical skills: is it possible for uni staff to provide these skills for a thesis or must you teach your self?

The answer to your question is very simple. If doing your research requires coding, you will have to learn how to code. Period. You can teach yourself, or take a class, or hire a tutor or whatever, but one way or another, you won't get very far trying to get your university, or anyone else, do the coding for you. As @JeffE and others were politely trying to help you understand, coding in the science and technology worlds today is such a basic skill that your comparison to operating specialized lab equipment simply isn't appropriate. A more proper comparison would be to things like typing up documents or using Microsoft Excel. Would you consider asking your university to get someone to help you with Excel because you can't be bothered to learn it? No? Didn't think so...

As for other skills which your question might be applied to, I think the answer would be it depends, but it seems pretty clear you are mainly interested in coding.


My professor submitted the draft recommendation letter with university name as placeholder. Can i re-submit?

Chill.

Admission committees get this sort of thing frequently.  We understand your professor's situation (because we write lots of recommendation letters ourselves).  It is very unlikely that a committee would even bother to comment...

... and a tiny mistake on your professor's part certainly shouldn't affect your chances of admittance.


How to cite in-text same source multiple times (chicago style)?

There is no necessity to repeat a citation each and every time you refer to the paper. Whenever it is clear from the context to which work you refer to, there is nothing wrong with using words such as "they", "he", or "she" to refer to the author(s) of other works.

For example, you could write:

  In her essay titled “Electronic Literature: What is it?”, N. Katherine Hayles (2007) gives an account of the state of electronic literature. She maintains [...]


Writing thank-you email to professor for agreeing to write a LOR?

You're over-thinking this. It's almost always appropriate to say thanks when somebody does something for you. You won't be taking up more than a couple of seconds of your professor's time if you send a quick "thanks!"

Suppose that you'd asked for the reference in person rather than by email. You wouldn't say, "This professor is really busy so, the instant they say yes, I'll save two seconds of their time by running immediately from the room without thanking them."


How to avoid plagiarism if I am learning from other's code?

You could add a (conspicuous) comment to the code explaining how you wrote the code and that you used the tutorial from GitHub. If you credit your sources and explain how the code come about, it can never be plagiarism.

You could also ask your lecturers in advance whether they think what you did is acceptable. When it comes to programming assignments, there is some variance from lecturer to lecturer in what they consider acceptable.


How can software piracy in academia be reduced/eliminated?

Actually, part of this is by design.

Software companies turn a blind eye to students and faculty pirating their software, so the students learn how to use their program. Once they go on to companies, they will request to use what they know best, and the companies will pay the hefty fees.

How can we avoid this? The best solution is at the root: replace all commercial software by open source versions, when this alternative has a comparable level of quality. This has two costs that would have to be weighted before doing the switch:

The instructors would need to learn another software, that is perhaps not what they are using for their research.
If the industry standard is a commercial software, the students will have to learn it, preferably when still at university.

On the other hand, sometimes the open source version is superior to the commercial version. For example, I think the Scipy ecosystem is much better than MATLAB except for a few niches. So, when MATLAB users do the exercise of evaluating the quality of Scipy for their applications, they may discover that making the switch in both teaching and research is, perhaps, a good move.

This switch should be encouraged even more for introductory classes, where none of the advanced features come into play, and classes where the software is only used marginally (limited to, for example, one or two practical sessions). Once students have knowledge of the free alternatives, they would have alternative resources before pirating.

(Disclaimer: I personally dislike MATLAB quite a lot, but I know of many people from many fields that are making the switch, and of no one that is doing it back. YMMV.)

Another front is in the software companies themselves. My university provides some commercial licenses for free for us staff. But the list of instructions to install and launch some of the programs is as long as my arm, and quite often (judging from the emails the IT department sends), unreliable. So, even though people can get a legal version for free, the pirated version may prove to be easier and more reliable; so I wouldn't be surprised if several people had chosen that option.


Does modifying the grades multiple times make me look unprepared/unprofessional?

Modifying the grades consumes extra time and effort in addition to that required by the grading itself, so regardless of professionality, you should try to avoid it. I assume that you have all (or large number) of assignments to grade available at once.

Your problem is that you start to grade to early.

First, read all the answers, mark mistakes, write comments, or whatever the standard procedure is. Do not assign any points except full points or no points, and those only in the situation where you are certain that that will be the final score. (Empty answer, total nonsense, perfect answer.)

You'll have to do this anyway, so it does not slow the process of grading. It gives you a good sense of the answers of the students, and so makes it easier to come up with the grading scheme (rubric, I guess, is the jargon here).

The next step is to write your grading scheme. Be as precise as you can, considering the successes and mistakes of the students. Ideally, this should so accurate that the actually grading would be merely comparing the assignment with the grading scheme, but this never happens in practice.

Before you start to grade, check a number of papers and which grades they would get. Check that this is appropriate. If yes, then grade the papers. If no, then revise your scheme and retry.


What it feels like as a PhD student in math or computer science in the US

This is not really an answer but a (somewhat) relevant anecdote that's too long for a comment. About 20 years ago, I chaired my department's graduate admissions committee. The college had a requirement that new graduate students whose undergrad degree is from outside the U.S. must participate in an orientation before the start of their first semester of enrollment, to acquaint them with various aspects of life in the U.S. and, in particular, university life in the U.S. We could apply to an assistant dean to have specific students exempted from this requirement. We had admitted a student who did his undergrad work at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, not Belgium), and I requested that he be exempted form this orientation requirement.

I thought (and I still think) this was a no-brainer, but the assistant dean wanted evidence, meaning information from people who had taught at the University of Waterloo. So I had to write (with some embarrassment) to a few of this student's instructors, asking them for the necessary information about similarities and differences between Waterloo and Ann Arbor.

One of the responses ended with a sentence that, I think, summarized the situation very well: The only thing the student will have to get used to in the U.S. is the absence of Tim Horton's.

End of anecdote.

We now have Tim Horton's in the U.S. So I suggest you think about U.S. universities the same way you'd think about Canadian ones.


How to reminded a Prof of a promised recommendation letter (2 years ago)

Write a letter, send an email.

Say,

  Hello, I am user3222184, and when I was an undergraduate, I
  volunteered at your research lab in 2013. I presented xyz work to you.

  I am pursuing graduate studies and would be honored if you can write
  recommendation letter for me.

  Thanking you, user3222184


Is it possible to submit a MathJobs application before a reference letter arrives?

Yes, this is possible. (At any rate, it was a few years ago -- I assume the software has not changed since then.) Hiring committees will be able to see whatever you have submitted, and once your reference writer submits your letter it will be visible with the rest of your application.


Getting back into academia after years in industry

You might find it easier than you think, especially with universities that have strong links with industry.

They welcome up-to-date current knowledge of pratices in industry and students appreciate the “real” stories of what goes right, or wrong, and how problems are solved.

So it won’t be only about your latest papers but how you can interest the students and the knowledge you have.

As an ex-student, it was obvious who amongst the faculty had real experience, once we had a lab using temperature sensors where two faculty were involved. We realised one had done brake testing (for a world leading company) where the sensors were being used at very high temperatures which made the reasons for finding the temperature coefficients so much more understandable.

So, apply and good luck, you may find that you have an advantage over a “pure” academic. All our profs had real experience and PhD’s to match - specialists in tribology, supersonic flow, power electronics etc and students do notice.


Is "read the syllabus" a sufficient transfer of responsibility?

From the students' perspective, this is similar to giving them a textbook and asking them to show up for the final exam. There are three reasons I see the need to start with discussing the syllabus.

First, talking about the syllabus is an opportunity to introduce yourself and the course, learn more about the students you will be teaching, and set the stage for the semester. It is a beginning of your semester-long relationship with the class after all. Skipping the overview is like taking a road trip without looking at the map first.

Second, it takes more than one repetition of same material, and preferably in different forms, for the material to be absorbed and comprehended. Thus, when the responsibility is passed to the students, their understanding of the syllabus will not be as good, no matter how diligently they read it. How important is it to you that they understand the syllabus?

Lastly, the students are denied opportunity to ask questions and discuss the syllabus and the course progression, if that is not covered in the class. Sure, they can email you, or ask during the office hours, but the entire class will not be on the same page.


Can I ask a journal editor about an invited review paper?

Is it a valid inquiry from my side?

NO. Invited reviews are the word "invited" means. The other party invites you to write a literature review paper because of your great expertise. You do not invite yourself. If you are Mr.Nobody, the whole effort of self-inviting will be embarrassing for you.

That does not mean that you should not actually proceed with the review paper. Just keep in mind that review papers are usually done by respectable and well-known authors who have contributed greatly and have great expertise in the suggested area. Also, remember that writing an extensive literature review may be very time consuming if you want to cover a great area. This is why review papers are done my multiple well-established authors who contribute almost equally and not by a single inexperienced author.


Kavli Frontiers of Science: is it a worthwhile use of one's time?

Yes, it's definitely worth attending and you should mention it to your dean.  (It's only a minor honor, but a minor honor is still worth highlighting.)  I did this some years ago, and it was a great experience.  Not particularly valuable for my research, but I met some fascinating people in other fields, some of whom I had more in common with intellectually than I had expected, and I learned many interesting things.


Getting a funding position as a foreign MSc student in Finland

My experience is from Jyväskylä, not Helsinki, and in pure mathematics. Things might work differently, but maybe this is still useful.

Teaching assistants

These were typically recruited among the better students. Much of teaching happened in Finnish, especially at the lower level courses, and as such, knowledge of Finnish was assumed.

Getting such a position right at the beginning might be difficult, but if you are skilled, and have good command of English (or even better, know or start learning Finnish), it might be possible. I doubt Swedish would help quite as much.

Research assistants

Research assistants were recruited among promising students and often involved writing their master's thesis, but might also involve research. Often these were summer jobs.

Connections

If you, or someone at your university, has connections to the faculty, you should try to ask via them. In particular, if someone can recommend you as an excellent student and a potential PhD student, the chances that someone will arrange a position for you will vastly increase.

Ask

It never hurts to ask. Contact information: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/programmes/master/data-science/contact

Scholarships

If you have not looked at it, the scholarship webpages of the university might be helpful: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/admissions/scholarship-programme


Page numbering of introduction in a thesis

It depends what you mean by introduction.

If your introduction is similar to introductions found in research manuscripts, then the introduction is part of the main body and should use Arabic numbering. On the other hand, if your introduction is metadata, then the introduction is part of the front matter. (Metadata introductions are common in textbooks.)

That said, first and foremost, you should follow your institutes required style.


How to ask what my salary will be for German PhD position

They will not tell you a number in Euro, as the person tasked with the hiring decision probably doesn't know the amount either. You need to ask for the paygrade and then use the calculator on this page to find the amount.

It is a very easy conversation, because neither you nor your supervisor can do anything about the payment. No negotiation, no decision making, nothing involved. You cannot say anything wrong (as in, reduce your chances for a good salary).

How to calculate the amount from the paygrade

First, you need to know which tarif applies to you. On the page I linked, choose "TVL West" if you will work in a state of former West Germany, and "TVL Ost" if you are in former East Germany. You will see a blue calculator form in the upper right corner.

The paygrade information your boss tells you will be of the form "E13, 50%". It may have been printed on the job ad, but not always.

E13 is the "level" determined by the job's difficulty, and is fixed for the position. The rules here are so firm, I don't know if it is even possible to have a PhD research job ("wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at any other level than E13.

The percentage is the worktime percentage paid. It is up to the institution to decide if they are going to pay you full time, half time, or some other fraction. Paid full time is practically unheard of outside of computer science departments, biomedical should be 50% or some more. The actual time your boss expects you to be present in the office may be different from what your contract says, and it is also up to your supervisor and work to know if you will need to put in some unpaid extra hours outside of fulltime work hours. If you have a cell culture which needs to be fed every day, you might find yourself coming back to the lab on weekends too. But the money you get depends on the number in the contract, and it is simply calculated as a proportion of the money for the full time.

The calculator also asks you for a Stufe. It refers to a pay "raise" based on years of work experience. If you are a freshly minted M. Sc., you start at "1", get upgraded to "2" after one year in 1, then to 3 after two years in 2, etc, up to 6. If you have worked somewhere else before and gained relevant experience (HR judges what is relevant), you can get into a higher group, but not higher than 3 when you are changing institutions, or when you are changing the E level within the same institution.

If you are single, your "Steuerklasse" (tax classification) is I. If you are married, try "IV" for the first calculation. If you are in a civil union with a same sex partner, that also counts, but I don't know how difficult it is to get a civil union or same sex marriage from another country recognized in Germany.

You will get some extra money if you have small children, but I don't know which ages count for how much.

If you are either Catholic or Protestant, you will also pay a church tax. For this, choose the link behind "Kirchensteuer" and enter the state in which you will be working.

Leave everything else at default for the calculation, and press "berechnen".

For example: in my institution, a biology PhD always gets a 50% E13 contract, and assuming he is single, atheist and has no previous work experience, this translates to 1758.68 €, of which he takes home 1208.12 €.

Beside the Stufe for years worked, your salary will rise a little bit every year, as the whole paygrade is adjusted in a negotiation on the highest level between the provinces' governments and the trade unions. You cannot get a pay raise by negotiating with your boss, nor could he give you one if he wanted. The exception would be giving you a few more percent worktime, if you are not already at 100% and if your institution's policy allows it. This is rare and will likely require you to take on one more project beside your PhD work.

An additional payment in December is customary, but it is not as high as a regular monthly salary.


Taking a graduate version of a course I took in undergrad

You said your exact problem is solved, but I want to answer in a more general way.

PhD admissions are not uniform or even consistent year-to-year. Additionally, the at some departments, the professors who are on the admissions committee change year-to-year. Thus there is no magic bullet for admission into a PhD program.

In my opinion, someone like yourself who has undergraduate research experience, will be in a situation where the admissions committee won't care about your exact courses on your transcript. Your GPA may or may not matter, depending on the whims of the admissions committee.

Most likely your success with applying is a completely subjective decision made by people: and like all people they are biased and irrational. I am not trying to be insulting. All I am saying is that you cannot expect a process which is subjective to work like a deterministic computer program: where the same inputs result in the same outputs; where if you change your initial conditions slightly, but taking a graduate course, your outcome will be affected by it.

I will also add that some PhD program/departments may have objective thresholds. For example a GRE minimum score, and no matter how strong the result of your application is, if you scored lower that the threshold, your application is thrown out.


How can I protect a course I created independently from being taken by the community college I substitute for, when I am about to teach it there?

I'm going to come up with a different answer.
Sometimes I've taken over a course from someone else. They've offered me their slides, exercises, questions, etc.
Sometimes I've stopped teaching a class, and I've offered my successor my slides, exercises, questions, etc.
I haven't been able to use anyone else's material, and I'm pretty sure no one has used mine. It's not much use - unless it actually tells you what to say, when I write a slide, I have some idea what I was going to say. No one else does, and they can often fail to make much sense of it.
They can't steal your course, your course is in your head.
(My favorite example of this was when we were giving a talk to prospective students. I usually did this course for our department, but on one occasion, a colleague did it instead. The colleague took my slides, and figured that these were going to be slides that introduced the department. What could they possibly say? I was told later by someone else who was there that there was a slide with a picture of my cat. My colleague said "And this slide has a picture of Jeremy's cat. I've no idea why."  [I'm sure that it was there for a good reason, or to make a point, but I completely forget what that point was.])


How to respond in the rebuttal phase when the reviewer's concern is a blind review issue?

Ignore it.

Even if  your paper infringes the blind-review policy of the conference, it doesn't change the veracity of the results. It could, conceivably, have led to a desk reject without sending for review, but the editor clearly did not pick up on it, for he sent it for review anyway.

The reviewer's comment was as much a reminder to you as it was to the editor. Perhaps the editor should not have sent it for review, but since he already has, what's done cannot be undone. Just ignore it, and treat the rest of the comments.


I disagree slightly with Peter Jansson's answer, which says that you should only search for new reviewers if the ones that you have assigned fail to produce.  In my experience, there is a decent chance that at least one of your reviewers will fail to produce a review in a timely fashion, so it is better to plan in advance.

As such, I strongly recommend recruiting slightly more reviewers than are needed for a paper to receive proper review.  For example, if a journal requires three reviewers, then you can recruit four.  Invite even more than that initially, since it is virtually certain some of the reviewers you initially invite will decline or fail to respond.  If, by some chance, all of the reviewers return in a timely fashion, then it's generally not a problem for the authors to get some extra feedback.

Further, never tell a reviewer that you don't need their services until you've got enough reviews to make a decision on a paper.  I've had the experience where a newly recruited reviewer fails while a long-delayed reviewer eventually actually turns up with a review.  If you dismiss the "presumed failed" reviewer before you've got sufficient reviews in hand, you cut off the possibility of such nice surprises.


Researchgate and Elsevier sharing policy

Take Elsevier's definition of the preprint:

  This is the author's own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements, and the like).

The preprint is the manuscript version that you initially submitted to the journal, and it stays the preprint version even if later versions are being revised through peer review, are formatted by the publisher, and are the published formally. Elsevier's policy makes clear that you can share the preprint anytime. They just "encourage" authors to put the DOI link on the preprint once the final version is published.

As you're allowed to share the full preprint anywhere, I don't see what could stop you from sharing portions of it (like graphics) anywhere as well.


Secretly switching research topics and funding oddities

This might be field-specific, but nonetheless: in my field (cond-mat), it is very, VERY common that people (phd students and postdocs) officially employed withing certain funding schemes bound to specific projects spend most of their time working on other stuff. In the end, what counts is that your supervisor is happy with your performance and your results, and lack of progress on the "funded" research topic is going to be his problem, not yours. It is very unlikely to hear a supervisor complaining about their students not progressing well on one topic while doing really well on the other. Of course, a certain level of mutual trust between you and your supervisor is necessary, but that is good to have in any case.


Advices for writing the research statement

When writing your research statement (and cover letter), it is important to recognize that hiring committees will be swamped with applications. My main advice is to keep it short (2 pages should should be enough to explain your research). You can assume that the readers will be scanning the document and not reading every word, so make the important information stand out, such as key techniques or accomplishments. Cover letter should be 1 page max.

In addition, some applicants write their research statement as a short grant application, with clear motivation and specific aims. Depending on your field, that can be a great strategy. Your research statement will also be the outline for your chalk talk.


How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?

You wrote:

  I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project

Nooooooooo.

Don't do that. This is a postgraduate degree, and you're expected to take the research seriously. It's not a 9-5 grunt job or prison sentence where you turn up, serve your time, and get the reward at the end of your allotted time.

Show what you've learnt. That's what the markers are interested in. You say that you've learnt the inner workings of neural networks. That's great. So demonstrate and document what you've learnt.

And don't document the tortuous process you used. Don't describe how you went from A to B via C,D,E,...X,Y.

Just report that you started at A, ended at B, you've found that the shortest route between those points is {whatever it is}, and briefly document the dead ends and traps that future researchers should avoid.


Publishing a paper that's already been cited

I think it should do more good than harm. The fact that you have been cited and your results extended means that your paper was relevant, which is a good thing. You definitely need to modify the paper though, not only to acknowledge the citing paper, but because you shouldn't publish a conjecture that is now known to be false.

Disclaimer: although I think the citation should help, this may be quite dependent on the particular reviewer(s) you get. The popularization of arXiv has been relatively recent in the CS field, and at least in many subcommunities the issues that come with it are still subject to debate and the "codes of conduct" are a bit blurry.


What kind of knowledge is required to do a PhD?

I think everything is about your motivation. You need a subject you're very interested in and of course you don't know everything yet you need to do the job. This is part of your work. In the end you’re getting paid to teach yourself

  but none of them is something I would consider researching on

This is a bit strange and dangerous. You’ll be working on a field for multiple years and you should choose an area you really really like. Imagine you're forced to do stuff every day you don't really like... You'll be demotivated and quit your research.

However, I think your future research should at least somehow be related to the stuff you do during your studies. Otherwise you have no clue what you're going to do or how your daily work will be.

Maybe you should talk to other PhD candidates from a group you might want to join after you studies - just to see how their daily work looks like and whether this might be the stuff you want to do for the next years.


As much as anything, the purpose of the research proposal (in the UK at least) is to show potential supervisers that you have the ability to construct and justify academic research, can write clearly and put forward coherent arguments. It is unlikely that you would be held to the specifics of your proposal. Once you have been accepted somewhere, it is generally accepted that the details of your research will (at least) be refined, if not completely changed! Just think of it as a way of demonstrating your abilities.


Why don't papers cite results within their references more specifically?

In the introduction section of a paper, such specificity might be considered out of place, since the goal is to provide an overview of what has been done without getting too bogged down in particular details.

In the methodology or main section of a paper (depending on the field), such references might be more appropriate, and I have seen papers that specify individual equations, tables, or figures. There's no reason they couldn't do so; I don't believe that there is any stylistic justification that would preclude it.


If you're seriously ill and risk either your health or the health of the audience, the correct course of action is to cancel. Just remember to add many apologies to the email/phone call.

It's up to the organizers of the conference to manage risks -- including cancellations, and if they did a poor job at risk management, they'll know better next time.

Edit: By 'many apologies' I mean 2-3. One at the beginning of the message/call, one at the end.


What to do if my internet connection drops during the exam?

That is usually covered in the documentation and what the professor decides both prior to and after a situation.


What tense to use when referring to self publication in a monograph chapter?

I would generally go with "are published", since "were" would suggest to me that the results are no longer published. In some odd situations "were" might be better, for example, "the results were published online [1], but the website has been taken down". Similarly, in a case like "the results were published in the first edition [1], but have since been removed", I think "were" might be better since although the results are still technically published in the first edition, the point is to note that they are no longer published in the second edition.


How to present ongoing dissertation research and get feedback on a one-on-one basis?

People have a lot to read in academia as is. Sending out a document and asking for feedback is a strenuous exercise for all involved parties. You may want to take into consideration that some of your colleagues will also simply not want to willingly participate with their opinion.

Instead, a useful compromise is the use of a presentation. Prepare one whenever you see fit and advertise to your faculty by email what it is you're presenting, why you're presenting, and explain that you're specifically looking for feedback on 'X'; 'X' being the methodology applied, noticeable gaps in literature, etc.

In this manner, you practice your presentation skills, you take only 10 minutes or so of your colleagues' time, you strengthen relationships amongst your peers, and you're immediately available for questions. The benefits of this approach are many, and I think you'll be able to find even more than the ones I've just listed.

I hope that this was helpful to you.


This can depend on a lot of things, but mostly on how much the other person did to help you and how much it would be part of their normal job. But in some situations, a simple thank you, totally appropriate in person, is, as you say, just noise that takes effort to deal with.

I often don't send such thank you emails myself, for this reason, and wonder, as you do, if I'm doing the right thing. And I find thanks you notes back to me as just an additional task to handle.

I sometimes add "thanks in advance" to the end of a simple response, getting it out of the way. Sometimes the return thanks is just assumed by the receiver, in any case.

But I don't think that "in person etiquette" is really identical to "online etiquette" and that we have to wait for some time to pass until everyone is comfortable with the difference. In the short term, use your judgement.

But, after a sequence of questions and responses, it is probably more important to give thanks at the end. And if you don't send individual "thanks" but later meet the person, you can then say "thanks for your help in the past".


How and where to get you research work assessed for PhD?

The first person to evaluate if the work is sufficient to warrant submitting it for official PhD evaluation is the PhD supervisor. Therefore you need to find a supervisor first.

  I have since done some research which I think suffices to achieve a PhD. Can it be done (and how)?

These things vary a lot by country and by institution, but it's common nowadays that the requirements for passing a PhD involve:

validating some classes (in particular about general scientific methods, ethics, etc.)
having published a few papers in peer-reviewed journals or conferences

The question doesn't specify whether the work has been published/peer-reviewed or not? If not, it's a bit risky to assume that it is sufficient for a PhD.


What does "restricted admission" mean in German universities?

In Germany, access to universities is regulated by the Numerus Clausus system, which basically says that the number of students admitted to any given programme at a university can be either unrestricted or restricted to a fixed number of students.

For an unrestricted programme, students just need to fulfill the basic formal criteria (they need a german Abitur, or an equivalent). For most restricted programmes on bachelor level, prospective students need to apply and are then ranked based solely on their Abitur grades (plus a few exceptions for corner cases, foreign students with no german Abitur, etc.). For restricted master level programmes, many universities (including, apparently, TU Kaiserslautern, as linked by the original poster above) have adopted a more US-style admission system, which is based not only on previous grades but also on letters of recommendation, statements of interest, interviews, etc. TU Kaiserslautern also has its selection procedure online. This will vary per university, though.

Edit: to answer your subquestion (which I happened to have missed the first time around):

  Do German universities discriminate students on the basis of their age?

No, not in general, and certainly not officially.


Can I upload a modified version of a code from a journal paper to Github?

The answer to your question depends entirely on the license of the "small external program (not yours)".  Where did it come from?  Find its source and read the terms of the license.

If it's an open source license or a free software license, usually you are permitted to redistribute it so long as you preserve attribution and license terms in the code header.  If it's a different type of license, then it will depend entirely on the content of the license, which acts like a contract between the author and yourself.

UPDATE w/ JOURNAL SPECIFIC DETAILS:

The Journal of Computers & Geosciences is published by Elsevier who has an open access publishing option for authors.  If the paper in question was published as open access, and its chosen license was CC-BY, then that gives you permission to reuse the work (including the attached source-code) so long as you provide attribution.  If the article in question wasn't published as open access, then you'll have to contact the authors or locate another source for the code that has clear licensing terms.


Is there a general way to find or get notified of relevant conferences and meetings in your field?

Many professional societies publish lists of upcoming conferences in their magazines and/or journals, and send monthly emails with information that usually includes calls for papers for future conferences. I assume one would be interested only in conferences in one's field. I would expect that one would know about the professional societies in one's field and how to receive notifications, although in many if not most cases such notifications go only to the society members.

Moreover, other conferences in one's field can be identified in Google Scholar by where the relevant papers have been published. Then the most recent (at least) web site for such conferences can be found with Google. The date and venue for the next conference in that series is sometimes posted on that web site.


PhD Advisor not responding to emails for letters of recommendation

You may try to either visit him during his office hours (more or less Krebto's suggestion) or you might contact someone at the department who is in close contact with your advisor. The latter worked for me a few years ago when I had to get in touch with someone who simply ignored my (and other students') e-mails. After a few weeks, I asked a colleague of his to remind that person to respond to my message. That middleman should be a friend of both, yours and the advisor.
However, as you have been sending him messages for a year already, it looks like your advisor simply does not want to write that letter. If you keep pressuring him, e.g. directly in person or through a colleague, you might eventually get that document. But its wording might not be as nice as you had expected in the first place.
Maybe, you could also ask nicely, if there are any issues that the advisor wants to clarify before sending that letter. Those might be some details regarding your research.


It seems to me you should simply expand the text to provide the background that "Expert (cite year) has shown that A,B & C are important and Smart (cite year) has shown that A, Y, and Z are important. Based on circumstances I postulate that also Red and Blue A are important along with B, C, X, Y, and Z". I hope you get the point? In other words describe the findings of Expert and Smart and then add your own "hypothesis" or ideaand make it clear that (a) it is your idea and (b) on what you base the idea. It is not clear fom th equestion whether it is a hypothesis to be tested or a result of your own research. Depending on which the way you present things will be slightly different, of course.


Exchanging co-authorship for proofreading?

I think this is professionally unethical. Other fields might have different views, but per the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, authorship is based on

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Since this graduate student has no intellectual stake in the work, this is basically lying. The fact that the student would benefit from a publication (and you, if you are their adviser) makes the conflict of interest all the more apparent.

The appropriate place for such a contribution is in the acknowledgements or not at all.


What's the exact criterion of dual submission?

It is up to the editor/conference committee/reviewers to decide if two papers have too much overlap.  Show them about both versions of the paper, and let them decide.

Since there is no objective way to decide if two papers are adequately different, the criterion is the opinion of the editor.

If the editor is unaware of the situation, then you are at risk of committing misconduct.  If the editor knows and approves, you are likely to be behaving appropriately.


How to refer to myself as a subject of study in a research paper?

Use the names "Participant 1" and "Participant 2" in figure captions and throughout the text. You can then, if you want, explain at one point, who these participants are (if it actually matters), but at least you don't have to repeatedly refer to yourself and your s.o..


My postdoc advisor wants me to work on a topic that I don't have a proper theoretical background in. How to proceed with this?

I started my PhD in computer science in 2002. My last prior formal education was a master's degree awarded in 1975. Everything I knew about the prior quarter century of developments in computer science I had learned by self-education from books and papers, as well as practical experience and a couple of industry courses. Although I did take courses during my PhD studies, my dissertation research depended on basic ideas in linear algebra that I learned from books.

I find it hard to understand deciding in your 20's that you are too old to learn new basic material from books, papers, on-line tutorials, and other self-education.

To proceed, I suggest discussing your need for more basics with your advisor, not in a spirit of expecting failure, but asking for advice on what you need to know and how to go about learning it. Your advisor may recommend books, or a course you can audit.

For your long term future, it would be better to learn now how to learn without courses, and get over your current block. Avoiding it by collaboration will just leave the block in place to stop you the next time you need to add to your basic knowledge.


This answer pertains to the United States

Given your interests, a possible avenue to consider is a college dedicated to teaching, such as Harvey Mudd and the other SoCal colleges, Haverford, Swarthmore, and the cluster of teaching colleges in western Massachusetts (Smith, Mt Holyoke and the like).

In all of these places, your primary job is to teach. You will also have a chance to do research, and your research productivity is valued, but the amount of research you need to do, and the amounts of grant money you pull in, have very different expectations from a typical R1 university.

You will still need a Ph.D. You will still have to do all the usual networking required to get a job. But you won't need to do battle for grants in the same way, and often teaching at an undergrad college can confer a slight advantage when it comes to asking for grant money.


How to address email to a professor who prefers informality?

If the professor explicitly says not to call him by his last name, then don't. It would actually be more impolite to ignore his request in order to conform to some abstract "formality" rules.

However, even if you are addressing your professor by his first name, you can still preserve some degree of formality. Some common norms include:

do not use slang
avoid excessive contractions (e.g. use have not instead of haven't)
use your full name in the signature
be polite

In general, the rule of thumb is to be respectful and professional in your communications. Sometimes that includes addressing the person as "Professor X" or "Dr. X", but it does not have to. Just make sure you sound polite!


Why should a paper be reviewed by more than ten reviewers?

11 reviewers seems excessive to me too, but that is the situation you are in now so you need to find a way to deal with it. My starting point would be that it is the editor that makes the final decision not the reviewers, so it is her or him you need to convince not all 11 reviewers. Sometimes the editor gives hints one what (s)he thinks the main comments are. In that case you know what to focus on.

If that is not the case you just have to make reasonable decisions and justify them. So if there are conflicting comments you need to show that you have taken them seriously and made a reasonable choice on how to handle that. If all the suggestions are too much, i.e. it would result in a book rather than a article, then the editor (and the reviewers) can see that as well. Just mention that and justify the choices you make.


What are the arguments for and against Open Access?

While there's a great deal of complexity in the arguments, the primary arguments basically boil down to a very simple core of inclusion vs. cost.

For open access: Science should be available to all people, including the large number of people who don't have the personal or institutional resources to pay lots of money to buy access to articles.

Against open access: editing and publishing quality materials requires significant resources, and these have to be paid for somehow. If readers don't pay, then somebody else has to (often, but not always the authors or article), and it's not clear if these alternatives will end up making a bigger barrier for low-resource scientists. Moreover, a stable business model hasn't yet been established, and in the meantime lots of scammers have been attracted, who are putting out piles of trash and giving open access a bad name.

There's a lot more here, as noted in the comments, but this is a pretty concise starting point for understanding the arguments for and against.


In what order are graduate application materials reviewed?

"I don't know if it would be best to assume that all of my other application material has been reviewed."

You should not assume any parts of your application have been read before the statement of purpose.  At many institutions, the order in which the documents are examined is at the discretion of the person doing the reading.


Benefit of a 1-year MSc in Comp Sci in the UK

You didn't mention if you want to do an MS in the UK or the US. If the former, I have no experience of how it works over there.

In general, an MS in CS does improve your chances of getting a decent job, but a lot depends on where you're getting an MS. In the US, the masters program is often viewed as a way to generate revenue via tuition, so your main benefit from the program is if it's very good at placing students. Obviously an MS from a place like Stanford or Berkeley will help you immensely because of the proximity of many tech options. But if you don't go to a place that has a good track record with placement, then the degree itself, while opening some doors, will not have provided you with maximum benefit for the price you're paying.

Also, make sure you go to a place that has strong ties to industry in the areas you're interested in. Since you mentioned games, many universities (including mine!) have specialized MS programs in game design (and we have fairly strong ties to local industry in the game world). That might be too specialized for you, but you get the general drift


Correcting errors in conference papers is certainly possible---I have done so myself.

Most reputable peer-reviewed conferences are associated with some sort of society or organization that maintains their archives, e.g., IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and that society will generally have a process for correcting or retracting their conference publications that looks much like their process for correcting or retracting the articles of the journals they maintain.

In many cases, however, a conference paper is superseded by a following journal paper, which effectively becomes the final and archival version.  In this case, while the authors have been less than honest about the flaw in their original paper, the later correction means that adjusting this particular paper in the archive is likely not a critical issue.


What's the point in specifying the grant number in a paper's acknowledgments?

The agencies that provide this funding often require such acknowledgement. NSF does. The format, more or less, is up to the agency. I don't know why they do it, but I believe they want readers to be able to find the programs that fund the work so that other potential applicant can find future versions of the program and possibly apply.

Edit: Look at Part J of NSF's grants guide for their format


How do researchers from different institutions get to know each other to begin a collaboration?

Go to a conference/workshop.  Ask intelligent questions in talks.  Talk to speakers afterwards.  (Have your advisor introduce you if you're shy.)  Eat lunch with them and their students.  Hang out in the hallways.  Talk about your research.  Listen to other people talk about their research.  Listen to gossip.  Throw in a few dirty jokes.  Grab some coffee, or beer.  Scribble on napkins.  Go out for dinner with the students.  Drink.  Play pool.  Try that new absinthe place around the corner.  Scribble on napkins.  Throw up in the alley. Stumble home.  Sleep.  Grab coffee.  Run into someone you met at the absinthe place.  Commiserate about your hangovers.  Talk about your research.  Scribble on napkins.  Have a good idea.  Skip the next four hours of talks.  Fly home.  Exchange drafts over email/github.  Chat on Skype.  Revise, revise, revise.  Submit to the next conference.  Repeat.

Very important: Do not skip the first 15 steps.


Should I mention strong engagements on the CV which are not related to the domain

Such details do not seem so counterproductive. In fact, it shows your versatility and that you possess effective communication skills.

To avoid blurring achievements from your primary domain, you may add a separate Ancillary Achievements or Other Accomplishments section.


How unwise is it to change fields/advisors late in my PhD?

Your profile does not say, where you are from. I suppose there are still areas on the globe, where academic titles matter. However, this is certainly not the case where I live. So, in order to provide useful answers, we need to obtain detailed informations.

I still don't understand your motivation!

If you don't like working in field A, why do you consider taking a job in this field?
And if you do it to pay the bills, start doing it now. If you're doing a great job in industry, nobody will ever let you go. However, if you underperform, no phd will safe you.

So I reckon the question you should ask yourself is, why do you believe you need a phd? What do you believe does a phd proof?


Is it suitable for an MS student to ask teaching faculty for a recommendation letter for PhD applications?

(I'm assuming that the application form says you need three letters, but does not specify more).
As you already have two letters, I think a third one from teaching faculty is completely okay. Most PhD programms do not expect you to have collaborated with three different researchers before admission.

Make sure they mention your work ethic in their letter (that is, if your work ethic is good), about special knowledge you have because of teaching this course (if any) etc.
If they can say those things, this is more significant as a letter from faculty you didn't interact with.

However, if you also did serious research with the undergraduate faculty and you have a good relationsship with them, consider asking them.


Should I ask for an exam deferral due to my fiance's first conference and first time leaving the country?

There's nothing wrong with asking, as long as you are polite and willing to take "no" for an answer.


Graduation Robes - What accolades does this guy have?

It is conventional in many places for faculty who participate in a graduation ceremony to wear the regalia from the university where they got their degree. Some universities have more... elaborate regalia than others.(See e.g. Etiquette of wearing the wrong academic robes at graduation as a lecturer in the UK, especially this comment. And this.)

Others sitting on stage in your photos appear to be wearing the Adelaide University regalia - maybe that's where they did their doctorate (or they did it at a university that uses the same regalia), or maybe they don't have the regalia from their alma mater and just wear this one.


How to find out the average duration of the peer-review process for a given journal?

For publishing in mathematics you could check out the AMS' Backlog of Mathematics
Research Journals. Among other things it provides a current estimate of
waiting time between submission and publication and historical data for the time between submission and final acceptance.

I'd personally take these estimates with a grain of salt, but I suppose if you're desperate it's better than nothing.


How to keep and organize a research journal/log/diary/notebook?

Be aware that only you will ultimately be able to answer this question! Each individual works differently, so take the following cum grano salis.

As you've noted, a physical notebook does not always work well. Not only it is difficult to carry and easy to lose, it is also not easily searchable. (Despite this, I personally use a series of cheap notebooks and paper folders to enhance my thinking and contain random notes during the initial stages of research.) For many researchers, electronic files are the best alternative to paper. Your LaTeX file is a good beginning, and sounds like all you really need is a way to organize the huge mass of material now contained in a single file.

I would suggest breaking the file into several files, each containing a separate aspect of your current journal. How you organize this is ultimately up to you. Use the logic and structure that meshes with the way your brain works. Only one hard and fast rule: Never have a file labeled miscellaneous! This will end up catching all sorts of odds and ends and junk, and you will NOT be able to remember what the file actually contains.


Awaiting EIC Decision for more than 1 month

Check out this question. You're at the "Editorial Decision" stage, and as you can see from there, the typical duration is a few workdays to a week. So more than 1 month is definitely atypical, and you should write in and ask.

If you're wondering, there's a good chance the abnormal wait time is because there's more than one "editor-in-chief": the original editor-in-chief, and the editor(s) in charge of the special issue.


Is it reasonable for a guest lecturer/class speaker to ask for a stipend?

I would look at this from the perspective of the professor inviting you. Most of the people a university invites to speak are professors (or postdocs/ phd students) from other universities. For these, giving the talk is beneficial career wise so there is no additional speakers fee. But they have to travel to the university, very often from out of town. This means there is no easily available budget for paying you to speak but there usually is a budget for your travel expense. Usually this also covers inviting you for a meal.

So I would recommend asking for travel expenses. They should definitely pay for your parking ticket and if you come by car there is probably some fuel money or something like that as well. If you are interested the professor will probably also offer to take you out for dinner afterwards. This should be easy from their perspective. Asking to be paid for the talk as such could be a lot more complicated. If you want that to make it worth your while be prepared that the answer might be no.


How to support a student whose aspirations I don't support?

I don’t really understand what part of your “support” your question is about. In short: is the problem how to support him personally (in your discussions with him, in your work relations in general), or how to support his PhD work, or how to support his job application?

For his PhD work, I hope you are able to prevent outside circumstances from impacting negatively your work. As an advisor, this probably happens at some point with any student… and  any coworker, really.

For his job application, you don't need to state to support his future job, just to say he would be excellent at it. Just to give an example, stating that “Dr. Martin has all the skills necessary to excel in numerical simulations of deep offshore oil drilling” doesn't require you have to state “I strongly support offshore drilling”, nor does it imply it. Moreover, most recommendations are done in written.

Finally, regarding overall personal support throughout his graduate studies: that's a bit harder, but you truly have to put it past you, and it may not be easy. The best approach is clearly to be upfront with him: discuss it, preferably in an informal manner (i.e. don't make it a big deal). Points that seem important to mention:

I have strong feelings about your future employer, and I think it is best that I am frank with you about it.
It shouldn't change our work relationship, and I don't expect it to. I continue to support you wholeheartedly.
If you think you notice a negative impact in the future, please come and discuss it with me, we'll work it out.

But honestly, it's not a nice situation to be in. I'm a bit surprised as to how what could gather so much distrust from you that you cannot simply separate it from your work.


Does journal access significantly influence choice in which journal to publish in?

I've asked many professors why they submit to journal X instead of journal Y. Reasons given include:

Geographic location (e.g. British astronomers are more likely to submit to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society simply because that's a British journal)
Impact factor
Scope (certain journals are more theoretical than others, certain topics are just historically published in certain journals, etc)
Habit / familiarity (if I am familiar with a journal's style, publishing there saves time)
Personal knowledge of the editors
Open access (although the professors I spoke to were not concerned about whether their paper would be OA; they were more concerned about publishing in subscription journals, just so they wouldn't have to figure out the open access APC)

Journal access is never cited.

As for why publish open access vs. closed access, see: Why do tenured professors still publish in pay-walled venues?


I've been using Google Scholar Alerts for the paper discovery for a while now and faced a very similar issue.

Here is a scholar-alert-digest script that I wrote to aggregate all unread messages in a Markdown report .

Hope this helps!


Referencing figures or tables in discussion section?

Every field has a large number of different types of publishing venues with different requirements and expectations for the structure of manuscripts.  If the reviewer is making a legitimate complaint, it is likely to have to do with the particular journal that you are submitting to.  Some do have very particular requirements about structure and what exactly goes where, so perhaps that is what the comment is about.

Absent particular structural constraints, however, I think that it's fine to reference figures or tables from a discussion section, as one is discussing them (in fact, it would be strange not to do so).


How long is it reasonable to wait for a graduate student or postdoc to obtain a visa?

Visa issues can be seriously problematic, especially given the high degree of arbitrariness that is often applied toward people coming from disfavored countries in the developing world.  For example, consider the apparently arbitrary visa denials faced by students coming to the US from Iran.

Given this I would recommend using the following criteria in making a decision:

Is the person being reasonably aggressive in acting to secure a visa?  If the student is attempting to secure a visa and being blocked/slowed by outside forces, time to secure the visa should not be held against them.  If the person is not bothering to act towards securing a visa, then it's the same as not bothering to physically move, and they can be let go with a clean conscience.
Is there a concrete time limit on the funds? If external requirements mean the money is on a short-term "use it or lose it" status, e.g., a 1-year externally funded project that includes a task for a postdoc, then the person may be disqualified through no fault of their own by the circumstances.  In this case, I think it is appropriate to put the deadline early enough to have a reasonable chance at hiring an alternate person to fill the post.  The deadline should be made clear to candidates as early as possible, however.

If the timeline can be flexed and the person is being reasonably aggressive in pursuing the visa, however, I think that it is morally important for the ideals of science to continue to extend the offer.  Science should be, to the extent possible, practiced openly for the general benefit of humanity, and it needs all of the diversity of strong intellectual contributors that it can obtain, no matter where they may originate, so long as they are honest and open contributors.  Giving a person time for visa issues to resolve is one small but important thing that an individual scientist can do to support that ideal.


Second author being lead presenter on paper at a conference?

As far as I see there is nothing particularly strange with any of the authors presenting while any other authors also attend the conference. (Well, I am from mathematics where there is no such thing as "order of the authors" but I also work with people from other disciplines which do have this notion.)

So having the second author presenting while the first authors is in the audience seems totally OK for me. (It could just be that the presenting authors is the "best presenter of the group" or, by contrast,  should train presenting…)

Also it is totally OK for you to be first presenter, especially since the student agreed. There are many different things influencing who presents some paper/poster (some of which you already stated such as funding, time to attend) and I think the audience would not even think about the issue much. In general, all authors should discuss who should be presenting and as long as all authors agree, the outcome is OK.


Can you switch from a non-competitive program to a more competitive program easily in university?

I'll assume that you really do mean "competitive" and not just "difficult to master". (Otherwise you've stepped into a minefield with your examples, which can be astoundingly difficult). I'll also take "competitive" to mean that there are lots and lots of students wanting to major in those things.

A priori, there is no reason for the university to care a lot which major you choose provided that it has the resources to accommodate you. But some programs that might be competitive (by the above definition) require small classes (and therefore more faculty) or laboratories with a limited number of seats available. Other majors have very deep prerequisite requirements for the upper level courses, requiring that you select those majors early if at all.

So, there are a lot of considerations. Each university will have its own constraints and those constraints will impose rules that don't seem valid until you look at the constraints that led to the rules.

Biology is a lab science, generally speaking, which imposes limits. Computer science may or may not require equipment, depending on how the program is built.

But your expressed interest on entry isn't really a constraint most places. If you want to choose a major, you will be admitted or not based on your current record and any constraints in place at that moment. (caveat: MOST PLACES)


Is it advisable to drop out of a PhD and look for a new one?

[I] am currently a over a year into a PhD in maths. However...I told my supervisor right from the beginning that my interests were in physics (and very specific areas of physics), yet I have spent a year without doing any physics.

Seems like a rather obvious mismatch! Why are you in math if you want to do physics?

  My supervisor has no clue how to solve the problem and suggestions he gives are never useful.

Another bad sign. Sometimes it's worth accepting a less-interesting area in exchange for an awesome advisor. But you don't seem to like your advisor either.

  All of these things make me...want to drop out and start again somewhere else...I don't want to waste 4 years of my life simply out of a desire to "see it through."

Makes perfect sense. Also consider the quality of your work...once you have a PhD, people will care about your publications and letters -- slogging through a PhD you don't like is unlikely to produce nice publications or letters of recommendation.

  If I drop out and apply to another PhD program is the fact that you've already dropped out once damning?

Nope, changing departments is a reasonable reason to drop out. But, it would be nice if you could declare victory -- "I was a brilliant math student who got awesome grades and interesting results, but I realized I like physics better" sounds better than "I got my a** kicked at math and physics sounds easier." Consider what you can do over the next few months to salvage your year (publishing, securing letters of recommendation, getting good grades, etc.)


Timeline to start applying for faculty positions in the US

Still march is good time to apply?

It's possible that Anonymous Physicist was right in the comments and that your field is such that job searches for positions that begin 1.5 years from now are happening right now. (If so, go apply!) But, let's assume that's not the case for the sake of this discussion.

The best time to apply, as I suspect you know, is fall / early winter. This is an unfortunate reality that must be acknowledged.

  Are there is a chance to get interviews or I am late?

You're indeed quite late, but there's certainly a chance. Some jobs will indeed be posted; faculty members leave unexpectedly due to illness or other opportunities, searches on the ideal hiring timeline fail, and so forth.

There will be fewer job opportunities now than there would have been had you begun hunting in the fall, and moreover, it's very possible that the jobs you find could be worse in nature (such as 1-year positions instead of tenure-track, etc.) at this time. However:

I think you should apply for jobs now.

Reason 1: If you apply for jobs now, you might not get a job. Perhaps you could even say that you probably won't get a job -- I don't know whether that is true or not. However, the following is certainly true: If you don't apply now, you definitely won't get a job.

Reason 2: Applying for jobs is a nontrivial skill, and it is likely that your first cover letters, interviews, etc. won't be the best that you are capable of. Practice now. If it doesn't work out, then you'll be more polished for when it's time to try again in the fall.

Reason 3: If you get a suboptimal job (such as a one-year visiting position) at a school you like, it is possible that there will be a tenure-track job intended to replace it, and it is possible that serving in such a position well would give you an inside track to the follow-up position. Both of these are quite far from guarantees, of course.

Reason 4: It is conceivable that you do some digging and don't find any jobs you like. In that case, you can just not apply for anything, and you're no worse off than you'd be if you hadn't looked.

However, all this is superceded by the following:

Make contingency plans for what will happen if you don't get a job right now.

In particular, figure out how you will survive for the 2020-2021 academic year if you are not hired at this time. This may require exiting academia, and such an exit may be permanent, or it may not be. But do not neglect this possibility.


How often do professors regret accepting particular graduate students (i.e., "bad hires")?

I've discussed this with a few line managers, I've hired a few people, and I've checked with headhunters. We all come to very similar numbers**.

Once you're doing the recruiting well, you can expect that for every five people you hire, on average one will be an extremely good hire, and three will do the job well enough. And the fifth will be regrettable, through some combination of lack of will, lack of ability, an absence of a shared understanding of what the role requires, & personality clashes. You can try moving them to different roles, get them more training, work with them to find out what they need. Sometimes one of those things will work. Sometimes, none will.

** My primary dataset is academia. I got similar answers from the wider market for professionals (not manual workers)


How to pitch a research idea to a professor as an undergraduate?

A small point about language: in the U.S., in mathematics, it might be more tactful and less presumptious (also) to not ask about "work with me", but "advise me on" [the project you propose]. At least to my perception (=old guy) this leaves many more options for the precise relationship. E.g., experienced people can often and easily give helpful advice without really actively participating. At the same time, depending..., they might find interest in doing so. Or, at the same time, they might see that it's better to let you do it yourself... etc.


Assuming you have a good relationship with the faculty at the moment:

I would discuss the situation honestly with your head of department or other appropriate person. It sounds like you have a good reason to want to be closer to your family. It also sounds as though you genuinely want to maintain links with the university. Those are reasonable goals, and if your department values you they will try to support them. Maybe you can keep a day or two a week, maybe you can work remotely, maybe you can visit for a week every two months... hopefully you can explore options and find something that works for everybody.


Are reviewers impressed by a quick response to a request to revise and resubmit?

Opinions might differ, but here is mine: as a regular reviewer for a bunch of journals, what impresses me is a resubmission that addresses whatever points I raise in my review in a thorough and convincing way, irrespective of whether the authors take one week or six months to write it up. The more seriously you take my review, the more seriously I will take your resubmission.