Lectures and labs on the same day as an exam?

The university I'm at recently had a class with lecture in the morning, lab that afternoon, exam an hour after that, then a quiz the following morning in lecture, and finally a recitation that afternoon. Summer semesters tend to be like this as they are shorter in length than a fall or spring semester. No one is happy with it, but it's what needs to happen to cover all the requisite material.

What would typically happen during a regular semester is that labs can't be moved or adjusted, but usually the following lecture is either shorter of cancelled if it is the next day and the lecture the day of the exam is mostly review. But I must point out it is at the discretion of the professor.


Potential downside of joining a rapidly growing department

My impression is that you are looking at the wrong factors here. For PhD training, department-level name recognition, or where in the usual rankings the department is placed, is both fairly irrelevant. The same can also be said about where students of the department usually go afterwards.

During your PhD, you will work first and foremost with exactly one advisor. You need to evaluate whether your advisor is strong and a good fit, and what her or his students usually do afterwards. The rest of the department is not irrelevant, but ultimately not nearly as important as your advisor.

Consequently, look at the professors in your field in the department who would likely end up your advisors. Would you think it would great for you to work with them? If yes, go there and don't mind whether the department is a few places down in some ranking, If no, don't go there even if they are "up and coming".


Should we tell students they need to improve their English?

You may prepare a list of local resources where an international student could improve his or her English language skills.  For example

campus writing center
volunteer language practice pairing service
special courses or workshops for English language learners
opportunities to improve one's public speaking skills (the focus may not be on English, but this can be incredibly helpful) -- this might be offered in the Business school in your university
literacy volunteers program located in your town or city

Once you have your specific list prepared, you might ask your professor to distribute it for you.  You can point out in the intro that strong English skills increase one's employability!

In the meantime... set yourself a maximum amount of time per assignment you feel you can afford to spend correcting a student's English, and go ahead and make some corrections.  (Think what this will do for your karma!)

If a particular assignment is not gradable due to incomprehensibility, bump it up to the professor.


Can I mention professors' names in the statement of purpose?

Your statement of purpose should be specific to yourself and your research interests, first. Mention names only when the owner's work is both relevant and pertinent to your research interests. As JeffE stated,

  If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.

Your statement of purpose should paint a persuasive and intriguing picture of who you are, and should not be a hodgepodge of famous names and those whom you want to impress. You are trying to sell yourself and your ideas. Mention those whose work you have both read and found relevant to your research (and perhaps cited in your own work), but avoid name-dropping solely for the sake of impressing those who may read your SOP. That said, you should tailor your statement of purpose to the specific department you are applying to. This may include mention of the work of individuals in the department, or those whose work has informed their research. How much of this you should do is a judgement call on your part, and you should lean away from appearing to name-drop for the sake of making an impression.


How to motivate a student to attempt solving tough questions?

This is a tough question and one that teachers have struggled with throughout the history of pedagogy.  Sometimes, students need to find within themselves the curiosity and drive to plow forward despite the frustration.  So, don't be discouraged when you see frustrated students, as every teacher has to deal with this.  Philosophy aside, here are some tips I've found helpful over the years:

Scaffolding is immensely important.  Build up to the harder problems, and give students the time they need to process how typical problems are solved.  E.g., If you're studying friction, have the students do plenty of problems that involve friction on a flat surface, then move to friction on a ramp, then work on friction on a vertical wall (by a sideways force), then move to centripetal friction that keeps a turning car from sliding off a road, then move to cars on banked hills.
Don't try to cover too much material in one sitting.  Students can only process so much at once, and many really do need time to process.
Positive feedback goes a long way.  When a student makes progression on a problem, acknowledge it.
Be available for help, but not always available.  Some students like the easy way out, which is to ask you how to do the problem!  Don't be afraid to turn a student away until they've given it a decent try.  That said, judicious pointers in the right direction can help.
Encourage them to work in groups.  This does run into the "easy way out" for some students, but more often it can lead to good ideas being generated, and students can learn from the collaboration.
Give them lots and lots of examples.  The more they see problem-solving techniques, the better they will become.

Unfortunately, given the time constraints of college teaching, it isn't always possible to use all of these strategies--I found that it was easier to find the time when I taught high school.  That said, students in college should be willing to work harder on their own, anyway (but we all know that isn't always the case!).


Can I submit an anonymous submission on arXiv

No, you can't submit to arXiv anonymously.

See https://arxiv.org/help/submit and https://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp where they say:

  It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or institutional affiliation.


What do you do when your PhD student is spending too long on a problem?

This is one of the hardest questions a math PhD advisor can face.  (Perhaps it is the hardest question.  It is certainly the one whose failure to adequately solve has caused me to feel most, um, inadequate as an advisor over the years.)  Here are some ideas:

1) You say the student is fairly good. I'm not sure exactly what that means.  For me, a good student can make substantial progress on problems of interest if the advisor sets things up very well: by choosing the problems well and by providing help when needed.  You don't want to watch a good student waste much more than a year working on something that is not going to come to anything.  Within this category, a better student will be faster, more successful and independent, and a worse student will need so much help from the advisor that although the student does solve his own problems, the advisor must put at least as much thought and energy into the situation as would be needed to solve the problems herself.

So for me, "fairly good" would mean a student who can be quite successful with a very hands-on advisor.  I would not want such a student to spend a substantial amount of time on a problem that I didn't have some idea how to solve.  That's a strategy for a higher grade of students (a really excellent student can carry the risk of failure of working on truly difficult problems and can also learn from the experience of choosing the wrong problem).

2) One year is too long for almost any mathematician to work on a problem without making any progress.  Certainly I have never done anything close to this (although I have spent many years writing certain papers: progress was being made, just slowly and there was always more to do).

  I obviously admire his persistance and I always feel bad to discourage him from working on something he feels passionate about.

To be honest, I don't really feel the same way.  Working on something for a year without any payoff sounds irrational, maybe a bit obsessive to me.

3)

  But at the same time, I am worried that the longer he spends on this problem, the less likely he would be willing to move on and eventually give up altogether.

To be honest, you don't sound quite worried enough.  The fact that he has nothing to show for a full year of work is already a problem for him and his future career.  A student can no longer graduate with "one theorem" and expect to be competitive in the academic job market: increasingly, successful graduates already have a body of work.  Moreover, most successful graduates draw on the knowledge and skills of their advisors in very deep, substantial ways: without enough of this access, they may not be competitive.

For a student who has been spinning his wheels for a year, I think you need to step in and give him a new problem in which you know exactly how to solve some initial segment of it.  Starting in a place where you are essentially telling them what to do seems like a good remedy for the situation: even implementing exactly what your advisor is telling you is more than one or two weeks work for a good student.  If you make clear that you do expect him to work and make progress on this new problem -- with your help -- he is likely to do so.  If you have a meeting with him in which he tells you that he worked on the other problem instead, reiterate what you want him to do and schedule another meeting only a couple of days later. If you can keep on him closely enough, he'll get the idea: you fully expect him to make progress on this new problem.  If he wants to work on his own problem in his spare time, great, but you are making sure that doesn't interfere too much with his new day job.

I hope it doesn't sound like I am scolding you.  As I said, advising is such a hard job that most people I know don't feel they are doing as well as they should.  Anyway, good luck.


Does doing a postdoc mean a commitment to an academic career?

Well, clearly, it depends on many factors (my answer is probably strongly influenced by the Computer Science field).

If you want to apply for a non-research industry position, then clearly, the postdoc might not appear as a strong point, unless you can travel, attend conferences, manage a budget, develop an application/software/experiment, apply for patents, etc, in general any transversal skill that you can justify. But if the postdoc is just sitting in an office writing theoretical papers for a couple of years, then it's probably not the best choice.
If you want to apply for a research industry position, then a postdoc can be a good point, although of course, the closer you can be connected to industry, the better it will be.
Ideally, you could do a postdoc in industry (in CS, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, and many others offer this possibility).


How should one interpret a rejection on the grounds that a paper "has no added value to the existing state of the art"?

Journals and conferences tend to have a particular standard for novelty. Some (especially high-impact journals) have a very high bar for novelty, and will only accept papers that have exceptionally high significance and novelty. Others have a low standard for novelty; they'll accept most original papers, as long as they are within the scope of the journal and present solid work. And of course, there is a whole range in between.

From this review, it sounds like you "overshot" a little bit; that is, your paper (as submitted) was not up to this particular journal's standards for novelty. This isn't an accusation that you didn't submit new material; it just means that it didn't contribute enough new insight, new techniques, etc. to meet this journal's standards.

For example, it may be an application of an existing technique to a well-studied problem, that didn't offer any surprising findings - new, possibly valuable, but not very novel.

Your choices are then:

If possible: Make some major improvements to your paper. Highlight the novel and impactful aspects of it. Ask others in your field to read your revised paper and give you feedback on where they think it belongs. ("What journal would you expect to see this paper published in?") If they suggest that this revised manuscript is suitable for a high-impact journal, then go ahead and submit to such a journal.
Maybe you can't do much more than you already did, or the feedback you get suggests that this work isn't suitable for a journal with high standards for novelty. In that case, find a journal that publishes papers like yours, and submit your paper there.


I'm a PhD student in my final months, I'm in a different field (geophysics), but I've been to some summer-schools that I found very valuable.  One lecturer even stated that summer schools are the best forum for scientific exchange.  The summer schools I've been to didn't have as many participants as yours, but still, besides from the obvious point of acquiring knowledge and skills, summer school permit you to:

Meet and talk to senior people in your field
Meet other students, who may be going to be the future senior people in your field

The bottom line is: A summer school is as good as its lecturers are.  Look at the list of lecturers, and ask a senior scientist you know to look at the list.  Are there many famous names?  Go for it.  Are those mainly lecturers who spend most of their time teaching at not so well known institutes?  Then you can probably spend your time and money better elsewhere.  Depending on what's included (lodging/meals/...) and on how long it takes, 1000$ is not bad, although of course it's better if you can find someone else to pay it for you ;).


References in a PhD thesis in mathematics

'Normal' is not really relevant. You must reference your sources. You must not artificially pad your reference section by citing things that aren't relevant. The question left then is how many standard texts etc you reference with regard to things like well-known background. This will probably depend on exactly what you study.
Yes, but it depends on field to some extent. In mathematics, references are almost always ordered alphabetically by first author's surname but check your university rules first, then a standard journal or three if that doesn't pin it down enough.
I'm sure this must have been answered before. If you quote something because someone else did, are you certain they were right? People make mistakes (and maybe occasionally deliberate false claims).


I'm an accomplished person in my field, but don't have any degree. Would I be able to be a teacher or substitute?

Traditionally, most higher education faculty positions require advanced degrees and usually terminal degrees (e.g., PhD, MD, Master of Fine Arts) and lectures at universities often have master-level degrees.

Some universities now have "Professor of Practice" positions (e.g., UCSB for people with non-traditional backgrounds. (Hat tip to Buffy for this feedback).

Community/Technical colleges often have faculty with less formal education. Although faculty often hold PhDs, many have master's degrees. However, for some technical, trade positions less formal education is required. For example, browsing Google jobs for "welding instructors" show many positions that require an associates degree plus experience.

Usually, guest speakers have no formal requirements other than being invited by the course instructor.


People who have made no intellectual or scientific contribution to a paper should not be listed as authors. So, unless your upper-level supervisors have had an active role in designing the project, carrying it out, or writing the papers, they should be excluded. This is the practice normally carried out in corporate environments.


Usually appeals are not a good idea, but in this case it might be your best choice.  It is very odd for an editor to "suggest" appeal.
https://journals.aps.org/authors/editorial-appeal-procedures
Appeals can only be on the basis of procedure (not science!).  The procedure says decisions are based on review by referees.  Five of six referees said the paper should be published in a physical review journal.  Therefore at least one of the three rejections is in error.
If your appeal is not successful, find a good journal elsewhere to try.


How to ask for an academic agreement with a foreign faculty?

Setting up a formal relationship between departments can be a lot of work, and requires strong motivation on both sides.

A possible lighter-weight option to consider would be a more unidirectional program like exists at the department of one of my colleagues in Europe.  In his institution's Ph.D. program, each student is required to do two terms abroad at another institution.  The university supports this by continuing to support the students financially while they are abroad, but it is up to each student and faculty member to arrange where they go and who they work with independently.

As I have observed it in practice (i.e., being on the other end hosting a visiting student), this it much easier for others to agree to than a formal arrangement between faculties, because it requires fairly little investment and are likely to be covered by normal "visiting scholar / visiting student" arrangements.  It's also a great way to bootstrap collaboration with a foreign colleague.


What level of detail should be included in a CV when listing the courses assisted?

I've never been on a hiring committee, but I can tell you what's standard in my field (mathematics): something basically similar to your second option. I would probably put it in a more condensed format, for example:

Courses Assisted

A Hard Course (Fall 2013)
An Easy Course (Spring 2014, Fall 2014)
and so on

No need to include course numbers (which mean nothing to anyone outside your university) or instructor names (even the most diligent hiring committee is unlikely to call professors you've taught under, beyond the teaching references you personally solicit).

Your third option (the table) is very hard to read, and includes a lot of information that the hiring committee is unlikely to need or care about.


Should one refer to the title of an article or to the title of the magazine when the author is unknown (MLA/APA)

According to the MLA Style Manual, which is excerpted on many sites (such as the Williams College Library homepage), they recommend using a partial title as the citation.

So, in the case above, you'd probably write

  Bassnett states that . . . ("Interview" 201).

unless you have multiple works with unknown authors whose title starts with "Interview." Then you'd need more of the title to distinguish it:

  Bassnett states that . . . ("Interview with Susan Bassnett" 201). Smith responds by claiming . . . ("Interview with Robert Smith" 12).


I think that your best bet is to contact the IP department at the academic institution where you did your PhD:

They can inform you about your rights concerning the work you did there as a student
Potentially it's also in their interest to get credited for the work done by their PhD students, so they might be your ally in case there is a legal case.

Edit (addition):
Alternatively, you could try to negotiate internally with your company, they might be open to offering you something. But in this case you wouldn't be in a strong position, so it depends how you think the company might react.


How to cite a chapter from a report with different authors?

If authors are identified for the chapters, then this document is best treated as an edited collection. In this case, the chapter authors are the author and the chapter title the title. The overall report title is then the collection title (filling a similar role to journal title) and the "main" authors the editors.

The exact details of how this is formatted depend on the style where you are submitting, but if any names are appearing in the main text, they are of the chapter authors.


How much of my teaching evaluations to bring to an interview?

Teaching evals are super important to lecturer search committees.  But nobody wants paper.  Email it to the search committee or upload it to their application site.


Presenting Review article at an International Conference

I do not fully agree with the answer by @All.

The question is pretty "unclear". The answer is highly dependent on the factors like research field, the type of conference, theme of the conference, the type of your published article, and suchlike. Here one more question is there:

Is it your own review article that has been published?

IF

the answer to the above question is NO, THEN you CAN NOT. (I am not sure about any existing rarity in which this didn't hold.)

ELSE

I would answer based on my own research field with positive assumption that it holds for your case as well -- That is what computer science guys do a lot of times.

You can actually publish review article as a poster (if at all the conference is okay with poster presentation). Note that a published article can not be re-published in a different venue with identical content. It would be like a small talk on the review, rather than more research oriented discussion. The Computer Science conferences are true publication venues that publishes full research articles that are citable.

AGAIN,

IF you are not from an engineering discipline like CS/Mech/Electrical, rather from a pure science stream like Physics, Biology, Chemistry, then you can actually talk (poster or PPT) about it in the conference. Try speaking with the conference chair/organiser.

Hope this helps.


Can I use a stamped arxiv paper as a proof of priority if it has been rejected?

I recommend against it. You can put online anything you like and use it to claim priority, but if the paper is hosted on your personal website then you lose the credibility that the date stamp of an official arXiv-hosted paper comes with (since just the stamp itself would be easy to forge), so in the event of a priority dispute this would not be a foolproof form of evidence.

Also, as has been discussed in other questions on academia.se (can't look it up right now), people who are new to academic publishing worry excessively about their ideas being stolen by others. Especially given that your manuscript was rejected by arXiv, the chances of this happening are effectively zero. You would be much better off using your energy to write a good manuscript rather than worrying about datestamps.


I was caught cheating on an exam, how can I minimize the damage?

I've learned the lesson about cheating, now how can fix this? How can
  I prevent the 5 instructors from reporting me. It's obvious that I
  should speak to them, but what should I say? What can I do? My future
  is almost over, but many of you are teachers and instructors here,
  what can I do to fix this?

From the way you wrote this, it seems to me that in your current mindset, you have not yet learned the full lesson. I say this because the second sentence above seems to me still in the same mindset where you are trying to control and engineer a result to essentially beat the system and get something better than your own actions have generated. That is not full understanding of learning that that whole approach is not appropriate. You're treating the system like an adversary, acting in a victim mentality, and trying to manipulate your way out of it. You have some lessons to learn about humility, honesty, surrender, and building integrity from the ground up. I would suggest accepting those.

I would suggest it may help for you to consider you may also be wrong-minded when you think things like:

  If any of those happen, my future is over. A dean's warning will
  cancel my financial aid. A suspension, will be at least for two years
  and coming back requires a lot of work. An expulsion, will be
  definite.

The "my future is over" fear is what led you to cheat in the first place. As your professor kindly observed, you didn't need to cheat in the first place, and it got you into far worse trouble than doing your best would have. Indeed, I think your future looks darker if you don't take full responsibility now. I would be more optimistic about your future if you lose your financial aid and have to leave that university, but actually learn your lesson and continue at some other institution.

Your future will depend on your mindset, your integrity, and how you do your chosen field of work (including how you feel about yourself and how you relate to your work). These things are built upon each other like the bedrock, foundation, and upper levels of a building. If your mindset is full of panic, it will undermine your integrity. If your integrity is unsound, it will undermine your work. Seriously. This is practical and not empty moralizing.

So, realize that if you really want to be an engineer, you can do this, even if you need to go to another university. Even if it takes another 2 or even 4 years. Then, restore your integrity by being completely honest about everything and taking full responsibility for everything you caused and continue to cause. Don't try to cover anything up, make anything sound good, look good, nor avoid looking bad. You will feel a lot better about it all when you let go of resisting and admit everything. Your instructors know all about it, and will notice any attempt to make this better for yourself, so even if you were going to cling to being a desperate manipulative person, it would be best to surrender and fully admit everything, and be as honest as possible in everything you do. If you can really learn these lessons, then it may actually make sense to give you some leniency. If you're still resisting, then it wouldn't be doing anyone any favors in the long run, to do anything less than suspend you.

The good news is, this lesson is FAR more important than the engineering content you were studying.


Proposals are tightly-controlled by rules. The only thing that really matters is legally handling the money. Different funding agencies often explicitly allow you to submit the same proposal. They will likely reject it anyway. If you get funding from both and you proposed the same thing, you will only be allowed to accept one of them (or else go to jail).

Also many journals have a cutoff for incremental improvements, for example of 30 percent new material that is required. Given that number of submissions to journals has increased dramatically, this kind of requirement probably has as well, with many journals insisting on entirely new material. In ye olden days you could also get away with only a few references. Now your reference section needs to be some kind of tour de force of reference thoroughness too.

There is finally the issue of copyright and the (rather problematic) fact that journals want to sell our work as a product. Which we gave them for free. Plus helped them screen the products we would most want to buy for them. So they tend to push the motivation for demanding the text be as novel as possible, and now they have automatic tools to help enforce this.

You'll note none of the above required the concept of "self-plagiarism", which I tend to think is an unnecessary concept we already have covered (when it actually makes sense) by other rules of ethics.


Information on Planetary Science PhD programs?

Catalogs of programs are a casualty of the internet age. Most schools would prefer to direct traffic to their individual sites, rather than have a short blurb in a larger publication—especially if it's something they have to pay extra to maintain.

As an example of this, the American Astronomical Association's Division of Planetary Sciences just has a compendium of links to school websites instead of a catalog. If a group like that maintains only a set of web links, I doubt there's a larger catalog out there.


How many students are typical for an advisor?

It depends on many factors:

Does the professor have any intense other duties like teaching, committee work, own research, being an editor, writing grants, etc. or can they focus on supervising?
Does the professor delegate supervisory work, e.g., do PhD students have postdocs or similar as a first person to go to?
Is there a healthy communication and collaboration within the group? Is everybody roughly informed what everybody else’s areas of expertise are so they can seek help (e.g., from the resident programming expert) directly without going through the supervisor? Is this encouraged by the supervisor?
How much supervision does a typical student in your field require?
How efficient is the professor in supervising?

Due to these factors, the group size you mention can work very well, but may also be a total disaster. As it’s impossible to judge these factors as an outsider, the best way is to talk to actual supervisees and look at the graduation statistics of the group (if available). If you are actually working in a professor’s group, you should be able to assess this better than anybody else.


Is it normal to preferentially invite female speakers when there would otherwise be few female speakers?

First of all: if the women who were invited to speak are in fact highly qualified for this invitation, they are not getting a "free pass". A "free pass" implies that they are invited only because they are women, and are not otherwise qualified. Qualified women are at best getting a "priority pass" to make up for being often overlooked (especially when the organizing committee is all male), and possibly not getting any kind of special pass.

It is a bit insulting (although I am sure this is not your intent) to suggest that these women were invited to speak because they are women, and not because they are doing quality, competitive work. I can see why you were uneasy when the organizers sent an email emphasizing the gender of the speakers, instead of their contributions to research; I would also be.

Second: depending on the sample size, it may not be entirely significant that 31% of invited speakers were women when they made up 18% of the list of suggestions.

In answer to

  Is this normal practice in academia:

Yes, sometimes a conference or workshop organizer will look at the list of invited speakers, see that women are heavily underrepresented, and think carefully about whether there is a qualified female researcher doing excellent work who could be added to the roster.

This is done as a deliberate response to counter a known bias. We know that we (as humans) are very bad at evaluating people based on merit alone; we tend to let our cognitive biases get in the way. (See, for example: Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students.) Deliberate attempts to increase the representation of women in underrepresented fields exist to counter this known bias.


What are the standard practices for hyphenating/spelling scientific words

This depends upon what's being written. For a university thesis, for instance, you should follow the guidelines of your particular institution: if they recommend a particular style manual, such as the Chicago Manual of Style or the [ACS Style Guide], then you should follow the recommendations contained therein. If you are publishing in another venue, follow the guidelines of the publisher, if they make those available.

Otherwise, you should follow a consistent set of guidelines. Note that this is not the same as saying "always use a hyphen" or "never use a hyphen." For instance, you would write

  "the velocity of the flow field increased"

but

  "the flow-field variables are . . ."

because "flow field" is a noun in the first example, and "flow-field" is an adjective in the second. There the hyphen links the connected words: "flow-field" and "variable" versus "flow" and "field variable."


How do I tell my teacher I want him to be co-advisor but not advisor?

I don't know if there is some kind of recipe for doing that.

I think that the main point in your question is about the feelings of the involved advisor and co-advisor. If they are as professional as I suspect, then you just need to explain to both advisor and co-advisor the situation, and probably they will agree with your decision, or better, they can point out things that you haven't see yet.

I think that the key point in this process is avoiding the feeling of being "betrayed". This could be achieved being transparent with both parts. Maybe you must appoint a meeting with both advisors.

Finally, I'm not aware of the actual rules of the Universities A and B, but in the case I know (Universidad de Buenos Aires) the advisor and co-advisor have the same level of responsibilities, being the "co-" thing because you need more than one "mentor". In such case the co- thing is a trivial issue that could be easily agreed by the parts


Potential Impact of Pass/Fail vs. Letter Grade in Elective Courses

Unless you're applying for a post-doctoral position at a corporation or somewhere else where HR personnel will be screening your materials before forwarding them to the person doing the hiring (where GPA might be scrutinized), I don't think it frankly makes much difference. Your work as a researcher matters much more than your performance in an elective course taken in graduate school that may have little to do with your proposed research area for the postdoc.


Is it ethical to use someone else's research as an illustrative case?

The entire point of publication is to get your work out there for other people to use as a basis for further work. (The whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" thing.)

If a researcher is going to be upset about someone else taking their work and using it as a basis of further work, then they shouldn't be publishing it in the first place. (E.g. many companies keep research results "trade secret", which they use internally and never publish.)

In the fields I'm familiar with, it's perfectly acceptable to take published results and re-analyze them or use them as a basis for further work.

That said, there are some caveats. Among these (but not a comprehensive list): Be sure to give appropriate citations and credit as to the origin of the work at every reasonable opportunity - avoid implying that this is your data, even by omission. Be careful about copyright - verbatim copying of text and figures without explicit permission is usually proscribed, but using the underlying data (facts, numbers, general ideas) is normally not. Be sure to conform to the particular norms in your field, if any, about re-use of datasets - in some fields there's norms about data re-use, as data collection may be laborious and researchers who spend a lot of effort making datasets don't want to be "scooped" on follow-up work by people who swoop in  with a quick re-analysis.

But generally speaking, if the data are available from a published source, you're not breaking copyright, and you're not doing anything that's going to prevent the original authors from publishing additional work, you should be able to use the published data in your paper. (With appropriate citation, of course.)


Shall I tell my college professor that the reason why I am asking for a letter is I have to have a letter from college?

It isn't essential to give this information. Hopefully one of your profs will be happy to write you a letter. If you ask more than a couple of people and they seem reluctant, then you could mention it, but it probably won't result in the best letter possible.

But first choose someone with whom you did well and who might have a good memory of you. Ask as usual, and thank them as usual.


What are the profit margins of academic publishers?

tl;dr: it is a distorted market. Open-access models involve cross-subsidy. Subscription models offer inflated profit margins to large publishers (and some small, very specialist publishers).
Those market distortions mean that suppliers' budgets will conceal as much as they reveal.
You'll find a little sympathy for the devil, here. Things are rarely pure, never simple, sometimes ugly.
Market prices?
As with most questions of the form "why does this thing have this price?" the answer is: supply and demand. It's that price because that's the price at which buyers and sellers agree on a quantity of supply.
But is it a fair market?
Is there an oligopoly?
There are very low barriers to entry: pretty much anyone with a computer and web connection can start a journal and get an ISSN for it.
Some profit margins at the big publishers (Elsevier, Taylor & Francis), do suggest oligopolistic pricing - 25-35% margins look suspicious. While any sensible profit margin analysis would also look at returns on capital employed, none of the critiques of the large publishers that I've seen have done so. There are claims is that Elsevier and Taylor & Francis, and possibly others, have used bundling (selling large numbers of titles as a group subscription) to inflate their margins. Some universities tackle this by subscribing journal-by-journal.
So yes, there are indications of oligopolistic practices that inflate prices and margins.
Is there a monopsony or oligopsony?
Well, those high margins would suggest not, and indeed, there are many many hundreds of competing universities each paying publishers on their own behalf, so the demand-side looks competitive. No, there is no oligopsony

Business models
There are three primary models of publishing business.
The first model is the open-access charity model, where everything is begged, borrowed or donated. So the costs are still there - and it's typically academics and universities paying - but the costs are concealed: effectively, the donators of resources are cross-subsidising the publishing, perhaps as an investment in reputation and/or impact. This model is very rare, because it's practically impossible to build a reputation from zero without any investment. Journals that I'm aware of that use this model, inherit reputation from predecessors that used one of the other two business models.
A second model - open access, author pays - is also along the lines of academia pays, readers from industry and commerce get the research for free, just like the open-access charity model. A large number of low-quality predatory journals are able to use this model, because of the pressure on many academics to "publish or perish".
The third model, the traditional journal subscription model, is that only organisations and institutions who access the papers, pay. This is the only model where academia does not have to subsidise industrial and commercial access to research. Some low-quality predatory journals use this model, though less sucessfully than the open access-author pays model, because the subscription model has much less demand-side pressure. But this model is also how large-scale scientific publishing got established, and it's how reputations of most academics, editorial boards, weighty titles, and many conferences got established. This is the least fashionable and most successful model.


In the context of an academic publishing agreement, the "paper" almost certainly includes everything on the page including the images, but read the agreement carefully. If you handed over the copyright of your images, then you'll need to secure the right to reusing them from your original publisher. This is usually easy.


Submitting a paper to a new journal with responses for the rejection to the first journal

I wouldn't do that, actually. Use the comments of the reviewers of the first journal to improve the paper as usual. Simply submit the revised paper to the other journal.

It is actually better that they look at it with a fresh viewpoint, rather than having their view possibly clouded by the opinions of others. Let your paper stand on its own.

You will get additional comments, of course. Hopefully they will also help you improve it further.


What can be done about a disruptive classmate?

You would handle this the same way you would handle anything in class that impacts your ability to learn.  You contact the instructor, and suggest that there is something disruptive going on.


What is the proper designation for someone who has not finished their master's degree?

In the US, a Master's Degree does not grant a title. So, their title would be the same as if they had completed their degree. This would probably be Ms. Smith or Mr. Smith. Some institutions might have other titles. For example, a military academy would use ranks (e.g., Captain or Major Smith).

Also, the title of the person would vary by institution. My guess is the most common title would be Instructor.

Based upon a comment by cag51, the title of Professor would also not be appropriate unless the instructor held a position with that title, which is unlikely.


Authorship Guideline for unused experimental results

I think in a larger sense your intern certainly did contribute to the project... whether or not the specifics reflect that. They were part of the team. Many things in team work are unpredictable... but everyone on the team should get credit. Otherwise, think of it, people will not agree to participate and exert effort in situations where they're not guaranteed a good PR outcome. That attitude would wreak havoc with genuine scientific/intellectual inquiry.


What typically happens when two or more professors from the same department want the same prospective PhD student?

I think that you would ultimately have the final choice in the matter. The supervisor is somebody that you have to work with for 4+ years, so you better make sure you choose the one you think you can handle for that period of time.


What citation style is this? It has numeric reference, title in quotes, "Last, F.F." name style

The system of referencing using numbers is called the Vancouver system. As alluded to by aeismail in his comment, each journal has some form of style based on this format. Hence, you need to know how the specific journal style works in terms of ordering the different bibliographic fields, for example, author, title, publishing year, journal, volume number, page numbers, doi etc. If no clear style description exists you can try to adhere to the specific style by looking at other published articles that use the same style.


How to convince professor that I have read topics on my own?

It's fairly easy for people to identify other people in the field. You need to demonstrate you know the topic during the conversation.
The easiest way is to read the professor's papers and offer intelligent comments when you first write to them: what is interesting about the paper and why, what you want to work on, etc.


How will a 'fail' in a course affect chances at graduate school admission?

Short answer, since I've already addressed a similar case in the answer mentioned above: this should hurt you very little so long as you can maintain your current record throughout your undergraduate program of study. When I consider graduate applications, I am not interested in how a person performed at age 17 or 18; I am interested in how he or she will perform in my program. Four years of high marks and outstanding additional activities are a good indicator. One bad grade from high school is irrelevant.

If the transcript is sufficiently vague that someone could possibly be confused about this, have one of your letter writers mention the situation in the letter. But my personal feeling is that even this is unnecessary.


Is publishing runnable code instead of pseudo code shunned?

There are cases where real code is preferable, and cases where pseudocode is preferable. You shouldn't rely on a simple iron rule, but rather on judgement of what is appropriate to the situation.

Some things to consider:

Programming languages come and go. In the 60s, Fortran was considered a really nice and readable programming language, much easier to read than Assembly. But if you'd written an article using Fortran code samples instead of peudocode, it would be harder to read for us now. Right now, Python looks pretty good to us, but will it still look that good in the future? If I handed you a piece of Python code with the following code in it:

a = 3 / 2

What is the value of a? Is it 1 or 1.5? Because Python 2 and 3 handle integer division differently. Now, I've gone more or less native programming in Python 3, so I actually had to look up which of the division operations in Python 2 and 3 are different and which aren't. Just to show you, using real code in a paper may reduce the shelf life of your paper.

Pseudocode lets you abstract stuff away In pseudocode you can just state something like:

WHILE stopping criterion not reached DO
    (stuff)

And then later on in your paper you can argue about different possible stopping criteria for your algorithm. You could do that with actual Python code too, but the result would be basically that you're twisting your Python code to do what pseudocode does by nature.

You can be pretty standardized in pseudocode Just use the various algorithm typesetting options for LaTeX.

You can use mathematical notation in pseudocode Using mathematical set notation is a lot more universal than relying on all of your readers understanding Python set operations. Consider:

a = set([1, 2, 3])
b = set([1, 2])
c = 1 if b.issubset(a) else 0

versus

A ← {1, 2, 3}
B ← {1, 2}
C = 1 if B ⊆ A
    0 otherwise

Someone not familiar with Python looking at the first example will be wondering: is [1, 2, 3] a ... maybe a list? Well the list [1, 2, 3] isn't the same as the list [1, 2], so the set A and the set B contain different elements so B can't be a subset of A.

Algorithms vs. implementations Suppose in 2019 you write an interesting algorithm in Python 3 using some state of the art libraries. In 2025 I come up with an alternative algorithm for the same problem in Go and want to compare performance to prove that yours is better. To get a fair comparison, I'm going to have to implement my algorithm in Go or yours in Python. Suppose by then nobody uses Python for high performance stuff anymore because Go does it better. (It might, I dunno.) Now I have to go research the seven year old libraries you used to find out exactly what functions you used and which Go functions are equivalent to them. That's very hard. So quite likely, the Go implementation I make of your algorithm won't be all that good. And big surprise! My algorithm benchmarks better than yours!

Now instead if you'd used an implementation-independent description of your algorithm, things might turn out better for your publication.

So the two big disadvantages of using real code are: it limits the shelf life of your publication, and you reach a smaller audience.

So when should you use real code?

When the topic of your paper is not the algorithm, but the implementation or the programming language. Maybe you're trying to show that Python is a really good language in which to solve problem X because with libraries Y and Z you get an easy and efficient implementation.
It's absolutely encouraged to also publish your real code as an appendix or, better yet, in a repository where people can download your code and suggest improvements. A nontrivial algorithm is probably too big to copy by typing by hand or even copy-pasting out of a paper anyway. As soon as you start getting into something like a new Deep Learning algorithm, you're probably looking at multiple files or even nested packages.


Is my plan for sticking with my incompetent advisor reasonable?

What are the chances I could actually get a postdoc?

Of course there's no way to give a definitive answer without far more information, but here are some factors to consider.

First, how bad do you think your thesis would really be?  It's possible to graduate with a thoroughly unimpressive thesis, good enough to qualify for a degree on the basis of hard work but not good enough to satisfy any employer who cares about research.  If that's your situation, then the chances of a worthwhile postdoctoral position are negligible.  On the other hand, perhaps your embarrassment is because you're writing a merely average or even good thesis rather than a truly noteworthy one.  If that's the case, then you might be fine.  Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between these extremes, but we can't know where based on your question.

Have you had any feedback from third parties?  For example, have you spoken to other mathematicians at conferences?  What about visitors to your university or collaborators of your advisor's?  If other mathematicians have heard of you and expressed seemingly genuine interest in your work, then that's a plus.  If you've never interacted with anyone but your advisor, then you're in a much worse position to look for a postdoc.

What about letters of recommendation?  You'll need several from people other than your advisor who can address your research accomplishments.  Do you have letter writers in mind?  If you can't think of anyone, then that's a major obstacle.  If you can, then have you sounded them out on whether graduating is a good idea?  If they are unenthusiastic about the idea, then you aren't likely to get compelling letters from them (and without such letters you won't get a decent job).  If they are as enthusiastic as your advisor, then you should feel reassured.

Does your advisor have a track record of helping students get jobs?  If so, then that's an excellent sign.  If he has a track record of failing to help students get jobs, then that's a terrible sign.  If he doesn't have a track record at all, then that's worrisome, and his views on the job market might not be well informed.

  Assuming I obtain a postdoc, is it likely I could establish a decent track record of research, given that I will be in some sense two years behind schedule as far as learning this field and establishing myself?

If you can get a three-year postdoc, you'll be able to accomplish a lot in that period.  You may not have time to achieve your full potential before going on the job market again, but you'll be in a much better position than you are now.  If you get this chance, then it's worth taking it.

Incidentally, I don't think it's fruitful to count how many years you are behind schedule.  There really aren't schedules or mileposts for research, and different people's research programs and abilities often develop in incomparable ways.  Some mathematicians do their best work much later than others, for reasons that are not always apparent.

  Staying an extra year with this advisor may be an option, but would be difficult financially.

Perhaps you could apply for jobs now but fall back on staying another year if your job search is unsuccessful.  That's not ideal, but it might be your best option.  If you really can't afford to stay another year, then your choices are far more constrained.  You either apply for jobs this year or choose another career.


Authorship for papers not completed before leaving, where I am major contributor?

If you only did programming support for a project, and did not design or collect data, or design the experiment, and did not have a role in writing the manuscript, you probably qualify for only an acknowledgement, and not full authorship. I'm not clear what you mean by "feasibility research" - it's possible that work would qualify if it went beyond normal software design processes (i.e., are you determining whether the idea was feasible for YOU to accomplish in a certain time frame, or feasible at all, and what was the extent of other approaches that you considered...given the time frame you state of 15-20 days work, I am very skeptical there was extensive feasibility research necessary).

15-20 days work is a miniscule amount of time for a typical scientific publication - I would say the normal range is 6 months to 2 years. This range counts all of the failures and false starts inherent in science, refining ideas, etc. Though it is possible all of the data and analysis that goes into a paper takes place on a shorter time frame, it is unfair to exclude all of the productive failure along the way.

Programming by itself isn't really a direct contribution to a scientific project, regardless of the time spent, unless you are developing algorithms, or doing something novel (for example, optimizing a program to the extent that a previously computationally intractable question can be solved in a reasonable timeframe).

I doubt your PI actually does not know the conventions of authorship in the field; it seems more likely that they knew you were overestimating your role in the project, gave you the appropriate credit, and didn't want to argue with you over it further.

More generally, and not speaking to your situation specifically, leaving a lab should not affect your claim to authorship on any work you did while you were a member. However, meeting all the requirements for authorship will indeed require further, unpaid work. At a minimum, this would include review of the manuscript before submission and publication, and in most cases would include substantial writing/editing support, preparation of final figures, etc.


You are right that TV-L is a civil servant payscale. Postdocs commonly are placed in the E-13 or E-14 scale, where the latter is higher (but usually comes with more responsibilities). The gross pay starts at just under 3579.34 EUR per month for Berlin. Very recently the pay scales have been renegotiated, so I believe it might have gone up a bit. This amount is the first step in the scale, depending on your experience you might start at a higher step.

The net amount depends on your specific circumstances, for example if you are married and if you are a member of a church. For single persons that are not registered with a church the net amount is around 2100 EUR a month. This includes health insurance. You should be able to live decently in Berlin for this money.

The details can be found on the Öffentlicher Dienst website  (in German, but you would want the table at the bottom).


Can I work on open-source projects while being a part of an academic institution?

Yes, it is very possible to work on open-source projects in academic settings.  The exact legal and technical details vary from university to university, but many universities are very open to open-source contribution.

There are a lot of variables that you don't specify in your question. I am most familiar with U.S. universities, so my answer will focus on those.

Short version: work with your adviser to discuss it with your Office of Technology Transfer.

In most U.S. universities, the university owns rights to code that is created as a part of sponsored projects or with their resources. The following easily trigger it:

Using the computer provided by your university
Being funded on a research grant
Being funded by the university

Often, work done entirely on your own time on your own computer equipment, sufficently unrelated to your paid work that it cannot be considered part of it, is yours without any problem. Coursework is also often yours, although using university equipment may muddy that point. The exact details depend on university policies.

Your university policies will contain information about the precise rules. However, there is often a fair amount of difference between how the policies are written and how they are implemented in practice. I have been affiliated with 3 universities, and at all of them have had no problems obtaining suitable permission for open-source software release.

The relevant office is generally the Office of Technology Transfer or something like that. You should start by talking with your adviser - they will start the Tech Transfer discussion - but there is a good chance that your adviser will not actually know the detailed rules of your university. In practice, there's a lot of open-source code released without going through the proper channels for official university sign-off.

Some universities officially vest faculty with the authority to authorize open-source release of software developed under their supervision.  If that is the case, then the conversation is very short.

In other cases, tech transfer will need to approve to have everything be formally legal. It is possible that they will not fully understand what is going on - I've seen cases where the relevant authority didn't really understand software copyrights and open-source licensing.  My current institution's tech transfer office takes the perspective that their job is to help faculty achieve their goals with technology licensing and commercialization, and has worked with me to get university counsel to sign off on a couple of standard open-source licenses, making subsequent releases very easy.

Unfortunately, most universities' formal policies for invention disclosure and review do not interact well with the realities of open-source software, particularly continuous development in the open.  You'll need to work with university officials to navigate that.

I have generally found university officials to be receptive to my argument that open-source release is a cornerstone of my approach to disseminating the results of my research and promoting reproducible research in my field.


I want to be the sole student author on a poster, but my advisor wants to bring on other students

Depending on how your lab works and how collaborative the work is, you may be right or wrong in this.
However, I suggest you keep a few things in mind. Fighting with your PI is seldom a way to academic success and having the good will of your supervisor probably has more value at this moment than having a poster with a small number of authors.
Also, the supervisor may, actually, be trying to get some of the others an interesting project with which they can boost their learning. Is it possible that she has done this sort of thing for you in the past? For others?
I'd suggest that you might just ask her for her reasoning in this, without appearing to be argumentative.
But you are probably (not necessarily) better off in yielding on this for the sake of your long term goals. Don't let short term goals interfere with the bigger - longer term - picture.


Acknowledgments usually skip formal titles, i.e. no Prof., Dr., Mr. or Ms. Some journals even insist on it in their authors guidelines (here for J. Chem. Ed.):

  Acknowledgment
  Include acknowledgment of grant and other financial support, technical assistance, colleagues’ advice, and so on. Do not use professional titles or honorifics in this section.

If your journal has guidelines on the topic, follow them.

Otherwise, just refer to the person as you would if you were giving his name to a colleague, i.e. omit the titles and honorifics unless you barely know them. But if you think they will like it, use their titles, it doesn't hurt!

To give a few examples from Nobel-prize winning papers:


How to compensate students who face technical issues in online exams

I guess this answer won't be popular, but my strong suggestion is that you rethink student evaluation from the start. Exams aren't the only way that you can assess student learning and they are a poor way, in any case, to assess real competence in a field like CS. Add in all of the ways to creatively cheat on online exams and it quickly becomes a near impossible task to validate results.
Some ideas, but I don't have a comprehensive list:
Assess in smaller units more frequently so that "high risk" isn't a factor.
Make the grading scheme somewhat forgiving, so that a few bad answers don't have a large effect on grades.
Take "time to finish" out of the equation as much as possible to account for technical glitches.
Lessen the importance of "question - answer" grading in favor of things like projects that require deeper and more comprehensive knowledge.
Use questions that don't have trivial answers than can be quickly looked up. Likewise don't reuse questions that might have archived answers.
Lessen the importance of "individual work" at least somewhat. Effective teamwork is an important skill in many fields, including CS.
For some students it may be necessary to provide a communication channel to clear up misunderstandings. But make it global. Everyone should see every question and its answer.
For some student issues it may be necessary to talk to professionals skilled in the various communication difficulties that arise (dyslexia...).


Is there a standard medical fitness certificate format for applicants to European universities?

I suspect that the right people to ask here are the staff at your local embassy. Certificates of good health, particularly in relation to European institutions, are more likely related to immigration requirements than university requirements. That will mean the embassy will be your best source of information about format. (In fact, there may only be specific doctors authorized to produce such certificates, and you may need to schedule an appointment with one of them, rather than obtain one from your personal primary care physician.)


When do I let other places I applied to know I have an offer?

It's in your interest to inform the other two departments that you have an offer and the date by which you need to respond to that offer.  You can say this without naming the first institution or the salary that you've been offered.

This way, they have a chance to speed up their process and make you a competing offer before the first offer expires.  If you don't tell them, then they'll simply continue with their search process and you might end up being forced to accept the first offer before the other two institutions have completed their search process.


Hypotheses that cannot be sufficiently tested

Bose-Einstein condensation was predicted in 1924 and only actually seen in 1995.

Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein in 1916. It was proved that they followed from general relativity in 1958. They were observed indirectly in 1974, and observed directly in 2015.

If "science" had been restricted to hypotheses which could be tested in the near future with available methods, then these predictions would not have been considered science, and it would have set physics back by decades.

I would agree that hypotheses which cannot be tested in principle are unscientific.


How do I reference a publication in my CV where I am alphabetically listed as an author but the citation lists the organization?

You should definitely keep the original reference format but could easily add a simple footnote/inline note to elaborate your involvement. I would do something along the lines of:

  [P7] Organisation name**. Awesome paper written in large writing group. Published in the Journal of Awesome Research [3.14], pp.200-222. 2017

  ** Note: Published under organisation name, I am listed as nth author and contributed x.


Is it okay to add a lecturer on LinkedIn

I do not believe an educator would feel they were put in an uncomfortable position by a student sending a LinkedIn request.

You should not, however, expect that the lecturer will accept your request. Some lecturers like to be very close to their students. Personally, I like to keep a professional distance from my students, even after they graduate. Of course, if a student happens to share a common area of research as me and wants to work together, that would be different but I certainly do not accept many requests to "connect" to students, even after they graduate.

What you should avoid is sending multiple requests or following up in person "Hey, did you get my 'quest? It would be super-kul if you'd add me." If they want to connect they will. If not, they will just consider you a student who is interested in having a closer connection than they want and they will ignore it.

Either way, I do not believe any lecturer would be made uncomfortable by your gesture of interest.


Should each substantive chapter of a thesis have its own literature review in addition to the main literature review chapter?

"Should each chapter have a literature review even if it is repetitive from the main literature review chapter?"

No.  Avoid putting the reader to sleep unnecessarily.


Supervisor who accepted me for a research internship now says he doesn't know who I am

I would send him the signed documents in e-mail, asking him if it was signed by him. His answer would shed light on things (he forgot he signed, he didn't read before signing, etc.)
But don't think that you're pushing things. An internship is important, and you already got a signed document and you need to know things to plan forward...


How much help is a PhD supervisor if you only see them 30 minutes a month?

Your supervisor's job is to be sure you're on the right track, not to do any of the work.  Thirty minutes a month ought to be more than sufficient for that.  Also, the supervisor either takes care of the administrative details or is responsible that someone else does that.  Finally, you appear to have omitted the amount of reading required of the supervisor.

I'm absolutely sure I didn't see my supervisor for 13 hours over the course of my degree, but he read every word I wrote and provided feedback without which I probably could not have finished.


What are the important issues to consider when using secondary data?

Reusing data gathered in previous research works save a lot of time, energy and may be money. However, there are some subtle details you need to keep in mind when using such practices.

Make sure the author providing the data knows what he is talking about.
Make sure the data are valid and genuine.

As I heard from one of my professors, citing results of another author does not mean that you would not be held responsible in case of false/inaccurate results.

Update: Following the comment about raw data I think such data can be trusted, unless proved otherwise. Also, it is better to go for raw data (data sets) used widely thus reducing the chance there would be something terribly wrong with the data.


I searched for the author Anonymous in PubMed (the life sciences publication database), and found 26 results, which shed some light on your question.

Some paper titles:

"I was sexually harassed as a junior by senior doctors: it still goes
on, and it needs to stop"
"My own story: dealing with depression"
"A mind surrounded by a moat: a first-person account of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis"
"Trying to overcome racism in the NHS"

So in many cases the authors are describing a sensitive experience or medical condition they have and they do not want others to know about. Alternatively the author could be a whistle-blower. It may also be used in some cases where the editor wrote the piece but does not take credit, but I am guessing this is usually not the case.


Is it unusual for a collaborator to ask for funding for a very short project?

Seems to me like that's their way of saying "no".  One week of work in exchange for authorship is a great deal -- and you'd give authorship to the professor, too, in exchange for nothing?  Why would the professor say no?  I'm guessing that the professor doesn't think your research will succeed, or get published, and therefore doesn't want to invest the time.

I'd recommend just working with the student in his "spare time".  I'm sure it's worth his time in exchange for authorship.


Postdoctoral grants for writing review papers

In Canadian grant parlance, I believe the kind of grant you are talking about is called "knowledge synthesis". The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has some information that describes this kind of grant. However, although such a thing exists, it might not be so readily available:

The page I linked is rather old (probably at least 5 years old), so I don't know if CIHR still funds this kind of research.
I'm not sure how CIHR operates, but I know that SSHRC (for social sciences and humanities) sends out very specific calls from time to time for knowledge synthesis grants specifically for literature reviews (here is a recent example). So, in that case, it is the funding agency that picks the topic, not the researcher.
In general, I don't think the major Canadian funding agencies offer this kind of grant directly to post-docs. Normally, it is for faculty members. Post-doc grants are separate, and I'm not sure if they would be fund literature reviews.

Ultimately, as far as CIHR is concerned, it is best to directly ask the scientific director of the specific institute that covers your area of research. They might be able to answer your questions


I don't think the lack of publications will be much of a barrier, but I also think you need more realistic goals. Top five US universities is a pretty small (minuscule) cross section of what is available. The total number of positions in any given year is small and the demand is gigantic.

Any application to a doctoral program in the US will be judged on a variety of things, including letters of recommendation, rather than on any single criterion. The admissions committee wants to be able to make a fairly solid prediction that each candidate is likely to be a success. Given your background as you state it, you can probably get admitted somewhere. But your chances at only those top five places is pretty tiny.

I suggest that you apply to a range of R1 universities, including those if you like. Maybe you get lucky but you will be more likely to find something suitable if you cast a wider net. Look at the top fifty, say, and see what they offer. some of the State University programs, for example, are larger and have more slots available, due to a large faculty. But also look for professors with working groups in and area of interest. The right advisor can make all the difference.

And, if you have the time, there is no reason you can't still publish as an independent researcher.


Two years into my PhD program, and Mom is dying of cancer. Should I tell my advisor about it?

My deepest sympathies for what you are going through.

You should certainly tell your advisor. No reasonable person would believe that you are using this situation as an "excuse" for poor performance.

Understanding your situation will help your advisor do his/her job: advising you according to your current needs and circumstances.

Your advisor may be able to direct you to mental health and other support services at your university that can help you through this time. He/she can also make you aware of other options that are available under exceptional circumstances: for example, a short leave of absence if you feel it is necessary, or an option to delay a comprehensive exam, or other similar concessions that can take some of the academic pressure off you while you focus on regaining your mental and emotional health.


Should I mention that I am a tutor on Chegg on my CV?

I would probably interpret "tutor on Chegg" to mean "paid to help students cheat". Maybe this isn't a fair assessment of your job there, but it's certainly the impression I get out of Chegg.
I am only willing to answer student questions on StackExchange and on other sites here like Biology.SE because of strict moderation policies that prevent students from using the site as a homework cheating tool rather than an educational aid. Other sites without these controls, especially those that seem to have a business model based on helping students cheat, leave a bad taste in my mouth.


Would a paper on neuroscience make an impact for the Computer Science PhD application?

Such a paper can't hurt and might help. CS is a pretty wide field with both theoretical and applied aspects. Your paper seems to describe applications. That would be more of a boost in some programs than in others.
But in the US, doctoral admissions is based on a wide variety of things, including letters of recommendation. Your co-author(s) may be able to help you there.
In any case, the paper is (about) done, and can't be a negative, so certainly include it in the CV and if applied CS is your goal, you might have something to add to your Statement of Purpose. Expect a lot of competition for slots in those schools, of course. You increase your chances if you widen the search a bit.


How to respond to reviewers that ask you to "look again at your results" without providing further details?

Email the editor to ask for clarification. They are the person you need to satisfy. If they don't understand what is needed either, they will either get in touch with the reviewer to ask, or they will tell you not to worry.


Can I apply to international internship 3 month early?

I think you need to apply early as there is some delay in getting things set up properly before the internship begins. However, the question about whether you can start the internship early can only be answered by your current institution, which has made the rule. If they say it can't be started early, then the question becomes whether the employer wanting an intern is willing to wait for you to start and whether it will be sufficiently long for your needs.

But you need to start asking those questions at the appropriate place (not here) immediately. Don't wait until December to start the process.


Professors who use their own idiosyncratic names for things

This is a tough one because it is a topic that meanders into psychology. I have encountered similar problems when professors insist on calling, that thing that everyone else calls agrees on as blue, pink. I will also add that I agree that this is an "academia" problem, as it relates to distribution and comprehension of information.

Three techniques for clarification that I have tried. YMMV.

Ask the professor why they feel the need to be an opaque and pedantic prat. Tell them to stop making up new names for things to feel better about their pathetic little existence and use the language of the field. This method has been met with some ... "resistance". :-P
Ask the professor is X has any adjacent concepts or theories that might be good to look up. This is dangerous as sometimes the prof. will decide to wax poetic on the art of Edvard Munch when you started out talking about impedance mismatch. Use with caution.
Ask the professor about the similarities and differences between X and Y. On a few occasions I have been VERY surprised to learn that I had completely misunderstood the point they were trying to make. All I needed to do was ask the simple question of "is this like such and such?" This has worked several times. BONUS: This approach has also led to some interesting discussions that worked back around to my area of research.

Jokes aside, the common theme here is 'to ask'. :-) As for "don't use google"... I don't know what to say about that. I guess you could ask for other reference material to gain a better understanding of the topic but google scholar is a pretty awesome/terrible research tool to use as a handicap. (IMHO)

Good luck with your class.


In many cases, they might think it is clear from the job title.  In the US, job titles with the words "Lecturer", "Instructor", "Adjunct", "Visiting", "Clinical" are almost always non-tenure-track.

The job title "Assistant Professor" is usually tenure-track, though with some exceptions: "named" assistant professorships like "John Doe Assistant Professor" may be effectively postdocs.  But it does not hurt to ask for clarification.

As David says, talk to someone in the department instead of HR.  The HR office is usually not closely involved in a faculty search and isn't likely to be the best source of information.


ask PI for more acknowledgement of good work / affirmation

This sounds like a matter you may need to take into your own hands. You can't make a person more emotive, affectionate, cheerleader-eque...that may just not be your prof's style. Also, you're sort of asking them to do more "work", even if you don't see it as work. It's one more thing they have to deal with. Why not solve this yourself: be the change you want.

Do you have a pin-board in/near the lab? Cover it in bright paper, call it the achievement board, and start tacking announcements of jobs well done. Alternatively, create an news/achievements email that goes out to everyone once a month that highlights what everyone has accomplished and make sure everyone tells you what they're up to.

Just two of many possibilities, but this way you come across as proactive to your prof, a champion of your peers, rather than needy and demanding of more of their time.


My mentor is advising me to "not worry about the cost"?

Your mentor, or prospective mentor, is telling you not to worry about the cost. Presumably, they know what they are talking about and have funding that can cover the costs. A $50,000, I am assuming US, laser could be easily covered by a large NSF/NIH type grant or start up funds. If it is a piece of equipment that the mentor needs for their lab and will use in the future, then it is no big deal. You are not taking money out of anyone's pocket. That said, you should realize that you will not be able to keep the laser at the end and it will likely stay in your mentor's lab.


What will happen to non open-access publications in the UK after 2014?

It seems slightly annoying, but not insurmountable. From the UK Research Council's Policy on Access, I quote,

The Research Councils define Open Access to mean unrestricted, on-line access to peer reviewed and published scholarly research papers. Specifically a user must be able to do the following free of any publisher-imposed access charge:

Read published research papers in an electronic format.
Search for and re-use (including download) the content [N.b.: footnote specifies including but not limited to the text, data, images, and figures] of published research papers both manually and using automated tools (such as those for text and data mining) provided that any such re-use is subject to proper attribution.

Open Access therefore allows unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools, as well as unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution – as defined by the Creative Commons CC-BY license. The Research Councils acknowledge that some publications may need to amend their copyright
conditions if they are to meet this definition of Open Access.

Furthermore, about compliance by journals:

The Research Councils will continue to support a mixed approach to Open Access. The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with their policy on Open Access if:

The journal provides via its own website immediate and unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY license should be used in this case. OR

Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above, the journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no ‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.

For individual grant recipients, the most important bit is probably the following:

RCUK have in the past provided support for APCs through both direct and indirect costs as part of grant funding. From 1st April 2013 and until further notice, RCUK will support the payment of APCs and other publication charges related to Research Council-funded research solely through block grants to UK Higher Education Institutions, approved independent research organisations and Research Council Institutes. Research grant applications will, therefore, no longer include provision for Open Access publication or other publication charges.
In all cases universities and research organisations upon receipt of funding should transfer these charges to
their institutional publication fund. A university or research organisation can then access these funds to pay
for APCs for any article resulting from research council funding.

and from the "guidance" document:

The Research Councils will be amending their conditions of award to reflect these new requirements and will be extending existing mechanisms which capture research grants outputs (such as the Research Outputs System) to include compliance monitoring on this policy.

To summarise: much as Daniel Shub anticipated, the policy allows for either a fully open access publication or publishing in a pay-walled journal which allows you to deposit the Accepted Manuscript in certain repositories, with an acceptable embargo delay. And enforcement of this will be much in the same way other conditions for grant dispersal are enforced. (They tell you what you can do with the money; if you don't follow the rules, they take the money back and/or not give you money ever again.)
The only thing to additionally note is the small caveat that pay-walled journals, to qualify for the second option of "open access" cannot charge article processing fees. (Which is not too unreasonable: a journal is to charge either the author or the reader but not both.)


How should one maintain a relationship with a professor?

If you don't plan to work with or take courses from this professor in the future, I advocate getting a letter of recommendation now instead of waiting. Services such as Interfolio allow your letter writers to upload a letter now that you can send out to any recipient at any time. This way, the professor still remembers you well; I can tell you from experience that after a couple of years of teaching large (>100 student) classes, even my better students start to fade together in my memory.


To continue or quit my PhD in physics after 4yrs？

We only have half the story. What you describe seems outrageous (particularly the dinner part!), but I imagine if your professor had described the situation, he would characterize it quite differently (I have one socially-awkward but useful student and one whiny, unproductive student...just as an example, not saying you're actually whiny or unproductive). Given this, I'm going to avoid criticizing any of you.

In any case, the current situation is clearly untenable. A couple of options:

Talk to your advisor. Send an e-mail asking for a formal meeting to discuss your status. In the meeting, you might start by saying something nice about finding his work interesting and regretting that things haven't gone as well as you would like. Then, ask him when he sees you graduating and whether he will give you interesting work going forward. If you can smooth things over and make a good plan going forward to work independently, maybe you can finish out your last two years. If not, better to find out now so you can cut your losses.
Get a new advisor. In a small group of ~10 professors, this may be difficult. I would start by talking to the department chair or a trusted professor
Transfer to a new university. I realize this may be difficult with your visa restrictions.
Leave with an MS, if this is possible. If you are OK going into industry, an MS is not so bad (and you can always apply to PhD programs after leaving with an MS).


Include in-progress paper in CV - UG to Grad school

If a paper is sufficiently far along in the draft stage, it's common to include the paper in your CV, mentioning that it is "in prep." i.e. in preparation. However, I would caution against doing this if the draft is not very far advanced -- the "in prep" signals that the paper will be finished and submitted to a journal soon, and it will look a bit dodgy if it isn't. Similarly, although this doesn't exactly apply to your situation, one published paper on a CV is worth much more than even two or three "in prep". The supervisor of your current project will be best placed to advise you if it's ready to mention on a CV, and hopefully they will be writing you a reference letter which highlights your contributions too.


One student grading other students' assignments in the same course?

A student grading other students in the same course is unusual, but certainly not illegal.  As to whether it is inappropriate, I would consider two cases:

Sometimes professors ask all students to do part of the "teaching" responsibilities for a course, whether that be lecturing, grading, creating course notes, etc.  The theory of this is that it forces a deeper engagement with the material, and may help prepare further skills.  When grading or similar is done by a student or other students for a pedagogical reason like this, I see no problem, as long as the professor takes into account the potential for quality variation.
If an individual student is simultaneously a class member and a TA/grader, that is much more unusual, and generally a bad idea.  In this case, the pedagogical value of having all students engaged with the process is not there to balance the expected decrease in grading accuracy and quality.  There may be certain unusual circumstances where it is appropriate, and a professor can, in fact, organize things to compensate for the issues that you raise, but in general I would be highly dubious about this practice.


When do you stop mentioning your dissertation in the cover letter?

My usual advice about cover letters and vitas is to include everything that you can include "with a straight face". A some point you stop putting your high school awards, because it's too embarrassing to mention them; at some later point you stop putting minor honors from your undergraduate studies; etc.

If you are a recent PhD and are applying for tenure-track positions, you should certainly mention your thesis, unless you have so much other research that it is no longer relevant.

But you do not necessarily need an entire paragraph. Just now, I looked up two successful cover letters of mine. One had a single sentence about my thesis (for a research post-doc position). One had two sentences, the second of which just said that my work could be suitable for undergraduate research (this letter was for a tenure-track position).  At least in my field, we usually submit a longer "research statement", and so there is little need to go into depth about research in the cover letter.


Professor wrote to me saying he supports my fellowship application to the committee

It is positive certainly, but not definitive. It is just a progress report sent as a courtesy. He is being encouraging, but not making any commitments.

Of course, you need to go through the normal admissions process. This isn't a substitute for any formal procedures that are required. In US institutions admissions is handled by the university, not the individual professor. Funding may be under his control, however.


How can multiple people grade assignments online so that different graders don't see each others' grades?

This feature is currently not available in Moodle.

Please have a look at the link below.
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Assignments/Grade_Assignments/Delegated_Grading

Trust this matches your requirement


Yes, you should keep the acknowledgments. Whatever the acknowledged did to contribute to your paper is independent from the mode of dissemination – except when it clearly isn’t, e.g., when you acknowledge a reviewer whose suggestions improved the journal paper but could not be included in the Arxiv paper due to journal policies.

If an acknowledgment is required by somebody (e.g., by whoever funded your research), this requirement may also apply to publishing a preprint, i.e., you may even be forced to do this.

As for common practice, I have seen many Arxiv papers with acknowledgments and never noticed an acknowledgment being only present in the journal version (but then I never payed attention to this). I never removed acknowledgments for an Arxiv publication.


What is the difference between bachelor of science in engineering and bachelor of engineering in the US?

In the United States there are a number of different types of bachelor's degrees that are essentially interchangeable, and which one a person gets depends primarily on the history of their institution.  As such, the particular name of your degree is not likely to confuse anybody, as long as it has the word "Bachelor" in it, and the correct thing for you to do is to simply name your degree as it has been given to you.


Is it a risk working for a graduate advisor who has over 20 students in their lab?

Being part of a big lab has pluses and minuses, and whether it's a good thing for you is likely to depend much on your personality and circumstances.

Cons: you've put your finger on the key fact, that students in big labs are likely to receive much less attention that students in small labs.  You also might end up as a just small part of some big project, or even just a glorified lab tech.
Pros: in order to support so many students, a professor generally needs to have good funding and being doing research that lots of people find exciting.  This means that the projects you are working on are likely to have people paying attention to them, and that if you do well, you may have a powerful backer.

For somebody who thrives in a big, competitive environment, a big lab may be good.  For somebody who wants a more personal relationship with one-on-one tutorial, a small lab is probably better.  All sorts of labs and advisors can be routes to good careers, however, and it's a matter of figuring out what works best for you.


Why are journals telling me that my article is plagiarized even though I wrote it by myself?

Chances are the journal ran your paper through an automated plagiarism checker (the only realistic way to check for plagiarism these days) and this 70% number is what the program found. That you found nothing using Turnitin isn't enough evidence to prove there was no plagiarism: a plagiarism checker is only as good as the data it has, and it's possible Turnitin doesn't have the original paper.

Having said that the journal should tell you which paper they think you've plagiarized from, as well as which sentences are plagiarized. If they don't, you should absolutely write back to ask. From your comments you've already done that, so there's nothing to do now except wait. The fact that at least two journals have checked your paper and found plagiarism is a bad sign; on the bright side, you can ask both journals for more details and it's less likely they both don't answer.

If they respond you'll be able to fix the plagiarism if it's there, or point out why there's no plagiarism if it isn't there.
If they don't respond after a reasonable time, then the only thing left to do is submit the paper elsewhere.


How can I address several deans in a letter?

One solution would be: instead of sending a single email addressed to all of them, send each one a separate message, addressed to them personally and with an appropriate salutation.  This is also more likely to get their attention than something that appears to be a mass-mailed form letter.  If it's important that they know the same letter is being sent to the other deans, say so in the text.


Can I re-submit a rejected manuscript to same Journal after 2 years

If you were invited to resubmit, you can.  Unless this invitation was conveyed to you with an explicit deadline, your waiting on it should not be problematic.

However, if you resubmit to the same journal after 31 months, then although you should call attention to the fact that you were invited to do so, you should not expect to get any advantage or economy from this.  In my experience journals and editors keep papers "in mind" for a certain, smaller length of time, after which they can forget pretty thoroughly.  (For that matter, 31 months is plenty long enough for the editor who handled your paper to no longer be working for the journal.)  You cannot count on getting the same referee(s).  On the other hand you might, which is something to keep in mind if there was something negative in the original referee report.

What I would advise is to  reflect on whether this is the best journal to submit your paper.  If you feel strongly that it is, then resubmit there.  If you weren't sure whether that journal was such a great choice and/or submitted there more or less randomly, I would try again with a different journal.  I have had the experience of submitting a paper to a journal, having it rejected, writing back later to the editor explaining that I was able to get the results the referee asked for, and the editor said, "OK, then why not resubmit?"  The paper went back to the same referee, who forgot about it, and then when reminded decided it still wasn't good enough.  Now I might have gotten the same referee at a different journal, but still: annoying!  In general I feel that once a journal has rejected your paper, it's safest (even psychologically) to take future incarnations of the paper elsewhere.


Is it illegal to explain someone else's research paper on my website?

As long as you don't quote too extensively from the paper, but do formally quote as needed, you should be fine.
Giving credit avoids plagiarism. Avoiding excessive quoting avoids possible copyright infringement.
But cite the "paper" itself, not just the "paper author".
I've assumed that you have proper access to the paper.


Should I attend Seminars/Conferences that give Certificates upon achieving some number of attendance?

There is some value in attending these Seminars/Conferences that you may want to consider:

It shows that you are "doing more" than the minimum requirements
You may end up adding or emphasizing important keywords in your CV
The Seminars/Conferences you mentioned are from University/Departments and clubs.  If the Seminars/Conferences have any "Name Brand" involvement, such as corporations or other institutions, you get the name of the institution on your CV.


Manuscripts should be submitted for double-blind review without acknowledgments, which are added after acceptance in the camera-ready manuscript.


How to estimate standard error of journal impact factor based on impact factor and number of citable papers?

I think the standard error (of the mean, commonly estimated as s/sqrt(n) as stated in the OP) is a robust and good estimate for the uncertainty of the impact factor. It would certainly be interesting to know this together with the impact factors. Unfortunately, the standard error cannot be computed merely from the impact factor and the number of citable papers.

Note that the impact factor, being the average citation count, follows a normal distribution, even if the citation counts themselves don't (according to the central limit theorem).

A completely different question is whether, in view of skewed distributions of citation counts, the traditional impact factor (=average citation count) is a good measure for journal impact.


Is it OK to include public domain (wikimedia commons) image in a research grant proposal?

Normally yes, as long as you clearly cite the source (even if the license does not require it, plagiarism rules do) and of course the image should be appropriate for the research proposal (regardless of source).  To be sure, carefully check any rules applying to your particular research proposal; it is possible (but unlikely) they have unusual rules that may prohibit this.  For details on how to cite, see this summary page on Wikimedia Commons (thanks Buffy for the pointer).  Note: most images on Wikimedia Commons are not public domain, but under another free license — check the specific image for details (it's even possible images have been wrongly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, but there are limits in how far you can practically go to verify that the license information there is correct).


Correcting small errors in text/picture after publication?

Typically, it is difficult/impossible to correct this kind of mistakes after formal publication. The 'traditional' reason is that there are now printed copies of your article in libraries around the world, and the online copy should coincide with them. Today there are online-only journals, for which this reason is less compelling, so you might want to ask, but I wouldn't be surprised if the journal answered that it's their policy not to change anything.

For something more major, you would issue an erratum / corrigendum, but for typos and small mistakes there isn't a good solution.


Is it okay for a thesis to have sections of very different lengths?

There's typically a great deal of flexibility in your thesis presentation, and as long as the lengths don't disturb you or your committee, there is no reason to force your work into some Procrustean bed of perceived length balance.

In my own thesis, the number of pages per chapter were approximately: 12, 4, 8, 8, 36, 12, 44, 16, and 6 pages, respectively.  While there may have been problems in the document, chapter length was not one that either I or anybody who encountered it ever had any complaint around.

In short: let the sections be the length that is best for them, and don't worry if they are different.


I assume that your supervisor already know that you already submitted your work:
If your targeted publication venue allows you to publish pre-print than you may submit your work at arxiv or any other similar public library and give reference to you work in extended work conducted by your supervisor.Otherwise, you can give reference to your work in extended version with status "Under Review".


Proposing collaboration to an invited speaker?

I don't see any ethical dilemma here unless you threaten to retract his invitation. Don't even hint at it. You liked his work enough to invite him to speak, you should feel free to invite him to collaborate. If he declines, thank him for considering it and tell him you're looking forward to his talk this summer. If he shows interest in collaborating, keep the email conversation going, set up a phone call, etc, etc, and see where it goes. You might be able to use his visit to get some real work done (write a paper, write some code, write a grant, etc) if you're already agreed to collaborate. Don't waste your time between now and then.


Is there a website that lists the journals that are actually scams?

There used to be one, called Beall's list, which listed predatory journals. The author however took it offline, apparently partly because of legal threats. If you search online you will be able to find archived copies of the list, but as far as I know these are not updated any more. You can read about it here for example.