How to translate German "Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz"?

I wouldn’t translate the law’s name as I do not see how it helps potential applicants. Just put yourself in their position and think about what benefit it grants you:

Any reasonable resource elaborating the content of the law in detail will mention the German name, even if written in English.
The translation itself will only give the applicant a very rough idea what it is about. The more important aspect what relevant consequences the law has.
To be actually affected by the law, the applicant has to have a history of employment in German academia and thus not be scared by long German words anymore.

If I would have to write about this in a job ad, I would write something like:

  Applicants who were previously employed in a similar position in Germany may not be eligible due to the restrictions imposed by German law (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz).

Note that I have rarely ever seen this law mentioned on job ads to which it applies and never on a PhD position – which makes sense because the law would only matter if the candidate already has been employed on a PhD position in Germany for more than three years.

Finally, if you can, I would let your HR department worry about this. They should have some legal boilerplate available.


Does it look bad to get recommendation letters all from the outside of undergrad school?

I would recommend getting a letter from someone in the field even if they do not know you personally, but this is based off of my experience from getting letters and may vary slightly from what you are doing. The guidelines I was given were to obtain letters from 1) someone who is able to speak to my academic talent and 2) someone who knows about the program you are applying to. In this instance, it would be helpful to get a letter from a professor where you did well in their class. If you need letters for other purposes (like a character reference), then it may be helpful to consider getting a letter from someone who knows you personally. If you get a letter from someone who has never gone to grad school, it may be difficult for them to explain why you would be a good candidate for the program you are applying to.

Even though you did not spend a lot of time getting to know your professors, you would be surprised at how many may remember you. I faced a similar dilemma when obtaining my letters, but it turned out really well. I recommend 1) emailing your professors with your name, semester you took them, and your GPA in that class and scheduling an in-person appointment and 2) bringing any application materials (like a statement of purpose) that may help the professor in writing you a strong letter. The worst thing that can happen is the professor declining to write a letter, and in that case, you would have the backup of asking someone who knows you better and is more likely to say yes to writing a letter.


Latest time to reverse a declined PhD offer

It is likely that there is no longer a slot open for you. But under the circumstances you state, the latest time to contact them is probably now. Once you declined an offer they moved on and accepted others. If those others have been accepted there is no longer room until the next class.

But if you are willing to wait a year, then you can probably enter the pool again and be considered like anyone else.

However, it also just sounds like a case of "buyer's remorse". Your situation at B sounds like it would work out fine.


When writing a literature review, more specifically writing a summary for a source, is the use of quotes frowned upon versus paraphrasing?

In general, paraphrasing authors is better than quoting unless they say something truly unique and their exact words are needed to convey their ideas. In a literature review, you may find yourself needing to quote more often because of this reason (for example, historian Gary Dickson coined the term "Mythhistory," which is not something I have heard other scholars use).

Many times in undergraduate writing, students will use several quotes in order to make their word count higher. In higher levels of academic writing (like journal articles or books), some publishers will not print your work if you include too many quotes. (A former professor of mine had to write a letter to his publisher to justify adding a total of two block quotes in his 80,000+ word book.)

I think the most important thing about using quotes is to explain them. To say that so-and-so said "important thing" isn't enough; your interpretation and justification of the quote is needed. I personally think your example in the question would be better paraphrased rather than quoted because the way the authors worded their finding is not too unique. If there is some specific wording from this that you would like to interpret, then I would say quoting is better.

I would suggest not arbitrarily quoting. If you can strongly justify using a quote then I would do so, otherwise paraphrasing is generally better.


Should he/she mention the name of the institute he/she wants to leave?

Yes, absolutely.  The application will typically ask for your complete academic history, which would include the institution where you are currently studying.  Leaving it out would be an extremely serious ethical violation that could jeopardize not only your chances of admission but your entire academic career.

  If the universities call the current PI

They normally wouldn't call your current PI.  But one of the requirements to apply to a US graduate program is to have letters of recommendation from people who have known you academically.  If you are currently in a PhD program, they would usually expect that one of those letters would be from your current supervisor, since that is the person who would be most familiar with your most recent work.  If you don't have a letter from them, an admissions committee might make the assumption that your current work is not very good, and so you didn't request a letter from your supervisor because you knew it would be unfavorable.

You can mitigate this somewhat if you have a letter from someone else at your current institution, especially if their letter explains why you could not ask the PI.  But your application probably still won't be as strong as if you had a positive letter from the PI.  If you have no letters from anyone at your current institution, that's likely to be a red flag.

Many PIs would have no problem writing a positive letter for a student wanting to make a move, and I think any PI who refuses to do because they don't want to lose the student is being selfish and doing harm to their profession.  But you know your PI better than we do.  So you're going to have to make your own judgment as to the relative risks and benefits of asking your PI for a letter, or seeing if there is someone else there whom you trust.

  Can the US universities reject the application based on the current PI's feedback in spite of the candidate having excellent grades and recommendations from previous PIs?

Yes, they can.  The admission committee looks at the entire application, and any piece of it could affect their decision.  At some very competitive departments, any significant piece of negative information on the application might be enough to reject it.  Other departments might be willing to overlook a single negative (or missing) recommendation if other parts of the application are strong.  There is no way to know in advance what any given committee would decide to do.


What to do after failing out of grad school?

Welcome to the real world.

If you can still get a bachelor's degree, I strongly recommend you do it. The number of jobs that require a bachelor's degree is much larger than the number of jobs that require a masters (which is in turn larger than those that require a PhD). If you can't get a bachelor's degree, you'll really have wasted a lot more years of time and will probably be forced into an uninteresting low-pay job.

The next thing to do is look for a job. Use your local job repositories or job search portals. Figure out what you want to do, and approach the companies in that area to see if they're hiring. If you don't know what you want to do, then look for jobs that require the skills you have. For example if you're trained in psychology, look for jobs that require a degree in psychology. You should also use your network. When I left my previous job, the vacated position literally "fell into" the lap of my replacement. I told my Honours supervisor I was resigning, and she recommended my replacement.

Then prepare a CV that caters to non-academics, stressing what you learned in university. Especially emphasize the transferable skills. For example if you learned the programming language C++ during your university days, and the job you're applying to needs programming skills, you're in business. Be aware that you'll likely be interviewed before getting hired, and one question you are odds-on to be asked is "why did you not finish graduate school". I would recommend preparing a good answer.

There's a lot of advice out there on how to find a job. It's up to you to look for it. Unless you stay in academia forever, you'll end up in a job search eventually. If your university has a career center, absolutely visit them. They're a great resource.


Published paper without advisor's name while receiving stipend from her grant

I think what I did was wrong because my stipend came from one of her grants.

There is no connection between funding and authorship.  Providing funding is never sufficient to make someone an author.  So you have not done anything wrong for this reason.

  What is going to be the aftermath of this?

I cannot predict what your advisor will do.  I can say what they should do.  If your paper is accepted, your advisor should say this is evidence they trained you so well that you are able to do research independently.  This makes you and your advisor both look good.

A good rule for research in general is:  Do not keep secrets.  If you feel a need to keep a secret, it's probably paranoia.


How do textbook authors and professors cook up homework/assignment questions?

You missed scenario f, which I suspect is the most common:  The professor has been teaching this class and refining the textbook/notes for years, and developed homework questions out of problems that have come up over the course of that extended period of time of engaging with this material.


Is it okay to work on colleagues' ideas after they leave academia?

I'm going to be blunt: yes, absolutely yes. What is the other option? That the progress of humanity should be stifled because you didn't get a job?
Ideas do not belong to anyone. The way I read it, you did not even come up with the idea independently, but "with some guidance from a research fellow in the lab". Look at it from the fellow perspective: they helped someone develop a research proposal, the person didn't get a job and the grant wasn't awarded, the person left academia, and (correct me if I'm wrong) made no effort to keep in touch with the fellow and/or work on the topic again. What is the fellow supposed to do now? Trash the idea, waste all the time spent helping the other person?
This happens all the time of academia. Supervisor helps a student/postdoc develop a research proposal, the proposal fails, the student/postdoc leaves academia. Now what? Is the idea not good anymore? There's no reason not to continue working on it.
Now let's answer your apparent actual question:

I know that it's kind of clear that I'm following a different path, and I'm happy to be doing so. But I'm a little upset that they wouldn't even send me an email to say "Hey, remember the stuff you came up with, well we got some money to do it etc.."
Am I wrong to be upset by this?

I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong to feel something. But if the question is "did the fellow act reasonably", I would lean on yes. It depends what your relationship was, but based on what you've told us, the idea has been developed a long time ago (several unsuccessful fellowship proposals + a year of postdoc + since whenever you took the software engineering job, as far as I can tell), and it's not clear you kept in touch with the fellow. What is clear though is that you're not working on the idea anymore. At some point it becomes fair game.

I don't think there's anything to be done about this, but it has got under my skin for someone I trusted to have no qualms about using ideas I worked to develop whilst I had to leave the field to find work.

Academia and life in general is not just. Yes, it's unjust that you were unsuccessful and had to quit when you proposed this idea, but the other person is apparently successfully working on it. But this other person cannot change what happened or give you the job. I don't know you or your situation, but it sounds more like you're upset about having had to leave academia more than at your colleague.


How do I best present my skills when switching fields from electrical engineering to earth sciences?

One problem you will need to think about is if you aim for a research job within earth Sciences of a more technical job. The latter may be easier because your knowledge is certainly in demand. The former will be more difficult since you lack an Earth Science background. Note that I do not say impossible.

Will you compete. The answer is definitely not an easy no. But, the position you will be looking for will need to be heavy on, for example, signal processing to make you of interest. Usually working on data is followed by interpretations of the data in terms of Earth Science applications. You will of course have a definite disadvantage there. Having some documented understanding of Earth Sciences will be beneficial.

I would encourage you to find a meeting where you could meet specialists and discuss opportunities and also just see what is done out there. If you are in the US then attending the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting in San Francisco (December) would be a good option. In Europe the EGU (European Geophysical Union) meeting in Vienna (April) will be good. There are also more specialized meeting on Remote Sensing. A good way in could be to strike up collaborations where your expertise adds to the mix.

Building sensors. The remote sensing sensors are built by electronics experts such as yourself and not by earth Scientists within the earth Science community (departments). Earth Scientists will provide input to what specs a sensor would need but that is usually the dividing line. So the answer to the possibilities lies outside Earth Science, you most likely would be looking at space agencies or physics departments.

On the whole, I would say that your expertise is valued in Earth Science but the total lack of documented knowledge in the subject(s) will make the opportunities smaller. I need to add that Earth Science, in its widest sense is a very broad and covers many different departments/subjects which is why trying to find some persons with research profiles that attract you a good venture.


The page you linked to provides a PDF named Author Information Pack (at the very top, right under the headline).

In that file, the different paper types are described. In particular, a Systems Paper is defined as follows:

  Widely adopted semantic systems and systems that generate a far above average amount of interest in the Semantic Web community, may be explained in systems papers. Systems papers are recommended to have 6 - 8 pages in double column format.


Does it look bad to have a PhD thesis unrelated to the rest of future research?

Will it be perceived negatively to have a PhD thesis unrelated to the rest of my future research or work?

Relative to what?  Having a PhD is generally perceived positively relative to lower levels of education, but it is perceived less positively than a PhD that is more directly in the research field in which you intend to practice.

In your case it sounds like you will be within the general field (computer science) that you want to practice in, but you are considering doing a research project that is not of great interest to you.  The PhD program is generally considered to be a training program for researchers, and the goal is to get you up to a level where you can do independent peer-reviewed research that is up to the standard acceptable for academic publication.  You will probably find that a PhD program in computer science gives you a wide range of high-level skills and abilities in that field, and you will benefit from it even if you end up doing research in other topics in computer science.  Having said that, if your PhD is in your future field of research then you get a little head-start, since you are already more familiar with research in that particular topic area.  This will not be much of a head-start, since you should graduate from a PhD program with the ability to learn a new area quicker than you learned it during your candidature.

In regard to this issue, it is worth noting that it is extremely common for PhD researchers to move around into different research areas as their career progresses, and correspondingly, it is uncommon for experienced researchers to still be doing research on the same project that they did in their PhD candidature.  As you get more experience you will get better and faster at absorbing and understanding material in a new research project, and so the disadvantage of not having researched in a topic before diminishes.  Once you are adept at research, you will find that there is not a huge difference in difficulty in researching in the topic of your PhD candidature, versus researching a new project.

  ...it is not what I would have picked for myself or an area I foresee wanting to work in long term.
  ...
  I am not worried about lacking the motivation to finish the thesis, or the opportunity cost of not starting directly researching the area I am interested in.

Now for some unsolicited advice - You say that you are not worried about lacking the motivation to finish the thesis.  You should be worried.  It is a bad idea to take on a PhD candidature unless you are confident that the topic will be able to command your interest and passions for a period of several years in your candidature (usually 3-4 years full-time).  If you are already viewing the topic in this way before you even start, it is highly likely that you will lose motivation and struggle with maintaining interest in the topic well before the end of the candidature.  This will make your candidature a major burden on you, and it is likely to lead to failure.


Is it mandatory to declare conflicts of interest?

I'm fairly confident that most scholarly journals require that you disclose conflicts of interest. If the publisher or journal doesn't discretely mention it, it wouldn't hurt to include it in the manuscript anyway.


What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple advisers?

The answer (as in case of most answers in academia.SE) is it depends, often widely from case-to-case. Unless presented with an exceptional example, I would generally view having more than two advisers as a major hindrance - the perceived benefit of having another source of ideas is negated heavily by the communications overhead between them, and the scope for misunderstandings about their role, which might cause the student to be either overloaded in multiple (possibly conflicting) areas, or languishing without any significant guidance. The rest of my answer is based on the assumption that the number of advisers is 2.

What is the defined role of the said advisers - are they equally responsible for guiding the student towards completion of their graduate studies (as I've been told is the case in some European schools/research schools), or is one of them the principal guide and the other a co-guide? The amount of time/effort invested by each would depend on their perception of how much they are actually responsible for the student's growth as a researcher.
As with most social interactions, it would help greatly if there is a good (or at least professional) working relationship between the 2 guides, as well as a healthy overlap of research areas - a new student might not be able to handle multiple research problems in completely different areas at the same time (without affecting the time to graduate, or the quality of results).
Assuming the student publishes with both of them independently, it would look good on her CV that she can produce publishable research with multiple established researchers. This could also have the side-effect of enhancing the student's research network - as a lot of papers (in CS at least) have more than 2 authors, and often collaborating on an paper could lead to more papers/research done with the same set of persons in future.


Can I pursue a new Master's in another country, while I'm pursuing one?

The first question is whether you even have the option of working on both degrees at once.  I'd assume you don't, since positions with full funding are generally based on an assumption that you will be devoting full effort to them.  They may formally rule out other employment/studies, and even if they don't the department may become upset or feel tricked if they discover you are also doing something else at the same time.  (And departments can sometimes react similarly even if the position has no funding: even if you are paying your own living expenses, they probably consider themselves to be at least partially subsidizing the costs of your education.)

So you shouldn't try to do both degrees at once unless both departments officially agree to it.  Even in that case, I think it's a bad idea.  Success in graduate school is based on quality, not quantity, and this approach can't be good for quality.  You'll be writing your thesis remotely, with far less contact and advising than you would have had in person.  That alone will make it harder to do your best work, but at the same time you'll also be participating in a different full-time program.  You might not be able to do good work for both at once; if you can, then you ought to be able to do great work if you focus on just one (and doing great work at one program is much better than doing good work at two).  The same reasoning applies no matter how talented and hard-working you are: if you can do great work in both programs at once, then you ought to be able to do amazing work by focusing on one.

  If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?

Having two MSc degrees might be a small negative, by making you look unfocused, but it probably won't make much of a difference either way.  Ultimately, you'll be evaluated by your academic achievements (papers, thesis, outstanding performance in courses), judged primarily by quality rather than quantity, so you should try to maximize these achievements.


who should I contact for the Faculty interview follow up: Department head or Search committee?

If your goal is simply to thank them for hosting you and meeting with you, I think it's really up to you to choose who to include.

However, I'm guessing that your main goal is to get a reply with some kind of update about your application status.  In that case, I would send a message with only one recipient.  The reason is simple: if there are multiple recipients, it's unclear who should respond and since they are busy people they may each hope that one of the other recipients will respond.

As for who that single recipient should be, I would write to the same person that invited you for the interview.  That message may have officially come from the department or committee, but there is a single person who sent it; that person is certain to know the status of the search and is the person most likely to reply promptly to you.

In case all the invitation correspondence was with an administrator and not a professor, then the search committee chair is a good choice.


Cover letter: List strangers as potential collaborators? And/or, can/should I be contacting them?

I think your need to trust your instinct that this kind of 'name dropping' is pretentious and avoid it.

By contrast, if you have carefully read someone's papers and truly believe you might
want work on a closely related topic, then you might mention
that as a one possibility.

Personal mentions can backfire as often as they may have some positive
effect. For example, suppose you make a strong case in your application that you really want
to work with Prof X. But Prof X is about to go on sabbatical or to change
universities. So the hiring committee figures you're not such a
marvelous fit to the department after all.

However, I think you are right to realize that it is helpful to show that
you have background, interests, focus and organizational ability that will make you an
asset to the department.  Obviously, it should be clear in your mind
why you want to be accepted. Giving some inkling (without being pretentious)
of why they should accept you is a good idea.


Post-doc in Iran. Would you suggest it? Where are post-doc offers at Iranian Universities published?

I would not suggest to anyone, unless it is the only possible option.

First thing, I think it would be hard for a western to live in Iran, considering the human rights violations of the regime, not having freedom of speech, restraints on women, homosexuals and alcohol and many others. Before seriously considering such a move, I would try to contact some westerners in the institution you're considering and asking about their experience.

Second thing, most of the universities in Iran are public and as you're considering a job, rather than just a research visit or a conference visit, it means you're being employed by the Islamic republic. This is a big difference.
This sole thing, may get interpreted as you being supportive of the regime and its actions, and can jeopardize future positions in the academia (US/UK/Israel for sure, and probably some other allies like Canada or Australia), and may lead to some visa issues/questioning in the future. It is true that there are many Iranians in the west, and Sharif University is a great university for undergraduate studies whose graduates continue moving to get education in the best US institutions, but those are Iranians, not people who had a lot of options where to do undergraduate studies and most of them fled the country without looking back the minute they can.
It might also disqualify you in the future to work in some work that might require clearance (if you consider doing state-department/security related stuff in the future, as you have extensive language knowledge).

You've mentioned that you studied Indo-Iranian languages, so why not look at some better places? India? Azerbaijan?
If you know some Arabic, there are all those branches of fancy US institutes in the Emirates and Saudi-Arabia? Maybe those have departments about Indo-Iranian languages as well? (my first point applies there as well, but my second point is not very relevant).

P.S. I'm pretty sure that even in Europe, the general consensus about Iran would be mostly neutral to (some) negative, most definitely I would not describe it as positive.


How to submit errata when a coauthor disagrees

I'll give a few options that occur to me.

Talk to the editor. Essentially ask him what to do. On the one hand he has a policy he wants to follow, and on the other hand he presumably wants corrections of erroneous papers to appear. After all, the alternative is that someone points the error out in a different venue, and the whole community laughs at his journal. Perhaps he will be willing to bend his rules a bit.

You will need to discuss any possible solution with the editor, anyway, so you may want to start out with the most obvious option.

What's to keep you from writing something titled "Erratum" with the whole list of authors X, Y and Z, but with two sections "1. The Erratum (X, Y)" and "2. A dissenting point of view (Z)"? Yes, of course we want a paper to have a unified message, but in this particular case, I'd say that getting the word out in any way is better than burying the discussion under mounds of policy.
Propose that you write the erratum, but allow the dissenting author to comment on the erratum and explain why he thinks the erratum is erroneous. Then send both the erratum and the comment out to review and see what the reviewers say.
Perhaps you can do the discussion under point 2. above on the ArXiv, but publish an "erratum" with the full author list that does not discuss the error but only points to this discussion on the ArXiv.

One bonus for options 2-4: actually writing up these papers will force everyone to really think about the derivation in question, and either you or the dissenting author may change his mind about whether there is or is not an error.

Option 1 puts the onus on the editor, who may not be very flexible, judging from your question. (Of course, we don't know what he would say.) Options 2-4 are pretty "meh", and involve getting both the editor and the dissenting author on board. So given that these three options involve convincing two people, anyway, it may be worthwhile to look at other solutions involving communications.

How deeply have you discussed the putative error with the dissenting author? It may be easier to convince him that there is an error than to convince both him and the editor to collaborate on a "solution" nobody is happy with.
How sure are you that in fact there is an error? I'd assume the dissenting author is not completely out of his mind, so perhaps he does have a point?

Options 4 and 5 really involve taking the time to discuss the issue in depth with the dissenting author. I'd recommend doing this in person, if at all possible, not via email or the phone. And do this one-on-one with the dissenter, not together with all the other authors - if he perceives everyone else "ganging up" on him, he may become defensive.

Approach this with an open mind. Maybe there is a simple misunderstanding, and the two of you are really thinking of different things when you think you are talking about the same thing. Often you will learn a lot from this kind of discussion. In the best possible case, you will find two different ways of looking at the issue, and maybe even the germ of a follow-up paper.

If all else fails and the editor is in fact an associate editor, you can always escalate the issue to the chief editor.


Plagiarism between a Physical Review Letters paper and a previous arXiv preprint

(too long for a comment)

I would contact the authors of the suspected plagiarism and demand an explanation in the politest possible way. Try not to imply that you're certain your paper was plagiarized, but ask instead if, by citing your paper, whether or not they are aware that your conclusions are so similar. I would also add that you have sent the paper to the same journal, which being a PRL should be rather obvious due to the length limitations.

If you are sure their submission date to PRL comes after you submitted your pre-print to ArXiv, and that they were also aware of it, then you have proof that you were the first to make those results public. I believe if the authors do not respond well to your email you have good chances of contacting the PRL editorial board and, using your pre-print as proof, claim that you were plagiarized.

The best case scenario is to be able to solve your problems with the authors of the other paper, but to be honest I'm not sure most human beings would respond well to this situation. Maybe you'll have to get in touch with the board. If I were you, I would definitely not leave things as be, and would insist until the matter was solved (even if legal measures are needed).


How to compensate for previous low grades when applying to PhDs in the UK?

It's not clear what you consider to be a low grade, or whether you are already in the UK. This answer assumes that you have a low 2:1 (i.e. 60%-65%) and have obtained your degree(s) in the UK.
If your highest qualification is a BSc, you can compensate for a low overall mark by one or more of the following:

Get a Master's degree (preferably a research-based Master's) and do well in it
Get some research experience either independently, through your workplace or through someone at your local university
Make sure you have excellent reference letters from three reputable academics, of which at least one can talk about your research ability and experience in detail

If your highest qualification is a Master's and the poor marks were in your BSc, you have already demonstrated that you're on an upward trend and there's not much more you can do. If your highest qualification is a Master's but the poor marks were in that Master's, there's not much you can do about that, unless you have a very good explanation as to why that might be (mitigating personal circumstances, perhaps). Again, having a referee who can vouch for you will go some way to compensate for that.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that if your degree is classified below a 2:1 (i.e. a 2:2, 3rd or pass), your application may be screened out before your references are even read. It's possible to get around this if you have someone on the admissions committee who will vouch for you, but this presumes that you have already contacted a potential supervisor who understands why your grades are poor and is still keen to take you as a student.
Note that we have a wiki question on this site that is US-focused, but much of the advice is also applicable in the UK: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?


Could the conference presentation be a part of my abstract？

I am not quite sure I understand your question ... of course you can present your PhD(?) thesis at a conference and you are also allowed to shorten the abstract in order to fit the conference requirements.

But in general I would rather recommend to re-write the abstract completely because shortened texts tend to be sub-optimal and you might also run into the issue of self-plagiarism if you take (parts of) your abstract with copy&paste.

If by "Could I use a part of the abstract to present" you mean if you could use a part of your ideas/results etc to present then the answer is also yes. There is no rule that you have to present your whole work at once - often it is even better to present one (shorter) clear message at a conference than trying to get the whole thesis into a presentation.

---- EDIT ----

After clarification of the question ("Does it matter if the content of my conference presentation does not (fully) match the abstract that I have submitted?"):

No, it does not matter. Most people will not even realise it. If you like you can say a sentence or two in the beginning that you will focus on a specific sub-part of your abstract (and you are happy to discuss the other aspects during the coffee break etc). But it is up to you!


Bachelors in computer science and wanting a masters?

It's going to be up to the school.  Contact the institution(s) you are interested in and ask.  Some schools will have stronger or weaker requirements, some may require you to take additional classes, some wont.


Disclaimer: This is my opinion

I can think of a couple ways:

First, edit the first sentence so that it does not require a reference:

  It has been postulated that squares are very probable to have four
  sides. For instance, Mr. X concisely summarised that ‘a polygon with
  four sides’... (Ref)

Second, chain the sentences together, eliminating the period:

  Mr. X, a main proponent who suggests that there is a very high
  probability that squares have four sides, concisely summarised that ‘a
  polygon with four sides’... (Ref)

Or

  Mr. X says that there is a very high probability that squares have
  four sides: he summarised that ‘a polygon with four sides’... (Ref)

Third, keep the current structure.

I think it's acceptable to cite only once if you can keep the subjects consistent:

  Mr. X says that there is a very high probability that squares have
  four sides. He concisely summarised that ‘a polygon with four sides’...
  (Ref)

The fact that the first subject is "Mr. X" and then the second subject became "This (idea)" causes the disjoint feeling. Unifying the subjects will leave no room for misinterpretation.


The easiest way to handle this is to use the "present address" option that most journals offer authors. You would list the laboratory where you did the work as your affiliation in the header, and list the university you regularly attend as your "present address" to show you're not there anymore.

On the other hand, if you continued to work on the paper at your university (for instance, if the research was carried out at the Erasmus lab, but written up after you returned home), then you'd list both as current affiliations.


How to build healthy working relationships with my male colleagues as a young-ish, attractive-ish woman?

If there are any female faculty that you trust, I would go and talk with them about the situation. This would accomplish a few things.

Documents your concerns if anything ever escalates.

Allows for you to share your concerns with another person, who may be able to give you insight specific to your situation.

Allows you to verify if your colleagues are indeed being more than "just friendly." (As in, a third party may be able to silently observe some of the behavior and verify what is happening).

May open avenues administratively for departmental intervention such as a general email about sexual harassment or the like.

You do not even need to mention specific people in your conversations. This faculty member does not even need to be in your direct department.
I also would be prepared to "friend zone" these men if necessary. One challenge with female/male relationships is that it can be very difficult to read soft signals. There were girls I knew in school (I am male) that I wanted to get to know better. I would chat them up after class. And, I'll admit, I even went walking by their apartments a few time in hopes that they would be outside and we could talk. I did not have any nefarious intentions; I just wanted to make them like me. Even if they brushed me off a bit, I was not always really fast at taking a hint. I would just think they were having a rough day, or were busy. (Sometimes this actually made me want to stick around them more to make them feel better—I was naive). However, when one girl directly told me "I am only interesting in being your friend" that is when I realized that I was bothering her. We went on to have a congenial relationship at school, but did not do anything outside of school. Be prepared to directly tell your colleagues that you are only interested in keeping your relationship professional.
While you may not really want to directly tell these men that their attention in not wanted, that will honestly be the most effective way at fixing the situation I feel. This is especially true if you do not want to radically alter your lifestyle (e.g. leaving school at 2 a.m. so that they cannot wait for you).
If your colleagues are decent guys, they will not ignore stronger signals that you are not interested in their attention in they way they have been giving it.
If your colleagues are still too dense to take a clue (or blatantly ignore it), this is when it could be helpful to have an established dialogue with a female faculty member. You may need to initiate an administrative intervention.
Do not be afraid to sever a relationship if you have to. No one does themselves any service by trying to be friends with someone while simultaneously trying to keep their distance from them.
The clothes thing is odd, but I'm honestly not sure what you could do about that. The department cannot begin sending out emails saying "No one may dress like Lily." If you see someone that is blatantly copying you, I would call them out on it. Perhaps if they see that, yes, you did notice their clothes, and that, no, you were not amused, they will stop matching your clothes. This could be done in a joking manner if that makes it easier:

Woah Jim, you are wearing the exact shirt I was wearing yesterday! Have you been in my house? (said while chuckling and in the presence of other people)
I see you're wearing plaid. I have one ugly plaid shirt that I only wear on laundry day. Do you like wearing plaid? It makes me sort of dizzy! (Ha ha ha.)

In closing, the fastest way to get this unwanted attention to end is to end it directly, either by telling the men themselves, or getting a person in authority to do so.


What can I do if the terms of my adjunct contract are not what I was led to believe they would be?

First of all, consult a lawyer before doing anything.

If you were to leave in the middle of the course, that will cause havoc, that they won't probably want. Since they are not paying you for the work, you are under no contractual obligation to fulfil anything (but consult the lawyer), and can leave without giving them notice.

Now, you may find unethical to leave your students hanging like this, but the mere threat that you are willing to do it, may get some wheels spinning to give you a decent offer.

Another option to consider is whatever anti-slavery laws apply in your jurisdiction, since you are working for free; and anti fraud, because you are working without a contract. Furthermore, since you don't have a contract, you are not covered by the insurance, and if anything were to happen during your lecture, there is trouble. Think who would have to pay for in case, for example, a projector caught fire and ruined the classroom.

If your oral agreement is considered a contract, you can't do this; but then they would be acknowledging they have to abide by these rules.


Risk to academic reputation by publicly requesting pay-walled articles

Probably very little unless they're very pro-copyright or lawsuits start to happen. In the former case, they'd look hypocritical. In the latter, a University might be less likely to hire the academic to protect themselves from future liability issues.


To what extent is the university budget public?

The key to this information request would be the Freedom of Information Act. The act has lots of things which you cannot request information for, however. One of them is "trade secrets". I don't know if construction work can be considered a trade secret.

Timothy Gowers documented his attempt to get UK universities to reveal their journal subscription costs on his blog. This sounds relatively similar to what you're thinking of. If you attempt to get the same information, I'd guess you'll need to use the same methods, will meet the same obstacles, and get the same results (i.e. you'll eventually be successful).


How to mask present unemployment when asking for recommendation

I don't think your professor is going to change the letter of recommendation based on your employment history. In fact, I'm pretty sure most professors would not be looking over that part of your resume very closely because it's not relevant to the letter they need to write.

Don't leave out your employment history though, that looks really weird.


Version control for research and teaching statements

My research and teaching statement have a lot of commented text (I write in LaTeX). This is because I amend each document specifically for each job application - as you do.

The detail in which I describe each topic changes depending on what job I am applying for.  I comment out text which is too detailed for the job to which I am applying. However, for other job applications, I might like to have that text put back into my statement, or write new text, to be perhaps commented out in a future application for a different job.

I now have documents with a lot of phrases from which I can "pick and choose", depending on the specific job to which I am applying, and amend appropriately. It isn't really version control, I know, but I find it useful to have a selection of wordings to choose from in one place so that I can compare and contrast things like the level of detail and the tone. This isn't particularly onerous as these documents do not total more than 2 - 3 pages in my case.


A potential PhD supervisor wants me to visit campus for an interview before I know if I'm accepted

The solution here is honesty and candor. You should explain that you would like to visit the campus, but that your financial situation doesn't allow it at the moment. Any reasonable person would either drop the suggestion of a campus visit, or find some money to pay for your travel expenses. Any other reaction would be a red flag.


Some opinions that may be helpful.  I assume this is in the US because as far as I know other countries do not use the Physics GRE.

The Physics GRE is a stupid test.
You seem to have what you need except for a good Physics GRE score.  (Assuming you attend a reputable school.)
Not all good programs require a GRE score.  Maybe you should apply to the the ones that do not.
There is no point in getting your PhD in a mediocre department.  Do what it takes to get into a good program.
Don't postpone a physics PhD for financial reasons.  Assuming you go to a good department, you will be reasonably paid while you are a student, and you will make a lot more money after you finish.  Loans may be deferred whine you are in school.
It should only take a few months to improve your Physics GRE score a lot.

On the whole, I suggest a one year postponement.


How shall I report my education and calculate my GPA?

Since your university does not calculate your GPA, you should also not calculate a GPA unless you are told to. Most people do not care about your GPA from graduate level programs. As for reporting the PhD work, it really depends on what you did. Assuming you passed all the university requirements to be actually a PhD student, some universities require you to pass qualifying exams before you are actually a PhD student, you can list the PhD if you want. If you always intended to take the Masters and quit, you don't have to list the PhD if you do not want to.


Should I cite an article that I can't find?

I would definitely try contacting your librarian at your university library. University libraries collect physical copies of papers and they might have this one. Librarians are also a lot more versed in navigating the various search systems and they will probably be able to find this paper, if only as a hard copy. It is also possible that your university does not have the paper, but they could contact different universities to get it.

I would definitely recommend to no cite what you haven't read, especially if you don't even know the title of the paper.

Edit: As others have also noted, it might be good practice in your field to in fact cite the paper, but with the caveat that you cannot find it, as suggested by Thredolsen's answer. If this is common in your field please do this.


A PhD student is using all the work I did for my master and presenting it as his own for his dissertation

There are two dimensions to this problem and both matter:

Ethical dimension

If this PhD student is passing a work in which you had a significant contribution (let alone if you are the main author) as their sole achievement, then it is plagiarism. However it is not plagiarism and it would be ethically acceptable if this PhD student is presenting the work as a joint work, since themselves also contributed to it. In this case they can also legitimately use the work in their PhD dissertation, provided that you are credited as co-author.
In case it is actually plagiarism, if your advisor is knowingly covering or even encouraging it then they are at fault as well, and it's potentially even more serious for an experienced researcher: their duty includes ethical supervision of their students, and that would be a clear failure on their part.
There is an important caveat that I think is worth  mentioning: as a master student and then as a research assistant, there might be some level of ambiguity about who is the main author of the work. In particular in some fields a research assistant job might not be considered as original research work by itself, in the sense that the research assistant can be seen as providing some kind of technical expertise necessary for the research. This is a potential source of misunderstanding, especially if the technical expertise is outside the skills of the lead researcher. Depending on the specifics of the case, it might be important to consider the possibility that such a misunderstanding happened and clarify it with the supervisor.

Pragmatic dimension

Assuming that all the conditions for plagiarism are met, what you should do next is ultimately your own personal choice and you must be ready for the consequences of your decision. The academic system is not perfect, and sometimes a perfectly legitimate claim for credit is not the best course of action for your career. If you hope to continue in this research group and especially with this supervisor, it's clear that accusing them of plagiarism could seriously damage your chances. Even if you don't plan to continue in this particular place but somewhere else in academia, it's difficult to anticipate the consequences of an open conflict with a researcher in the field.

If you decide to move forward, the first step would be to try everything reasonable to convince the student and/or the supervisor to include your name in the work. It's usually much better for everyone if it can be solved internally. If they refuse, then you can seek the advice and possibly the mediation of somebody else: director of research, ombudsman or any other person in the institution with this role really.


What kind of citation is needed for a whole paragraph?

You are paraphrasing the material, not quoting it.  (You summarized it.)  Put the citation at the end of the paragraph and add the source to your bibliography.


Is the impact factor the sole criteria for selecting journals?

I think impact factor should be almost at the bottom of considerations of how to choose a journal. If you want to read more I suggest this nature article.
The first test should be to make sure you are submitting to a journal of good standing. For example you may want to ask is it a predatory journal.
Once that's out of the way then I think the most important thing is your choice depends on who you want your audience to be. You've suggested journals in different fields - this is now your choice. Different journals have different audiences from different communities. In my work, some journals lend themselves to more theoretical work whereas some prefer more practical implementations and applications.
There are some other considerations which I think you might consider too:
You may also want to bring your work to the attention of one of the editors. This might be someone you want to work with in future for example.
You should also think if there is a good fit to your work. Acceptance is not guaranteed for any work. You should have a look at the scope of each journal and see if your work fits.
Finally, you may want to consider how fast the journal processes articles - how long is it from when you submit your work to a potential publication. Early in your career this might be an important factor too.


What are some guidelines and best practices for releasing PR statements and project summary to the general public?

Talk to someone at a media relations, public relations, or press office at your university.  Most universities will have folks who work in this area; they are the experts and have a ton of experience, and you should take advantage of them.  They will likely be glad to help.

Here are some tips that I have learned from public relations folks:

Identify your message.  What's the takeaway lesson?  Can you write it in one short sentence, in a form understandable to the average person on the street?  Take a lot of time to craft this carefully.  Then, your entire press release should be centered around supporting this message.
Look for three facts or points that support the message.  Numbers and statistics are very powerful.
Stay on-message!  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Everything you talk about should be focused on your message.  Avoid the temptation for digressions or  tangents.  Yes, you are a witty raconteur and can wax on enthusiastically for hours about your work, but this is not the place for it.  Avoid unnecessary details; give a spare answer that provides just enough for folks to understand the message.
Yes, I know that you and your fellow researchers are fascinated by all of the details of your experimental methodology, the alternative hypotheses you considered and rejected, the details of why your finding is correct, your calculations, and so on.  Sorry, but the average person on the street doesn't care.  Your top priority is to explain your bottom-line finding, why the average person should care, and maybe a teeny bit of something to give some intuition about why your finding is true (enough to make it sound plausible to an average person).
Edit ruthlessly.  You want as many eyes on it as possible, and ideally people who are not involved with your project.  Lean heavily on your press office.
In many universities, the press office will help you draft a press release.  They'll talk to you informally, ask you a bunch of questions, and then work with you to write a press release.  If they're available to do it, grab the opportunity; it can be very helpful.
Brainstorm a list of about 10-20 questions that you expect reporters might ask you.  Next, for each question, draft a candidate answer.    Your answers should be concise (at most a few sentences) and simple; and, the chance to throw in an analogy or fact or figure can help, too.  When you are talking to a reporter on the phone, have this list in front of you. This way, when they ask you a question, you can refer to the list and give your honed, crisp answer -- or at least, you have it to refer to if you need it.  The reporter will never know.
Remember that the purpose of talking to a newspaper reporter is not just to educate them about your project.  It is also to supply them with as many pithy quotes that they can use in their article.  The more quotable you are, the more likely it is that you will be quoted.  They will be listening for those great quotes.  Take the opportunity to brainstorm in advance a few short quotes, and make sure to throw them into every conversation with every journalist.  Read a bunch of newspaper articles in advance so you can see what kinds of statements tend to get quoted.

The public relations folks may also be able to offer media training.  If you can get the chance to take a media training course, take it!  This is especially important if you might be on TV, where you have to make every second count.  There are some powerful but non-obvious techniques that they can teach you.


What would you call the temporary advisor assigned after enrolment?

In the program where I currently work, we call such advisors "academic advisors," which makes the distinction with the "research advisor" or "thesis advisor" fairly obvious.


Is better to make your own image or utilise the cited paper's image in a review?

If creat[ing] a picture which denotes [your] understanding of the model adds value, then do that. I expect potential for added value, since that's surely an objective of your review paper. Of course, you can't add value to every image, reproducing an image (with appropriate accreditation) is fine.


Can a roundtable chair not liking my research influence my chances of having a submission accepted?

There is no way to anticipate if a roundtable chair will be on the conference's program committee without more information.  Most conferences list their program committee on the conference website.


Are there online resources for finding information on M.S. programs that fit my criteria, without having to go through every school's website?

The most useful I found (which also helped me finding one for me) is Find a masters.

It does let you select a country of your choice, provides a summary of program where courses list, research focus and other things important are mentioned.

It also lets you filter by program type (Dip, Cert or degree), by study plan (part time, full time etc) and more.

Lastly, it also provides a link to university website so you can go there easily for complete details if you like the description.


Document required for German National Visa application

Don't trust google for legal advise!!!!

Instead ask the international office of the university you want to attend. Even if the lab has no experience with non-EU students, the university as a whole certainly has. For Duisburg-Essen look here: https://www.uni-due.de/international/index_en.shtml


Are papers corrected by the publisher after acceptance?

I cannot speak for that conference, but for all the conferences I happened to participate in my field (in a couple of cases as a member of the organizing committee) for camera-ready submissions, there were no corrections after the submission.

Usually, the editor of the proceedings puts together all the submitted papers and adds page numbers, table of contents, list of participants etc. That's it.


The acknowledgement is usually placed between the conclusion and the references.

You should write a sentence mentioning how the other person or persons contributed to the paper or your work.


Tools for managing and scheduling meetings with students?

Several of my colleagues use YouCanBookMe (https://gb.youcanbook.me/), which integrates with GoogleCalendar. You can specifiy "office hours" or the like, and then students can book a meeting with you.

I myself, however, discuss individual appointments per mail and then immediately add them to my digital calendar, which to me works better, as I do not have fixed office hours.

When I want to have a whole day of meetings (e.g., everyone from a class is supposed to have an individual meeting with me on one specific day to get feedback), I create an etherpad at http://www.titanpad.com , give timeslots and ask all students to put their names on it.

For group meetings with colleagues, I use http://doodle.com (or http://datumprikker.nl , which offers a similar service in Dutch) to schedule group meetings. I guess pretty much everyone at our department does so.


Which committee decides the speakers in a conference: SOC or LOC?

I would expect this to be done by the scientific organizing committee (if there is not a more formal peer review process).  It is a scientific task, after all, and requires some level of scientific judgment of the quality of the submission.

Agree with TheWanderer that the "local organizing committee" is typically responsible for purely logistical issues, and does not make decisions about what is included in the program.


Deferring Admission to reapply for some PhD programs next year

Deferring admission is not an automatic privilege at most universities at the doctoral level. You will typically need to justify why you want the deferral, and explain what you would do with the time. For instance, a Fulbright fellowship or a "service payback" on a fellowship might be valid justifications to a deferral; applying to other grad schools most certainly is not. If you are found to be deferring at one school to apply to another, you may lose out on admission to both, as the first school may retract their offer, and the second would likely not want to accept someone who might try and hold out on them.


Can I have a PhD in one field, and be an avid academic contributor in another?

In principle there's no problem with that. Many researchers change their fields over the course of their career -- sometimes slightly, sometimes drastically. No one cares what your PhD says on it, just the quality of your work.

There are a couple of caveats. If you need funding for the new field, you may have trouble convincing funding agencies that you're competent to perform the work.  And of course it can be hard enough to do good work even when you devote all your time to one field, let alone two (though on the flip side, using insights from Field A may give you a new view on Field B).

But the field your PhD is in, by itself, doesn't limit your activities.


Should postdocs give fewer (or otherwise different) status updates than PhD students?

I'd wager that both 1) the variance in expectations among PIs and 2) the variance in communication styles among graduate students or post docs far exceed the average distinctions between grad students and post docs.
Many labs will have regular group meetings, perhaps weekly. One would expect both grad students and post docs to attend and give regular updates at these meetings. This was my own experience. In some fields, both grad students and post docs may need more "every day" training in the beginning to get up to speed, which might mean more frequent check-ins during that time.
Other labs, and in fields where work is more independent, grad students may mainly check in when they have either produced something worth sharing or are stuck. Perhaps in this context, post docs will check in less often if they have gotten better at solving their own issues. Alternatively, professors may be more proactive in checking in with their graduate students to make sure they aren't wandering off into the woods.
I'd recommend anyone starting in a new position (graduate student, post doc, or employee of any sort; within or outside of academia) have an early conversation with their supervisor to compare expectations and preferences about communication, including frequency (ideally, this would occur in some form before even taking a position, but it's good to revisit once starting, too). This sort of direct conversation is going to be a lot more productive than trying to divinate expectations from the latency or content of email responses, norms experienced by others in other positions, or ones own past experiences. You can start the conversation with how you've interacted with supervisors in the past, if you'd like, and share how you thought that worked well or didn't work for you. Your supervisor may have other ideas. I'd suggest finding a working compromise between the two.


I want to do a masters in Biology, but I hate lab work

You want to do cancer/cell biology but you dont want to do lab work or simulation work (bioinformatics). You have really hemmed yourself in.

What it sounds like may be of interest to you is the field of science communication. There is a real need for individuals who have training/knowledge in a field and are strong communicators to the general public.

For example, I feel very comfortable communicating to an academic audience but I have found that I struggle to communicate to the lay audience. I had an instance recently where I assumed my audience knew a piece of what I thought was trivial information. This was a very poor assumption on my part and made the communication of my research impossible as I had used that "trivial information" for my analogy explaining my research.

I listened to a talk from one of the editors of Nature talking about science communication this past semester and how critical it was (and how it was an underdeveloped skill in academia). There really do need to be more people who understand the science and can communicate it to the lay person.


Choosing one's best papers for job applications

If your first two choices are sufficiently strong (as they appear to be), then for sure go for the third with the paper where you are a lead author. As a general principle, lead authorship is considered to be more relevant than co-authorship (unless it is associated with a stellar journal of the highest IF in the field.)


Contact your local library and ask them to help, they may be able to access copies through inter-library loans. If you're located in the US or Turkey, it appears that this book is available via OverDrive (https://www.overdrive.com/media/96681/how-to-prove-it) , which is a commonly used eBook lending service. It's quite likely that you have a library nearby which offers OverDrive to their clients, in which case, you'd get free access with membership and so would your students. Good luck and keep up the good work :-)
ETA: I'm not affiliated with OverDrive in any way. Of course, there could be other eBook providers which have this book, just check with your library.


Suggesting my own paper when serving as a peer reviewer

My personal rule for this is that I go ahead and suggest the paper in my review, and in the "Notes to the Program Chair/Editor" I disclose that I am suggesting a paper of my own.

That way, I am covered on both fronts: I am suggesting papers that are relevant to the authors and I let the Editor decide whether it is a fair suggestion.


Do journals hold rejections against authors?

Rejections are not necessarily a negative when submitting to a new journal. Of course, it means a careful editor will take an extra careful look at the manuscript before accepting it for review. They key point is, however, that when submitting a previously rejected manuscript it is necessary to, first, be upfront with the rejection and the reasons for it, and, second, to provide clear details on how the previous reviews have been used to improve the manuscript for the current submission. So, clearly, of one simply submit the same manuscript over and over again, yes, there is a chance someone may accept it in the end, but it is very poor work ethics to do so. A manuscript that has been rejected and significantly improved from comments received and additional work done, will have a pretty good chance of being published. As an editor you can then see indications of what may be key issues with the paper. This does not mean, as some seem to think, that submitting half-baked manuscripts and have reviewers beat them into order is the way to write good papers so there are fine lines of good conduct which have to be followed.

As for holding a rejection against you: No, not unless there are repeated sloppy submissions. But even then, every manuscript receives an independent check to see if it is of sufficient quality. A bad reputation just means you will raise flags with editors whenever you submit. And, once will not create a reputation.


How to acknowledge ideas/clue/discussions on StackExchange?

EDITED according to the PiotrMigdal's comment

If you like to point out the SE contribution to your work I would suggest to acknowledge the community by any acknowledgement you consider suitable. For example:

  The authors would like to express their appreciation to the Stack
  exchange, inc. community for many useful inputs and valuable comments.

or if you like you can be more specific

  We would like to thank to community of Stack exchange, inc.,
  especially, Cross Validated group (section?) for advices regarding the data processing and data
  visualization.

Or you can combine what ever you like.

If you think that only one user was the core of the contribution, you can mention only him or her.

  Special thanks goes to Piotr Migdal, who significant contributed to
  the quality of this answer with his valuable and well-aimed comment.

In case the person would be (or would like to stay) anonymous and you would still like to acknowledge the contribution, you can write the acknowledgement to anonymous person (as well you can citate a source with unknown author). This happens typically when you refer to web-pages:

  We would like to acknowledge the discussion regarding the deep learning algorithm at Stack exchange, inc. in Cross Validated section
  (Available at:
  https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83092/regression-in-deep-learning,
  Accessed: 44rd August 2010).

However, I think that much better would be to try to contact the person/people. You can do it either by contact info or by comments. They can be willing to step out of the anonymity for you or, what is more, have some further discussion on the topic of your interest.

And if you would like to express your gratitude, you can always contribute to SE :)


What to teach first: theory or practice?

It isn't really a question of either or in terms of theory and practice. Instead, what is needed is theory and practice happening simultaneously in the classroom. The students learn a concept and then they used it immediately in some sort of authentic assessment. To have to what 1-2 years to use any sort of new knowledge is difficult for the average young adult learner and nearly impossible for a mature adult learner. Knowledge retention is most effect through teaching it to others and followed next by the application of it.

Within education, there is a big emphasis on learning by doing or being an active learning. This can take many forms such as the use of projects, problem-solving, presentations, etc. The point is that the students need to learn through actually doing or producing something through some sort of authentic real-world application. The real-world application creates the relevancy that most students need in order to process whatever it is that they are learning. This is particularly true for inexperienced students who have zero practical knowledge.

A major exception to this is the experienced student who returns to gain theoretical insights into their career. For example, if a teacher returns to school for a master's in education, they often experiences many "aha" moments when they see a connection between a theoretically concept and something that happened when they were teaching. Since these people already possess practical knowledge they are even better able to appreciate theoretical knowledge and create a bridge between the two.


How can I tell my advisor that I'm not going to work for free?

I would suggest that you repeat that you did not win the fellowship and ask if he has other funding available, "because I am still very interested in the work, but will need to find paid work instead if I can't get a stipend for this collaboration."


Correlation between personality type (MBTI or other) and success in academia?

1) Psychologists on Psychologists:
Helmreich, Robert L.; Spence, Janet T.; Beane, William E.; Lucker, G. William; Matthews, Karen A. (1980), "Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 39(5), Nov 1980, 896-908.

ABSTRACT: Examined personality, demographic characteristics, publication rate, and citations to published work in a sample of 141 male and 55 female academic psychologists. Reputational rankings of their graduate schools and current institutions were significantly related to citations, as were components of achievement motivation. Mastery and work needs were positively related to citations, whereas competitiveness was negatively associated with the criterion. Large sex differences were found in citations, with men receiving significantly more recognition and producing at a higher rate. A model of attainment in psychology is proposed, and possible explanations for the differential attainment of the sexes are explored. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

2) A more general review paper that includes a discussion and literature on psychological factors:
Fox, M. F. (1983). "Publication productivity among scientists: A critical review". Social Studies of Science, 13(2), 285-305.
available at
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/68920/10.1177_030631283013002005.pdf


Qualifications needed to teach math/statistics at US university

A friend with a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Statistics would like to teach math/statistics at a US university which is not research oriented as a full-time faculty member.

I have some questions.  First, do you mean a specific university, or will any university do?  Second, do you really mean "university," or could it be a "four-year college" or a community college?  Third, by full-time do you really just mean full-time, or do you mean tenure-track?

A few data points:

In my department (mathematics, UGA) we have faculty with master's degrees who are teaching full-time, but they are not tenure-track.  Some of these positions are "permanent" by any reasonable standard -- e.g. some of these faculty have been there for multiple decades.  A friend of mine just got hired into one of these positions, so I know a bit about them and I don't think they're going away anytime soon.  In fact my friend has a bachelor's in math and a master's in statistics.
At my PhD program's Visitation Day on Friday, I met with a woman who is a faculty member in the math department at a four-year college relatively nearby.  She has a master's degree and has been teaching there for about five years.
In some regions of the country (e.g. New York City) even community colleges tend to hire people with PhDs.  But there is a lot of variation.  You can read e.g. here for more details.  My understanding is that even in the community college scene having a doctorate makes a difference in your job titles and responsibilities.

  However, my friend is not interested in statistics research, so she's thinking instead about trying for a PhD in Math Education.

The "so" confused me.  This makes as much sense to me as saying "physics" or "computer science" in place of "math education."  In other words, these are all academic fields that are closely connected to mathematics but distinct from it.  So far as I know (and I do know about the math ed PhD program at my university, although I also know it's one of the best in the US and therefore is probably not representative of all departments) being a math ed PhD student is much like being any other PhD student: you are being trained in research and implicitly/explicitly groomed for an academic research career (though many graduates will end up elsewhere).

So getting a PHD in math ed is an excellent idea if your friend is deeply interested in math ed research.  Well, and also if she can find funding: in my experience, one of the main differences between math and math ed PhD programs is that the former are much better funded than the latter.  But since you didn't mention any prior training in that area, I'm a little concerned that you are viewing this as some kind of degree for people who are interested in teaching rather than research.  That might be true for certain people and/or certain programs, but it's not true for all.

The idea of someone joining a PhD program in field X because they don't like field Y makes me very nervous.  I would certainly encourage your friend to learn as much as she can about post-secondary academic jobs available to people with master's.  A combination of math and statistics sounds rather valuable to me, and it may well be that your friend is employable now.


What is the etiquette around blogging about conference talks?

My general rule of thumb in these matters is the following. If you don't want to communicate your results yet, you should not be talking about them in a public seminar. Or, at the very least, you should put out a disclaimer initially that you will be discussing confidential material (I have seen some company talks that started with a similar disclaimer, but probably more for legal reasons than because the presenter themselves cared deeply about it). Barring such a disclaimer, I think it's a fair default assumption that the presenter does not mind their thoughts spreading.

Another safety line you can take is, after you published your blog, making the speaker aware of it. I have found that Twitter works very well and non-intrusively to that extend:

  .@coolprof summarizes topic X, feels more research is needed on Y. Summary: http://my.blog.edu

In that case you can assume that if the speaker really does not want your summary, or parts of it, on the Web, they will tell you.


How to grade a student software project?

My policy, my 2 cents:

Part of the grading corresponds to the expectation of the "customer". if this project is considered as an actual development project in industry, does it deserves that the customer is paying its full price. For instance, I will give 10 points (over 20) for that criteria. If the software fulfil all the requirements then the student is awarded the 10 points, otherwise he/she starts losing some of the points.
Part of the grading is for the quality of the code (structure, naming of variable, algorithmic aspects, etc.). I give 5 points at max here.
The rest is for the tasks around the code: modeling, UML stuff, reports, etc. The last 5 points can be found here.


Two co-first author publications vs. one second author + one first author publication

First, I want to make it clear that I am not in your field, and do not know what relevant people's attitudes to co-first authorship are. In addition, answers and comments to What does first authorship really mean? suggest that they may actually be different between biology and biomedical engineering, so that might be something to pay attention to as well.

The main point I'd like to make is that the nature of the papers can (and should!) matter - I would at least that to happen in my own field. Say if the more experiment-focused paper has minimal theory/modeling, and the theory-focused paper only uses previously published experimental data... Well, if the contributions look incommensurate (and remember that the journal might require author contributions to be clearly stated), people are going to see right through that co-first authorship - and that can reflect poorly on both authors. Even if the journal does not require a description of individual contributions, A would likely be asked about their individual contribution in a postdoc interview situation, for example.

Hence I would always suggest picking the natural/ethical author order over a strategic one. It's also generally better to get a paper out this week than having it delayed a month over an authorship order debate or prolonged strategic analysis... Co-first authorship should be considered if there are clear arguments for it on the level of an individual paper.

Now, overall I actually expect the two scenarios to have fairly similar outcomes (again with the caveat that I'm not from your field) - especially since I suspect C to be the advisor, who'd presumably write a fair recommendation letter either way. If pushed, I would say that the second scenario could hold a slight strategic advantage for author A, since A could appear to have a higher degree of intellectual leadership in the higher-impact paper. If it is more theory-focused anyway that may well be the case.


What is the purpose of "issues" and "volumes" in journal publications in relation to DOIs and citations?

I guess your question is about citing an article. If the article you want to cite  is in a journal which have both volume and issue number (this is very often the case). Then you should write both of them.

The issue is the booklet number in which the article was published. They are grouped together to make a volume. Often one volume correspond to all the issues of one given year, but not always. Page numbers usually run sequentially through a volume (issue 2's first page will be numbered one higher than the last page of issue 1 and so on).

Finding the article in a (paper) library is easier if you have both the volume and issue number since you directly know which booklet you need to consult. While helpful, the issue number isn't strictly required in order to find a particular article. Indeed, libraries often bind all the issues of a single volume into a hard-backed book where the page number is sufficient.

Today with electronic paper those notions might have lost their meaning,  and in the end, the DOI is probably the best way to share a reference.  However,  it is still in the habit to provide both issue and volume number, and given what they mean, it does not really make sense to have only one of them. The last word will go to the editor of the journal you are publishing the reference in and the bibliography style may or may not include the issue number. So for your personal bibliography, it seems safer to have it for the day you publish in a journal which request issue numbers.

For this particular paper in jabref, I don't know why only one get pulled. Maybe it is a bug, or a database error.


Can an independent institution run experiments without IRB approval?

I'll address the academic, rather than legal aspects of the question.  All legitimate scientific journals require ethics review for published human subjects research.  Any human subjects research which is has not passed ethics review must not be published.  In my opinion, any such research is not part of main-stream science.  So the answer is no.
It is generally accepted that these are not research, and therefore not human subjects research:

Testing a commercial product to see if customers like it.
Experiments whose results will be kept secret.

However, all activities need to be ethical, even if they are not subject to IRB requirements.


How can a proof question be asked online?

I have experimented with a system that provides students with a collection of phrases/formulae from which they can drag and drop a selection to construct a proof.  I think that this is a promising approach but there are still a large number of different ways in which students can get the answer wrong, and an even larger number of ways that they can construct an answer that cannot be parsed as something meaningful.  If you simply reject such answers without comprehensible feedback then you will just make the students hate you.  So you have to write a large amount of code that tries to analyse all possible answers and explain what (if anything) is wrong with them.  The logic is quite complex and I am not sure how well the students would understand the explanations.  I hope to return to these experiments at some point but at the moment I am not teaching anything for which they would be useful.


If most universities in the U.S are non-profit, why are they so expensive?

I think that education in US, even in non-profit institutions, is expensive, because colleges and universities can charge basically whatever amounts they want, a practice, to a significant degree, IMHO prompted by trying to stay competitive by overspending on amenities, many of which are very remote to the nature of education and learning. Of course, there are significant costs, some of which are appropriate, such as salaries for faculty and staff, equipment for labs, some research programs and other reasonable expenses. Having said that, I believe that some of the expenses are over-inflated, such as (too) nice and fancy campuses and buildings, top administrative and executive compensation, research labs and programs that don't produce significant enough output, sports and other over-spending sources. That is not to say that tuition and fees cover all those expenses - universities traditionally rely on various financial sources in addition to tuition and fees (see the last link below). Of course, the above is just my somewhat naive (but, hopefully, not so far from reality) interpretation or, rather, impression of the complex ecosystem of higher education.

More details on the topic can be found on Wikipedia (i.e., see this section and this article) and other resources (i.e., this article). In the popular press, there is no shortage of opinions, both blaming colleges and universities for exponential increase of the cost of education as well as defending their actions and situation. Those interested in a more comprehensive economic analysis of the subject, can be referred to a significant amount of existing academic research, such as this thesis.


Can I ask a reference letter from someone I met at a place I interviewed?

You can ask the person and there would be no conflict of interest in doing so. While this person might have a good understanding of you research, teaching, and background from the previous job process, they generally will not know you well enough to write a strong letter of recommendation. The best letter writers are people who have known you for years and have worked with you on a daily basis.


Your recommendation letters should help you in any admissions program. They should speak to your strengths, but also be honest. If you feel that this professor will write something that can damage your application and you have the ability to switch out references/recommendations in your application without negatively impact your application, then absolutely, you should have another professor write you a recommendation letter. For the ones where you cannot switch, you should be honest in that you have another professor in mind who can write you a much stronger letter of recommendation - which is not a lie.


Possibility of submitting a paper whose one page has been previously accepted in a poster session?

Only the conference committee can really answer that, but I offer two suggestions. These apply even if the conference committee sees no problem.

There is a concept called self-plagiarism, that I think is a bit stupid, but it exists and many consider it a serious issue. You should, at a minimum cite your own earlier work (the poster) just as you would cite anyone else and quote it appropriately.

The second suggestion is that, while you still cite the poster work, you re-write it, incorporating the important ideas rather than quoting it directly.

But you will run in to trouble with some if you just use it without comment even though it is your own work.

I doubt that the field matters much. My field is also CS, however.


Lab colleague uses cracked software. Should I report it?

I don't feel that general academic ethics obliges you to report this, unless you have reason to believe that it might be endangering the research of the lab (giving inaccurate results, introducing viruses to lab computers, etc).

You will have to make your own judgment as to whether you are obliged to report by any of the following: your own personal code of ethics, your institution's policies, your lab's internal policies, your PI's expectations, threat of lawsuit from the software vendor, your local law, or likely consequences from any of the above for failing to report.  You could also consider whether to warn your colleague and give them a chance to remove the cracked software before reporting them.  But all of that is beyond the scope of this site.


Do editors choose reviewers based on the quality of manuscripts?

Editors try to maintain a good status of papers published in "their" journal. There is no obvious point in using different standards for different papers and I am sure that such differences are not concious decisions if they appear. If an editor receives a paper that is outside of their comfort zone, it is of course possible they are not aware of possible good reviewers and may make seemingly odd choices. How common this is will be difficult to assess but that it occurs is certain.

In the specific of receiving something of breakthrough character, the procedure should normally be the same. However, an editor always has the choice of adding as many reviewers as they see fit. If a controversial paper appears, it will likely receive quite varying reviews and adding additional reviewers may be useful to get a sense of the quality of the work. This does not necessarily mean an editor will go for specific names but I can see that it may be the case that one would go for prominent names for such a paper.

In my experience as editor and author (and reviewer) I often get the sense that good science receives far harsher reviews than poorer. I do not think this is because the good stuff are assigned to "better" scientists, I actually think it is because a good paper is easier to fault be cause it is more transparent than poor papers which are muddled.

So, in short, there are many aspects to how papers are run through a review process. Choice of reviewers is not generally done after quality of the paper although it can happen. In the end a journal, through its editors, want to retain its status and letting poor papers through, does not serve such a purpose.


Is it possible to measure/evaluate one's progress or development in quantitative terms?

To reduce anything to a quantitative score, you need a valid metric. There are very few valid metrics you can use in research, as you state in your question. The only other half-common metric that you didn't list above is Papers read/annotated. We all know reading is really useful, and you should definitely aim to read X papers a week (where X is some random number that makes sense in your field). That said, the goal of reading is to gather information, and how much information was gained (and retained) is a lot harder to measure.

That said, I have two half-answers:

Make up your own metric based on hours of productive work. At the end of each day, just write down in an excel sheet or something how many useful hours you worked that day. You can use some service like Rescuetime to help you in this, or the Pomodoro technique, or just simply buy a stopwatch and keep track yourself. At the end, do a simple # useful hours/total hours worked to see how productive you think you're being. That'll probably be more useful than anything else you'll come up with.
Make task-specific metrics. I tracked my progress on my thesis using a custom shell script I wrote that tracked how much text I added in a given time period and plotted it out. (Yes, I probably spent more time making the shell script than I gained in motivation from using it. Whatever.) I tracked progress on one of my projects by how many datasets I had analyzed. I tracked progress on another project by how much coding I completed each day. These are much more useful than broad, overarching metrics.


Is it common to ask for reference letters from members of the MSc thesis committee when applying for PhD/Scholarships?

In the UK at least, when applying for research jobs soon after completing a PhD it's quite common for one of the referees to include the external examiner of your thesis (a member of the committee that is external to the institution which awards the PhD). The idea there being that as they're experts in an area in which you've worked and they've assessed a sizeable product of your research (i.e. the thesis), as well as having engaged with you during its defence, they should be in a position to speak authoritatively about your abilities as a researcher.

The professor who has only read your work is in a significantly different position. While they may have the expertise in the subject area, and the familiarity with your work, of the examiner, they've not assessed you in a formal role, nor really engaged with you as an individual.

Of course, your question is about an MSc thesis committee, rather than a PhD one. Without more specifics, you will have to judge whether the involvement of committee members is similar to the involvement of a PhD thesis committee member.


What does "informal application letter" mean?

I would interpret that as asking for a short letter that briefly states what you are applying for, your educational background, interests and goals, why you are interested in their   program specifically, and mentions anything else you'd like them to consider.


Affiliation on the papers extracted from the thesis

Your advisor is correct that papers published as a result of your thesis work should include the institution at which the thesis was done as at least one of the affiliations.

The role of your present institution depends on whether or not you did substantial work on the paper there. If so, then you need to include that as an affiliation as well; if not, then it should be listed as a "Present Address."

What you cannot do is list just your new affiliation, with no recognition of your graduate institution.


Is it better to prove a generalization of a theorem before presenting specific cases?

There is no "general" answer here. It always depends on circumstances:

Is the general proof really hard and difficult to understand?
Is the general proof of interest, or does only the special case have applications (yet)?
Can the general proof be done in the same way as the special case, just with uglier notation, more indices, etc.?
Is the generalization natural or does it require work to actually show that the special case does indeed follow from the general one?
Is the special case the only application of the general theorem, or are there other corollaries of interest?
...

This is just a small part of the questions to consider, depending on what the theorem and the proof looks like. In some cases, it might be good to use the special case to motivate the generalization, especially if this is a new idea and you are the first to look at this general case.

On the other hand, people want to see the benefits of the generalized version, so it would be best to get results from it that go beyond just showing a special case.

I would suggest leaving the choice of which proof to read to the reader. So if you have a really easy proof for the special (and most interesting) case and the general proof is really hard, you should give the special case first and let the reader decide if he wants to skip the general one or not. I sometimes see phrases like "readers only interested in the case ... can safely skip to  section X". Of course this has to be properly organized, such that section X is still readable even if the general proof got skipped. In this way, it is easy to see and understand the basic concepts of your paper and how you showed the special case, and there is always the opportunity to come back later to study the general one (or to give it to a student for a bachelor thesis...). Note, however, that this is only my personal opinion and approach, this is not a general consensus.


Should I abbreviate the author names due to the page limitation?

This is almost always dictated by the style guide of the journal/conference/whatever to which you're submitting. Check with them, or better yet, use a bibtex style definition file provided by them (e.g., IEEE).


If I upload a draft of my paper to arXiv, will I still be able to publish in an IEEE or ACM publication?

As @Jukka Suomela has indicated in the comments, yes, you will.

The relevant policy for IEEE (from http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf) is:

  8 . Electronic Preprints. Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post their manuscripts to their own web site, their
  employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to
  transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE
  copyright notice. Upon publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either
  (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore, or (2) the accepted version
  only (not the IEEE-published version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published article in IEEE Xplore.

For ACM, from http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf:

  (b) Furthermore, notwithstanding the exclusive
  rights the Owner has granted to ACM pursuant to Paragraph 2 (a),
  Owner shall have the right to do the following: [...] (v) Prior to commencement of the ACM
  peer review process, post the version of the Work as submitted to
  ACM (“Submitted Version”) to non-peer reviewed servers...

This answer is current as of August, 2014.


Is it appropriate for an undergrad student to ask a professor to sign a non-disclosure agreement?

I don't understand most of the current answers, which mostly assume you want technical advice without paying for it, but requiring an NDA. If this is indeed what you want, I agree it's a bad idea.

However.

You write that this professor has already gone into business. This implies that he has a certain basic understanding of how business works. He probably has signed his fair share of NDAs, as well as requiring others to sign his.

It appears perfectly reasonable for you (or your friend) to set up a short meeting with this professor, say of 30 minutes or so. Quickly present your idea in a rather general manner, in an "elevator pitch" - at least outlining what problem you want to solve. Think beforehand how much you are comfortable revealing. Tell him that you'd like his advice, and be frank that you are not comfortable giving full details without protection for your intellectual property. (I'd also look for protection if I knew this professor, not only if he were unknown.)

Have a proposal ready for possible next steps, which would include him signing an NDA and his investing a little time for a discussion. Ask him explicitly what he'd expect from you in return for investing his time. Professors are busy people, and more so if they run a company on the side.

You may actually have a good chance that he'd be happy to mentor you to a limited extent pro bono - most academics are idealists at heart, otherwise they would be in industry from the very beginning. However, if you want more in-depth advice, be prepared to offer hourly rates, possibly conditional on your idea getting off the ground.

Always keep in mind that professors are busy, just as are other businesspeople. Don't come with a mindset that you are entitled to advice, but ask politely, and things may go well. If this professor is active in a similar line of business as you are, this may be a very good opportunity - he may have contacts in the industry and/or to funders that may very well be invaluable.


How to thank someone who proofread my scientific paper?

The author would like to thank [colleague name and title] for constructive criticism of the manuscript.

No need to get into additional details as after all you are thanking your colleague.