Writing Statement of Purpose As a Bachelor Student (Physics)

SOPs are a rather dreaded part of the application process for many students in the tagged geography, precisely because there is a big gap between the expectations and method of working that students are typically used to. The previous comments and answer are indeed relevant. Given your current situation, I'll add some specific things that you can think about, leaning towards pragmatism rather than the ideal.
(1) The SOP is essentially a narrative that has to sell. (Arguably so is most research, but that's another tale). You must know your audience. Don't make one boilerplate SOP for all the departments you apply to. Visit their websites, read up what they work on. Try to use social media to speak to current students. You may not know what you want to work on, but you must know with reasonable veracity what they work on. Don't start writing your SOP without doing this. The underlying benefit (arguably the real reason) is that you will me more updated about what is currently happening in the field now, and this will help you cultivate your interests more sensibly.
(2) Treat each SOP as an independent and exclusive document. Once you've identified the department & professor/group you would like to work with the most, think of everything you've heard, learnt or done that may be relevant to the topic. Oftentimes this is a research project, sometimes it is a class that really interested you and motivated you to read up further. Sometimes it is even a personal experience or anecdote that left a deep impact on you, inspiring you to move towards the respective field. You need not have done concrete research work on it, but you should be able to demonstrate some interest or passion, or even a convincing motivation.
If you are not able to find yourself motivated by a certain field, it may be a strong indication to look elsewhere - one more underlying benefit.
(3) Connect your background (educational, personal if it is relevant), your motivation/experience/interest and relevant achievements to the field of interest. Avoid irrelevant history. The badminton championship you participated in is unlikely to be helpful, unless you are using it to make a point about striving for excellence. Or being fascinated by the aerodynamics of a weighted shuttlecock. I hope you catch my drift here.
(4) Take seriously the last segments, which describe how the university could help you achieve your goals, and equally, why you are a good fit for the university. Be very specific about the first. You should be able to demonstrate that you know what the department/group is known for, what sets them apart, what sort of impact they have. Use details if possible. If you've been able to speak to some students there, mention it (show your efforts and initiative). As to why you are a good fit, describe your attributes and qualities; but ensure that they relate to the personal history/experiences/achievements that you previously mentioned. This adds continuity, keeps you honest and prevents the SOP from reading like a boilerplate job application.
Take your time with this, and remember to respect the reader. Its a big opportunity for you and an important investment for the group/department that you join. The worst thing that you could do is treat it flippantly and churn out something that doesn't show serious thought.


Repeatedly citing same item of personal communication

Without knowing the context, what you are trying to do seems poor practice to me. "This is important because person X said so in private" is impossible for peer reviewers to verify, and hence not authorative when written in a paper.


Is it appropriate to make 1 or 2 statements without providing data in the abstract and summary

I don't think so. Unless you have another published paper that you can refer to, I wouldn't put anything about the full result in this paper nor its abstract. Since you don't have that paper (yet?), there's no good way to refer to such a result without a way to back it up.


Updated title of arxiv not recognised by Google Scholar?

Google Scholar should (relatively soon) detect both versions, at which point it will likely list them separately.  Once both versions are showing up in your profile, you can merge them together.  Select the check-boxes next to both publications, and a "Merge" button should appear amongst the buttons up at the top of the list.  During the merge process, you can tell it which version is the "best" version, and it will use the information for that version as the source for its title, authorship, etc.


I am a PhD candidate and I have been offered an internship that I want to take. My advisor objects. Should I take it anyway?

Make a decision. Do you want a PhD or not. If you do, then make that the priority. Such opportunities as the internship will probably come along later. The doctorate would probably be harder to restart if you stumble.
Your advisor is giving good advice provided that the PhD is what you want.
Slowing down your research may get you scooped before you complete it, requiring at least a partial restart. Why take a chance.


Are itemized lists discouraged in scientific papers?

It is extremely common in my areas of computer science (TCS and machine learning) to see a paper itemize a list of contributions as a bulleted or numbered list. I use it regularly as a technique to highlight and emphasize contributions and key ideas in a way that stands out.

So while any such answer is area specific, I'd say that in the areas of CS that I'm familiar with it is definitely not discouraged.


Should a personal statement for grad school discuss large challenges in personal life?

My own experience includes the opposite of what you describe. I have evaluated statements of purpose (SoP) with specific stories of overcoming adversity where the story helped me conclude that this was a courageous person worth taking a shot at. This was, of course, accompanied by strong grades (though not necessarily stellar) and supportive letters.

I strongly disagree with your notion that an SoP can only hurt you.


How to answer questions about whether you are taking on new doctoral students when admission is determined by a committee and a competitive process?

You give one of the two possible answers:

No, I am not taking on doctoral students.
Yes, I am interested in taking on doctoral students but who actually gets a place is decided by the admissions committee, not by me.


Asked for PhD grade in application but no grades awarded in my country

In all questions like this the appropriate course of action is to contact the people who run the application process and ask.
They will be able to give you the appropriate instructions taking into account all the details we don't know. E.g. can you even leave it blank, is there an automated system, does it even matter for the ones that do have a grade etc.?


There are other, more specific, possibilities. "I led the organization of ...", or something similar. "I was the lead organizer and editor of...". On the other side, "I aided in the organization of...".
Don't make it a title, but a description, unless the organization requires titles.


How to reconcile desire to succeed in academia/willingness to prioritize research with ethical concerns about fair work practices?

I will avoid the discussion about "fair work practices", which I find problematic for the reasons explored in the comments. Instead, I will address two questions that I think are at the heart of your question.

Does the fact that you work long hours contribute to a "culture of overwork"?

Arguably, no. Investing a certain amount of time into your work is not an endorsement for others to follow your path. There are large individual difference in how much capacity a person is able and willing to commit to their research. You are responsible for keeping your own mental and physical health in check, but not for the health of others.

How can you avoid contributing to a "culture of overwork"?

This is mostly about how you interact with others. Fundamentally, adopt a mindset that acknowledges and embraces individual differences.

Don't glorify worked hours as a performance metric. Don't walk around telling people how busy you are.

If you're in a position where you supervise students, encourage them to work the number of hours that feels right for them. Encourage them to view their time as a valuable asset and use it in a productive way. Don't scold them for not putting in a certain number of hours (assuming that they don't clearly put in less hours than they are contractually obliged to - if so, first try to understand what's going on).


How do I turn down a project I'm not interested in anymore?

A polite and concise email to the postdoc will suffice.

As an undergraduate in my early years, I think I'm still figuring out my interests

A postdoc researcher will certainly understand this sentiment. There is no need to go into details about you not finding their work interesting, but rather focus on changes in your interests.

Since I haven't been offered an official position at the lab yet, I think this is still a good time to make this call.

The postdoc will be glad that you did not waste their time and they will appreciate knowing about your decision to not join their lab ahead of time.


I have nothing new to add, other than I can show the second paper proves the first paper is wrong.

If the second paper already refutes the first paper, then there is nothing to do. If you could write a brief, non-trivial paper explaining how the second paper refutes the first (and the consequences of this), that's a different matter.

(A) contact editors of the journals with the incorrect results? and then what happens?

This may be field-dependent, but in general, I think this only be appropriate if the authors acted in bad faith (and thus the paper needs to be forcibly retracted). In this case, it sounds like the authors were simply wrong, so I wouldn't get between the authors and the journal.

(B) post a paper to ARXIV?

Particularly in math and physics, all papers are posted to arXiv. It's not a bad policy for other fields as well (I post all my machine learning papers to arXiv). But it sounds like your results are significant enough that you should publish them in an actual journal or conference, not "just" the arXiv.

(C) submit a paper to a journal?
(D) wait, do more research, and try to craft something more "substantial"

If you have enough "substance" to publish now, then I would go for it (and post the paper to the arXiv while you're at it). If not, doing more research is necessary -- you shouldn't publish a bad paper, particularly one that "calls out" another paper (all the more so if the other paper is well known).


How do I articulate my grade dispute in a letter of complaint (student grievance)?

Dear Committee,
This grade dispute seems like a simple math error. As shown on the
attached syllabus, the grade is 85% exams and 15% worksheets and
responses.

On the exams, I scored 76.5/85, which is a 90% (A)
On the worksheets/responses, there were three worksheets and I received a check mark on each of them. To my knowledge, no other
factors counted toward this part of the grade. Further, my class
participation was exemplary, so if there were other factors, they
should have been in my favor.

When I asked the professor about my grade, he said that 76.5 was a B
and he had used the worksheets and responses to "bump me up" to a B+.
But this is not mathematically consistent; 76.5/85 is an A, and the
professor admitted the worksheets/responses would "bump me up," not
down. I never received any evidence or justification for why my grade
would be lower than 90%.
Regards,
Name


What to do if undergraduate research has stalled for a long time?

You say you have learnt a lot, so you need not feel guilty. You do not think your work is publication-worthy yourself, and you also are leaving for grad school - so the only solution is to move on.

Make a neat report explaining your work. Even if it is not publishable, you could include it in your resume as a "technical report." From the tone of your question, this seems to be the only way out.


Should I make a fuss about small typos I found in a reference book?

Just send an email. Most authors keep an errata on their website.


Is it ethical to apply to a scholarship sponsored by my employer?

"I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply."

I think that answers the ethics about it as well. As long as you are open about the fact that you are a company employee, there is no scope for you to violate any ethics. Any possible violation (which I don't think there are any) would be in the company's hands.

Think about this - why is the company offering a scholarship? They probably want the recipient to graduate and then work for the company. Thus by attracting top students to apply for an attractive scholarship, they gain a highly skilled and motivated employee. Sure, the fact that you already work for them might give you an advantage in the application process. But this is a private company giving out privately earned funding. They should be able to pay whomever they choose, for whatever reason.

In the end, there is really little difference between this, and an internal hire.


Why can't motivations in a paper's introduction be copied?

At a fundamental level, every new paper is (or should be) presenting something new, whether it be new results, methods, experiments or even summaries or reviews. The paper would be redundant if it didn't present something new.

The 'introduction' or 'motivation' section follows the title and abstract as the next link in the chain to motivate people to read your paper in its entirety. Since it's your paper that you want to motivate people to read, it doesn't make sense to copy the words intended to motivate people to read some other paper.

There may be parts that overlap with prior work (and other answers on the site suggest methods to deal with that), but if you want your motivation section to relate to the novel elements of your paper, it needs to be recast for each new paper.

Your question (especially per your update) is why this boilerplate text can't be either copied or left out altogether.

When I'm presented with a paper, I am not always motivated to read it at first, so it doesn't help for the author to jump straight to the equations or experimental results, etc. What does help is to start with common ground. This is the job of the preamble. You can't leave it out altogether for the same reason libraries include the first part of each book's Dewey Decimal Number on every book - it's needed when the work is separated from the collection.

As for copying, it's a matter of skill in the craft to keep it concise, yet useful:

  No one prevents you from copying a few sentences from your previous papers. Except that perhaps page/word limits will encourage you to jump as quickly as possible to your actual contribution. – Alexey B


Will people judge me negatively for skipping department seminars?

I would say that you should always go to seminar, unless you have some very compelling reason not to go (you are away, you are working on an experiment, you are trying to finish writing your thesis, etc.).

There are four reasons:

Scientific courtesy. To travel somewhere and give a talk to the 10 people who show up (5 of whom you already knew) is really irritating.
Good or bad -- you learn something about presentation. Even if you say "wow, I should never do that in a talk" your hour has been well spent.
You get perspective. You never know when something that someone says will make you see your own work in a different context.
The speaker may someday be interviewing you for a job. It's better to be able to say "I heard your seminar" than "Oh, sorry, I missed your seminar when you visited."


Effective ways of encouraging "weak" students to make use of office hours

I have found personal (email) invitations to be very effective at getting certain students to come to office hours. (After attending once by personal invitation, they seem to be much more likely to come again without an invitation.)

The emails typically look something like this:

  Hi Jane,

  I noticed that some students, including you, had trouble with the theoretical basket weaving questions on Homework 3. I would be happy to review this topic with you during my office hours this Monday, 3-6PM in room 901. If you have class or other obligations during that time, you can email me to set up an appointment at another time.


Should I mention unfinished master work in my CV in order to show I have research experience?

Generally speaking it is best to show everything. You need to account for the time spent on the earlier MS. You may have a perfectly good reason for quitting, which you can give if asked.
If you failed out of the earlier one or were terminated it makes it harder to explain, but your new major, especially if pure math is sufficiently different from physics that it is, otherwise, unlikely to hurt.
But having a gap that can't be explained raises questions also, that might hurt.
Your letters of recommendation and your statement of purpose will need to be strong enough to convince readers of your seriousness, as is true of all candidates.


Productive but not respected advisor - Should I continue with him?

There are reasons for setting aside the issue of your potential PhD supervisor's publication record for the purposes of deciding whether to carry on  working with him - these reasons are set out in other answers.

You also need to think about whether your - or any - potential PhD supervisor's working habits is a good fit with yours. When considering whether to continue with specifically this supervisor, you comment as follows:

  Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.

So - is this a good thing for you, or a bad thing? Was that working relationship a positive or not? You mention that you've been thinking about this a lot, and I urge you to be clear about the answer in your own mind before you commit to a PhD program. Perhaps working like this was okay for a MSc project; I suspect that it could well be a problem during a PhD.

What were the experiences of other PhD students in this regard? Did they all have similar feelings regarding how he manages the research of his team?


Are overlapping dissertations ethically acceptable?

I think for a PhD thesis it is important the writer has enough original and new contributions to earn the PhD degree. When two PhD's work closely together, and write joint publications this can only work if it is clear that both PhD's have made new and significant contributions.

For example, in a publication which has both lab experiments and numerical modeling it is easy to see that both the lab-PhD and the numerical-PhD have done different things, which are put together jointly into a publication. In this case I would think it ethical that both PhD's get their degree based on the same publications. If, however, the overlap is not countered by the fact that the PhD's each have their distinct niche, I would not find it ethical to let two people get their degree based on the same work.

In the PhD theses the publications could be used as such by both PhD, but they need to have a different introduction and synthesis chapter as they worked on different aspects of the joint papers. In addition, I would explain the situation and how the collaboration worked in the preface of both theses.


Recommendation Letter: How to properly mention the grade and the rank of a student in multiple courses?

X attended with me class A (grade A), class B (grade B), [...] and class
E (grade E).

Or your preferred variation of the above. However, you can also repeat the grade statement several times, possibly adding for each class details about the student's participation.


How is literature that contains racially charged language treated in the context of academic discourse, and what is the etiquette for using it?

It is counterproductive and anti-intellectual for a historian to "sanitize" history. One of the reasons to study history is to learn from it. If we provide only a nice-nicey view of history it is basically impossible to learn anything. We use innuendo instead of plain facts, perhaps, but that is just sweetener in a bitter pill.
Historically bad things have happened. The bible, for example, has some pretty brutal sections. Does a "christian" educator also want to sanitize that.
If you sanitize Huckleberry Finn, for example, the story loses its point entirely. It is what it is.
I don't think there are any black people in America over the age of two who aren't familiar with these terms and how they have been used. Sanitizing the history of racism only erases their experience to make others feel good about themselves.
We need to learn to behave better. Pretending that we haven't behaved badly doesn't help us get there. The fact that some dehumanizing terms are still used today is the problem, not that that we find them in the historical record.


What can we do after entire class failed/barely passed?

Talk to your student's union.

They should know whether or not there can be anything done and if yes, what. They should also know if a situation where everyone fails is common (in some universities there are some courses, mostly freshman-courses, where it's common that 90% of students fail) in your country/university.

But prepare yourself for the possibility that nothing happens. In my experience, the situation that two groups/individuals are graded obviously differently, is very common in the university level. In my university, for example, there is no quality control of the courses whatsoever - a course is taught well/ is fair if and only if the instructor wants to teach it well and wants to be fair (and is capable of teaching well and being fair). Fortunately, many academics are "good people" wanting to be a good teacher (without being rewarded) but some don't care at all (which can also makes sense, since they need to focus on publications to survive).

But what can you learn from this situation? You can take some steps to prepare.

1) It's always a good idea to find out what the exact rules are for taking courses in your university. Can you switch the order of the courses? Can you choose instructors? Can you do exams with instructors who held the course some years ago (but you took the course with someone else)?

2) If you can choose instructors, then try to find out something on them. Who teaches well? Who is motivated? Who treats students fair? Who helds female and male students to the same standards? (Unfortunately, not everyone.) What about foreign students? Who grades fairly? To find things like that out, ask your student's union, socialize with other students, read things in facebook groups, maybe become active yourself as a student's representative.. These things will help you a lot.
If lists are avaiable on who will teach courses in the future, try to adjust your courses (if possible) such that you get the good instructors. Remember that, of course, your goal should not be to just get the easy-grading instructors, but the ones where you learn much. (But nobody is helped if you learn much but fail the exam because the instructor belongs into the (unfortunately, non-empty) category of people who let everyone but women with very revailing clothes fail).

However, be advised, that unlike popular belief, there are many harsh graders where you don't learn much and their are many easy graders where you learn a lot.


Is it secure to use Microsoft Teams for quizzes?

Assuming you mean a quiz written as a Microsoft Forms quiz and using the Teams assignment tab for submission and collation, then I believe it's robust to that particular attack, since it is literally a web form, and the marking and score generation seem to happen server side.
On the other hand there are plenty of attacks that it isn't secure to. Not least students communicating with each other, either through Teams directly (for the non-creative students) or out of band (e.g. via a mobile phone). And unfortunately both multiple choice and true-false are harder to plagiarism check than freeform text.


I've sent an email to a potential supervisor and I've gotten an email today from the chair of Graduate Studies that says "we would be very pleased to accept you".

That mean the potential supervisor forwarded your email to the Chair of Graduate Studies.

  Now what should I do? in my first email I've just talked about my interest and how it would be an excellent fit to the supervisor's research interests. I think I should send my CV this time, but to whom? The supervisor or The chair of Graduate Studies?

Since they want to work with you, the best thing is to ask them about what is next. Send an email to the Chair of Graduate Studies (since it seems it's their job), asking for what is next etc...


Professor creating math Youtube channel?

This is a great idea, and at my university people would generally be delighted if you create a public math resource of this type.
In terms of ethics, I don’t see a problem as long as you don’t start making the web materials a required source for your own students, since that would put you in a conflict of interest.
Also, if you use university-owned equipment in creating the online materials, in some cultures this could be deemed ethically problematic, so you might want to check with your department how they would feel about it, or take care to create a full separation between the time and resources you dedicate to your teaching job and the resources you use for the YouTube channel.
Other than that, as I said I think it’s an awesome initiative. Maybe the biggest concern I can think of is that if you become too successful as a famous YouTuber, people around you will get jealous. That’s not an ethical problem but maybe a practical one to think about...
Anyway, good luck with it!


How much will connections with the department chair help with grad school acceptance?

You're right, it's sometimes discouraged to get a graduate degree from your alma mater, but it's not as highly discouraged as getting a Ph.D. from the same place you got your master's degree. It really depends a lot on the culture of the department. When faculty are going over your letters of recommendation, test scores, and statement of intent, they're trying to mainly assess:

How likely you are to succeed in the program
How closely your interests align with faculty (i.e Can they help you? Can you help them?)

People can seem amazing on paper and turn out to be a disaster as a graduate student, and vice versa, and faculty will tell you they're taking somewhat of a gamble each year when they admit new students based on application materials alone.

If you've got someone on faculty who can vouch for your intellectual abilities and your fit factor in the department (and you clearly do), then I would say you're very likely to be in a favorable position over other applicants in that department. My department accepted a master's student who had just graduated with their bachelor's from the same department two years in a row.

As far as other programs go, it's extremely beneficial that you have co-authored a published article and would have a letter of rec from a department head. Not a guarantee, of course, but a massive help in any case.


Is it common to have exam questions 'peer reviewed'?

Yes; as mentioned in the UK it is expected that assignments (usually those greater than a certain proportion of the overall mark) is both internally checked and externally checked before being sat by students.

I have acted as an external examiner involved in the checking of the exam papers of another university. It is a valuable role that experienced academics can play in both improving the student experience, and the quality of the learning and teaching of an institution.

Another aspect that is also worth mentioning is post-exam error checking. In my department (some considerable time ago) we did an experiment of random error checking and to our astonishment, discovered that despite the diligence of the most experienced marker, things got missed. Our checking showed up whole missed script pages, ridiculous arithmetic errors in the final score and whole class transcription errors where spreadsheet cells were "off-by-one". As a result more regular clerical checks were done on everyone's marking and result recording to gain much in quality and student satisfaction.


Is it OK to upload thesis including published work to personal website?

The Sherpa/Romeo database (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) will give you all the information about journal policies concerning self-archiving.


Is it possible to become a neuroscientist without first studying clinical medicine?

Neuroscience is interdisciplinary! To give you an idea, the neuroscience faculty at my institution (University of S. FL., RU/VH university) generally have Ph.D. in:

Pharmacology

Molecular Biology

Biophysics

Biochemistry

None of them are an M.D. so you have to ask where would medicine come in useful? Ph.D.'s do not generally interact with patients, perform medical procedures or do anything an MD is qualified to do (with respect to humans). Being said, you can have a dual MD/PhD where for example your MD is specialized health science and technology, and your PhD is specialized neuroscience. I think that for neuroscience research involving humans such as drug trials, behavioral neuroscience, etc. this is a preferred route. Some neuroscientists are then experts in computational studies as opposed to wet lab, where a data science background is helpful.

Some related publications by our faculty:

Hevers W, Hadley SH, Lüddens H and Amin J. Ketamine but not PCP selectively modulates cerebellar GABAA receptors containing a6 and d subunits J. Neuroscience. 28(20) : 5383-5393, 2008.

Segers LS, Nuding SC, Ott MM, Dean JB, Bolser DC, O'Connor R, Morris KF, Lindsey BG. Peripheral chemoreceptors tune inspiratory drive via tonic expiratory neuron hubs in the medullary ventral respiratory column network. Journal of Neurophysiology. 113: 352-368, 2015. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25343784

At least with respect to reference one, the methods state results were obtained from rats/mice, from reference two they collected data from adult cats.

You can see that an MD or medical degree isn't necessarily required for a career in neuroscience. Some career postings I can see give preference to those who know some surgical procedures (not just for humans), but at the entry level I'm seeing 3yrs postdoc experience on top of the related PhD, to which you don't have to be embroiled in clinical decision-making and large amounts of blood (maybe on mice, etc.), publication record, etc.

For your intended program, you'll largely want to refer to your university of choice, mind you curriculum and requirements can largely vary by institution!


Could I insert a figure in related work section?

Yes: Figures can generally appear anywhere (except the abstract), unless explicitly forbidden by a particular venue.


Can we present a same study to a different conferences?

It depends on the rules of the conference, but it is usually OK. You could get different input from different audiences.
Beware of publishing rights if there are published proceedings and you expect the paper to be published in a Journal that expects original and never before published before material.


Well, this should give you an idea:

Source is https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-863940581-pdf/Data_Visualization_101_How_to_Design_Charts_and_Graphs.pdf


It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation?

No, at least the regulations that I am aware of require that the dissertation be a novel contribution to the respective field and that it has not been submitted before.

If you write a dissertation at the crossroads of different fields, you have to decide for a field in which you want to formally graduate and obtain a degree. It may be advisable to look for supervisors from different fields or with an interdisciplinary background.


What benefits are there to peer reviewing papers?

One benefit is that you are now part of the academic game and you'll learn how it's working, esp. if you have a chance to see other reviewer's comments (which is not always the case, but sometimes, all comments have to be adressed and then you can see them).

Someone might have proposed you, and this person wants to promote you.

If the paper is clearly off-topic, I would avoid reviewing it, especially if it is your first review. You should thank the editor for the trust in you, but send them a list of topics you would happliy review.

If the publication venue is a conference, you will be listed under "program committee" and gain visibility in the field.

If it is a journal: Is the journal trustworthy? I'm getting two invitations per day by some predatory journals...


How to deal with sources whose authors I don't have good relationship with?

If you feel that the work is relevant, you must cite it - not citing would be unethical.

Also, most people are happy if they are cited - regardless of their relationship to the person who cites them. Citing someone does not mean liking someone - even when criticizing someone's work, you have to cite.

And if you can think of no particular reason why they should not want to be cited by you, there probably is no such reason.


How to properly reply to regret email for PhD application?

how may I send a follow up email, if should I do so?

That's not expected. You got the answer.

Time to move on and get on.


MOOC / video integration into classroom schedule

The best way to integrate off-line video content into a face-to-face course is to make the videos worth watching in the first place. If the videos are not well-made, or if they are too long, or if they are only tangentially related to the topic at hand, there's a good chance students won't bother to spend time watching the videos.

However, if students can learn basic information effectively in a relatively short amount of time, and you structure the class so that this information is needed to complete their homework assignments, there's a good chance they'll start learning from the videos.

The videos need not be MOOC videos. A video can be something from the Kahn academy, something you found on YouTube, or something you create on your campus.

Does your institution have a Center or Office that helps professors with DL classes? If so, they may have equipment and expertise to help you create your own videos, if you have trouble finding existing content to fit your needs, and have determined that that's your best course of action.

Once you have a collection of suitable videos ready to integrate into the course, I'd avoid telling the students that the videos are mandatory viewing. Instead, I'd simply make this a commonly-heard refrain in your class:

  And then you complete the problem by doing X, but X is something we're not going to cover in class. If you're not sure how to do X, I've posted a link to a video.

If you make the video something that they need to watch before class, there's a high chance the students won't bother. But, if watching it will help them complete a homework assignment, I think the chances are much better. There's a tangible reward for watching the video; it becomes a worthwhile time investment. It helps if the videos are short – say, 10 minutes at most.

So, I'd try to structure the course such that the videos are assigned, and they are tied to a written homework assignment that will be turned in. You can then start covering the more advanced material in class after the students have turned in the assignment, with a bit more assurance that a majority of the students have really watched the video.

I'd also explain up front (in the course syllabus) why you are leveraging videos in the first place. Tell them directly that your aim is to exploit technology. Explain that spending class time covering basic concepts is not an effective use of class time, now that we are in the age of YouTube and the Internet, and there are other ways they can learn.

Use the Discussion Board feature of your institution's LMS so that students can ask questions if they've watched the video, but are still confused about something. That way, you won't create the impression that you're just trying to take the easy way out with a detached teaching style, but that you are instead striving to leverage technology in multiple ways to create a more effective learning climate overall.

Lastly, try to post the video links in your LMS in a way that you'll be able to see which students have opened the videos, and which students haven't bothered. Such reports aren't foolproof (just because a student clicked on a link doesn't mean they've actually watched the video attentively, e.g.). However, it might be worth knowing that, in a class of 23, only 8 students have even bothered to open the video.


Is it dishonest to omit publications in one's CV?

Since there are no rules on how a CV should look like it will be hard to find references. There are also different preferences from different people, so you cannot avoid "opinion based" answers here.

In my opinion it doesn't look good if you just leave out a publication and make it look like those are all of your publications.
However, it is very unusual to include all publications in a CV once the number gets bigger. How many to include is up to you, most of the time I've seen around 10. To make clear that those aren't all of your publication there's usually the phrase "selected publications" and in that case you want to include the "best" or most relevant publications or a very representative sample of the things you did. So the important part is to actually tell the reader that it is only a part of the full publication record, but if you do so it is definitely no problem.

The guidelines from columbia university say:

  Publications - These can also be listed on a separate page, or you may include a distinct section called “Selected Publications.”

This is also true for awards, fellowships and things like that. Once the list get's very long you might only list the most prestigious ones.


Can a paper get rejected in the copyediting phase (after peer review acceptance)?

Formally, a paper can be rejected at any time, even after printing.  E.g. IEEE describes such cases, which are mostly plagiarism-related.  In your case of mixed-up references, a rejection is unlikely.

Updating references should be a non-issue in the early copyediting phase but problematic in the late stages.  You might have to live with published wrong references.


Can a university revoke one's degree for his minor misconduct?

This depends entirely on what the misconduct was and the university in question. One extreme case is Jan Hendrik Schon where he published many articles using fabricated data. The University of Konstanz revoked his degree after the subsequent investigation of academic dishonorable misconduct. For something like this, the institution that had initially conferred the degree may revoke the degree despite the individual having already graduated.

If the individual has graduated, but has not yet been issued the degree, and depending on the severity of the misconduct, the university may also withhold the degree until further notice.

Overall, it really depends on the university's judgment on how severe the misconduct was. There are no universal rules regarding how the university ought to punish a student based on the misconduct (e.g., some universities are much more strict about plagiarism or cheating than others).


Should I emphasize certain traits in my CV for master's application?

An academic CV typically contains items you wouldn't want to list in a professional resume, such as a complete publishing history. Your resume may list as a bullet point that you are published, but they don't want 20 pages listing each publication, for instance. So, yes, your academic CV should be different.


How to ask for a letter of rec from a first semester professor in a masters' program?

After you complete the course and receive an A, you email your professor along the following lines.

  "Dear Prof X, I was a student in your class Z. I found it very
  interesting and really enjoyed learning about the subject (don't say
  this if you didn't). Next year, I am thinking about applying for W.
  Would you see yourself in a position to write a letter of
  recommendation for me for those applications? If you want, I'm happy
  to discuss my plans in person. Sincerely, Q"

Note that letter of recommendation that simply state "Student Q took my class Z, and they got an A" will not be particularly valuable for PhD applications. I would make sure to interact with the professor beyond just passively taking the class and really stand out. Don't do this just for the sake of getting a LOR (they can tell). Only if you're actually interested in the material!

Also, use those interactions to discuss your academic career plans with the professor! Maybe they know someone in your specific field of interest, maybe they are looking for PhD students themselves etc. That could become more useful than the LOR!


How is it possible to switch careers from undergraduate to graduate level in the US?

My PhD was in neuroscience. When performing neuroscience research, there's a lot one needs to know:

Biology: Starting with the basics, almost any course in neuroscience will have both macro- and microbiology of the human/animal bodies being studies. This includes topics at the molecular, cellular, and systems level. There's a non-insignificant chunk of anatomy to be learned as well. A specific focus will be spent on the biochemistry of neural transmissions, which involves a lot of...
Physics: The principles of electromagnetism govern the firing of neurons. As such, a thorough understanding of both the chemistry and the physics leads to understanding neurons. To study these cells, people using implanted electrodes need to understand a fair chunk of circuitry, as the quality of their cellular recordings is dependent on them understanding impedance and amplification and such like that. People using surface monitoring (EEG/MEG) need to understand the basics of electromagnetism, which govern how the fields propagate and are measured. As an added bonus, they get to familiarize themselves with the signal processing of source localization as well. Wheee.
Psychology/Sociology Some people study how the brain controls complex behavior, such as motivation, learning, addiction, planning, visual abilities, motor abilities, bla bla and bla. This works for both animals and humans, so there can be a lot of literature to cover.

This doesn't begin to discuss the computational skills required to create and analyze experiments, or the statistical knowledge required to make sure you're not screwing up your analysis, or the writing (yes, that's a skill) knowledge required to write a paper that someone gives a poop about, or the public speaking skills required to give a conference talk.

And that's just neuroscience.

Long story short, successful researchers nowadays BECOME polyglot experts simply due to the highly cross-disciplinary nature of the fields themselves. Obviously, you don't need to be expert in all these fields, but you have to start somewhere. When it's all said and done, the person coming to neuroscience with a biology background is surprisingly not that far behind the person with a computational background, because they both have so much to learn.


When has an unemployed post-doc refereed enough papers to decline another?

One simple criterion is that if you have refereed more papers than the number of referee reports you have received for your papers, perhaps even divided by the number of coauthors you have for each paper, then you are ahead of the game and shouldn't feel guilty about turning requests down.  Ultimately, if your career goes really well you should expect to do substantially more than your share of reviewing, but you aren't obligated to do this while still a postdoc.

Even if you haven't reached this point, it's reasonable to put your career development first for now.  Strategically, you should referee a paper if reading it will be valuable for your research, if you can impress an influential editor, or if it's for a particularly prestigious journal (so it will stand out on your CV in the list of journals you have reviewed for).  Beyond that, you can do what you reasonably have time for, but you should feel free to decline review requests when you are busy with other things.  If you feel guilty about this, you can make up for it by reviewing more papers than you would otherwise like someday when you have a stable job.

  At what point will listing another journal (or another instance of refereeing for a given journal) on your CV generate negligible returns for an early-career researcher?

I'd say the returns become negligible pretty quickly.  Adding a really fancy journal can look impressive, but even doubling the number of run of the mill journals will make only a small difference.  (People want to see that your reputation leads to review requests, but don't care much beyond that.)

To the extent refereeing helps your career, it's more likely to be because you impressed the editor than because a hiring committee liked the line on your CV.  However, writing papers and giving talks will reach a much broader audience than refereeing can, so extra refereeing is not an efficient career boost.


New proposed theory is the same I asked in this network some years ago

No, you have no reason/right to claim co-authorship, or I believe any acknowledgement at all.
For those curious about the paper a preprint is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09560
I have skimmed through the paper and have some background in AI, but even ignoring the fact that the topic of the paper is different to what you wrote about, what you have linked to is no more then a random thought. Any contributions from you can be summed up in the following hypothesis:

Dreaming can be a significant advantage since it allows you to experience a virtual world, simulated situations and reactions, without taking any risks. In this way specimens who could dream were better prepared to face new situations and how to react.

This statement is very vague and doesn't actually specify anything. How are dreams simulating a virtual world? Why are dreams better than being able to run simulations while awake? How does the specimen decide upon which simulations to run? Possibly a good starting point to develop a more specific research question but not a research question by itself. The statement was also after you asking if anyone else had ever looked at this kind of idea.
Even if the author had read your statement and that had inspired him to start thinking more about the subject I don't believe there would be any ethical issues by not referencing you since the statement above feels lacking in substance to me (just like you wouldn't reference a handwaved/madeup science fact from some sci-fi book if it had inspired you to look into a topic).
Now considering the actual paper, and based on my skim of the paper a few months ago, the topic is actually different to what you suggested. The paper proposes that dreaming solves the problem of over-fitting. This occurs in reinforcement learning (AI) where the algorithm is trained on a data-set and can perform very well on classifying/responding to that data-set, but when input that it wasn't trained on comes in the algorithm does something stupid.
So instead of simulating the situations and reactions that the creature may run into, the paper suggests that dreams are the result of training yourself from your daily experiences, but with added random noise to the input training set (your daily observations). This means that you won't assume that everything will occur exactly the same as what you observed today, and that will be beneficial. Specifically it balances against the innumerable number of variables that you couldn't have been aware of which impacted your daily experience.


Academic with fellowship cannot land a permanent position in her department. Should she stay or move elsewhere?

Universities in the West are generally quite reluctant to hire anyone into permanent positions who had been graduate students or postdocs or otherwise temporary employees at that same university. This is fundamentally based on the idea that we don't want "inbreeding" of ideas and that it benefits departments and universities to get in people with other perspectives. As a consequence, there may not be merit-based reasons why she isn't hired -- it may all be due to not wanting to hire your own disciples.

The solution is of course to go elsewhere -- as almost all of us had to do at some point. Everyone understands that to be the system, and students need to know it as well. In many cases, one can make practical arrangements where students come along, or where someone who leaves can still advise students at their old university until they are graduated. (I have done both.)


writing the learning outcomes and the syllabus

If you are designing the course, you get to pick the outcomes.  So you get to decide what is good.  Learning goals will be specific to the course, discipline, and the type of students you anticipate teaching.

There are some general principles that can help.  For setting outcomes/objectives/goals in any context, the "SMART" criteria are good. Outcomes should be Specific, Measurable (by assessments), Achievable, Realistic, Time Limited (by the length of the course), and Evaluated (to see if the course is wroking).

The Bloom Taxonomy is a system for classifying learning outcomes/objectives/goals.  It is often presented with a list of verbs you can use to construct learning outcomes.  These verbs describe what the students will be able to do at the end of the course.  You get to pick which ones to use, but it's often recommended to use different parts of the taxonomy.


Did my former supervisor steal my research proposal?

It was a proposal, not a publication. The ethics would depend at least a bit on how much she contributed to the effort. But it isn't necessary for her to leave the research undone if you have gone away and she participated. She can certainly follow up on it, even with another student. It would really only be unethical if you brought the proposal to her, relatively complete. In would have been better had she contacted you before proceeding, of course. I don't know if that was possible.

But if you are still in academia, you might be able to get back into this research, even if not as her student. You need to contact her with a request to participate, reminding her of your earlier work on the proposal. You might be able to achieve an authorship position, provided that you continue to contribute. But your past work probably won't be enough.

Note that I'm basing this on the fact that a proposal for research isn't the same as the research being completed. It is a proposal to study something. It is primarily an idea that might go somewhere.

If you can't participate, for whatever reason, you might still be able to get an acknowledgement in whatever results from the idea. You have to ask, of course.


Where can I find information about upcoming special issues in a field of study?

In addition to the two sources mentioned by William, I can add professional societies or their equivalent. It is usually these that organize meetings that result in special issues. It is rare (may differ between disciplines) that journals themselves, unless they somehow specialize, provide open special issues around a theme. Usually, it is then by invitation, or papers emanating from a workshop or symposia etc.

Hence, looking for especial issues may be a dead end and you should be looking for activities that lead to such issues.

As a final note, the term special issue signals an unregular issue in a scientific journal open for submission of manuscripts. Many conferences issue proceedings but then the prerequisite is usually attendance at the meeting and presentation of the paper there.


Grant proposal: How to answer question about Promotion of equality and non-discrimination

This is obviously not very relevant for your grant, but to be safe I would add something along the lines of, if and when the possibility of employing someone arose in the project in general (not just under this grant), you would consider candidates based on their technical suitability, and try to have an even representation of gender/etc in the candidate list.


To be honest, most PhDs can probably be (largely) conducted at distance. I live quite a way from the University at which I'm registered for my psychology PhD. However, you might want to try contacting the Open University http://www.open.ac.uk which is the UK's very highly regarded distance learning University. They do offer PhDs and I would assume that since they are geared up for distance work they might be one of your best options.


How to balance academic reputation of PhD supervisor and teaching experience

I'd advise caution: completing a PhD with no teaching experience is risky, as you're putting all your eggs in the "research" basket.

As other answers mentioned, there certainly are jobs that don't necessarily require teaching experience.  These are likely to be jobs in places where research is paramount; probably the top-tier research universities.  There is massive competition for these jobs; the number of such jobs in such a year is at best a few percent of the number of new PhDs.  Only the most successful researchers will have a chance at getting them, and if you don't turn out to be one of them (or discover you just don't enjoy research that much), you'll be out of luck in this arena.

At most of the remaining institutions, teaching is more important and experience will be valued, and you'll be in competition with candidates who have substantial experience.  So if you don't have any, you may be out of luck here too.

(I don't share MHH's confidence that alternative teaching activities such as high school outreach will be viewed as similarly valuable by a search committee.  Community college teaching might, but it also involves a higher level of responsibility and time commitment.)

That would leave only the bottom of the barrel of academic jobs: those who don't care too much about research accomplishments or teaching experience, and just need a warm body with a PhD.  These won't be nice jobs: they'll have high teaching loads, low pay, and limited instructional support; and even so there's intense competition for them.

The remaining option would be to leave academia for industry.

So in summary, if you aren't able to gain meaningful teaching experience, you'll be committing yourself to aiming for the most difficult jobs to get, without much of a fallback plan (within academia) if that doesn't work out.

(Disclaimer: My experience is limited to the US, and mostly in mathematics.  Things may be different elsewhere.)


Is it ok to get independent feedback before handing in thesis?

One of the objectives of gathering professors, postgraduates, graduate students and undergraduates at an university is precisely to encourage working together and cross-checking. Nothing wrong here.

If another graduate student in interested in your work, good for you! Perhaps the basis for future collaborations. If she helps you out by helping proofread your thesis, she is certainly entitled to an acknowledgement of the help in your final writeup. And you should also lend a hand, either to her or some following students, in gratitude.


The best way to thank my research supervisor?

You have the options already mentioned: sending an email or visiting them in person to say thank you.

However (like me), you might be a little unsure of what to say when speaking face to face. In this case, a handwritten note or card would be a nice touch, as it's more personal and permanent than an email.

You might want to ask for a reference at a later date, nearer to when you submit your applications. As Prof. Santa Claus says, if the project went as well as you describe, I see no reason why they would refuse.


How should a student handle possible misconduct in his supervisor's work?

Misconduct is of course a very serious thing. The problem you face is that you do not know the circumstances when your advisors work (or lack thereof) was made. It will also be hard to start digging into it to find out so I am afraid there is probably not much you can do. I do not think it would be wise to start spending time on this as a student either since it could seriously affect your thesis by distracting you and waste your time.

So what can be done? I would try to bring the question up with others. Discussing the different works and see if others pick up on the problem. Making people aware of what might be a problem can help you further assess the issue. I would tread carefully, however, unless you feel secure in opening up a can of worms.

I fully realize that this is far from a satisfactory answer from a moral point of view but it is pragmatic and I do not think it is your burden as a student to carry such weight. So the best you can do is to carefully expose the issue and perhaps later do something about it, if you still feel it is a serious breach.


Tips for faculty members seeking administrative responsibilities

Don't worry, administrative responsibilities will find you unless you flee them, and even then you probably won't avoid them.  At most universities, young faculty are expressly spared administrative responsibilities so that they can focus on research and get tenure.

If you're really looking for them, generally all you need to do is vocally speak your mind on every issue that comes up.  Most of your colleagues will feign apathy in order to avoid being assigned to a committee.


Postponing faculty start date due to covid and Pregnancy?

You should chat with your future department, starting with the department chair. (The views of random people on the internet, by the way, should count for very little!) Based on past experience, asking to defer one's start was not uncommon even pre-Covid. Keep in mind that (i) your department wants you to succeed, and making a case that you're more likely to succeed given x, y, and z is a good thing to do; (ii) it's possible that there are external constraints on the department, like a need for someone, perhaps you, to teach certain courses. Still, it's important to realize that (aside from rare, dysfunctional departments) the department is on your side.
Less important, I will note that personally I would think it better to start sooner, in January, rather than when you're due. Having a new baby is exhausting for the first few months at least, and starting a faculty position at the same time sounds very challenging! (I have two kids, one born before, one after, and zero at the start of my professorship!)


Do international politics, language, and local culture affect recognition of research degrees?

Your question is based on the wrong premise:

  My hunch is that someone graduated from Delft University will be enjoying much more competitiveness in the job market (academia and industry) than someone graduated from Shanghai or Moscow.

What you are confusing is (i) the competitiveness of an individual applicant for a position, with (ii) the ranking of a university they graduated from.

The ranking of their alma mater is one factor that affects the competitiveness of an applicant, but it is only one of a very large number of certainly not even the most important one. Among the many other factors are (i) previous work experience and results, (ii) familiarity with the language and culture of the hiring institution, (iii) the strength of the university from which the applicant graduates in the area for which the applicant is seeking a job, and many other factors.

Ranking is really fairly low on the list of criteria hiring committees look at.


Published paper not showing up on google scholar

In a blog post, Claus Wilke describes a bug with Google Scholar where it does not update pre-prints once the article has been publsheed. He notes that:

  The bug exists
  The Scholar team is aware of it
  They don’t know how to fix it
  They don’t think it’s a particularly pressing problem
  For any given paper, the problem will go away eventually, after several months or more

The other answer by cirne recommends that you upload your own citation. This will update your Scholar Profile but not Google Scholar. Thus, your profile will be correct, but others cannot search Google Scholar to find your papers.


Can I apply for PhD without recommendation from my masters advisor?

Yes, you can apply, but you may experience great difficulty in getting accepted.

  Additionally, wouldn't the admissions tutors suspect that something is going on if all my referees are undergraduate even when I am taking a master's course??

Most likely, yes.

  I am certain that his reference will be lukewarm or may even be negative as I am currently having difficulty getting along with him.

As others have suggested, the very important first step is to ask your advisor for a strong recommendation letter. If he agrees, no problem. If not, and there is nobody else that can comment in a strong, positive way about your research capabilities/potential, you may need to take a break from your studies and come up with a plan about how to move forward. I have been in such a situation.

I had a falling out with my MS advisor. I knew that he wouldn't write me a strong letter (I was not on speaking terms with him and I can't say much more than that). I also knew that I would need several strong recommendation letters commenting on my research capabilities/potential to continue on with my goal of pursuing a PhD. To get strong recommendations, I decided to go back into industry for a few years. In my field, a good percentage of industry jobs that I qualified for are heavily R&D focused. A good couple of years back in that environment landed me some solid opportunities to work on some cool stuff and impress some people who were very willing to help me out with pursuing my long-term goals.

I'd like to point out that this is still not a fail-safe approach: several schools I applied to explicitly asked me to submit a recommendation from my MS advisor. I explained to them my circumstance (it's actually a pretty good story), but that did not matter to them. I was very fortunate that one of my industry-based references was considered a big shot by several top schools I applied to, and for those schools that did not ask for a reference from my MS advisor, that worked out well for me. While there was a lot of hard work that went into my plan, I also feel in some ways that I got very lucky.

So, if you cannot get a strong recommendation from your MS advisor, be prepared to take some relatively drastic measures to improve your chances of success. Also, if it is possible in your field of study, leverage the skills you have obtained to build up some strong research references.


Considerations when negotiating a promotion from postdoc to researcher?

This varies enormously between universities (see Suresh and JeffE's comments, for example).  At some schools, having a soft-money position means very little.  They are basically just saying you are allowed to use their name to apply for grants, and to pay for things like office space using grant funding (including overhead).  In such a case, there may not be much to negotiate over, since they intend to make a profit from you, not spend money on you.  You could ask for adjunct status, and the salary requested in grant applications might be determined by the university, but most of your other issues (space, travel, equipment, assistants, etc.) would be handled in the course of dealing with individual grant applications, rather than specified in advance.  The key would be getting large enough grants to pay for them.

At other schools, particularly in medical fields but sometimes elsewhere too, being a research professor can be very serious: you may be a full faculty member, attending and voting in faculty meetings, with the possibility of tenure.  Of course, tenure on a soft-money position doesn't mean much, since the university never gives you a salary.  If you don't get grants, you don't get paid.  But it does mean that as long as you get grants, the university cannot get rid of you.  (This can be a genuine issue in some soft-money positions.  If the regular faculty don't think you meet their usual standards, then the department chair may eventually be tempted to push you to leave, so you do not seem like a permanent fixture and start to affect the department's reputation too much, or to make your lower status clear in other ways.  A tenured soft-money position is a real indication that the department values you, even if they aren't paying for you.)

How you should negotiate really depends on the sort of position.  It can't hurt to ask how anything you care about works, and the worst case scenario is being told it's not negotiable.

One thing I'd avoid bringing up is authorship issues.  This is something that should be discussed at the level of individual projects, and bringing it up here may make people worry that you are asking for something inappropriate (like guaranteed authorship just for providing funding), even if you have nothing like that in mind.  If you do discuss it, you should make it very clear that you are just making sure everyone is on the same page, rather than trying to negotiate special rules that would be guaranteed to apply to your job.

One thing I'd add is grace periods between grants.  If all goes well, you'll arrange overlapping funding, so you will not have a period with no active funding.  However, it might well happen if you aren't lucky, so you should discuss how that would work.  For example, if you had a gap between grants, would they immediately take away your office when the first grant expired?  If you reached a state in which all your grant proposals had been rejected, with no pending applications, then would that be the end of your job?  Or would they allow you some period of time to continue making applications?


What's the point of PhD theses if nobody reads them?

For simplicity, I am going to let your premise that (virtually) nobody reads a PhD thesis stand, even though that's debatable and also a bit field-dependent. There are still a number of reasons for it to exist:

It's arguably more of a "writing to learn" task anyway. Students don't produce theses for the sake of the thesis, but to learn how to do research and write it up properly in a long, coherent book. Even if no single person outside the committee reads the thesis ever, it was still a good learning experience for the student.
There is a lot of history around the concept of a doctoral program requiring developing in new thesis (in the original meaning of the word), writing it down in a book (the dissertation), and defending this new thesis against the local learned community. Even though nowadays many fields don't communicate new research ideas through long books anymore, there is still enough historical appeal to the idea that few programs want to get out of it entirely. The entire process of writing and defending the dissertation also has some appeal as a significant milestone event, which nicely demarks the end of an era for the student - he is no longer a student, but a complete member of the academic community.
In many countries there is a legal angle to this. At least in Europe, a PhD program is usually legally defined to conclude with the production of a doctoral dissertation of some kind.
In the age of "stapler theses" (which consist of a synopsis and a collection of previously published papers in verbatim), the entire affair is fairly low-cost anyway. My last students rarely spent longer than 2 or 3 months on the actual "thesis writing".


Is it inappropriate to explain why I really want to live where the university is located in my job talk?

Just to put what's already in the comments into an answer:

Yes, you should convey the information you've told us to the hiring faculty.  If you've gotten a campus interview for a faculty position, they are already extremely interested and satisfied with your on-paper qualifications.  Final decisions are often strongly motivated by who they think will take the offer and who they think will stick around, happily and productively, in the job.  You list several things that would earn you lots of points on that score, and since the hiring faculty cannot and should not ask too many questions about your personal life, the way to make that information known is to tell them so explicitly.

However,

No, you should not put that information in as a slide.  Your talk should be about your professional work.  Throwing in "I'd like it here!  Hire me!!" while people are listening to your work is jarring and shows (I think) just a soupçon of poor judgment.  I assume that your on-campus interview is structured so that anyone who is involved in hiring you has multiple opportunities to talk to you outside of the context of your job talk.  If so, then I wouldn't even bring it up at all in your talk, except possibly as an ice-breaker at the beginning or a parting shot at the very end.


Should I answer students' questions immediately or teach them to ask better questions?

Being a student myself I know how frustrating it can be to work with technics or facilities you don't know enough about. Sometimes this means asking fully detailed questions can be tricky.

But there is a difference between a student that tries to ask a question to get help with their problem, and one that just declares that they have a problem and thinks it is another persons business to deal with it. What you posted above is the latter.
They have encountered a problem and instead of trying to get help to solve it they try to make you solve it. That might even be clever, because as long as you DO solve the problem, they get maximum effect with a minimum of effort. And as soon as students realise that, even the good students won't bother to read your FAQs anymore, because it is a waste of time, when you obviously can identify and solve a problem as soon as they write "Help, I have a problem."

Additionally you have to keep in mind, that as a student you often take from the experience that people don't respond to your question of, "can anyone help me" as indicating that this person is just checking, whether someone responds. It is not meant to be a question, but a phrase to start a communication about the problem. That is something adapted from face to face communication. In the real world you don't go to people and start with a 5 minute monologue to your problem, you ask "Hey would you help me?" Wait for a "Sure what is it." And than give your monologue.

So what I read above is not a question it is the reflex of a student to a problem. Before even thinking they are posting (in my generation a common reflex in every situation - we are the tldr - too long didn't read generation). If I were you I would respond with a reflex. Just answer with a standard answer that explains, that you need more detail to help. Students who get frustrated by this are already frustrated and beyond your reach.
If on the other hand a student tried to ask a proper question and just failed, you should provide the answer and give a hint on how his question could have been better.

How frustrated your student will be is less a question of what you respond, than of how you
respond. "I could solve your problem, but I wont because of your stupid question" is of course frustrating. But even in a standard answer you can demonstrate that you care, that you take the other person and his time serious, that you would like to help and that you need more information in order to do so. I would try to phrase it, but as you undoubtedly realised I'm not a native English speaker, so I leave that to you. Just don't advertise the fact that you are trying to teach them something.


In terms of the literal meaning of the word, you're an undergraduate until you graduate. Then you are called a post-graduate student (British English) or graduate student (American English) if you continue studying for a higher degree, or simply a graduate if you are no longer a student.

However, your university may use these words differently or use different words altogether, and their meaning and usage also varies across countries and cultures.


Advisor wants me to break our group out into a different area

I don't see it as very unusual. The advisor seems to want to have several projects going at once to maximize the chance of success on at least some of them. It is common, where I've been, for different students to work on different things.

But as you go along, you will need continuing guidance. Setting a simple expectation at the start (write a paper) is probably fine as long as it doesn't end there. And you will also need to depend on the ability of the advisor, and his general experience, to get you over any hard spots or know when it is time to move to a different problem if the chosen one turns out to be fruitless.

It actually sounds like he has some faith in you to carry on. That can turn out to be a great thing.

And, as you go, keep notes on other directions that your work suggests might be good to explore in the future. Having lots of "irons in the fire" is a good way to avoid getting stuck.


Is it appropriate for peer-reviewer to look for possible plagiarism?

I would immediately communicate your findings to the editor and do no further reviewing until you hear back from them.
In the best case, like you say, they forgot to edit it, and can resubmit. Communicating to the editor will let them stop the other reviewers so they don't waste their time either.
In the worst case, it's poorly executed plagiarism and you would have to contact the editor anyway.
To answer the title question, of course there's no issue looking for plagiarism, and you seem familiar enough with the field to understand the implications of your results.


GRE is more or less compulsory for graduate admission in the US. You will need better reason than 1-year military service for not taking it in your application.

Please take the exams and apply for the fall 2020 term.


Leaving a conference immediately after presenting a paper?

Is there an etiquette regarding this? Should someone accept a presentation on a conference if they won't be able to be present for the whole duration?

There aren’t really any universally agreed-upon rules for such things, but as a general rule:

If the conference organizers are paying any expenses for your attendance (such as travel or accommodation), it is considered good manners to be present for at least a good chunk of the conference other than your own talk.
If the organizers are not paying your expenses, I don’t think they have either a moral claim or much of an expectation that you do anything other than show up and deliver the talk they invited you to deliver.

If you are in doubt about what the organizers are expecting from you, it is perfectly acceptable to let them know about your constraints and ask them if it’s okay to accept the invitation even though you won’t be able to stay after your talk. If it bothers them, I‘m sure they will have no trouble telling you.


Firstly, note that, from my experience, your senior advisor isn't by any means a research advisor. What you're looking for, admirable as it may be, is a good deal more than he's signed up to provide to students. I wouldn't be too hard on him.

If you want to simple familiarize yourself with "what research entails", I recommend simply talking to people. Ask any graduate student if you can meet them for coffee and just ask them what they do all day (other than surf the web and drink coffee). Search through the faculty profiles on your department's website, find someone who looks interesting, and send an email asking to meet with them for 15-30 minutes to talk about research as a career.

If you're more interested in actually doing research, all of the above still apply, but there are two more steps. First, talk to the undergraduate coordinator for your department and try to set up a research internship over the next semester/summer. Secondly, when you're talking to faculty whose research interests you, ask whether they'd be willing to take undergraduate researchers in their lab. Doing research with them, even if just for a few hours a week, will give you the exposure you need to really understand what research entails.


Applying to MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at the University of Cambridge

The admission requirements and international equivalents make no mention of university rank. (Disclaimer: I haven't checked every single country in the international equivalents). You can check for yourself whether your degree results meet the required standard.

I haven't found specific statistics for CS, but the overall ratio of applications to admissions for graduate study overall at Cambridge is about 6 to 1. (The ratio of applications to conditional offers is about 3 to 1, but it sounds as though you have your results already and would get an unconditional offer or a rejection). If you meet the basic requirements you could expect an interview.

The interview is where things like participating in Informatics Olympiads may be useful. If you've mentioned it in the application, you may get a question about it. But that kind of thing is more useful to undergraduate applicants than to graduates, unless you can show direct relevance (e.g. good results in undergrad-level security competitions, when you've mentioned in your application that you want to focus your studies on security topics). The reason that it's less useful for graduate applicants is that you will probably have done some kind of individual project in the final year of your undergraduate degree, and that project tells the interviewer more about your interests and abilities than Olympiad results.


How specific should I be in my SOP, regarding courses and thesis subject?

The expected Statement of Purpose probably differs between fields, countries and even institutions. In economics, it is not a major factor in admissions even if required. People write about their general interest area and proposed topic, with the expectation that their actual thesis may be completely different.

As I understand it, the purpose of the SOP is just to demonstrate having an idea about the field in general and being able to distinguish subfields. As mentioned, this may vary across fields.


Should recommenders be from the same discipline as the program one's applying to?

To point out one pitfall in kmdouglass's answer, there is one situation in which getting letters from out-of-discipline people can affect an applicant's chances: if the letter writers do not directly support the candidate's application to the specific discipline. In other words, if you're a mathematician applying to physics programs, your math professors should be explaining why you will be a great physics graduate student, not a great math graduate student. (Or why you will be a great graduate student in any department.) "Dissonance" between the letters of recommendation and where you're applying could make some reviewers question if you're seriously interested in applying to physics departments, which could hurt your chances (albeit perhaps only slightly).


Decision in process has passed a one month. Should I send a mail asking status of manuscript to editorial staff?

The straight forward answer is NO. This is because of the following reasons:

the journal you are talking about is highly reputed and the editorial office know their responsibility well.
30 days is very less given few situations where two or more Editors taking final decision. So it includes communication times.
although you have adrenaline rush to see the review results. It is better to wait to show that you are not desperate. (I understand it is difficult)
instead of mailing them better start working on what possible comments the work might have got. So that you can finish the revision soon, if Incase

Last, good luck!


Should I follow-up with the editor about formatting issues on a published article?

It sounds like these issues are purely cosmetic and don't significantly affect the paper's content nor its readability.  I would just leave it alone.  I think you do risk being seen as picky or annoying if you make an issue of something this minor.  Yes, it's not ideal, but life's not perfect.

If you're able to post a version of the paper to your website or a preprint server, you could certainly fix the formatting in that version.  Depending on the culture in your field, it may be that most people will be reading that version instead of the "official" version anyway.

(It's also possible that you'll still receive proofs and be able to correct them at some point in the future.  I have experienced cases where the publisher will post a preliminary version of the article before the author has corrected the proofs, and update it later after corrections are made.)


What to do in dealing with scientific mistakes in an article?

In this kind of scenario, write a letter to the editor. To quote:

  In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print.

Example of such a letter, and the authors' response to it (and other letters criticizing their original results).


Business card for Ph.D. student - what should be included?

My experience of business cards in academia is that they are mostly just an easier way to share contact information than scribbling it on a napkin.

As such, the only things that are really important are institution, name, title (because everybody will expect it), and sets of preferred contact information.

As such, if you want people calling you, put down your phone number; if you don't want people calling you, don't put it down.  Likewise for all of the other standard aspects.  You probably should have a web page that you want people to visit.

As for social media sites like LinkedIn: I'm rather dubious about them, simply because there are potentially so many.  I think one wouldn't be a problem, but the extrapolator in my mind goes to a ridiculous image of somebody handing me a card with their LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, ResearchGate, Facebook, etc.  Don't be that person, or else if I meet you at a conference and you hand me your card, I may have a difficult time avoiding laughter.


How to manage new ideas coming at late stages of PhD

I would say based on my opinions and experience that no-one cares about the Thesis.

The Thesis is a set of publications that must be about the same topic. Your publications will be the ones cited, not the Thesis. The Thesis will be only found somewhere in the university archives, while the publications will the visible part of your work you are evaluated upon.

Thus I think that the Thesis should be pushed to the finish line.

EDIT: The form of Thesis may vary, so it is noteworthy that especially in arts and humanities, the Thesis may be a coherent piece of work. Then the Thesis can be evaluated as a whole.


Is a Polish PhD degree in engineering equally respected in North America?

No, it generally wouldn't be as revered. If you look at the university ranking systems, Polish institutions are generally not as  well ranked, or regarded as North American institutions. This is also true if you look at the specific rating given for the quality of engineering education within these universities. For example, see:

http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings


How is the quality of a paper evaluated for application purposes?

The quality of a mathematical paper isn't an absolute. It may not even be apparent for years. Quality is judged by individuals and two judges may come to opposite conclusions on the value.

Number of citations is no more than an indication. A person working in an especially arcane sub-field with few other researchers will naturally have fewer citations than someone working in a popular field. Who cites your work may mean more, actually.

The quality of the journal in which you find something is an indication, but partly that is a matter of coincidence. Perhaps the paper in the "lesser" journal is, again, in too arcane a field for the editors to have included it. It isn't that this means nothing, it is just that it isn't an absolute indication.

If the purpose of the question is anything beyond a hypothetical, related to who is more likely to advance, then that really depends on other factors. Certainly one paper isn't a great indicator. As a comment by Prof. Santa Claus notes, a future advisor is more likely to want to work with the student who has more to contribute to the actual work of the subfield of that advisor. Something in either paper may help that person to make a decision, but other factors will also come in to play.

This doesn't, of course, address the issue that some problems in mathematics are considered important. You mention famous unsolved questions of course. Giving a first correct proof of a problem already considered important is, of course, quality work.


Is it a plus point for my PhD application to mention that I am already a PhD candidate at some other university?

I can't really see how it is a plus, but it could be a big negative.

The obvious question is going to be: why is this student leaving his current university? Doing a PhD involves a pretty hefty investment for both sides, and you're about to leave a university in an attempt to go to another. Universities want to be convinced that you will make it to graduation.

I would expect you to have a very good reason for this (trying to go to a better ranked school after starting at one isn't a good enough rationale to me).


Are there any tools for organising literature with tags?

I use Qiqqa to manage my PDFs when writing research papers. It allows you to highlight text or add notes to the PDFs. You can then tag the notes, and run "reports" which essentially will pull all of the tagged sections from all of the PDFs in your library into a single paper (similar to the Word document you mentioned) so you don't have to do that manually. It will show the original snippet from the paper, any notes you've made regarding that snippet, and the citation for the paper. There's also a neat brainstorm function that will let you visualize papers, tags, or notes and move them around/link them together; I use that to organize papers sometimes.

There is a free version which will let you try out some features, and an affordable pay version that has more enhanced options. There are some helpful how to videos on Youtube that provide a nice sense of functionality and may help you decide if it's the tool you're looking for. I've been using it since I started grad school and it's been tremendously helpful in organizing my academic writing.

http://www.qiqqa.com/67642


Would it be beneficial for me to transfer to a university with a PhD program instead of continuing to study for a MS?

I can only speak from my experience. To note, I am a recently graduated PhD from a top school in an engineering field. I served on an application committee as a student member. Two main issues come to mind:
1) How will your decision impact your possible acceptance into a PhD program, and
2) How will your decision influence your finances (course fees, possibility of courses taken that will not count towards your degree.)

The application process for PhD programs starting fall 2016 have closed, to the best of my knowledge. I do not know the likelihood of transferring within a Masters program - even then, you would still need to submit a PhD program application at the same school when it is next open, though you would be better set assuming you have an advisor and research ongoing.

Even with a Masters at the same school, same department, classwork does not necessarily count towards your PhD requirements.  Be sure to check if it does.

If you decide to finish your Masters at your current school, your future PhD application will be viewed a little differently from a straight from undergrad application. As someone who has completed their masters and who has dedicated time specifically to research, you will be expected to have at least one publication in a refereed top conference/journal. An undergraduate should have evidence in their work/project history that they are capable of doing research, but it is not critical they have a publication.  This may vary depending upon the school and department, but keep it in mind.

There are sometimes Master degrees that follow one of two plans (coursework Masters or project/research Masters). A coursework Masters is at a significant disadvantage compared to other Masters when doing PhD applications.

I don't have complete knowledge of your situation, or goals, of course, but if I was in your situation, I would try to do the following: pick and contact a couple schools to check out the possibility of a transfer within the Masters program for this term. If yes, establish contact with a couple of professors about research in their lab. With a masters at the school you plan to apply to for PhD, you can immediately start your research, develop connections, have a better chance of getting accepted into that PhD program, and are more likely to have coursework count towards your PhD requirements.  If the transfer is not possible, I would complete the Masters at the current school while emphasizing research, pushing for a paper which is good evidence that capable of doing solid work.


Can we send our research paper to multiple journals at once?

Short answer: No. Then to expand on the different aspects of your question, acceptable or not and effects:

It is generally not acceptable to send the same paper to two journals (in your question your title states "journals" but your text talks about "conferences", I will focus on journals). Typically you sign or agree to a statement that the work is not under consieration elsewhere when you submit work. If so then you are clearly violating an understanding you have agreed to. This does not prevent people from doing so. I have experienced (as editor/reviewer) a paper that was submitted to three journals at the same time.
There is no way to provide formal punishment if you break the rules but you will become "known" for this behaviour quite quickly and you do not want a bad reputation. Again, this does not prevent the problem from happening but I guess some authors think the world is too big for anyone to notice and prior to Internet and its search capabilities, this was probably at least partially true; now it is much easier to trace duplicates.

Your final commnet confuses me a bit. why would you send a paper to a journal if you do not intend to try to get it published there? If this is to get free feedback to improve the manuscript, I would strongly advice against such behaviour.

A final comment: I deliberately did not consider the case of a conference since all conferences may not lead to a publication, but then you would submit an abstract and not a complete manuscript.


If I am interested in specializing in theory of computation, should I be looking for a PhD program in CS or math?

Generally speaking, in the US, the theorists will be in the computer science department, but it will not be hard to make arrangements for you to work with them as a student in the math PhD program.

Would you prefer to TA and eventually teach introductory programming courses, or calculus courses?  That's probably going to be the biggest difference (especially down the line after you graduate) between the two options.


Is it worth serving on a program committee if you are going into industry?

You might address this as a 'return on investment' type of problem.

Your investment: you will need to put in some time in reviewing the articles, writing down your findings, perhaps communicating with the rest of the programming committee, etc. How you value this investment depends largely on how much time you have available, how much you enjoy (or dislike) reading the articles on this particular topic, how experienced you are in reviewing, etc.

Return: you might learn something from reading the articles, you might feel that it is benevolent to contribute to science, and it might be relevant for your CV. Again, the value of these depends on your particular situation. Is the conference topic relevant for your career? Do future employers care about these type of activities? Do you care about contributing to science?

The value of the different elements will vary for everybody (depending on their personality and situation), so it is impossible to provide a generic answer.


As an instructor, I usually appreciate when my students let me know about a potential problem in their work before I even have a chance to discover it myself. It signals to me that they're 1) concerned about their work, and 2) aware of their own work -- which, sadly, not all students are.

I can't imagine it would hurt to send that kind of email, unless your instructor feels a certain kinship with the Grinch.


Why are external PhDs considered to take "decades"?

Being a PhD student is a full-time job.

True, "officially" you may be assigned to 20 hours of "study" and 20 hours of "work" by the university, but this is just a way to determine your salary, and does NOT reflect the amount of time you actually spend on research studies.

In the U.S., the nominal time for PhD is about five to six years average. This assumes the student is a full time student. While some people finish their PhD in three years or less, this is truly exceptional. The average is six. (This was the case at least in the school I attended, in the Computer Science department. Length may vary in other departments.) It also depends on what you aim for in your PhD: is graduating after publishing just one paper good enough for you?

Now let's do the math. If it takes about six years to finish a degree, assuming full time, then how much time would it take for a part-time student? Take into consideration also 20%-30% extension of time due to context-switching, but also reduce 15%-25% of the time due to being more efficient  (it's easier to waste time when working full-time, in my opinion).

You arrive at 10+ years.

Then again, I know people that worked part-time and studied part-time, and were able to complete their PhD studies in four to six years. I also know people that took five to six years to finish their MSc degree (which nominally takes two years), due to having another full-time job.. It depends mostly on your abilities and aims from PHD (but also quite a bit on your luck).


How does the family background mentioned in the statement of purpose affect a PhD application for admission in U.S.?

How a statement of purpose is read varies from department to department, and from person to person.  That said, I think for most people reading your statement, it wouldn't matter much.  Yes, many people are for socio-economic diversity in admissions, so scenario B could be slightly helpful, but really this might only make a difference in very borderline cases.  (Of course, you should be truthful, and not claim to be Pete Clark's offspring if you're not.)

What's important about the statement is that we get some sense of your motivation and goals, and possibly mathematical maturity.  It's also good if your expectations about grad school sound realistic.  By the time you are applying for PhD programs, between your academic history and your letters of recommendation and a statement about your motivation/goals, we should have a good sense of your likelihood of success in our program without any information about how you grew up.  We care more about where you are now rather than how you got there, so to speak.

My advice is, if you feel it's useful to explain where you came from to explain your motivation/goals, then by all means feel free to.  If not, there's no need to bring it up.


You will not be paid in money.

You might be paid in reputation. This depends on how the conference handles its review process and you can ask your supervisor about it.

If the conference organizers learn about your reviewing (i.e. if "being appointed as a sub-reviewer" is more than your supervisor forwarding you the manuscript and asking you to write the review that he or she will then send back to the conference organizers), that may lead to a slight rise in your reputation among those organizers. Results could be that you will at first be asked to review more papers, but on the long run, this might lead to you being considered for e.g. co-organizing a workshop (if one of the organizers remembers you usually provided valid input in a particular field etc.).
Some conferences publish their list of reviewers. This has basically the same effect as above, however with a much wider scope, as the fact that you contributed will be publicly visible.

And of course, you will gain some experience in reviewing and more awareness of issues in authoring scientific texts. Also, you might get some insight into the work of researchers that you may not otherwise have found. Sometimes, this includes becoming aware of research that you can use for your own publications (either as related work or as an inspiration in the first place), as seems to have happened e.g. here.