Is there a conflict of interest when the supervisor and co-supervisor are husband and wife?

Your supervisors are problematic in several ways, from what you describe:

Pushing their own research interests over what's most beneficial to you
Exposing you to unpleasant interpersonal issues between themselves that affect your working environment
Not coordinating and communicating effectively with each other to co-supervise you

However, none of these things are necessarily the result of them being married. The same issues can arise (and I have seen them) with unrelated co-supervisors who do not get along.

In general, co-supervision by a married couple is not universally disallowed.  (In my university it is allowed, and there is a husband-wife pair in my department that successfully co-supervises PhD students on occasion.)

Some universities do recognize this as a conflict of interest. This from the University of Western Australia (emphasis mine):

  Supervision must be free of actual or perceived conflicts of interest.  Supervision by, or co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships is generally not appropriate.  All such cases must be declared at the time that supervisors are nominated.  In cases where approval is given on academic grounds for supervision by, or co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships, additional supervisors who are free of an actual or perceived conflict of interest must be appointed.


Ought mainstays (people recurring in a piece of academic writing) be abbreviated?

I've never seen this in academic writing, ever.  At minimum it will be confusing, and some people might find it rude to obscure people's names like this.

Don't do it.  Just write out the surnames on each reference.  If they're long, so be it.

If your main goal is to avoid keystrokes and typos, use an autocomplete or "abbrev" feature of your word processor or text editor, or some sort of macro expansion.  But don't impose it on the reader.

(I think in some fields it might be acceptable to refer to authors of the paper this way.  "One of us (NE) previously investigated this question..." And in some cases, you see initials used to refer to individuals who are anonymous, such as patients or  study participants.  "R.Z. is a 59-year old female who presented with shortness of breath..."  But I've never seen initials used for non-anonymous third parties as you suggest.)


Is mild credential embellishment from industry considered academic dishonesty?

I find it unlikely that your colleague got their academic assignment based on the role in the company. It is more likely that their contributions/research/innovation/pedagogic ability was recognized and they were offered the opportunity.

Don't generally assume that an advanced degree is an absolute prerequisite for academic affiliation. I know a guy who doesn't hold a PhD yet is the director of a major research lab at a prestigious private research university in the US. He simply "never got around to it". True and extraordinary merit is still recognized in academia, advanced degrees are just another (arguably easier) contribution to that merit.

That being said, I wouldn't call that academic dishonesty and embellishment is also a strong word for it. This could be labelled as inflation, because, as you said, their stated position is a bit 'stretched'. Unfortunately, such things are seen quite often, people feel the need to stress their influence and position. However, for the world outside your company, the distinction makes little difference, and for people who care within, your colleague either doesn't care or can plausibly defend the vague statements. From the standpoint of ethics, this falls arguably into a gray zone, where it is understood that it is not ethical, yet it is tolerated, as long as the stretch isn't blatant.


How do I find a research assistant positions (life science) in USA if you're an international student and outside of USA now? Is unpaid job possible?

Research Assistant positions are almost exclusively filled by graduate (and occasionally, undergraduate) students. They are not normally available for non-students. You'll have to wait until you're enrolled - and an RA position may be part of your financial aid package.

Research Scientists and Research Staff positions are available to non-students. However, because there are so many people with work status who can fill them, employers will rarely agree to sponsor someone for a visa for them (unless there is a mitigating circumstance, like a spousal hire). You can find staff openings through the human resource (HR) portals of most major universities.

Under US law, you generally cannot take an unpaid job to circumvent visa restrictions -- this part of your question is best asked and answered in expatriates.stackexchange.com , as I have seen you have done.


What are the main reasons postdoc applicants get rejected?

There are two big issues: competition and potentially poor fit. Either can knock you out. In some fields, at some times, the competition is fierce. Be happy (a bit) that you made the short list.

On the other side of the coin, it is possible that a candidate is seen as a poor fit for the position. This is more likely to happen early in the process unless it comes down to personal issues - arrogance, or indifference, or ...

Your materials can be fine and you can be fine, but someone else is just seen to be a better fit at the moment. Soldier on.

You may not need the rest of the advice, below, since you seem to be able to reach the shortlist, but for others, note that your written materials have to be positive/strong enough to move you from the "all applicants" pile into the "we should look at this person" pile. The second pile is very short and if you don't get into it at a quick reading, you are done. Once you are in the shortlist it becomes more of a personal and less of an institutional "game". If you know you are a marginal fit for a position, don't bother applying except in exceptional circumstances.


Is there any published research on pedagogy of the semester vs trimester systems at the high school or university levels?

I do not know about semester vs. trimester, but I have seen research showing that taking 2 semesters to learn Calculus I prepares students more completely, and makes them more resistant to leaving STEM majors:

Nelson, M. (2014, September). Oral Reviews: Retaining STEM Majors. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings (Vol. 6).

and
Nelson, M. A. (2010). Oral assessments: Improving retention, grades, and understanding. PRIMUS, 21(1), 47-61.


Is it okay for a PhD student to go on holidays in breaks?

Do you have an adviser? Have you talked to them about this? Most should be fine with you taking some time off to visit your family, but you should probably discuss longer breaks with them to work out all the details.


Do we cite authors or papers when using author/year citations?

In general, the final arbiter of this is the style guide the editor is using for the book, journal or collection. If you have no external editor or style sheet then the choice is yours, but the most common usage for inline citations would be not to repeat the name, while leaving the sentence readable with the parenthetical part left out, i.e.

  As shown in Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

This is specifically when the name is reused, so it would still be

  As shown in another paper (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.


Requesting a favor from student for giving recommendation letters

It sounds like what you want to do is to write a letter now in exchange for the promise that they will work for you later. Whether you can do this is down to your university's rules, but I would argue that it is unethical and unwise to coerce a student in this way.

My recommendation would be to accede to the request and make the offer

  Sure, I can write you a strong letter. For that matter, if you are looking for research experience, I would be happy to supervise your senior project next year. Let's chat sometime if you are interested.

If you are not willing to write the letter:

  My policy is to only write recommendation letters for students who do research with me. That said, I'd be happy to discuss hiring you as a research assistant next year.

Note, this second one still links the two, but it simply tells the student your requirements, rather than suggesting quid pro quo.


Can you put awards from a project on your CV, if you had help with the project?

I commend you on taking ethical authorship seriously. Authorship requirements are not entirely clear, and customs may vary across academic disciplines and cultures.

I would include the awards on your resume/CV. Based on what you described, I doubt that you will ever have the legitimacy of your claim to authorship questioned, since you developed and executed a majority of the ideas for your project. Also, you are not trying to take credit for others ideas (you are very clear and forthcoming about who thought of/did what), you are just saying you won awards, which you did.

There are many articles in peer-reviewed journals on authorship ethics. For example, this article in Nature.

Nature also published an article on a physics paper with >5,000 authors.


Do European PhD programs have a qualifying exam, and if so, what form do they take?

Most central European universities don't traditionally have QEs. However, it seems to me as if it is getting more popular to have something after the first one or two years of your programme. Two data points:

In my current university, PhD students need to defend their thesis proposal after (maximum) two years. This includes writing their proposal, receiving written comments by two other (i.e., not their advisor) professors of the faculty, and presenting and defending their proposal in front of the entire faculty (our faculty is pretty small). Questions are asked in this defense, but not typically about material that is not directly linked to the proposal. In theory students can fail at this step, but is is very uncommon. The goal is rather to force students (and advisors) to have a clear goal of where the thesis is going early on, something that was historically a bit of a problem.
When I did my PhD, we did not really have any sort of entry exam or defense in my alma mater. However, since then, they have switched to a model not unlike what I explained above. The main difference is that proposals are only presented (there is no written document), and that only a small committee is responsible for giving feedback on the proposal (not the entire faculty). This defense has to be taken one year after start of the PhD. Failing this defense is again very uncommon.

Summary: the places I am well aware of don't have stressful QEs. Instead, we traditionally had pretty much nothing. Nowadays, many places have a proposal defense instead of a QE, but this is not a step that students typically have to be stressed out about.


How to be a cultural representative as an academic?

The answer to this question probably depends a lot on whether the "cultural representative" aspect is a primary goal of the fellowship (e.g., if it is designed to enable artists and poets to travel), or if it is a secondary goal (e.g., they want to make sure contact between cultures is a byproduct of what you do).

If it's a primary goal, we probably can't help, and it's probably not for you unless your field is the arts (which I don't think it is).

If it's secondary, however, the big thing is probably to bring your head outside of work and talk about what you'd want to do with your outside time, interacting with the culture around you.  For example, I recently hosted a visiting graduate student through Cultural Vistas "Train USA" program. One of the requirements for setting this up was to provide our plan for exposure to American culture, so I talked about some of the local events and places that I wanted to introduce our visitor to outside of work.  And that's just what we did: my visitor was a good, social person, and enjoyed exploring the area, and though the specific selection of events and places ended up being a bit different than the examples I listed, the spirit was the same.

If the program that you are applying to is similar, then I would suggest it may be good to take a similar approach.  Begin with the plan and assumption that you will be socializing with people outside of your work, and then talk about how others will get exposed to your background and experience through what you would like to do.  Food is a nice example, if that's a thing you enjoy.  Some others: do you play music, or enjoy poetry?  Are there festivals and holidays whose celebration you would want to share?  Are you a movie buff, and want to share locally made good or bad cinema?  The list of possibilities is endless, and depends mostly on what it is that makes you a well-rounded person beyond your research.

Likewise, for the return home think about what people you know at home are likely to ask, and how you will share it with them.  Are you a photographer?  Do you blog? Are there local elementary schools you volunteer at where the kids would like to hear about traveling?  Will the networking connections you build abroad help others to make similar journeys?

In short: think outside the research box, about the rest of what makes you a good and interesting human being.


Is it cheating to give someone my old exam revision notes?

No, it is not cheating.

It's also not cheating for them to go to the library and find a particularly well written textbook that no-one else had.
It's not cheating for them to hire a tutor.
It's not cheating to share your revision notes with other students before your exam.
It's not cheating to do a unit completely including exam, then repeat it in the next year to get a better mark (In fact, this is normal if you fail)

Most would say not even cheating (or facilitating) to tell them about the exam in your year.
E.g. along the lines of "I focused my study too much on the topology part of the unit, but there was only 1 topology question in the exam. But I don't know how it will be this year."

Some would even argue that its not cheating to share with a past student a copy of last years exam, with fully worked solutions. On the basis that the instructor is not going to use the same exam twice. This is a bit more dubious though.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the exam is to test how well they know the content.
So the context of an unfair advantage is one that lets them do well in the exam, without learning the content.
No one cares how they learned the content.
They might have gone to lectures, read the textbook, watched youtube lectures from other universities, read notes from a friend, or even have been working in the field for decades and just be attending the exam to get the paper to prove it.
No one is assessing an unfair advantage at learning as cheating.


Well, search for publications of a John Smith (no middle name), or a Lee Wang, or any common name, and you'll have a hard time identifying them because of the many homonyms… Publishers and database owners are trying hard to help users, by trying to guess who is who (Web of Science calls this “Unique author set”), but their algorithms don't do very well.

As an example, I have a colleague who has a paper completely outside her main field. None of these algorithms pick it up.

Thus, because a researcher’s name is not unique, many people argue that there is need of a unique ID scheme. (Others disagree: “I’m not a number!”). As a researcher, the benefits are:

easier for others to identify your articles in databases
easier to keep track of your citations, especially for items other than conventional journal articles
possibilities for cool web hyperlinks, like DOI has brought

The Orcid registry was launched yesterday, so noöne uses it so far…

My own concern about it is that I don't know in detail on the ORCID consortium will use the data they will be able to mine. In particular, this worries me:

  I consent to the privacy policy and terms and conditions of use, including allowing those who access the database to make commercial uses of the public data.


Keeping my remote Job with MSC in Berlin

Both at the same time seems quite unfeasible. A degree in Germany is generally considered to be a full time thing by itself, not to mention the additional work of living in a foreign country, having to deal with German immigration and bureaucracy (which apparently is a special nightmare in Berlin).

I would say the question boils down to where you want to be in five years. If you can see yourself living and working full time in Germany, then the M.Sc. is the clear way to go. As far as I know, if you finish a degree on a student visa, you can to transform it into a work permit if you can find a job within a few months afterwards. If you want to ultimately stay in Uganda, then maybe keeping the job is better. But I don't know how much a European degree is valued there and if it could get you an even better job.

If you really need the money, asking the company to reduce your hours might be another option, but if you go your time is best spent studying (and possibly learning German).


I am going to start my PhD in the next few months. How you would you recommend that I start networking?

Professional networking is best done in person, therefore if you want to begin networking before you start your graduate studies your options will be limited. Check various social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) to see if any of the researchers/students at the school have social/networking groups set up. If they do, try joining/following those groups, introduce yourself as a new student and take it from there.

Additionally, check the university website to find the list of professors in the department. Usually these lists include their email address and a link to their research websites, or a list of their research interests and publications. Identify a couple researchers whose work interests you and skim a few of their most recent papers. Then, contact them, let them know you're an incoming student and you've read their work (mention a specific paper of theirs you liked) and ask if you could meet them to discuss their work when you arrive in September. That way, you can introduce yourself to several professors and make it easier to establish contact with them when you arrive.


What will be the research methodology if you are developing a generic software

Writing software isn't research. Proving that a piece of software, written by yourself or others, can be research. How are you going to show that your software does what it set out to do? How are you going to show that it is better than the alternatives? For those questions you need methodology. Questionnaires? Observations? Objective measurements? Something.

But the software itself is just a tool. Showing it is valuable is the research part.

And, of course, if it is real research then you need to be prepared for the situation that you get evidence that the new tool isn't actually better. Research is a search for truth, not proof of a predefined statement.


Minor Error in Submitted Elsevier Journal Paper

First of all, that it's Elsevier doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.  (Unless you didn't want to submit there at all, but evidently you do, which is fine by me...)

Based on your description of the errors, I agree that they are minor.  In my experience, many if not most papers contain minor errors of this form, and a lot of referees include it as part of their job to point out the minor errors that they find (though of course you cannot count on this).  If the minor errors are sufficiently numerous that creates a bad impression, as would minor errors that are not viewed as minor (obviously).

  I would be very disappointed if they were to reject the paper on these grounds.

In the great game of journal submissions, anything is possible.  If it happened it would be a raw deal.  Raw deals occur relatively frequently in this game, and I know of no way to systematically protect against them.  In this case, being a bit more careful is obvious advice, but don't take it too seriously: one could spend twice as much time proofreading and still have minor errors.

  I hope they wouldn't assume I don't know the content of my area because of this mismatch.

To me that seems even more unlikely and also a bit off-center.  The task of a referee is not to judge you but rather your paper.  Full mastery of the content of your subject area is neither necessary nor sufficient to get your paper accepted, I would say.

In terms of what to do, you have two options: either wait patiently for the outcome, or contact the editor saying you found some typos in your paper, have prepared a new version, and are willing to pass that along to the referees if they think that is a good idea.  My advice: if it's only been a couple of weeks since submission, probably the referee has not sat down to read the paper carefully yet.  (At least that's the way it is in pure mathematics.  If it's otherwise in your field: congratulations.)  Sending along a fresh version will probably be well received.  (If it can be received.  The automated journal submission systems complicate this a bit.)  If it's been much longer than that, the referee may have already been through this part of your paper, and sending a revised version is asking them to look at two versions of your paper at once, which is a bit annoying.

Anyway, try not to worry about it.  Others have done this and worse than this many times over.


Can I lose my job over writing a negative comment on (anonymous) faculty evaluation of institution?

The true anonymity of "anonymous evaluations" is a key issue (in academia and also in the workplace).  If you say an evaluation is anonymous, can you later take them to task for something they wrote that you regard as problematic?

This happened at my university a few years back.  Student course evaluations are done electronically now, and they are said to be anonymous.  However, one student "contributed" an anonymous evaluation which criticized their instructor for their sexual orientation.  The university IT staff got involved, did in fact trace the evaluation back to the student, and the student was prosecuted for it.  In particular, IIRC their name was made public (I read about this in the university paper!) and they may have had to write a letter of apology.

This is a good problem for an ethics class: should the university have done this?  After reflecting about it for a while, my feeling is that the university did behave unethically: not by tracking down a comment that violates rules of university conduct (not to mention the rules and conventions of civilized society about treatment of minority), but by not being open with the students that the anonymity in the evaluations was meant as a policy decision, not a factual description of the way the technology is implemented.  They could have designed the system so that university IT staff would have no way -- or at least, no standard, built-in way-- of tracking it back to its origin.

Anyway: yes, it is probably technically possible that the evaluation can be traced back to you.  The moral of the above story is that unless you specifically know and trust the mechanisms that prevent that, you should regard the anonymity as being at the level of policy -- i.e., you are honorbound not to act on the knowledge of the identity -- rather than a true lack of knowledge of the writer's identity.

As for the rest, you ask:

  Do you think I will lose my job over it? Maybe another dumb question, but I'm stressing right now.

That doesn't sound like a dumb question for you.  However, in my opinion it's  "a dumb question" (rather, an unfruitful one) to ask us.  We don't know:

Who you are, and what are the conditions of your employment.
Where you work, and who your colleagues are.
What you wrote.

Without this information, our best guess at the answer is nowhere near as good as yours.  I understand that because of your closeness to the situation and reasonable anxiety, it may be hard for you to view objectively.  I suggest that you confide in someone you can trust and who is closer to the situation.

@Trevor Wilson asked:

  Was it this case: nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-ethicist-t.html ? If so, it sounds like the evaluation was handwritten.

Nice find!  I checked it out a bit, and...I think it is likely that this is the same case, and that it was long enough ago (longer than I thought) that I am not quite remembering the particulars.  It is also interesting that this made "Ask an Ethicist"...and the Ethicist said very much what I said above.  Adding to the irony,  I suppose I am now criticizing my university a bit by weighing in on this.  I think they can take it.


Advisor threatens to discontinue fellowship. What should I do?

This is a tough one.

To be brutally honest, from your post I can gather that your English is not up to scratch for English language journals. And that's not a minor issue.

Thing is, it's not your supervisor's job to fix your English mistakes and it's not ok to keep giving him draft over draft over draft. Academics are super busy people. And if you want a paper published it has to be free from English mistakes. No-one is going to fix that for you.

In regards to the rejected paper, four rejections is a lot. It shouldn't take more then 2 revisions to get it accepted. Do you fully understand what the one reviewer want fixed? You need to fully address the issues the reviewer raised, otherwise you won't get it accepted.

Having said that, if you've done enough research for five papers, you've done very good work. It looks to me it's your English that's holding you back, not your research.

Can you get help with English from someone? Don't rely on software, that's not going to fix it for you. Can you afford to pay someone to fix it for you, there are people you can hire to proofread? Can you take a 3-6 month break and do an advanced English course? Is there someone at your university you can talk to?


What should PhD students do when they are told to add authors who did not contribute to the paper (e.g., head of school, international funders)?

The other answers are good already, especially the point that "If you can't change it, do it and move on."
I wanted to add that it should be OK to ask a question. You may politely ask a question like

"I wanted to make sure that person A and B shall be added as authors to the paper P. As far as I remember, both people did not contribute to the research or the writing of said paper. However, there may be reasons to add A and B that I do not know and I would be glad to learn them."

It is not impossible that there are fields in which giving funding or providing facilities are accepted reasons to be a coauthor. This may sound strange, but at least if this is agreed upon in the community and the contribution of the different authors can somehow be  estimated (e.g. by the order of authors, but I have also seen footnotes explaining different contributions such as "designed research", "performed research") this would be OK.


What should I do if an admissions office asks me for a bachelor's thesis, when my program didn't require it?

As suggested in the comments above, I would send both the final project writeup and your masters thesis with a letter explaining the situation (no bachelors thesis required at your university), and contact the department and ask them how they wish you to proceed. At the end of the day, it's their requirement, so it's their call.


Using second person in cover letter for a publication

There's no need to sell the paper to the editor.  Write the letter, asking that the paper be considered for publication, and telling the editor anything else he or she needs to know to get the paper to appropriate referees.  Anything else would be odd.


Is there anything I can do if a professor agreed to supervise me but I was rejected by the admission committee?

No PhD program that I am aware of guarantees admission to every candidate who meets the minimum requirements for admission. Moreover, an agreement to supervise you is not a guarantee of admission, either.

Most likely what happened is the usual in such circumstances—there were enough other qualified candidates that the admissions committee did not choose to extend you an offer. I'm afraid that there's not really much you can do here. Writing the professor will be a waste of your time, and filing an appeal isn't likely to get you anywhere, either.


Switching theoretical base for Ph.D. studies

Most of the time, research "resets" between a master's and a PhD, and you are not obligated to continue your research focus between different programs.

(Besides, some faculty change their "base" several times during a career—why wouldn't they let students do the same?)


Can I use a method I developed or a data collected with a group in my project with another group?

I have developed a method/measure in a project supervised by my PhD advisor ... Can I just use it without having my advisor as a co-author or do I need to ask for a permission from my advisor for that?

This is a very vague description, but in my field, this is the whole point of having collaborators. You might not need to ask "permission," but you could certainly mention it to your advisor. Unless standards in your field are very different, there's no reason for them to stop you.

  so I'm also considering showing this application on that data as an example later in the paper for this method. Do I need to have anyone from group X as a co-author if I do that?

Typically, yes


How to acknowledge a more general result?

Cite it as usual. You can note that the paper is an extension of your work. You can, if you feel the need, give the date of the conference, etc. It may be that Y was aware of X from the conference, or it may just be parallel work.

In any case, your work isn't worthless. Just a symptom, perhaps, of a subfield with a lot of current activity.

But you should also look at how you and they achieved the respective results. It may be that your, more specialized, paper has proof techniques that are valuable in themselves. There is more to mathematics than the results.


How to find top authors with most papers in a particular journal

Discipline-specific repositories or databases might work, depending on your field - if 95% of papers in a given journal end up in DBLP or PubMed, then working through those tools will give you a good answer. However, it won't work for multidisciplinary journals (where some papers are in the repository and some aren't), or ones which aren't in that field at all.

For best effect, you need something which indexes on a per-journal basis; in other words, the database includes all the papers (or 'all since a given date') if it includes any at all. The two major commercial databases (Scopus & Web of Science) both do this.

Web of Science:

The most popular bibliographic database but not the most powerful.

On the general search, select 'publication name' and put in your journal title - it should suggest a matching entry from the index, or you can go through the index to pick one.
You may want to add a date filter at this point (if your journal is long-lived)
Run the search and glory in the thousands of results
In the left column, click the drop-down for filtering by authors, then 'refine'
Bingo - the top hundred authors, by number of records (though actual numbers are not shown)
You can download the data to play with it, but only in batches of 500 at a time

InCites:

InCites is an add-on package for Web of Science. I'm pretty sure you can get a more detailed report for a journal using this, but it's the weekend and I don't have my login details at home...

Scopus:

Never as popular as Web of Science, but more inclusive and you can do some very complex queries with it.

Select 'source title' in the standard search, and put in your title (no auto-suggestion here, but you can look through their index)
Again, add year filtering if appropriate
The left-hand column gives you a very quick summary of the top five authors with item counts, and if you click 'view more' in this box a couple of times you'll get a list of the top hundred with item counts. Like WoS, but better!
Alternatively, click 'analyse search results' and you'll get some pretty graphs; the same top hundred authors are available through this.
You can export up to 20,000 bibliographic records from a query through Scopus (as a flat CSV) if you want to do some further digging

Caveats

All of these tools are only as good as their author matching. If they think "Smith, J" and "Smith, J" are the same as a third "Smith, J" (or if they think that another is two different people because they publish in disparate journals) there's not much you can do. Author disambiguation is a work in process and some are better at it than others; generally speaking it's probably decent for recent papers and less good for records from the 1980s.


Professor didn't write recommendation letter on time, what should I do?

It sounds to me like you're in the US and I'm going to answer this from a UK perspective, but I expect the situations are broadly the same. I'll first discuss a similar thing that happened to me, and then give some advice.

So, this exact situation happened to me last year with two different universities, and two different letter writers. All the places I applied to required a minimum of two reference letters, so in each case, I was down 50% on letters.

In the first case, the university notified me that I was missing a reference letter and I had time to find someone else who was willing to very quickly write me another letter. My application there was ultimately unsuccessful, but not because of this (it's the best uni in my country and my application was wildly optimistic).

In the second case, the university didn't notify me at all that they had only received one reference letter in support of my application. In fact, I didn't find out until they mentioned it in the interview, after which they subsequently gave me an offer, still only having seen one reference letter. So it didn't matter in this case either.

My advice to you is the following: contact the schools which are missing letters. Ask if it matters that your letter might be arriving slightly late-- I expect it probably won't. People working in academia are aware of the time constraints that academics have and will likely be lenient in this kind of situation. I also don't think it will reflect badly on you, as you have done what you can to rectify the problem.

Secondly, send another gentle reminder to the letter writer in question, or, if possible, pay them a visit in person. Chances are, it was an honest mistake and they just forgot.

Good luck with the rest of the applications!


PhD application cover letter closing formula(e)

It doesn't matter. I'd probably suggest editing it to just one of those phrases, but it doesn't matter.


First of all, this doesn't look like a reviewer's comment, but rather like a copy-editor's comment. And if I interpret the comment correctly, they just want a note that indicates when the resource was last accessed for all online resources. So you only have to add "(Accessed 10 January 2020)" after the URL.
This is completely unrelated to the age of the paper.


A research paper is a paper that contributes some new knowledge to your field. That is, if you do some work (research) that adds to the body of knowledge in your field, and you write up the methods and results of your research in a paper, this can be called a research paper.

So in your example cases:

If A's technique is an important bit of knowledge that will move the field forward, then a paper describing it is a research paper. If it's a straightforward application of things that are already known, or a hack that's not going to move the field forward, it's probably not going to become a research paper.
D's work would not be considered research, if it's obvious to those in the field.
I don't know enough about standards in history to judge what's considered a contribution to the field, so I can't comment on B or C.


Are there any implications about review paper acceptance if the proposal has been accepted?

My experience is that review articles undergo peer review like any other article. So if you write a review on underwater basket weaving, it'll be sent to experts in underwater basket weaving, who might say things like "X group did a lot of work on the materials that give the best results, and you didn't mention their work at all". If the editors decide based on the reviews that you don't actually understand underwater basket weaving enough to be able to write a review, then it might lead to a rejection.

If you make a good-faith attempt to cover the field + address review comments though though, the chances of acceptance should be pretty good. After all, they did accept the proposal, which means they think a review article is appropriate + you're qualified to write a review.


Keeping academic credit on work with human rights impacts but fearing repressive regime retaliations

This is a highly speculative answer - just a thought experiment.

It may be that you will never be able to publish, safely, under your own name. The secret police in such regimes may have a long reach into other countrie,s as Russia seems to have in GB.

It might be possible, however, to create a second identity for yourself that is known to only the fewest possible, most trusted, allies. It may be too late for that if you already have worked with others on these issues and they can connect you. The difficulty, of course, with a second identity is that it is necessarily not connected to your history, including degrees, employers, etc.

But academic publishing is normally by individuals and their institutions and credentials are not as important as when seeking employment. But, then, your human rights work would be attributed to a fictitious person, which I'm pretty sure is legal as long as you aren't using such a pseudonym for fraud.

I wonder if you already have connections to reputable human rights organizations (Amnesty International, ...) that can help you with legal advice on this. Certainly a human rights lawyer familiar with the issues in your home country would be worth consulting. If you work with a reputable lawyer, that person can cache the relationship between your true-name and the pseudonym, so that if it ever becomes possible to reconnect them, you have the legal means to do so.

I don't know if the US government would be of assistance, but I don't have much faith in it at the current moment. Even our own spies identities have been "outed" here for political gain.


How to deal when you're an actual imposter in academia?

Own it. Channel these feelings into finding what makes you competitive and happy.

As an impostor that continues to 'make it', I have accepted that I bring something different. My undergrad GPA was 3.6, exactly, at a no-name school. I was accepted to a very good school for my PhD, and opted for a lower ranked school on the basis that I would 'have a better chance'. Likely, that was an error: I have since held a postdoc and now a faculty position at a high ranked school, with offers from other high-ranked schools. People puzzle over my CV, which is all kinds of nontraditional, but they also see evidence there that I do some things very well. I do, and these things make me competitive with the 4.0-olympiad-never-made-a-mistake crowd. Indeed, the fact that I continually make mistakes is itself a competitive edge; I'm inherently more fearless than my well-heeled peers.  This strategy has led to a career that some of my 'perfect' classmates have openly wondered at.  I wonder at it. I mean, I'm still a scrub, just a highly effective one. ;)

So, go do that.


It is a non obvious claim, so it should be cited. An alternative would be to give a few examples of high impact papers on the field.

The style should be as any other database, if your style manual specifies it, or as an online resource.


You basically answered yourself.

Option 1: not necessary for bound documents.
Option 2: doesn't add much with respect to 3.

So keep the standard approach 3. There are not sufficient motivations to justify putting more ink on those pages.

As the quote says, a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.


I see no problem with asking the referee (via the editor) for relevant references. The referee is under no obligation to reply, but I don't think it's wrong to ask.  But I don't think you should ask to communicate directly with the referee.


How is the corresponding author on a (math) paper typically chosen?

My experience as a pure mathematician in the US is that there are essentially no benefits to being the corresponding author. When I was a postdoc and in grad school I was often the corresponding author, but I get the feeling it was mostly because I was often the most junior of the authors and the others didn't want to waste time navigating editorial websites, receiving emails from the journal, mailing people tex files, etc. I would say that if someone is a pure mathematician in the US, the number of times they've been a corresponding author for a paper will have absolutely no impact on their career.

(I should add that I believe that in other countries the situation may be markedly different.)


Is it acceptable for a referee to reject a paper for superficial reasons?

Referees don't reject papers: editors do.  You may feel the report was superficial but apparently the editor does not subscribe to this point of view.

You can make an appeal to the journal or the editor, pointing out politely that since the referee (alledgedly) admits to not having read the body of the paper, you would be grateful if the editor could add some constructive comments so you can make changes and resubmit, but don't hold your hopes up.

You are unlikely to win by challenging the report directly: if your appeal looks like a complaint it will be ignored; you are more likely to get some traction if you ask for clarifications on why the report was so short, why referee did not bother to read the main body, what specific published work that the referee used to reach her/his conclusion, etc.


Is is inappropriate to bring a +1 to a gradate school recruiting weekend?

Bringing a significant other who would be relocating with you to a recruiting weekend is acceptable. In fact, some schools/departments would encourage it. We routinely welcomed SO to our recruiting weekend and saw it as a "good sign" when prospects brought such a person.

I would not bring your parents (would make you seem juvenile, and I have never seen this in practice) and I would also hesitate to bring a significant other who would not be relocating with you.

The next question is which events the SO should attend. This is probably a good question for whoever is planning the recruiting weekend. I would expect the SO to attend social and student-only events (meals, tours, social evening), but not academic events.


How can I fill in the missing background I need to be a good computer scientist?

Let me give you a bit of perspective, as well as assurance. In mathematics it is no longer possible for a person to be knowledgeable in every aspect of the art. That possibility ended early in the 20th century. Henry Poincaré is often given as the last person who was conversant in everything mathematical. Math has evolved a huge amount in the interim. So, even Poincaré didn't know all that we now know about math.

In any field there is a tendency toward specialization. Research normally requires this. Over time, being a good researcher requires less and less of the whole both because of expansion of the field and the much narrower needs of a specific sub-topic.

While it is good to know a lot and your goal of expanding your horizon is a good one, don't be discouraged if others, especially other researchers have different ideas, use different tools, and especially utilize different thought patterns than you do.

Probably the most effective means, given that you like your research area and that it rewards you properly, is to branch out from there, studying similar things that you don't explicitly need, but which might come in handy. But rather than focus on the details of the related topics, pay special attention to whether the thought patterns you hear discussed are somewhat different from your own. Think Different was a slogan (Apple Inc.), but it has a deeper meaning.

Another way to expand your horizon from a given base is to study something very different from what you know, but to which your current knowledge might be applied.

I don't know of CS has reached the stage yet where you can't know everything, but I suspect we are pretty close to the boundary. You can have a broad education, and you should. You can also go deep into one or a few areas, as you also should. But there is (likely) too much there to do it all.

Modern Academia tends to reward specialists, as I'm sure you are already aware.


Do universities care about bias experienced in group projects?

I'm going to come this from the other (probably less popular!) direction.

I see no evidence of racial bias in your description. Of course I wasn't there and can't judge it, but to me it seems like you describe a straightforward disagreement between classmates. I would be very careful about raising the issue of race unless you have compelling evidence.

It is true that the group you describe is dysfunctional. For sure the others shouldn't have waited until the last minute, or should have made an appointment for everyone to work together on the last day. Still, I wonder if you are partly to blame for this. Again, I wasn't there, but:

Looking at this from the light most favorable to you, it seems like you did a good job on your part, submitted it ahead of schedule, and were planning to address the remaining edits later that night.
Looking at it from the light most favorable to them, it seems like you just dumped a bunch of stuff into a word doc, didn't help them edit/integrate/merge/revise/fact-check, didn't respond to requests for changes for an entire day (on the day before it was due!), then became hostile when they asked about it. If there was any misunderstanding about what "your piece" of the project was, so much the worse.

Regardless of whether the second viewpoint is accurate, learning to foresee and avoid such blow-ups before they happen is a valuable skill. (Of course, this is not to make excuses for racism or plagiarism, if those things actually happened).

The university will not intervene in dysfunctional groups. If you can make a serious case for racial discrimination, of course they should investigate that. But the dysfunctional group is really not a university issue; such things fall to the instructor of the course. The instructor probably views learning to navigate such problems as one of the course aims, and will view this as valuable experience for you. The insults, the use of the f-word in this manner, etc., is a very inappropriate way to resolve conflict, but since it is student-to-student, I doubt the university will get involved (unless you are in a culture / campus code-of-conduct that takes such things especially seriously).

Deleting your name from the assignment is probably the most actionable piece of this. Since you can prove that you contributed to this (assuming any of your pieces survived), and if they submitted it without your name, you could bring a plagiarism charge. I imagine the professor would just smooth it over (giving you the same grade as the rest of the group) -- this is likely to be his/her choice (depending on your university's rules).


Does unpublished paper matter for U.S. graduate school application?

How different are papers that are "in draft", "in review", and
  "pending publication" for graduate school application?

They all have value, although it is hard to quantify. In draft papers show you have initiative and signal (but not reliably) some level of creativity and experience. In review papers suggests the same things to a stronger extent as it implies that the work is more mature (a draft could be at any stage of completion). Obviously, a paper pending publication is a very strong signal of ability.

  Or alternatively, I could submit my draft and wait for the reviewer's
  opinion, so I can put mark the paper as "in review". This will serve
  as a proof that my work is mature enough to be seen by others. But is
  it worth it?

Without knowing much about the details, I think it would be worth doing if you are not going to lose out in someway. I know of people who got academic positions partially on the basis of papers in review (although usually at advance stages, so second or third round). In contrast, I don't know of anyone gaining much advantage from claiming they had a draft paper.


The acknowledgement is there to thank people for their help in the work. It is not a place to provide information to the editor on who may have conflicts of interest. You list such persons in a cover letter with an explanation for why there is a conflict. This will make the situation clear to the editor. Persons in the same department will pretty much be excluded by default but if an obvious connection is not present it should be pointed out in a letter. It seems a little odd to thank someone without there being any connection to the work so I would not recommend trying to suggest such a person as potential reviewer. At the same time a person who ha a conflict of interest should decline to review with the excuse that there exists such a conflict. I would say such behaviour is good etiquette and good ethics.

I know there have been instances where a person received a strong reject review on a crap paper by a high-ranking scientist and then used the name in the acknowledgement thanking for input on an earlier version of the manuscript. The manuscript was almost the same but the signal was the high-ranked scientist approved it and so reviewers were unwilling to reject it. Hence the acknowledgement is not a place where a seasoned editor would look for valuable information.


Can images from wikipedia article be used for non-commercial use?

On the same page, under the picture you link to, it literally states

  The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed.

In other words, yes, you can use it without obtaining further permission. Note that other pictures on Wikipedia might have other licenses, but the terms are generally stated quite clearly.

However, you should also do your due diligence and try to see if the picture might have been published elsewhere before. After all, it might have been uploaded against the real copyright-holder's wishes, in which case the statement of license terms wouldn't hold water.


Possible for ABD (all but dissertation) to return?

ABD isn't usually thought of as a final status. Most people don't leave their university ABD. Most people spend a couple of years in the program, having passed quals, taken all the classes, and proposed a topic working on their dissertations. At this point, they are colloquially considered "All But Dissertation" because that describes what they've done so far not an official status. Every university will have a policy about what happens if you leave while ABD, and most will have some mechanism for coming back in reasonable time (not decades later) and finishing. Ask your advisor and graduate school or coordinator.


Are professors' salaries a function of the amount of grant funding they obtain?

In the United States, the amount of money that a professor makes is not generally a percentage of the amount of funding that they have under management.  Instead, professors are typically guaranteed a 9-month salary and can supplement with 3 additional grant-funded months (generally at the same rate) for summer.  That salary is set by a combination of regulation, negotiation, and academic rank, in a manner vaguely similar to salaries at a large corporation.

Thus, high funding correlates with high salary because a well-funded professor is also likely to be progressing in their compensation package, but there is typically an effective "cap" on the amount that a professor can receive through their university (consulting, startups, and patent licensing fees may be an entirely different matter, but again are not actually determined by research funding, just correlated as being another common product of a successful research).

As for the actual compensation of specific faculty: for most US state-funded institutions, you can find complete salary databases published as public records.  For example, here is one for Berkeley.  Private institutions have relatively similar compensation rates (or a bit higher), since top private institutions are competing with top public institutions for the same talent.


In what countries/programs is a graduate student bonus common?

I do not know how common it is but I remember Germany Ph.D students get Christmas bonus. See this link.
When I was doing my doctorate in USA, I remember my colleague from Germany asking my research advisor for a Christmas bonus. He laughed, then figured out it was customary in Germany and then gave him a tie.


Do I have to translate primary and secondary sources into English for a dissertation?

I wrote my dissertation about translation in Spanish, and I had to quote several non-Spanish speking authors (English, German, Catalan, French). I decided quoting in the original language and adding the translation in a footnote. When there was a published Spanish translation of the quote, I used it. But if not, I translate it myself.
However, it's a good idea to ask your supervisor if there is a style guide for this issues.


Ethics: How to deal with a professor who will not accept their inaccurarcy in judging my work?

Your professor is not being "unethical".  It's possible he's a difficult person but ethics is not a part of this.

There's a pretty good chance that if your professor says your proof is not correct, that it really isn't.  And he may not be as unhelpful as you think.  Students sometimes think an instructor is unhelpful if they don't give them the answer any time they're stuck.  But simply giving you the answer won't make you a better mathematician.  Forcing you to keep plugging at it until you find the answer on your own will make you a better mathematician.

My advice:  Consider the possibility that he's right, you're not and that he wants you to keep working at it until you solve it on your own and go from there.


How should I mention the period between the end of my post-PhD and the beginning of my work as research staff?

In the comments you said it is called an "Extensión de posdoctorado".  It is fine to list that phrase as your job title during the period.  It is reasonably clear to english speakers.

People reading international CVs expect to see unfamiliar terms and career progression.


I have egregiously sloppy (possibly falsified) data that I need to correct. How should I go about this?

I infer from the question that you still have the raw data. In that case, I think you need to re-do all the steps in which errors could be introduced (such as data entry, spread-sheet calculations, analysis of trends). Then see what effect the corrections have on the conclusions of your paper, and rewrite as necessary. I realize that this sounds like a lot of work, essentially repeating most of what you had done earlier, but since you apparently did it wrong the first time, you now need to do it right.
Meanwhile, you should tell the PI about the problem and your plans for correcting it. If I correctly understand the situation, the raw data are the only reliable information currently available. You should make sure he knows that, so that he (and others working with him) won't build further research on a foundation of wrong results.


Difference between conference paper and journal paper

Conference papers refer to articles that are written with the goal of being accepted to a conference: typically an annual (or biannual) venue with a specific scope where you can present your results to the community, usually as an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or a tabled discussion. The review process for conference papers is typically within a fixed window: everyone submits for a certain deadline, then the review committee (program committee) collaborates to review and discuss papers, then all authors are notified with accept/reject at the same time. Since the review process has a fixed schedule (to meet the schedule of the physical meeting), conference review times are quite predictable.

Conference papers are typically published in collections called "proceedings": sometimes these are printed by university presses, by professional organizations, by big-name publishers, or simply online.

Journal papers refer to an article that's published in an issue of the journal. The frequency of issues for different journals varies from one-a-month to once-a-year, or anything in between; it may not even be regular. The review process for journals often does not have a fixed deadline or schedule: though journals may promise things like "reviews in six weeks", in my experience, this rarely if ever holds true. However, instead of conferences that typically have only accept/reject decisions, journals typically have a rolling review schedule and reviewers can opt to ask the authors for revisions, meaning that there might be multiple review phases (often limited to three, at which stage the paper is rejected/accepted).

Since conference papers have a fixed schedule and provide the authors a venue for discussion and feedback, they are generally for earlier-term work or for "announcing/marking an idea", or for finding collaborators. Furthermore, conference papers tend to have fixed page-limits, which restricts the content to preliminary findings.

Journal papers tend to have generous page-limits (or none at all), but typically require the work to be more comprehensive and self-contained in return.

In general, in most fields, papers in well-recognized journals tend to have more prestige than papers in well-recognized conferences (esp. in terms of metrics). But this is a simplification.

While in some fields, conference papers are akin to talk abstracts, in areas like computer science, conference papers can be very meaty and there is a high churn of papers in conferences. Top conferences can have acceptance rates around 10%, and as such, A+ conference papers are often held in high regard within the community: these venues are far more competitive than many of the best journals. Still, even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference following the norm in other academic fields.


How to withdraw an under review manuscript from a journal when you decide you want to submit to another journal with a higher impact factor?

Technical aspects of withdrawal: Technically, you should be able to withdraw your manuscript from a journal any time prior to acceptance. This would usually be done either by using some kind of button in the submission management system, or by contacting the journal (e.g., editor, action editor, etc.).
Ethics and norms of withdrawal: However, there are reasons for withdrawing a manuscript that are appropriate and those that are inappropriate. After you submit your manuscript, the journal, the editors, and reviewers may begin expending effort and resources in processing your manuscript. It is considered poor form to waste their time, by withdrawing the manuscript for no good reason.
The appropriate time to consider impact factor is before you submit your manuscript to a journal. This is information that is available prior to submission. Thus, I think most academics would consider withdrawing a manuscript from a journal after submission based on impact factor to be very poor form.
In contrast, some acceptable reasons for withdrawing a manuscript during the peer-review process include the following:

You submitted to a predatory journal.
They are taking an excessive amount of time to process your submission.
Following a revise and resubmit, and you do not wish to make the revisions. That said, if the requested revisions are minor, and you withdraw at this point, this may not be received favourably by the editor.
You identify a fundamental flaw with your manuscript following submission. That said, minor problems can typically be addressed at the revision stage or by notifying the editor and asking them whether they would like you to correct the error now or at any potential revision stage.

Probably, if it is extremely early in the submission process, it would be more reasonable. E.g., you realise a few hours or perhaps a day after submission that you made a mistake.


Conference Paper/Poster version of Bachelor Thesis - should I cite the thesis?

Yes, you should always cite your own work and failing to do so can be called a violation of norms. This (self plagiarism) is, I think, a relatively recent concern, but it is something that everyone should give thought to in their writing.

If at all possible, provide a new version of the publication, in which you make the correction before it is published and do something appropriate in the poster as well.

Not everyone will complain and some will consider it a minor violation by a novice, but some might judge you harshly. Be aware of that and defend yourself against it. When in doubt, cite it.

The purpose of avoiding plagiarism is a bit different than that of avoiding self plagiarism. Ordinary plagiarism is a violation because it represents someone else's work as your own. Self plagiarism doesn't do that, of course, so the purpose of avoiding it is different.

When you present something that is derived from earlier, visible, work, and you cut and paste, you are likely to cut, past, and edit a bit. This can subtly change the meaning of things in a way that may not be obvious to a reader. Moreover, the original work appeared in a context including various references and other words that you did not cut and paste. This context is invisible to the reader of the new work.

Therefore, when you use and update your old work you cite it in the new work. This permits a reader of the new work to find and analyze the context, just as they would if you were citing someone else's work.


How do I credit someone who made the trajectory file used for my thesis?

You could ask the original author to put the data in a data repository (like Zeonodo or Figshare) and claim a doi for it. That makes the data object citeable in its own respect and you can give credit in a persistent way (as a bonus you get the author to think about licensing of their data).


Can I still publish a paper in a journal after it has already been assigned a DOI through Zenodo or ResearchGate?

To "publish" something really just means "make it available to others". So, there are many ways to publish something: You can strive to get it accepted in the most prestigious journals of your field, or you can just put it on your website -- strictly speaking, both qualify as "publishing". Putting an article on Zenodo, ResearchGate, or arXiv is closer to the latter than the former; the fact that some of them can give you a DOI really just means that you make it easier for others to find and reference what you uploaded.

From a practical perspective, the difference between all of your options is how much vetting and endorsement the locations where you publish provide for your work. Academic journals review your article, and this provides a level of endorsement that lets others trust that what you published is useful and correct. On the other hand, putting an article on a web site or ResearchGate involves no vetting and, consequently, does not bestow on you the prestige that comes with the vetting. If you wanted to use your "publications" as part of a job application, it is this prestige you want, and consequently, putting your work on a website of your own will not be enough.


The EDITOR()-field searches for editors, i.e. (usually) human individuals who edit a volume.
You are looking, instead, for a book's publisher. The correct field would thus be labelled BOOKPUB().
With the following query, I find 8 results:
DOCTYPE ( "bk" )  AND  BOOKPUB ( "Wiley" )  AND  KEY ( "real time systems" )
(Note that I added the operator AND between each field as well as quotation marks within the parentheses.)


What license to use while putting papers on the Arxiv?

This is the right license that you can always safely pick (assuming you can submit to arXiv at all):

  arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article (Minimal rights required by arXiv.org)


Professor cc to other professors when I ask about the PhD student vacancy. Should I answer as a group or to individuals?

The key factor here is that the professor X is retiring.  He is not attempting to initiate a group discussion, he is trying to pass you off to the other CC professors and give you an introduction to them.

The correct way to respond is to send a nice single-addressee thank you note to original professor X only, perhaps also asking your query about Professor T, then send a single-addressee email to each individual Professor listed in the CC.

The key here is that you won't be working with the group, you'll only be working with one of them.


MPhils or Masters by Research in Germany in a mathematical subject

Most master’s degrees in Germany require a thesis in some form, usually comprising the final semester of studies. However, because of the Bologna process, there are unlikely to be “pure research” programs.


How can I address a student systematically boosting their grades by filing frivolous complaints?

When it comes to "he-said, she-said" situations, as seems to be the case here, most institutions will tend to take the side of professors by default. For obvious reasons—the 18–22 year old college student is much more likely to lie to obtain a favourable mark, than the professor is to act maliciously to sabotage a student. The only scenario where the professor might be in trouble is if there are accusations from multiple students.

The most significant red flag here is that the student is making essentially the same accusation against nine different professors. It is preposterous that nine professors would collectively decide to sabotage a single student.

  So far I have read the students' code of conduct carefully. There appear to be nothing that can be directly applied here. The closest appears to be the rule about dishonesty, but it wouldn't work by itself.

Making dishonest accusations to obtain more favourable grades is an unequivocal form of academic dishonesty. Any respectable institution would discipline a student engaging in such behaviour. If this behaviour cannot be disciplined at your university, I would suggest seeking employment elsewhere.

You should lodge a formal complaint, possibly in collaboration with the other professors who are being accused. You have a rock-solid case.


Kicked out of PhD program, I have been delayed two years until find a new one

I was kicked out because of a racist supervisor.

That is quite an accusation. I'd suggest that you consult an attorney, if you have any evidence that you were discriminated because of your ethnicity. There is a chance that you might resume the programme. Of course, provided that the expelling took place based on some sort of discrimination.


How to Present an (Essentially) The Same Proof, in a Different, Earlier Working Paper, in a Present Paper?

Presumably you cited the earlier work. If so, I don't really understand the concern. But, if the editor/reviewer/conference would accept it, you could offer to show them the proof separately from your new paper. This would permit them to verify the result if they think it necessary.

But you were correct in not including the result in the new paper. But that also assumes that the earlier paper will actually be published. And it is possible that it won't be.

However, there is an alternative, but it would also require some editor assistance. For purpose of review, you could include the proof but note that it would need to be replaced by a citation if the earlier paper gets accepted. The final, published, version would be a bit different from what was reviewed, but that is normally the case anyway. The easy way to include the proof would be in an appendix.


Can students apply for Research Grants (US)?

Technically, in the US, most grants are not normally submitted directly by the principal investigator, but are instead sent in via a "grants office" that acts as the interface between the principal investigator and the funding agency.

Consequently, in addition to the grant-specific funding rules you have from a specific funding agency, you also have to deal with whatever restrictions your university grant-office has. For instance, it's not likely that your grants office will accept a proposal submitted by a graduate student instead of by a faculty member or similar personnel (lecturer, research professor, etc.).

In general, though, you need to read the requirements of the individual granting agency, as well as ask your local grants office.


Post-doc wants to break his promise of including me on author list

This is an unfortunate situation. If your results invalidate the post-doc's idea, then most likely they will not be included in the paper, unless one can put a positive spin on it (e.g., "an obvious explanation for the observation is Z, but here we show that Z cannot be right and instead we propose that W is the true underlying mechanism"). In this case you have no claim to authorship, despite the work you've put in. In other words, the promise of authorship was implicitly contingent on the experiments yielding positive results supporting the hypotheses advanced in the paper.

If the current manuscript is based in part on the code you wrote, then there is a case to be made that you should be an author. But I'm always of the opinion that writing some code is a weak argument for being an author, unless there is some novelty or substantial effort on your part.

Note that the post-doc said that they will consider your authorship request. You interpreted that as a no, but that seems to me an unwarranted and premature conclusion. You should have a constructive conversation with them to try to resolve the issue collegially. This kind of situations will pop up in the future, and it is a good skill to learn how to address them. Even if you get nothing out of it in the end, just remember that in the grand scheme of things it's not really a big deal and you'll forget it in (hopefully) a couple of months.


How to cite ebooks that have no pagination in intext cittion in MLA7?

If you're worried about what is "correct" for your dissertation, I think you will need to check with your adviser -- I think different people might have different perspectives, and you'll only know what those judging your work will expect if you ask them.

From a more utilitarian perspective, I'd say listing the chapter number is ideal. Only the most critical or curious readers will follow the citation; for such readers, it will not be a terrible inconvenience to flip through a few pages to find the exact passage. The chapter number should be enough to get them to what they need.

I would not list the page number that shows up in Adobe Reader, because it's going to be arbitrary, a function of the text size, page size, font, etc. that you have chosen. The function of a footnote is to help the reader find the text, but using arbitrary page numbers may have the effect of hindering them, as they may not immediately realize why the numbers they're looking at don't correspond to yours.


While applying for PhD in Deep learning, how useful are papers in some other topics like photonics?

You can specialize later on, any research experience you have is definitely a plus. Here's an untold secret, researchers will often switch between subjects throughout their careers (depends on the field and the researcher, some choose to focus on a very narrow field). This means, that it is not uncommon for researchers to begin writing about a completely new subject that they have very little knowleage of simply because they received funding to investigate that topic.
That's a long winded way of saying, don't sweat it. Your previous experience is not useless. It certainly won't hurt if you can author (or co-author) a paper in deep learning.


Is doing Ph.D from a US university regarded as an absolute advantage in future career for international students?

One of the most important factors is in which country you plan to work after getting your diploma. E.g., if you plan to work in France, some French diplomas are just as valuable as "top" US schools.


Do positions exist in philosophical research?

Yes, for example Oxford's philosophy faculty includes professors of

ancient greek philosophy
philosophy of mind
political philosophy
philosophy of language
practical ethics
philosophy of physics
philosophy of mathematics
medieval philosophy
metaphysics
logic


Continuing a PhD in a different institution

First of all, I would like to wish you very good luck with the change. I experienced a similar situation in the past and it is a sensible one. Namely, I have spent 2 years at a nationally funded research institute in Spain to move afterwards to complete my PhD at a Public Ivy university at the US, keeping my EU advisor as PhD co-supervisor.

Second, I would like to state that my answers just reflect my personal opinion based on my experience (I do not think there are mathematically true answers to your question), although I hope that they are useful to you or any other person in the same situation.

  What are the best practices in terms of communication with the advisors when a PhD student is researching in a different institution
  than his/her advisors'?

This is really important and handling it well from the beginning can lead to success. This change will require a more diligent attitude from everyone. Some things to take into account:

Set a fixed time slot for the meetings with your advisors.
I would advise not to let meetings to be scheduled ad-hoc. I would rather fix a time weekly/biweekly/monthly with your advisors that complies with the agendas/time zones of everyone and try as much as possible to stick to it.
Document and minute your meetings, and send the minutes to everyone involved. In the case that someone can not attend one meeting, the person can catch up fast and will have the feeling of being connected.
Keep your advisors motivated (before and after your departure) Typically academic professors/researchers are busy and somehow you have to pick their curiosity and motivate them gets you more of their "CPU-cycles". Make sure they feel part of the project, keep them in the loop, send update emails regularly, etc. Hopefully you know them enough by know to be able to keep them up.
Strength the ties between your UK and Singapure advisors. Try to be friendly and always speak well of the other co-advisors -- we all get bothered at some point by our advisors, however try not to cross-complain and try to create a strong relationship between your advisors.

  What differences should a researcher expect when moving from a University to a research agency (company) in terms of daily work and
  office atmosphere?

Your questions are very pertinent, and this issue is the one I struggled more with.

When moving to a new institution in a different continent you can expect and be ready to big differences in general, some of them in terms of:

Work ethics and traditions: The amount of hours invested at the lab, the traditions towards if it is normal working on weekends... In my case this factors did not vary a lot.
Relationship habits with other students/ superiors / advisors: When I arrived to the US, I was used to have a very close relationship with my colleagues, which I found not to hold. Also, the way to address superiors in Spain was way more informal.
Level of independence at work
Bureaucracy and requirements towards the completion of your PhD
Style of research/teaching
Expectations from advisors

and really, many others that hopefully you will discover and adapt quickly to.

Honestly, the only advice I would give is, keep your mind open, accept the changes and do not get stuck or try to hold to what you have seen in the UK. "When in Rome do as the Romans"

I really wish you best of luck in your adventure.


Is it better to apply to doctoral program in the fall semester or spring semester?

Most universities offer Doctoral admissions exclusively in fall semester (once a year). Deadlines for applications are typically in December. For more detailed information, you should check the particular department's webpage.


How would you react as a professor if a student has been going to your office hours and does not perform well on an exam?

The grade wouldn't be affected. The student's performance is their own. I would worry a bit about my effectiveness, and I would probably modify my approach with them in future visits. In particular, I would try to get them to do more exercises to support their learning. In some cases I would suggest a tutoring center if such is available. And there is always the possibility of an undiagnosed learning difficulty that might require specialized professional help.

But you don't say whose perspective this is. If you are asking as a student, then I suggest that you keep going back for more and following whatever advice you get.

But if you are asking as the instructor, then it is more complicated. It is a temptation for new teachers to say more in response to a question than is, perhaps, ideal. Sometimes the best answer to a student's question is a very minimal answer so that they are led to their own insights. A hint, not an answer. Or even a new exercise that will lead them to the insight.

Students too often get the idea that a professor asks questions because they want/need the answers. What they want, actually, is a change in the student's way of thinking and it is the search for the answer not the answer itself that is normally required to get that insight.

Students can, of course, get frustrated if you don't answer their questions. It can be a subtle dance. But sometimes responding to a question with another question can actually get the job done better than providing the answer.

But none of the student-instructor interactions or "extra" help should result in changing grades. The students still need to perform their part of the dance.

I've had to spend a great deal of time with a few students. Initially they stumbled and fell. But sometimes they got over the hurdles that they faced and did well. But it was their work that did it.


How to handle severe illness in promotion and tenure reports?

(I'm very sorry for your troubles...)

To supplement other comments and answers:

In my experience (at R1 places in the U.S.), while mostly undergrads' and grad students' (broadly speaking) "disability issues" have a roughly appropriate procedure in place, just as an illustrative and ominous example, this does not seem to extend to grad students who've (e.g.) had their leg broken in a car accident through no fault of their own. That is, one of my students had this happen, could not do TA (teaching assistant) duties, and had to petition for "leave of absence" and was supposedly not allowed to be on campus, use the library, etc., but was allowed to (!) petition to return. This policy was beyond the power of my department to alter. I was told that the university is "more caring" about faculty in similar situations... presumably because they've invested more in them. But, my point is, I would be very suspicious and untrusting.

E.g., it might happen (given my observations) that dept head and lower-level deans are sympathetic, supportive, and quasi-promise that they'll accommodate... but then eventually discover that "university policy" prevents them from doing what they promised they'd do. E.g., even a signed document from them may easily (!) be countermanded by higher-ups, claiming that they did not have the authority to make the promises they made.

Yes, talk to the disabilities office. The "Americans with Disabilities Act" has not yet been scrapped (fingers crossed), and U.S. (especially public, in the U.S. as opposed to U.K. sense) have considerable power to set accommodations. Yes, they attempt to "negotiate" with relevant work-place authorities, but the rough idea is that you cannot be fired or marginalized for (new or old) disabilities. Having things in place with the Disabilities Office may be your best "insurance" against higher-ups' disavowing your departments' agreements with you, since they cannot so effortlessly over-ride them. I'd absolutely do this.

And, above all, no "accommodation" should include your losing your health insurance just because you have some periods when you can't teach classes!!! Obviously, in the U.S., anything like that is very, very dangerous for people who are not Magically/Luckily Healthy. The reason I mention such a thing is that my student, mentioned above, did lose health insurance exactly due to the broken leg that made him unable to TA... Luckily, I believe his partner's employment covered him. A bit too unfunny, non-recreational Kafka-esque for my taste.

(Again, very sorry about your increasing troubles, and best hopes for no additional troubles due to bad bureaucracy...)


Letter of Recommendation: Reputation vs personal relation

The more a person knows of you, the more positive things they will have at their disposal to write about. As you explain it, your second option knows about your skills and probably could redact a great recommendation letter.

That being said, I do not think that it hurts to ask both. If both agree, you can submit both letters


What to do about accidental, easily corrected errors in a conference paper you already submitted?

If I understand correctly, the paper has only been submitted for peer review, and this is thus not yet the camera-ready final version that will be archived and widely disseminated.  As such, you have an opportunity to fix the error before it enters the literature.

The key question, then, is whether your error will mislead the peer reviewers into having a different judgement of the paper than they would otherwise (whether better or worse).  The first question I would thus ask is this: how different are the wrong plots from the right plots?

If the results are essentially identical (just unsupported because of the error), then I would let it go and just make sure you fix it in subsequent revision.
If there is a major difference, then you need to update the paper, because otherwise you will be misleading the reviewers.

Updating the paper may be easy or may be difficult depending on the conference and its submission and review timeline.  Since it's quite soon after the submission deadline, there's a fairly high chance that no reviewers will yet have actually reviewed your paper, and so updating isn't likely to cause problems.

As for how to actually do it: occasionally conferences will allow you to continue updating a submission (whether intentionally or by misconfiguring their review system); for most, though, you will need to email the program chairs who are running the review process.  If they are feeling generous, they will allow you to update; if they are not and the error is a major problem, then you may need to withdraw your paper and instead submit more carefully to the next good opportunity.

There are a lot of ways to salvage this situation, though, so hopefully you'll have no difficulty in correcting your paper, whether now or at the camera-ready stage.


Where can I find the Impact Factor for a given journal?

If your institution has a subscription to Journal Citation Reports (JCR), you can check it there. Try this URL:

https://jcr.clarivate.com


Presenting a new work in different seminars in the same department

You present your work to colleagues, not a formal group under a certain name. If you think there are people on both seminar groups who are genuinely interested in what you do and with whom you would like to collaborate in future - there is nothing wrong in presenting your results in both seminars.

However, there is no point (and no joy) in presenting to a wrong audience, or, in other words, in presenting a wrong talk to a given audience. If you decide to present in two different seminar groups, focused on different topics, make sure you rework your presentation accordingly. In fact, you have to present two different lectures,  each adapted to interests of a particular group.


Reviewing article and bad-faith citation

If you are certain the article is not novel, you should recommend to the editor that the manuscript be rejected.  Give detailed references in your review.
It is impossible to know if the poor citations are deliberate or accidental.  It also does not matter at all.


Attribution of authorship within undergraduate group project reports

FWIW, I mocked up some sample reports--some having the byline style and some having the footnote style--and I've decided upon the byline style. I disliked more the presence of footnote numbers at the end of the chapter subtitles compared to the bylines.

Noting that the same student(s) could author contiguous subsections within the report, I think I'll use bylines only to indicate a change of author/contributor rather than requiring a byline within each and every (sub)section within the GROUP report.

The definitions for AUTHOR and CONTRIBUTOR I've settled on are those provided in the IEEE Publishing Policy and Ethics manual. The IEEE manual was chosen simply because the students I instruct/manage are electrical engineering majors, or computer engineering majors, or both, and the IEEE's style guides are relevant to both majors.


My University professor copied parts of my assignment for the sample solution. Should he have credited me?

Yes, this is both flattering and weird. I would call it unprofessional and tacky.
He should have thanked you for the nice answer and asked your permission to post parts of it.
Whether you should have public credit for that work may depend on policies at your school and on how you and the instructor think about the impact of such an announcement on other students.
Do stick with this:

Anyway I am not gonna say anything to him but I did laugh at the
thought that if I ever use my answer again in a similar topic imagine
if then I am accused of plagiarism from myself and/or him :)


How to complete homework more efficiently?

I have to disagree the first couple comments, "7-8 hours wasted daily" certainly does not sound normal. The amount of time is not necessarily an issue, but it is far longer than I ever spent on homework and if you feel that you are being inefficient you're most likely correct. It sounds to me like you are indeed getting bogged down in unnecessary things or (perhaps more likely) just struggling to piece all the little things together into the big picture.

A big part of higher education is learning how to learn efficiently. In your career and in life, this will most likely be much more useful than the actual material you cover in your courses.

I think there are a few things you can do that might help:

When reading a textbook focus on items that are formatted in a way that stands out. Textbook authors format material to emphasize critical and major points. A good lecturer will also make an effort to highlight the big picture topics and build up the details around them.
You might try studying or reviewing notes with a classmate before starting homework assignments. Ask for their insights on what the most important things are and try to formulate your own judgments as well.
Visit office hours. Ask conceptual questions about the topic at hand. You might also consider explaining to the TA or professor that you're having a hard time picking out the crucial material from the details and ask if they can help you focus in on the key topics.

It has been my experience that many students get bogged down in peripheral details when learning new topics, not seeing the forest for the trees. It has always helped me to ask myself what the most critical concepts are and then be sure to understand the details as they support these concepts. Hopefully, with practice, you will soon improve at picking out the key concepts and building a mental framework around them rather than getting bogged down in all the details from the start.


Should a thesis advisor be an onlooker or somebody who struggles with the problem?

I am not sure which type of advisor is better. It probably depends on the individul or is a combination of both extremes. However, I think that, in the absence of finding all good qualities in one individual, a PhD student can build a team of mentors and coauthors.

Your advisor is one type of mentor in your team, but you should add others. Perhaps you can also do work with a postdoc or coauthor who would provide the togetherness/teamwork you are looking for. You might also want to add a junior person with a different research specialty but a great personal connection to you who can provide some career-focused advice rather than research-focused advice. And others as needed.

Personally, my advisor was like yours. I cultivated other relationships with more junior people to supplement his more 10,000-foot approach. It was good training for being an independent researcher.


If I use most of the references from a thesis but not the exact same sentences, is it plagiarism?

Working from a bibliography in another paper is not plagiarism.  It's actually a  good research technique.  As you read those papers, check their bibliographies, too, and so on.  Pretty soon you will have thorough coverage of the subject.

Do note that you cannot just plop those 50-60 or so references into your own bibliography but do nothing else, nor paraphrase what someone else has said about them, but without reading them.  That's called reference padding and is academic misconduct.  You have to actually read the papers.  When you do that, you may find that some of them don't fit your needs as well as you may have at first thought.  You will also find it easy to write your own thoughts about those papers, and so will not have to worry about paraphrasing another author.


Policy Note: Yes, this is happening all the time. However, each university policy might be different on its students/staff data. Also, might be different in each case, based on the level of education. For example they might do this for their previous postgraduate students; but not their undergraduates.
You need to send an email to the system admin of the university and ask him/her very nicely to forward all the upcoming emails to your current account. Something like following:

Dear Mr/Miss X,
I was a student/staff at the university from 20?? to 20??. My university email account was me@uni.asd.edu. Could you please forward all the upcoming emails to this address to my alumni/current email address (e.g., alumni@x.edu/currentemail@site.com)?
Kind Regards,
Me


Is there any standardization of figures for scientific publication in any field?

There is no need for it.

  Or a software that can extract all the figures and build a massive database of data that can put the research into a quick use by engineers or others.

This is pretty much what Information Retrieval systems do (Yes, I'm looking at you Google).  I worked with interpretation of images through AI in the IR area and finding that something is a figure or not is easy.

First of all there aren't many document formats, almost all papers are either in PDF or PostScript, which have a stamp that something is an image or figure.  The same is valid for Word documents and even HTML.  Then the question simply becomes what is a figure (in the sense you mention in the question, i.e. something generated from data) and an image generated by a snapshot of reality (e.g. a photo).

A figure (in the sense above) will have few edges in an ordered fashion, whilst a photo will have many edges in an unordered fashion.  Even a photo of a white table on white background has enough noise to produce more edges.

The interpretation of what the figure shows is a completely different thing.  It is much, much, much harder to do with AI.  But then again, a standardised way of placing the figures or placing content in the figure would not help with that.  Interpretation of a figure is something we humans have some difficulty to do.  More often than not, looking at only the figures in a paper does not make you understand what the paper is about.

To produce a meaningful interpretation of figures in papers you would need to understand the paper first.  Just like we humans do.

One note on MATLAB's .fig I'd like to add is that asking for specific file formats that are not publicly available may produce a lock-in problem.  This is not a particularly good example of a lock-in since MATLAB provides discounted student (and sometimes general academic) licences.  Yet, there are some countries where these licenses are not available or in which even the discounted ones amount for a big sum due to monetary differences.

Therefore requiring specific file formats may lock some researches/students out of a journal.  Something that would not be a good sign about the journal's openness.  The tech wars, notably between file formats are sometimes more fierce than between options about well debated scientific topics.  I'd prefer a journal that stays out of those (although guidelines on how and article should be formatted that are independent of the software used are definitely good).


Misguided plagiarism phobia - is it a thing? (mainly related to difficulties in understanding English)

I must agree with chasly.

I have come from the backgrounds of monastic education in Burma. They have a very different perspective on plagiarism. For these people, quoting an authority on the subject matter is for the sake of learned readers who will not believe an author on his or her own words. Therefore:

1) Even though the quoted text is in Pali, an ancient Buddhist language, translations are usually not provided. For, if you are a learned reader, you are expected to already know Pali.

2) The text is quoted only by title, or sometimes with the chapter title, but page numbers are never given. It means: if you are not learned enough to find out the quoted text on your own, you are not qualified to question the author's words.

See also the pages (611-617) of the following paper Intellectual Property in Early Buddhism.


Should amount of citation/references be taken into account when grading an assignment?

Plagiarism is not about whether your work passes some % threshold on software that detects plagiarism.
Plagiarism is the representation of words and knowledge/ideas as your own. When you learn from a source, you need to cite that source when you write about it.
Over time, some knowledge becomes so commonly known that it doesn't need to be cited any more in most cases; for example, Newton's laws. Lecture content might sometimes fall into this category and sometimes not, you can ask your instructor for guidance on their expectations. However, most of the content in a paper you write at a college level will come from a source you need to cite, unless it's work you've physically done or your own unsupported opinion.


Appendix before references when asked for separate page of references

I think the order of mentioning the differenct sections does not resemble their order in the document. The way I read it, the journal only wants to clarify that the one page with references does not count into the X pages for all the other stuff. While I can't give you a source here, from personal experience the appendix comes after the references. That's just the way it usually works.


Either past or present tense is reasonable for a literature survey. You could argue for the past tense since the work was already completed, or use the present tense because the papers currently exist and describe something that can be found now.

The main issue is to be consistent in your usage throughout the review.


The fate of an accepted paper not being presented

This has actually happened to me a couple of times in the past. This really depends on the policy of the organizing professional group (ACM/IEEE) and even within sub-groups of that body (SIGWEB/SIGCHI within ACM)

Generally, I have found that if your paper is accepted in a conference and you or any of your co-authors register for that conference, then the paper will still be published in the conference proceedings and indexed in the relevant digital library. e.g. IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library etc.

If you or a co-author do not register for the conference, then your paper, in general, will not be indexed.

If an accepted paper is not published in the conference proceedings (and by extension not indexed in the appropriate digital library), then it generally does not "count" as a valid publication. You are better off, in that case, by withdrawing your paper and submitting it at a more acceptable conference venue (or a journal where there is not travelling involved)

PS: You can always link to such a paper on your personal website or put it on arxiv for comments. Google Scholar will obviously index it but such indexing has limited practical value.


I attended such a course during my first semester at a community college. It was mandatory for all incoming students, in all fields/majors.
This course covered most of the topics you mentioned, plus effective study habits, time management, basic computer and research skills, and brief experience with PowerPoint and givng a presentation. A major focus of the course was introducing students to resources they could use if they ran into difficulties with studies or life experiences. For me, the course was not very useful, since I already had a strong foundation in those essential life skills. However, to other students, the course proved very useful.