It would certainly help your application if you have previous publications. It probably won't tip the scales too much.

On (2), ask your advisor. To show you the ropes on this, a part of what research is all about, is part of their job.


What is the meaning of "honorable speaker"?

There are often emails like these floating around, some look enticing; however, to protect yourself against any potential scam attempt (or worse) - as with any unexpected email from an unknown source, I would advise:

Hover over the email address in the email you received - if it is from 'yahoo', 'gmail' or any other free email service, be wary. Don't reply directly.
Don't open any links and do not open any attachments in the email (should be wary of doing this from unknown emails anyway).
Do a web search and go directly to the conference website (in this case http://windenergy.conferenceseries.com/)
Read the information on the webpage (and the fine print)
Use the contact details there to ask questions if you have any questions (contact details at the bottom of the page)

Reading the conference site, it looks like if that invitation is real, then you will still have to pay for registration etc. and present a paper.  Some conferences send these emails as an advertisement for their conference.

Be wary of 'predatory conferences' - there are many guides to help with that, an example is from the University College Dublin's page Scholarly Communications: Predatory Publishers & Conferences


How to determine the merit of an encyclopedia?

This might not be what you want hear, but I think this kind of product doesn't exist anymore in any meaningful way. Essentially you are asking what would be a reputable universal encyclopedia (with a grown up target audience) in different languages.

I checked a large high quality German book store (Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann) and I didn't find a single one matching your query. There are a number of kids general encyclopedia, for different age groups and of different quality and there are a whole bunch of very specialized encyclopedias, from Star Wars to medical but no universal ones for grown ups.

20 years ago this would have been a good question and there were multiple options in all major languages that could be compared to each other but this is not the case any more.


Write about coursework/background or research first in letter of intent? (and misc. question)

Put aside the details for a moment and think about the larger picture. You want your application to support your suitability for the program and your likelihood of success. Everything should support that and you have limited space to express it. For a doctoral program research is primary, so research experience, especially if guided by well seasoned and respected professors is a key message. Naming them is easy and may help and can't hurt.

As to already being grounded in the required coursework, that is not trivial, but less important. There is time after you begin to decide which courses you need and which you don't, but having a solid background is positive. Your CV or transcripts will already speak to these, of course.

So, the message is, I'm a great candidate, my background coursework and research has well prepared me, my interests and work habits will propel me and others can attest to my dedication and good results. Fit everything else around that message.


Citing own work within a paper and being anonymous

If this is in the context of double-blind reviewing, the correct response to this situation is to alert the handling editor or PC chair to this situation. Different venues are differently strict about double blind reviews, so the response to the situation may vary between "well, we don't care if the authors wants to reveal himself" to a reject and resubmit (without the incriminating statement and a new set of reviewers). However, which of those it is is not your decision as a reviewer.

If this is not in the context of double-blind reviewing, you are aware of the identity of the authors anyway, and this statement gives you no additional information.

If you are just reading the paper (and not reviewing), as implied by the wording of your question, then I don't understand the issue. Published papers generally have publicly visible authors, and it is not clear that the incriminating wording was already visible during review. For instance, in many software engineering venues that nowadays use double-blind reviewing, it is customary to "blank" self-citations and to slightly change the phrasing for the review version to make sure that identities are not, or at least not obviously, revealed. This can then be changed back for the camera-ready version.


In the US and some other places, graduate (and other) admissions is handled by the university itself in coordination with an academic department. They are not under control of individual professors. Therefore, in such places, you need to deal first with the admissions system, and than with a professor.

Depending on how you phrased your letter he may just be informing you of the rules.

You could, of course, send a letter to professors expressing your interest, telling them that you are applying through normal channels and asking if they are considering taking on students for advising. Such a letter should show some knowledge of the research interests of the professor and your own matching background.

For your specific question, I think the professor is being as positive as he can be. Don't take it as a negative.

Also, depending on the field, the professor may not be responsible for choosing graduate assistants. Again, it may be a university or department decision. In some other fields, the professor, if grant funded, can staff his/her own labs. In mathematics, for example, while you have a specific advisor, you may 'work for' the department, not that professor.


Recommending a paper for rejection, then publishing my own

Is it ethical for me to submit my paper to a journal, citing the dissertation and giving it credit for introducing the problem?

Yes.

  On the one hand, the material that inspired me to study this problem has been made public,

Yep, that sounds like a winning argument to me. If it’s public, then anyone may use it as inspiration for new research. Credit must be given to the source of course, as you yourself say you intend to do. The fact that you came to learn of the ideas through your work as a reviewer a year ago is irrelevant and I see no good argument in favor of disclosing it. The ideas are now public, period.

  but on the other hand, I feel guilty for the amount of time that the authors spent on revisions that were ultimately fruitless,

Guilt is sometimes a worthy emotion, but I don’t see what role it has to play here. As the reviewer, you did your best to shepherd the paper along on its route to publication in the hope that it will reach the threshold of publishability, selflessly investing time and energy with no expectation of getting anything in return. Sadly, things didn’t work out that way, but it sounds like everyone involved acted in good faith and no one is to blame, least of all you. It would have been very different if you had developed the follow-up research while you were reviewing the paper and intentionally sabotaged its publication in order to publish your work first, but that’s clearly not what happened.

  and this could lead to the original paper having a much more difficult path to eventual publication (somewhere)

That is too bad, but that is life. For you to voluntarily refrain from publishing a good scientific idea just to leave elbow room to other people who may or may not ever want/need/make use of it, would be damaging to yourself and (presumably) to the scientific community.

As for the idea of offering coauthorship to the authors of the original paper, that sounds like a reasonable option to me, but based on your account I don’t see that you have any ethical obligation to do so. In fact, depending on whether you feel they really deserve that type of credit, that may itself border on the unethical practice of gift authorship. Whatever you end up deciding, in my opinion coauthorship should not be offered as an act of charity or for irrelevant (even if true) reasons like “PhD students need to eat” as someone mentioned in a comment.


Slow dissertation advisor: should I complain?

Ask your advisor to check with the dean or other appropriate authority to see whether tuition can be waived since you have nothing left but a round of revisions and the defense.  That puts your advisor in the position of explaining the delays, rather than your complaining about them.


Is it fine to cancel class on days before national holidays, due to low attendance?

I have known a number of professors who took a third approach: on an expected low-attendance class day such as the day before Thanksgiving, they held a lecture, but did not make it part of the "standard" curriculum.  Instead, they would schedule some sort of fun and exciting "bonus material," like a notable guest speaker or a cool demonstration.  That way, those students who showed up got something out of coming, but the ones whose plans prevented them from being there didn't have any missed "core" material to make up.


How does one avoid bikeshedding in paper reading groups?

This is a real problem. In a reading group I am currently a part of, we have imposed the following policy:

Before showing up to the reading group each weak, each member must write a summary of the paper, like a short review, including strengths and weaknesses as well as questions for discussion.

I think that this helps ground the discussion in reality and has avoided "bikeshedding" to some extent. Specifically, writing a summary ensures that you know where the work fits into the big picture and what its main contributions are. After this is articulated, you can be sure that whatever problems you have found with the paper are in proper context (it may then be clear that they are minor problems, not related to the paper's main contribution, or it may be that they are major objections).

I think the act of finding flaws in a paper is invaluable, whether the flaws are minor or not. So the goal should not be to not find flaws, but rather to put those flaws in their proper context.

Finally, I think a good general piece of advise is to withhold judgment until reading at least the intro and conclusion in a positive light, without skepticism. That means you understand the authors' argument before you form an opinion. It may be that the negative thing you see with the paper actually has nothing to do with what it's about.


I dropped out of college a decade ago. How do I finish my graduation now? [Pune, India]

If you're looking for a full fledged CS engineering degree then https://www.ieindia.org/webui/IEI-Academics.aspx#academic-programme. There seems to be some court case going on. Follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/euringbishnujee.singh/ . It's still recognised though.

Any other 3 year degree you can easily do from your local university or IGNOU.

DEB site: https://www.ugc.ac.in/deb/notices.html

The distance education bureau, DEB functions under the UGC. So trust no one else but them. They have a couple of PDFs with recognised universities. Not all universities can give distance certificate.

IGNOU: http://www.ignou.ac.in/ I've enrolled here recently.

Physically visit and interact with the staff before enrolling.

These courses will have very few classes and they're mostly on weekends. Very doable.

All the best.


Does a senior area editor supervise a country or a region?

Most journals accept papers from a fairly large spectrum within some field. Most of the time the field contains specialties that require deep knowledge. No person can be expected to be expert in all of those sub fields. Therefore, a journal's editorial staff is likely to contain people with at least some knowledge of a specific subfield. For a math journal there may be "area editors" for Algebra, and Analysis, and such. Perhaps even sub-sub fields within those fields.

So "area" here refers to area of expertise, not a geographical designation. (Possibly different in a journal devoted to geography, I suppose.)

But even here, the specific knowledge of an editor is limited, hence the assignment to reviewers who are expected to be much more knowledgeable in the specific of a given paper. The area expert (editor) can do a rough estimation of the quality and suitability of a paper, but it requires deeper analysis.

A journal that published in various languages, of course, would need people to sort those, but that isn't the main idea behind the term.


Can I upload multimedia from subscription access journals to third party websites

Update:

After further emails and confusions settled, IOP was more than happy to grant me permissions to use the videos. One thing I discovered is that technically, even if you're just using one or two of the figures from your paper for a poster you should ask permission from IOP. I'm not sure how common this is.

~~~~~~~~

The email response to my specific case was:

"Under the copyright form, IOP Publishing only take a non-exclusive licence from you to use and publish the video abstract (clause 1.3). Therefore we do not control what you do with the video abstract. Please note, if you have used any third party material in your video, you may need to consider whether the permission you were granted was wide enough to use that content on YouTube."

One thing to note is she is talking about the video abstract and not video figures, but I'm personally going to say that's enough of a green light for me.


Write about what you know and don't speculate. Because of the power imbalance, let others (professors) speak about improvements.

Think about whether you have had a good experience and whether you would recommend him to other students. Make it personal. If some sorts of students might not thrive with this prof and you wouldn't recommend they work with him you can say that.

Be honest, but don't stray too far outside the limits of your relationship.

From a student I think that is all that is expected.

If you think he needs improvement, speak to him about it, privately. And preferably after you finish. "I wish that ..."


Late followup for Internship Opportunity

Simple enough to just ask. Ask if the offer is still open and what your next steps should be. And express your enthusiasm as you have here.

Four days isn't actually that long. Nor is a week without a reply. But if it is upcoming soon then an email now should be fine.


What academic functions does a Professor Emeritus usually serve?

To the best of my understanding, the primary function of a professor switching to emeritus status is that it frees up a faculty slot for a new hire.  Emeritus is essentially retirement without giving up affiliation. An emeritus professor can ramp down their duties, go part time, etc.  In some cases they may still do some teaching and supervising, and may have office space, but I believe they are typically no longer paid and no longer expected to fulfill normal faculty duties.  That said, when they are still active, their advice and participation is often still quite valued by the active faculty.


Is it unusual for a professor to submit recommendations to other universities more promptly than their own?

There's not enough information to say for sure, but one possibility is that they know the deadline isn't strict because they've seen what happens from the inside.  When submitting a letter to another university, it's hard to know how harmful a delay might be, but your recommenders may know that in your department nobody even plans to look at the letters until the end of next week.  (It's not uncommon to schedule a buffer period between the deadline and the beginning of organized review, precisely to give late letters a chance to arrive.)  Or they may trust that their colleagues on the admissions committee will forgive them for being late.


Are universities run more and more like businesses? What are the consequences?

I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:

We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.

So when people say "universities are run like businesses today", what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students ("customers") and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the "operate like a business" category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.


Meaning of question "do you give permission to release a copy of this recommendation to another academic institution" in a recommendation form

The text suggests that YGS may want to send a copy of the recommendation letter to another school, given a request from the subject (your student) and the permission of the author (you). That the school seeks your consent in advance suggests that it is streamlining its process for forwarding old recommendations to other institutions. Perhaps this mechanism is sometimes used in the vetting of visiting scholars?

The worst implication that a "no" seems likely to incur would be the student having to seek out another recommendation instead of using one on file. I don't see how they could justify treating the letter's contents any differently based on the response to this question (unlike the issue of whether the applicant has waived their right to see the letter).


Can I publish a technical paper on more than one publishing sites?

Short answer : No.

Long answer: Only under certain circumstances where you have explicit permission to do so. Be aware that even if you have permission to do so, there are many folks who take an extremely dim view of multiple publishing.


What relevance do law school grades have on admission to a Master's degree in economics?

The effect of your law grades probably depends a lot on the program you are applying to. I guess (really just a guess here) the overall GPA might in most cases serve as a signal for being a good/bad student, so they probably matter.

I think it doesn't really matter what the courses are. Most law courses have nothing in common with economics courses even if they cover the same topics. And to be honest, people are lazy and probably are not try to figure out which of your courses are useful for an econ degree. That is of course different for a law/econ master or a specialized econ master.

However, most master programs require you to have a sufficient knowledge in math.

But, as I already said that depends on the university/department/program.
So, my advice would be: ask the top 1-3 universities on your list what the necessary conditions are.

A minor remark: I can't think of my econ MS being useful in a real job (i.e. not governmental or in academia) but maybe that is just me. Maybe don't pick a research master's degree.


Put the link where your readers will find it most easily, i.e. as early in the document as possible. A link to your repository in the introduction would be ideal. Placing an identical reference elsewhere in your paper wouldn't hurt - nothing is worse than having to hunt through a paper just to find the single github link.

Similarly, the exact format should be conducive to finding your code, so a direct link is likely easier to follow. A formal reference may work better if you reference the repository several times within the manuscript.


International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) in References (APA style)?

Since the ISSN refers to the journal, it isn't a very precise identifier for a publication in the journal. I'd highly recomment to use the DOI instead, if availble. This is becoming more and more a common convention in science. Listing the ISSN is in contrast relatively rare.


What does it mean to do research with a phd student?

You need to work that out with the professor and the PhD student. Before you start, get an idea about what you will be expected to do and how exciting or boring that will seem to you.

But, you should also settle the question about authorship of any resulting publications. You need to know in advance if you will be a co-author or will only get an acknowledgement of your contributions.

At your stage you may not be able to insist on much, but you should know going in what the parameters are. But as you phrase your question, it is impossible to answer, as the key is with those other individuals.


Is there a difference between Top Tier and Second Tier graduate programs in Mathematics regarding tenure track?

I don't think you have gone very deep into rankings. Certainly not deep enough to suggest any relationship meaningful for individuals. I've never heard anyone scoff at a PhD from University of Michigan. You are suggesting that the top graduate from some place is invariably less skilled than the worst graduate from some other essentially similar place. That doesn't happen in the real world.

But if your life goal is to be a tenured professor at one of the top six schools in the US, prepare for disappointment, no matter where you study or how good you are. The problem is that the total number of open positions at such schools in any given year is minuscule and the competition for those few positions is huge.

But you should also think about the following in choosing a graduate school, if that is why you ask. Many top (and other) schools don't like to hire their own graduates. It certainly isn't that they doubt the quality, of course. But they like to bring in people who may have fresh ideas, not having studied with the current faculty and been exposed for many years with their ideas primarily. This has less effect now than it once did as it is easier to collaborate across distance and even internationally because of the internet and cheaper travel.

But some schools do permit hiring their own, and many students prefer to stay around a place where they are comfortable, so such places can collect a faculty made up of their own graduates. But, even in these, I'll guess that a lot of those "from here" people went out into the bigger world and made their reputation there before returning "home."

On the other hand, there are some incredibly fine mathematicians at quite small and out of the rankings places who simply want to live and work in a "home" environment of a different kind. Princeton isn't, actually, the finest place in the US to actually live. Too many cars, too many deer ticks.

But there is more to life than the quality of the institution you attend or the institution you work for. Lots more.


How much feedback to provide for unsalvageable manuscript during peer review

For a manuscript that's so clearly a reject for all the reasons you state, I would not spend much time at all on feedback to the author. Of course you list those reasons for the editor.
If you are feeling generous with your time you could point out one instance of each of the kinds of flaws.


What is the effect of a PhD student dyeing their hair blue?

The general advice is that when you're an undergraduate student, a graduate student not yet on the job market, or when you're a tenured faculty, you can do whatever the hell you want.

The problem is that you are vulnerable when you're in the position to be hired, promoted, tenured, or retained. In those cases, having just one conservative person on the hiring/promotion/retention committee (or at the divisional, full faculty, dean or provost levels) can derail you. In those circumstances, you want to stand out in terms of your research, service, and teaching  but to try to avoid or mitigate any areas of friction where and when possible.

Since hair color is easily changeable, if I were your advisor, I would recommend that you dress (and hair color) more conservatively when you go on the job market -- and when you come up for promotion/retention/tenure.
I would also recommend you wear shoes at your job interview.

The benefit to risk analysis just isn't in favor of frivolity in these high stakes situations. Your departmental faculty may be 100% behind you and your sartorial style but I've seen faculty lose tenure bids at the divisional, full faculty, and provost level despite department support. I've seen grad students not get hired because they wore a t-shirt to a job interview thinking the institution was a cool, hip place. It was, just not that hip.

At all other times during your career, I think you are relatively free to do what you want within the broader norms of your particular cohort and department.

Note that while my home department is anthropology and I'm currently at a R1, I've also taught at two SLACs and have seen enough shenanigans in other departments and at divisional/university levels that my advice is not restricted to just anthropology at R1s but is intended as general advice. Ymmv.


What can a math major do to get into a computer science PhD program?

"Programming" is only one part of computer science, and arguably, the "easiest" part. The harder parts of computer science are the theoretical parts (e.g. math and machine learning), in which your background is strong.

To address your greatest concern, programming, my own experience is something like this: The easiest part of program is creating commands for things like "formatting." That is more tedious, than anything else. Certainly, Python or other programming experience is helpful in this regard, but is nothing that someone of your intellectual caliber should worry about.

A harder part of computer science is "logic," at least as expressed in flow charts. These include things like true-false "branching," or jump commands such as "goto," or loops and links. This part of computer science is harder than the formatting part, but not overly difficult.

The hardest part (for me at least) is mathematical concepts and equations. Once you've got the equations down, and can express them in "computer" form (using e.g., recursion), you are over the most difficult part. Related to this is machine learning, how the machine bootstraps itself through feedback loops.

So, relax. You have a good background in the hardest part of computer science. Naturally, you want to learn some of the "soft" stuff, e.g. programming, but until you get to the actual courses, what you don't know won't hurt you.

Besides the four California schools that you mentioned, I would consider Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My father (Dr. Tung Au) retired from there as a professor 24 years ago, (and has a laboratory named after him). That school is known for robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer science. Another school you might consider is his alma mater, Illinois Institute of Technology.


Can an article "in press" (available online) be withdrawn/retracted?

In your question you say "fatal flaw" and the answer will strongly depend on the meaning or intent with using these words. A fatal flaw might mean a figure is wrong; you may have submitted an earlier version of a figure you later revised. A fatal flaw may also mean you discover something that negates your results; you used the wrong equation or based your conclusions on the wrong data, both in ways that would pose serious risk. A third way to interpret the term is by personally simply disagreeing with what has been published, but my guess is that this is not what you are primarily thinking about and it is of course not grounds for any actions.

In the second case, retraction could be the only way forward. You should of course make the journal aware of this as soon as possible and ask for their suggested solution. If you have your paper published online but not yet printed, the journal (publisher) might retract it and it will never be printed. If it is printed they might retract it and probably print a note in a following issue to that fact. See examples for why in The New England Journal of Medicine

In the first case, the journal will likely publish an erratum, publish the correct figure to follow up on the example. Anything that is of a technical nature and can be rectified by providing the correct version will be done so through errata,. In print this will be included also in a subsequent issue.

Elsevier, for example, summarizes their rules and provides the following grounds for retraction:

  Article withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
  Article retraction: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.
  Article Removal: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s).
  Article Replacement: Identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.

In essence, if something is officially published with a doi, there is no way to get corrections made in the pdf or in print. The online version must correspond to the printed and so the solution becomes providing a correction later on.

Anything that has published will be possible to see. A paper that has been retracted will just be associated with a clear sign that a retraction has been made. The paper might live on through older copies on peoples computers or in their desk drawers.

There is an article in PLOS one that provides a perspective on retractions in general and which may be of interest.


Can I take credit for contributions to study materials on my CV?

These are not academic publications that you can legitimately claim on your CV.  At best, you might be able to describe this work experience in a different part of your CV, but keep your publication section clean.  A publication is one that you claim authorship of the given product, whether it is a peer-reviewed article, book, book chapter, monograph, etc.  Once you have a stock of publications, then you can create some logical categories.


Including non first author papers as "sample papers" on academic job application

Every paper published by a reputable publisher is a good paper and should be on the CV. Advising students who rightly have first authorship is also a good thing. In some fields, advisors aren't co-authors no matter the input on student papers.
It think it a mistake to leave such things off of the CV. In fact, somewhere in your application materials you might want to explain that you were advisor to the other author(s) on the papers. Probably not in the CV itself, but a statement of purpose for an academic job will benefit from indicating a willingness and history of advancing student research and careers.
I assume you know your own field's standards, but in some, people assume that the last author did the work and the others were along for the ride. I dislike that sort of thing, actually. But a faculty position in most places is more than just a heads-down-don't-bother-me researcher.

Edited to add. Including the papers themselves as separate from CV references is a bit different. The first suggestion is to ask first. The second, in the absence of guidance, would be to include a mixture, with mostly first author papers, but a sample of the others. But an explanation of the situation on the latter should be fine.


Why are papers accepted even if they don't release code or data to allow reproducibility?

There are multiple answers to your question.

Academic publishing assumes good faith. At least in the circles where the majority of people are genuinely interested in the advancement of science. This is the only viable mode of sharing scientific information between adults, although it sometimes fail as we all know it. Publishing should firstly serve the purpose of communicating results in a fast and convenient manner and second provide some sort of quality control.
Sharing code and data is not a necessary condition for a study to be reproducible. It surely lowers the threshold of work that has to be done by other groups to reproduce the results, but clear and comprehensive descriptions of the methods and algorithm, as well as how the data was gathered, suffice. In fact, it's even better since starting from scratch will avoid the reproduction of results that are due to artifacts in the implementation or the original data.
Acceptance standards vary vastly between journals. Nowadays anything can be "accepted and publicized" providing you pay the "article processing charge". The question is where was it published and by whom. The most prestigious journals in my field have strict guidelines about the study design and sharing of materials and methods, the other ones don't.


Is it necessary to send a "thank you" email to reseach commitee after on-campus interview?

In my experience this is somewhat uncommon, but not unheard of.  When a candidate did thank everyone they met with it made a positive impression on me and at least some other faculty I talked to.  So if you'd like to send such a note I'd say go ahead and do so, but you should not feel obligated.  I'd suggest you keep the note very short though and not say anything weird.


How to indicate a 'summary' of some sort in a presentation

I recommend short simple words no matter how complex the audience is. Just highlight main points of what is being said per slide. I don't recommend quotes on a slide though especially if it requires inhaling to read.

If you need hard data shown, I recommend bringing a printout and handing it out.

Be sure to include your name/contact info at the last slide.


Postdoc Funding for an American looking to do a postdoc in europe (in Theoretical Computer Science)

UK is definitely of the 'professor has funding' variety of post-docs. However, there are also Fellowships. This is funding intended for a researcher doing their own research and there are programs specifically for Early Career Researchers. For example, there are Fellowships available through the EU Horizon 2020 program, see http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/ (note - extremely competitive) and through the various discipline funding councils, I think computer science would be https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ and the fellowship info is at https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/fellows/overview/.

You can also try organisations such as Fullbright.

A couple of other points - you should be clear about what you expect. I see lots of comments here about postdocs being training positions. This has not been my experience, I have had little supervision and no training. If you want training, you would be best off to join a project that involves several people, or seek a Fellowship with a training component. Also, make sure you are on the email / forum lists for academic communities that interest you, this seems to be where a lot of post-docs are advertised.


In German-speaking countries, or at least in Austria, the abbreviation DDr. mult. is used to denote people who have more than two doctorates. Googling for DDr. mult. allows one to identify some persons, but I cannot quickly verify whether they received just three or even four+ such titles.
However, note that some of them should actually be labelled DDr. h.c. mult., whereby h.c. (honoris causa) suggests that the doctorates are honorary titles. In other words, oftentimes they did not start PhD programs from the beginning to the final defense of their dissertation multiple times, but perhaps just once, whereafter they received some honorary titles for some public service.


Groups seeking postdocs will absolutely consider you as an applicant before you have completed your PhD. They will, however, want to be certain that you have completed the entire process and all its requirements prior to officially beginning your new job, as the comments above have said. Be as honest with them as possible about when you expect to finish.

Universities will vary in terms of how they expect you to prove you've completed your PhD: some will accept official letters while others will want a photocopy of your physical degree (I was asked for the latter and found it rather, er, surprising). Luckily, none of that is likely to happen during an interview.


What does it mean by a "research university"?

In the US, the Carnegie classification is used to describe different kinds of academic institutions. The system  changed in 2005, but under the previous incarnation, universities that had significant research components were called "R1" universities. Under the new system, universities with research components are called "RU/H" or "RU/VH" (Research University/(V)ery (H)igh research). It's most likely that the term 'research university' is an indirect reference to this.

Update: The Carnegie classification has many categories of institution: only three of them are predominantly research-focused. So there are many more "non-research" institutions than there are research institutions.


What to do as a grad student about an adverse grader?

Of course, you are perfectly entitled to get graded fairly. Talk to the prof, and when you do, concentrate on the factually wrong grades if they are the substantial part of your complaint, because that's where you can provably address the factual incorrectness of the marking. Make absolutely sure this is really the case; if you get that wrong, people won't listen to you on the other things.

If the professor looks at that, you could add as an afterthought that you generally feel that the grader is overmeticulous, and whether you are really supposed to submit at that level of detail?

Generally, much will depend upon how well you do on other courses.

I would completely put aside the thought whether the grader has it in for you, as you have no way to prove it, unless you have hard evidence for that (e.g. some proof of a conflict of interest or something else). I would avoid going down that route, though.


Conference reviews contains the whole range of ratings

This happened to me twice. I think the rebuttal is only necessary for the rejections (1 + 2), or the weak accept? the strong accept requires no rebuttal. It's hard when there's no extensive comments. But when I did my rebuttal, I just targeted my response by reviewers (as in, I wrote separate rebuttals for each, and labeled them as such). If there's not enough comments to go on, can you write to the conference organizer asking them to solicit a bit more info? once I received a blank comment page, but as it turns out the reviewer made a PDF of his/her comments and it failed to attach. Not saying this is your case, but it doesn't hurt to ask.


If you plan to change anything in your authorship agreement, you should bring this issue up as soon as possible.

You could politely ask if the person is still interested in working on the paper,  e. g.  ask "I've noticed that your responses for this paper come slowly. Probably you are busy with other things. To complete the paper I would need... from your side. I could also try to finish the paper without you, but wonder if you still want to be a coauthor." (Just a first shot for a formulation...)

You don't know the motivation on the other side, so it may well be that the coauthor is really busy, but feels obliged to continue to work on the paper and they would be happy to say "I'm out." I have they can't work on the paper but insists to be coauthor, that is another topic for which your field plays a large role.


Should I ask a reference letter from someone working where I am applying to use it for another application?

I understand your hesitation and there may be situations in which your concerns are spot on. That said, people in the position of researcher A exist to support and further the successful outcomes of their students. Outside specific research contributions, this is their legacy. One of the most rewarding aspects of leadership is helping people succeed.

Based on your question, I recommend immediately asking researcher A for a recommendation letter. Discuss any concerns with them directly and save yourself the worrying. You can always draft the letter for them and let them make revisions as they see fit.

Good luck!


How to teach programming to first timers at a college level?

We've had pretty good success through the Software Carpentry initiative.

There are software carpentry bootcamps happening around the world: I'd advise going on one yourself, before hosting them.

They offer a well-rehearsed pattern of training, with lots of hands-on exercises, using open-source training materials.

You can mix and match bits of the syllabus to suit: databases, particular languages, using the shell command line, source-code version control, OOP, and so on.

Once you've put one cohort through a Software Carpentry bootcamp, get them to be the helpers on the next software carpentry bootcamp, for the next cohort of students. That way, they get to copy the successful "see one, do one, teach one" method used in medical training: they learn at least as much again when they're teaching the material, as they did when being taught it.


How to reference a picture from a website in a report?

Just caption it as "credit: www.nde-ed.org (with original amendments)" and then drop the link into a footnote.


What skills are needed to sustain a research group?

I try to only work with people who are capable of excelling in all the skills needed to perform and write up high-quality research.

That's not to say that some of them (particularly students) won't need training in those skills in order to excel, of course.  But I definitely don't believe in having 1 guy who only collects data, 1 who only analyzes data, and 1 who only writes (or some such scheme).  If you pursue such a scheme, you may be crippling people.  They'll likely have a hard time in their next job, when nobody holds their hand through the other parts.


Will submitting to viXra before being accepted by arXiv cause me to be blacklisted by arXiv?

No.  As a general rule, arXiv moderators neither know nor care what's posted on viXra; it's just not important enough to spend time on.

(I was an arXiv moderator for over a decade.)


It looks to me like ZRSS isn't a citation style, just a list of journals.  You can refer to that list to figure out how to abbreviate the name of a journal (e.g. Animal Conservation might be abbreviated as Anim. Conserv.) but it isn't supposed to show you how to format the rest of the citation.

If you keep reading right below there in the Guidelines for Authors, it contains more information about how to format citations, with several examples, and provides style files for EndNote and Reference Manager.  It is possible that someone else has written one for Mendeley, or you could do it.

If you need more detailed information than what is in the Guidelines, you will need to ask the editors.  If you look on the left side of the Guidelines page, there is a Contact link, which gives an email address for someone in the editorial office, who can be contacted with questions about "submitting a manuscript".


Is it acceptable asking to join a researcher in co-organizing their conference session?

I would not directly broach the subject. If you want to judge interest, the kinds of questions I'd ask are:

  What do you have to do to organize a session?

If your friend mentions needing a co-chair, you could ask your friend if he has someone in mind.

But do not ask directly to be a co-chair for someone else's session. What you might instead want to ask is: "would you like to be co-chairs for a future session sometime?"


Can you resubmit a rejected manuscript to the same journal if you have made many changes to improve the manuscript?

Some journals won't accept a resubmission after rejection. For some others it might depend on the reason for rejection. If the editor deemed it not suitable for the journal it isn't likely to be reconsidered.
But otherwise you should be able to resubmit it. You can also ask the editor whether it would be advisable or not. Follow their advice, of course.
And "frowned upon" only matters if the editor is the one frowning.


Is it advisable to mention the dollar amount for grants on a CV?

If you're applying for academic jobs in the US, your ability to acquire funding is one component of your viability as an academic. So definitely add in the information about the amount of money. It will stand out (in a good way)


Finding specific types of manuscripts of a journal

First, try the Advanced Search interface of the specific journal or publisher. In this  case:

Open https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/advanced-search.
Under "Find a specific article", select Bioinformatics and press the Search button (the one in the first row).
One the left, under "Article type", select the desired type, e.g., "Brief report".
Again on the left, under "Section", select the desired section, e.g. "Systems biology".

Now only articles of type Brief report, in the section Systems biology are displayed.

If such a search interface is not available or gives irrelevant results, there are more general approaches:

In Scopus Advanced Search, use queries in the form:

  EXACTSRCTITLE(Journal Name) AND DOCTYPE(document_type)

You can find the list of possible document types in the help (field code DOCTYPE).
In Google Scholar, try queries in the form (include the quotes):

  source:"Journal name" "Article type"


When to publish and what to include in a work in progress?

Presenting work in progress on conferences is a good way to elicit a first discussion of your (preliminary) research results, to establish yourself in a new topic, or to claim first ground in a "hot" research area. The important thing to me seems to be that you are able to present at least some results. Research concepts and plans often do not yield good conference papers.

There's a number of ways in which results can be regarded as premature, such that you would want to present them as "work in progress". I'll give some of them without claim of completeness:

In empirical research:

Small amount of data compared to the standard in your field.
Contradictory results which prevent firm conclusions.
Low amount of replicates or additional supportive data for your conclusions.
Experimental setups which may not capture or control for relevant factors in the system you're looking at.

In theoretical research:

Restrictive assumptions which make a theory applicable to only a fraction of the relevant problems.
Evaluation of a method with a smaller or more restricted test case than what would be done usually.
Mathematical results from numerical experiments without a clear proof.
Missing steps in an implementation such that only partial results could be obtained.

In many cases, it is a difficult decision, whether you should publish preliminary results (in case they are publishable in principle) or rather wait until you get more complete results. It depends on how fast you want to publish something on the topic, whether you can quickly get more complete results or not, and probably a range of other factors which I didn't think of now.


What is the highest post-doctoral salary one should ask for (immunology)

Postdoc salaries as high as 60K are not unheard of, especially if the cost of living is high and/or you have children. I believe some very competitive "independent postdoc" positions can even reach as high as 70K. However, these salaries may not increase annually, while typically lower salaries do increase annually.

BTW I believe the average 1st year postdoc salary is under 40K (and so is the NIH postdoc salary guideline).


acceptance letter with no letter of financial support

How about,

Dear Prof,
I am an international student and need to apply for a visa to come to the University. I will miss the winter semester if I don't have the letter of financial support in 2 weeks.
Best regards, Nikki.

Be polite but straightforward and always explain why the deadline is real. Don't hesitate to chase people - it might be that the professor is simply too busy and he keeps forgetting things which are not urgent. Note also that his understanding of urgency can be different from yours.


Is it appropriate if my current affiliation is different from the ending of my email address?

Yes, I think it is true to some degree.  I received such an email before and it made me wonder what is going on.

Although it is not really prohibited and people understand that situations cannot be generalized, it gives a strange feeling to some people at least.

It is like indentation and font size in a paper submission.


Did conferences have poster sessions before PCs were widespread?

My technical career started in the early 1980's before the IBM PC came out. On campus we had a large mainframe and various minicomputers. I was running experiments using a Terak personal computer with an (one) 8" floppy drive, 16k of memory, and UCSD Pascal.

For typesetting, one could use text processing languages such as nroff, troff, and spinoff (IBM's version of nroff/troff) on the mainframe, Vaxen, and HPs. Tektronix graphics monitors were available on various machines, and they had thermal printers attached to save a hard copy.

For talks, generally everybody hand wrote on overhead slides. Graphics were also copied by hand onto the slide by using the printed graph underneath. If you had lots of time, the graphic arts folks would be happy to make great plots (which you definitely had them do for papers). Sometimes you would have them photograph their professional graphics onto slides for talks. Most conferences had an overhead projector at the front of the room, and a slide projector at the back. You learned to show up early to get your slides into the projector and test for up/down/reverse so it actually looked OK. Some really good speakers went ahead and free-formed the talk on the overhead projector, writing as they went.

By the late 1980's we had actual PCs, TeX/LaTeX, and HP pen plotters for great output onto overhead sheets. Thus, for a talk you could assemble a set of machine-generated overheads that looked clean and fancy.

Posters went much the same way. In the early 1980's you would format blocks of text and print them out, often cutting up the printed sheets into pieces (e.g. for descriptions of graphs). The graphs were often the thermal prints, or perhaps (with enough time) output from the graphic arts folks. One would physically cut and paste (or drymount) things together into some number of parts that could be carried to the conference and assembled with push pins on the supplied cork boards. Some folks did substantial portions either handwritten or using various graphics arts tools. In high school I took drafting classes, and certainly knew how to use Lettreset and other tools for neat, consistent lettering.

A (fairly late) example of 'assembled' posters can be found at AIP's Emilio Segre Visual Archives, where people have pinned up various bits onto boards. This is late enough (1999) that the various pieces look computer-generated, but the general idea is the same. Another from the archives is also at the AIP. I think you get the general idea.

Large poster scale printers became available at places like Kinkos in the early 1990s. I can remember taking a 3.25" floppy disk to a conference in Boston and having my poster printed on the spot for what seemed a lot of money, but it looked a lot better than my earlier ones. Now folks seem to have given up on the just-in-time mode, and lug giant tubes around with their posters. I'm not sure that is progress.

Perhaps next we will just be allotted a huge monitor, and can plug a USB stick into it, or just have the poster appear on virtual reality goggles.


Should I omit some of my qualifications in my application materials to "surprise" with during an interview?

No.

How will you know exactly what's "just enough to pass the first selection round"? You won't. You can't.
Don't "surprise" by withholding helpful information. I believe most people find it annoying and inconsiderate when someone deliberately withholds information that they need in order to do their job (which is what you are proposing to do to the selection committee).
It's harder to change someone's opinion of you than it is to confirm it. Even if you manage to get an interview using this strategy, convincing the interviewer that the candidate he thought was mediocre is really exceptional is more difficult than making him think, "This student is just as exceptional in person as I thought he would be!" (Also see: confirmation bias)
Presenting yourself badly on paper can lead the committee to think that you don't know how to present yourself well, or didn't bother to find out how, or didn't care enough to put effort into your application. These are not qualities that people look for in an applicant.


One of the coauthors withdraws their authorship after submitting a paper

It’s definitely weird, and a clear indication that something is going on with a paper. Basically, I can see two cases were this could happen, and both are not exactly great signs for the quality of a submission:

The removed author was just a “courtesy author” without any real impact on the work. (S)he wanted to tag along at first, but now when people started to nag her/him to do real work, (s)he is rather out. In this case, it is ethically entirely okay to proceed without the additional author, but one wonders why the courtesy author was on the paper in the first place. While this does not say something about the quality of the paper per se, it leaves a certain sour taste in the mouth with regards to the ethics of the rest of the authors.
The removed author was a “real” author in the sense that (s)he actually contributed to the work, but now feels that the submission is either so bad that (s)he does not want to be associated with it, or that the results are in fact wrong or unethically generated (e.g., because the co-author assumes that all or part of the work of somebody else was fabricated or is otherwise inaccurate). I think I do not have to explain why this would be a very bad sign for the quality of a submission.

What I would suggest in terms of procedure is full disclosure. Don’t just silently remove the author — in this case, the thoughts of the editor are very likely to wander to the two cases above, and this will make him look very carefully at your submission. Explain exactly what happened, and make sure to explain how it has nothing to  do with the quality of the submission. If you can’t do that (e.g., because the co-author actually withdrew because (s)he thinks your results are wrong), it is simply better for everybody to withdraw.


There are two questions here:

how to cite?
can (and how) such materials be used?

The first question can be certainly answered. Library Guides from Victoria University has the following example in APA style:

  Ooi, D. (2018). AEB1804: Young People in a Global Community, week 1, session 1 notes [Course Presentation]. Retrieved from https://vucollaborate.vu.edu.au/d2l/le/content/177492/viewContent/2217850/View

This question also deals with citing lecture notes and when to do it. Concrete example for lab manuals and lecture notes.

An important discussion on whether to use citations while preparing your lecture notes can give a perspective on why doing proper citations in lecture notes is a good idea.

However, citing lecture notes has its limitations, since lecture notes are essentially gray literature.

Now, to the second question whether and how you can use them, which is a question of copyright. This question discusses the copyright-issues-free preparation of lecture notes to get you started.

Lecture notes rarely mention a license under which they are published, so you cannot assume they are in the public domain or under a permissive license. You can contact the author of the notes (or the copyright holder, which might be university). This will raise two problems (that theoretically can be resolved):

sometimes it is actually unclear who is a copyright holder for the lecture notes
you rely on the fact that the lecture notes you are trying to use do not infringe copyrights on their own

So, I would suggest the following. Use the material from the lecture notes in a way that will constitute fair use. Citing paragraphs here and there would certainly be fair use while using images and figures might not be, as well as using entire chapters. Use appropriate citations where applicable. Also, consider asking the author of the notes for an explicit permission.

Known assumptions and limitations of this answer:

you do not intend to sell your lecture notes
copyright law is complicated and has its own peculiarities in every country
you intend a fair use (in a common, not legal, sense) and wish to be as fair and copyright-respectful as possible


CS Conference paper reviews, decision and supervisor issue

Generally, it is a good idea to do what your supervisor says unless you really, really know what you're doing. In this case you have two supervisors who disagree. This is why people say that it's a good idea to avoid having co-supervisors. In any case, now you have them - the ideal solution is to get a unanimous decision from them. Maybe try to have a meeting with both present, or send an email to both, and ask for a clear decision on whether you should continue with the submission or withdraw it.

It's usually a bad idea to submit a paper that your supervisor is not on. In this case, one supervisor is on it, so it's kind of a grey area. But you say your supervisor is mad you submitted, that makes it not grey! It's hard to go far in science if you do things that make your supervisor mad.

Just because the reviewer had the same objections as your supervisor doesn't mean your supervisor influenced them. Maybe they independently recognized the same objective flaws. If you really want to get this published, I think your best option is to talk to the supportive co-supervisor, figure out how to deal with the problems, figure out how to best make a case to your unenthusiastic supervisor, then go to him and ask him to reconsider. If he won't reconsider, let it go. The benefit of the paper to you will not be more than the harm of annoying your supervisor.


How to come up with an effective undergraduate research topic - for scholarship?

Generally speaking, developing a research topic is something that happens over weeks, months, even years - it's not really something that naturally comes about in a single day. So reasonably speaking, you really need an alternate question: how to come up with something reasonable to put in a scholarship form in a few hours. The usual process is to talk with lots of professors and potential advisers, read over their research, look carefully at all topics that come up in class, read a variety of books and keep your mind open and working on what you are really interested in...and that is going to take a lot more time than you have.

So frankly, you are going to need to "wing it" - to "fire from the hip" and hope for the best in terms of this particular scholarship application if it indeed has the hard deadline of 'today'. For this I would suggest you review the general ideas in this helpful professor's published works, as you mentioned you have already done, and point your finger towards whatever topic sounds kind of doable to you and is generally an area you might like to work more on in the future - or at least you think you might like to. And something vaguely in that realm could be your proposed topic. Just write it up and get it out.

Once you have gotten past the emergency of the deadline, you should certainly talk with the professor more about potential topics. But there is no replacement for having your own ideas and interests, and what is a great topic for one person is torture to someone else. By all means, keep working on it and developing your interests and awareness of what you might like to work on in the future - but for now, get that scholarship app done while you still can!


What to do if a colleague is reviewing an unchanged paper that has been rejected before on my recommendation?

If you were asked to re-review an "unchanged" manuscript there are a number of things you can do (e.g., Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it). The issue is that this is not the case. You are no longer part of the review process.

The first thing you should do is STOP. The behavior you have engaged in so far has been completely unethical and a clear violation of every reviewer agreement I have ever seen.

Your colleague should never have told you about the paper under review.
You should not have mention that you reviewed a similar paper in the past.
Neither of you should have mentioned authors or the title.
The actual manuscripts should never have been shared and/or compared

To a lesser extent, it is not even clear why you still have your copy of the manuscript.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers which can be thought of as best practice. These include:

respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its
review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the
journal
not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript, including junior researchers they are
mentoring, without first obtaining permission from the journal; the names of any individuals
who have helped them with the review should be included with the returned review so that
they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due
credit for their efforts.
keep all manuscript and review details confidential.


Under what title should I list my graduate program on my CV?

You're applying for a PhD and you're on an MSc program (at least, the MSc part of a PhD program), so list your MSc program on your CV. (We could quibble over details, but MSc will be easily understood by all, whereas your precise situation seems overly complicated and possibly country specific.)

Write the expected completion date (for the MSc), because the reader of your CV wants to know when you're available to start a PhD.


You do not need to have external funding to be accepted to graduate schools, and your situation is the same as every other student who applies: most of the time, the results of the fellowship applications won't be known until after the application deadlines.

As for RA's and TA's, that's a field-dependent thing. You may find that some departments use "central" funds to support students in their first semester or even first year (especially in programs where there is a lot of coursework to complete).


What should I do if my advisor is replacing me with younger, more energetic masters students?

I think he doesn't think I'm very smart.

More probaby, instead, he just thinks that you're not enough committed to your project. In fact, you write (bold mine):

  They are better at coding than me and seem a lot more interested in and involved with the project than I am.

You are a PhD student and this is your project, and you should be the one who boosts the project with work, ideas and enthusiasm: how come that these two students seem a lot more interested in and involved with the project than you?!

So, take the bull by the horns and be the booster of your project. Otherwise, it's time you rethink about your motivation in doing a PhD, about your interest in this specific project, and about your future goals. And talk to your advisor.


How common are interviews for Computer Science PhD programs?

Extremely uncommon

I understand that interviews are fairly common in other fields and in other countries, but they are rare in computer science in the US. In my experience (student, postdoc, or faculty at five different American CS departments; multiple years on graduate admissions committees; dozens of recommendation letters for CS undergraduates applying to graduate school), very few (if any) American computer science departments include interviews as a standard part of the PhD application process.

There are rare exceptions, though, usually involving prospective advisors calling up applicants directly.  The most common reason for a phone interview in my department is to assess their English fluency, especially when the applicant's test scores are borderline, or there seems to be a discrepancy between their test scores and the fluency of their statements.  I'd be surprised if this happens more than 10 times a year, and we get 2000 grad applications each year.

When I applied to Berkeley's PhD program, I was already a PhD student at UC Irvine. My future advisor and the director of grad admissions called me to ask why I wanted to move when I seemed to be succeeding in my current program (good advisor, good research progress, and so on).  I suspect they also wanted to understand the discrepancy betwen my grad school grades (good) and my undergrad grades (terrible).

In short, as long as there's nothing borderline or non-standard in your application, it's unlikely that you'd need to be available for an interview. And even if someone does want to interview you, they're much more likely to want to do it by phone or skype than in person.


Is there a conventional word that describes a professor for whom you were a TA

I would initially suggest terms supervising lecturer or supervising teaching professor. However, both terms are not perfect due to potential interpretation of "lecturer" and "teaching professor" as formal positions. In order to improve this, it might make sense to add clarifying term "class" and remove "teaching" from the second option. Therefore, my final suggestions are the following two options:

supervising class (course) lecturer;
supervising class (course) professor.


What are acceptable "relationships with referees"?

Perhaps:

Colleague from current university and active collaborator
Former employer and active collaborator
Respected senior colleague from same field


It probably just happened quickly. This is peer review - it's not a well oiled machine. Take pride in knowing you passed the first benchmark and keep your fingers crossed R1 and R2 are kind. R3 is always a wildcard.  :)


Is it possible to automatically obtain abstracts and citations from a list of references?

If you have a list of DOI's and a scopus/web of science login (via your institution) they have API's available to automatically obtain this data. For example, using python, you could use the packages pybliometrics or wos to go through this list.


What is the correct manner to make it clear that your passage is paraphrasing a reference, that itself is refering to another reference?

does A1 not deserve credit for bringing this to your attention??

Not really, however it is often beneficial to the reader to include a reference to a review paper, as it may be a good aid to their own understanding, as presumably it was for you.

e.g. "A good overview of the field can be found in A1".

  ensure that the paraphrasing is made crystal clear.

State it explicitly.

e.g. Author A1 (2017) gives a good review of recent research into ...., they note that in B1 ....


Is it acceptable to list unpublished papers in a PhD application for computer science?

Yes, this is done routinely; provided, however, that these papers are clearly marked as "currently under peer review" or "submitted for review" and specify the journal. If the paper has passed peer review and us merely awaiting publication, it can be marked as "to appear." If the paper has not passed peer review,  it should not be labeled as "to appear."

Best regards and wishing a swift publication process.


What to do when you find out your research result is wrong because it's based on wrong methods/results, after years of works?

One thing to consider is that showing fault in an "established" result is, in itself, an important result. If a student spent years working on a project, only to find that the results from their new work disprove earlier accepted results, that's worth telling other researchers (i.e. publishable). Especially considering there's probably dozens of other graduate students all working off those same results until someone tells them the results are not reliable. In fact, my father, an emeritus professor of mathematics, lists "counter-examples" as one of his areas of research.

In the case of proofs and lemmas (i.e. case 1), this is clearly publishable. In the case of experiments, it's a little harder: you would need to make a strong case for your new experiment being substantial evidence that the previous results were wrong, rather than you just botched your experiment. But if you can make a solid case, it is well worth publishing.

Sadly, the third case is not so good for the student. Assuming the student's colleague has not published yet, the research community does not benefit much from the student saying "hey I just realized my friend messed up". They should still tell their colleague and advisor so that the situation is communicated.


Should I mention industrial experience in an academic CV when applying for a PhD?

As the fellows said, you need to declare something about that rather long gap. Because, the admission committee would be disappointed in a typical applicant with a considerable time interval without any scientific or technical activity.

Furthermore, I would like to pinpoint that the Ph.D. projects would be, roughly, divided into two large categories. One would be pure-research projects, are which supposed to be traced as the cutting-edge study and engineering. The next one would be industrial projects (considerably common in european positions), are which stemming from the desire for new ideas, but are different with the former case in that the mental background from the context of the project would be really functional and precious. One might claim that the industrial experience could be accounted as such background.

Just do it, then!


Is it ok to ask for H1-B visa during postdoc interview? How?

Generally in an interview before you've received an offer, your overriding priority is making yourself look like an appealing candidate, and so bringing up points that will present a difficulty for your employer may not be so wise.  Trying to negotiate a point like this will at best put your interviewer in an uncomfortable spot (since they are almost certainly in no position to commit on a point like this) and at worse come off as arrogant.  I think it would be reasonable to ask if they can put you in touch with a staff person who can explain how visas are usually dealt with (it is probably not wise to try to look this person up beforehand separately).

After you have an offer, then you are in a better position to make requests, though honestly, most postdoc positions are pretty much "take-it-or-leave-it."  Visas (as opposed to salary or research funds) are even trickier since they are not usually handled by the department, and have legal constraints that most of the parties involved understand poorly.  You can try, but I wouldn't have a lot of optimism you will get them to do things differently than they would have.


Is it reasonable to not study previous research to avoid bias?

You should write down your thoughts now, then get on and do the proper research, before trying to do any experiment, if you wish to be taken seriously. While there is a need for radically different ideas, most research succeeds by following what has been done before ('standing on the shoulders of giants'). It is very unlikely that you will come up with something amazing without any reference to all the other intelligent people who have thought long and hard about the issue.

If you did come up with something, but without reference to any other work, the likelihood is that you would be seen as a 'nutcase', or at least viewed with deep suspicion, until you could explain yourself very clearly. Your research should not be about simply accepting what others have said. You should think critically about it, and question their assumptions and conclusions. For the most part, you do not find new ways of doing things by working in isolation, but by looking at what others have done and making different choices where you aren't fully convinced by the justification for their choice.


On what factors is a dissertation approved

Although the exact process varies from university to university, the general form of the process in the United States is typically as follows:

The student needs to do work that makes a novel contribution to the sum of all human knowledge.  This is the universal part of the process, and the key thing that a Ph.D. really certifies that you are capable of.
The student, with guidance from the advisor writes up this work in a thesis document.  In some areas this is not-yet-published work, in others it is a summation of things already published.  In either case, it should be a complete and thorough presentation of the ideas and work.
Eventually the advisor and student are both satisfied, and the advisor judges that the student's work will pass external review.
External review is obtained from some combination of oral or public defense and input from other committee members.  Sometimes the defense is a serious part of the process, sometimes it is not; in either case, an advisor should never allow a student to stand for a defense unless they will pass.
The student satisfies any additional requirements imposed through the external review.  Sometimes this is just correcting typos, sometimes this is a lengthy period of additional research.  If it is the latter, then the advisor has generally screwed up.
Submit the final document for archive, and graduate.

Note that this process assumes some flexibility in the length of a Ph.D., which is typically the case in the US.  I know that in some other places, such as many institutions in Europe, there is often a shorter and fixed schedule.  I'm not sure how one deals with not being ready on time in that case...


What to do when your student is convinced that he will be the next Einstein?

Let the standard processes of education and research take their course. This student will probably not survive them to receive the degree, and that is as it should be. Tough love: warn, then let the system do its thing.

The central issue I see is that this student is clinging tenaciously to a goal of disruptive fame rather than a goal of advancing research. This happens; it's a difficult thing to screen out at the application stage (where unreasonable ambition is not entirely uncommon, and not usually a dealbreaker). You can suggest that this is an inappropriate goal, and it sounds as though you have -- but you can't force the student to hear, much less change.

I would be inclined to keep my interactions with this student as concrete and immediate-goal-oriented as possible. Have an agenda for every meeting, and pull the student back to it when a megalomanic rant is imminent. Deflect, e.g. "Yes, but when will you have {thing with imminent due date} done?" or "Interesting. Write that up into a conference abstract and submit it to {conference}."

You are well within your rights to "fire" the student as your advisee, I would think. I don't know how that works where you are (or whether it's even possible), but to some extent your students become part of your professional reputation, and this one will not reflect well on you.


Returning to academia after a long peroid

I'm positive on her situation to get a funded Ph.D. if she tries hard enough. There are tons of PhD programs in the world, and based on her background you described, she could be a valuable, encouraging and branding story that a department may prefer.


Should undergraduate students be included on papers containing data they collected?

A few comments:

Were they asked to contribute to the paper or was the paper written without their knowledge? If they refused to contribute, then they shouldn't be a named author. If they weren't asked, then it's not their fault they didn't contribute ;)
I think the word undergraduate is a red herring. Substitute it with the word PhD student or RA or Prof from the lab next door, does this change your view? A person's title shouldn't influence their inclusion.
How much work are we talking about here? When I provide statistical advice, I'm happy to give up a few hours of my time for free. But once I'm spending days on the project, then I expect (and make it clear) to be am named author.
If data collection was "trivial", then I would suggest it shouldn't be used as an undergraduate project. Also, I presume that there was some skill in collecting the data?


To pursue research career in physics; How much physics courses should I pass in my undergraduate engineering degree?

Cross-disciplinary movement does happen fairly frequently, particularly between engineering and the mathematical and physical sciences. Unfortunately, as the academic disciplines themselves become more cross-disciplinary, it becomes much harder to say what specific training one needs to move from one field to another between the undergraduate and graduate levels.

A good way to check for the qualifications you are likely to need is to examine the course requirements of schools you're already interested in attending as a graduate student—if your undergraduate program has sufficient depth in math and physics to allow you to take those courses as a graduate student, then an admissions committee will likely be OK with the lateral movement.

If you have questions about what is necessary, you can contact the person in charge of admissions at some of the departments you're interested in for further clarification.


How long should a brief CV for a call for papers be?

If it is more than a page it is too long. As for what should be there, say something about your education, current employment and some of your publications. It isn't necessary to be comprehensive but include things that are most relevant to the conference and to the paper you are submitting.

That is probably about enough, but if it seems too short, include honors, etc. if you like.

All the committee is looking for at this point is that you are qualified to say what you want to say in the resulting paper. Focus on that above all.


Can the authors grant the permission to reuse figures copyrighted by the publisher?

No.

If the copyright in the articles lies with AIAA, then it is they who must license it, or parts of it.

You may be able to recreate a similar diagram, acknowledging the original one.

(I am not a lawyer.)


What is expected from a "Contributions to Department Statement"?

It sounds like you're on the right track.  What can you do for them that they're not already doing?  What special expertise do you bring?  How can you move the department beyond where it is now?  And -- unspoken but most important -- how does this distinguish you from other applicants for this position?


How to mention non-archival CS workshop publications on resume

List your contributions as accepted presentations for workshops, not as publications, and make a separate list for presentations of this sort. For the more tangential contributions, ask yourself if they are important to mention on your resumé. If they are indeed important, then you may want to group your presentations according to the subject area.


Citing a research article coming from a journal you suspect to be predatory

No, a DOI is not enough. DOIs are cheap, and many journals of questionable quality have them, or at least pretend to have them.

There used to be a somewhat reliable index of predatory journals (Beall's list), but it has been shut down. Nowadays, the best way to determine whether a journal is real or not is through experienced colleagues. Talk to your advisor or another person with substantial experience in the field of research, and ask them if they know this journal and its publisher, and whether they are trustworthy. If they have never heard of the journal or the publisher, you can safely assume that you don't want to submit. However, beware - some questionable publishers have taken to generating journals with names that are (presumably intentionally) very similar to well-known reputable conferences and journals. So make sure that you are indeed talking about the same journal, not just one that happens to have (almost) the same title.

Some red flags that allow you to identify predatory publishers:

You either can't find previous issues of the journal, or the papers previously published there are largely of very bad quality.
You submitted to the journal, and quickly receive an accept without any reviews (in this case withdraw immediately).

Some yellow flags that are also very common, but not necessarily surefire ways to identify predatory publishers:

The website of the journal is hard to find and visually extremely unprofessional.
The journal prominently advertises quick review.
The journal prominently advertises "being indexed in Google Scholar", or there are vague formulations such as "will be submitted to ACM DL" rather than a clear commitment where the paper will ultimately be listed.
You have been invited to submit to this journal, although the topic of the journal is comically outside of your expertise.
You have been invited to submit an "extension" of some previous paper of yours to this journal, with no clear indication why.
You have never heard of the members of the editorial board of the journal, or the editorial board contains some prominent members which don't indicate on their own website being involved with this journal.


I hope to contact a professor in the grad school i want to work under him. What are some tips and things I should pay attention to in my email?

I think the main thing is showing a genuine interest in their work. I think the main way of demonstrating this is actually knowing of their work. Good ways of doing this is 1) reading some of their recent and most impactful papers and 2) talking with people in the lab about what the current research directions are. The other thing I would strongly encourage is not to commit to working with them unless you are absolutely sure you want them as a doctoral adviser.


How can a PhD student find a collaborator who might assist with programming in exchange for co-authorship?

The best solution would be finding someone locally. Contact the professors who teach advanced programming-oriented courses in your university (and also in Berlin, for instance, since the two cities are close) to see if they have someone to suggest among their past or present students.

Finding someone to do the work remotely seems more risky. It is difficult to train and mentor someone without meeting in person at least a few times.

And, in any case, when hiring a student for such a job, keep in mind that  there is always the risk that in the end this move will save you a negative amount of time, if you find the wrong person.


Prospective PhD advisor encourages me to apply and positively mentions relevant experiences. What are my success chances?

The professor's asking to be kept informed, which is certainly a positive sign because he's interested enough to want to know what you're doing. At the very least he's not outright rejecting you.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee he will take you on until you actually receive the offer letter.
I don't think there's much more to say other than thank him, reaffirm that you will submit an application (if you are planning to do so) and say you will keep him informed when you do.


How to manage the structure of a masters thesis and what mistakes to look out for?

Other answers have suggested outlines, but even with such an outline it's not always clear what is the best order to discuss everything (whether it's the choice of section or ordering within a section).

One approach I have seen used is to print out the whole document, cut out each paragraph, and pin them on a pinboard. Then it's easy to adjust the order of the whole document until the whole thing is coherent. You'll probably want to have a pencil on hand while doing this, because you'll need to adjust the text a bit to fit the order.


Positioning of elements in research paper

Your problem is that a term paper for university is not the same as a company white paper. You cannot expect to write a nice white paper ("What is a good way to present the introduction and discussion/conclusion in a paper which has to be easily read and understood by non-academics.") and expect your professor to grade it as such. The conventions for white papers and academic reports are significantly different (and I would honestly be surprised of the positioning of the conclusions are really the only required change).

I like Suresh's suggestion - produce two versions of the report, one for the company, which focuses on the results and implications for the company, and one for the university, which is written for an academic reader outside the company. The style may well differ, even if the vast majority of the content will be the same.


What to do when students bring me questions related to other courses and subjects?

There's no shame in saying you're not an expert in their domain specific knowledge.  It's more important to know your limitations than to give advice you're not directly qualified to give.  Direct them to a professor in that specific field.

If you feel you have sufficient experience to give (at least) a starting point, by all means share it with them.  Just always make sure that you are clear about the limitations of your expertise.


How to get access to university resources after graduation?

One potential solution: I may register for a one-credit course at the University. It (hopefully) may not cost much and help me get access to standard University resources.

Update: the University library just told me I could get access to math databases through computers on campus libraries by applying for a guest account for free, though I can't get remote access.


Is being socially reclusive okay for a graduate student?

Is "OK" good enough?

It's "OK" to be strange and reclusive, but being socially reclusive will stunt your career long term. You will not be considered for projects, not be sought after for collaborations, students who go on to success will not be as likely to reference your papers or publications in informal situations, and you will be less likely to be considered for promotions/tenure/etc. Not maliciously perhaps, but the social recluse just doesn't come to mind as often as more gregarious colleagues do. It essentially closes doors unnecessarily. This isn't to say that you shouldn't be true to your personality, but the fact is that success in any field of endeavor, even academic ones, is as much affected by your social skills as your intellectual skills.

Look at the mid-nineteenth century physician Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who identified that hand-washing and sterilization of instruments drastically reduced incidence of death from childbed fever. Because of his poor social skills (note that he was actively abrasive and confrontational rather than merely reclusive), he was unable to gain acceptance for his findings, and unsanitary medical practices continued despite his efforts.


It is not wrong to request for more time to make your decision. But, as @Nate pointed out, you may not always be granted what you request for.

If you do not receive the time you ask for, then it is a gamble you may choose to make or decide to play it safe. Many go through this sort of situation.

There is however another option. If you can't postpone your decision for the first institution, you could try preponing the your offer result of the other institution. Give a kind request to know your status of the application to the other institution to be in a position to decide earlier. This is also just a request, however it is still worth a try.


Acknowleding referee suggestions after rejection

How about:

  We would like to thank X and Y for their review of a previous version of this manuscript


Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals?

Presumably an important reason is that publishers contractually forbid libraries from disclosing this information, see for example http://access.okfn.org/2014/04/24/the-cost-of-academic-publishing/:

  And then libraries are not allowed to tell anyone what these costs are. Libraries are placed under huge amounts of pressure not to release this data, and in the case of Elsevier, they are explicitly forbidden to by non-disclosure agreements in the contracts they have to sign.

This is a reference from 2014, so perhaps meanwhile things have changed (but I would guess not).


Importance of individual postdoctoral fellowship

Opinion only, of course.
Since the finances are a wash, at
this stage of your career I would choose the job that I thought would best allow me to do the research that most interested me.
I would not let "prestige" weigh my decision.
Congratulations on having two good possibilities.


Affiliation and connected responsibilities

4) Being a coworker of the university is sufficient to use this affiliation on the papers. No internal review is required. This answer suggests that this might be the case even for undergraduate students, however, I greatly doubt it in the case of german universities.

Assuming sufficient experience to get something published in a quality venue, from what I have seen, this is the case at German universities.


How does having a PhD affect your chance of getting into a second PhD UK university in a different field UK university?

... she has little success in obtaining scholarship for her PhD in art
history... I cannot help but feel a bit 'unfair'?

Overall, I would interpret your friend's lack of success in getting funding for her second PhD as tacit rejections from these universities. An offer of a PhD without any money attached is not really an offer at all (see e.g. Is it worth self-funding a PhD to attend a top 10 university? and especially Fomite's answer to that question for more information on this point).
Note: there is a subtlety here about the type of self-funding. If a student has won an external scholarship or grant, or has some money from their own government (or maybe a national museum or gallery in the case of art history), that student would be very attractive and likely get many offers for a PhD.

Are the UK universities quite relax in choosing PhD students who have
their own means of funding (assuming that they can get a supervisor
there who is willing to supervise them)?

No. If you don't have the potential to do good research then it's likely you won't get an offer to study for a PhD, even if you're as rich as Croesus. Since your friend has been offered PhD positions, then the universities clearly think she is capable, but would rather award their funding to someone else (see my answer to your last question below for why).

Does the pandemic causes the UK universities to relax their section of
incoming PhD students?

It could be that there are fewer applicants for PhD positions, as people may be preferring to go into a more stable career than academia at the moment, or international students may be put off by how the pandemic has been handled in the UK. However, I would expect that there are still more than enough candidates to make the selection competitive and hence no relaxation or lowering of standards on the part of the universities. Furthermore, since PhD funding is decided years in advance, I don't think that we have seen the effects of the pandemic on that yet.

Does having a PhD in a separate field made my friend easier to be
accepted into a PhD in the UK university?

It's possible. Offers for a PhD are generally based on the research potential of the candidate, and obviously someone who already holds a PhD is capable of doing research. However, this clearly counts against them when it comes to funding. Most supervisors/departments would rather fund someone who doesn't have a PhD than someone who does -- who's already "had their turn", so to speak. This question and its answers discuss why doing two PhDs is generally not a good idea: Is doing two PhDs a good path?.
A final point to consider is that funding in art history is likely far scarcer than in engineering, especially in the UK where the government has placed heavy emphasis on funding STEM research over humanities in recent years.


Before entering into a computational research PhD, should one gain strong coding & software engineering skills?

I think the answer largely depends on what role you are in.

If you are a professor on the graduate admission committee, and/or consider taking Ph.D. students, you are free to set your standards according to your opinions (that I disagree with, but irrelevant here).

If you are a student that is considering applying to a Ph.D. program in that area, or a Ph.D. student that is choosing research area now, I think it is unnecessary to delay the application process/research just to gain software engineer experience. While it is cool to write clean and nice style code, the software engineer skills, while still helpful, are unlikely the main focus in academic research. For the purpose you describe, I believe those skills can be obtained during the time in a Ph.D. program doing related research, and would not be too time consuming.


Statement of purpose for applying to graduate school in a different field of study than high school

Short answer: It doesn't matter at all.

Particularly in the US, high school degrees don't have "concentrations"; you simply get a high school diploma. In certain circumstances, your school may have a special focus, but accreditation rules for high school diplomas typically specify some distribution of courses which all students have to meet to receive the diploma.

Moreover, the statement of purpose tells us what you want to do in graduate school, why you want to do it, and why you're qualified to do it. That's pretty much it—most people on admissions committees aren't interested in knowing what early pearl of wisdom some random relative imparted, or other "humanizing" anecdote that too many applicants include. In fact, many of them actively hate it.

Statements of purpose are not your life story, they're a summary of your past and future career. Tell us about your relevant experiences, and why you should be admitted to our graduate program.