I made a post on this matter a little while ago and just finished translating my CV, so I'll tell you what I did.

Leave the university name alone, don't translate it, UNLESS you think it would be unreadable by the folks who are reading your application (so if it was in Russian or Chinese for example). Does the name of your university look like something that would resemble 'university' in English? Leave it alone, or, if you have to, put it in quotations NEXT to the original university name. But do not remove or change the university's name, since it's a proper name.

In the case of "dataingeniør", leave that name there as well, and put in quotes the equivalent thing in your country. Same with the actual title of the degree e.g. B.Sc. Dataingeniør (equiv. Software Engineering Bachelors). Or you could put Computer Science if you feel it covered all the equivalent content (verified by a cursory glance at the CS programme information of the university for which you are applying). In any case, leave the title alone but then put in parentheses the equivalent qualification. And make sure it's actually equivalent (having a person from that country on hand to answer questions is important).

I was told also to not translate the name of project/thesis titles, UNLESS they are in a very hard-to-read language, and to go again with the quotes. But my advisor advised against this because it makes the CV 'look cluttered' and, according to him, it's not important unless the title uses a different character system.

Finally, if you are applying for a PhD, you should have a prospective advisor lined up, no? In that case, you can ask her/him or someone in her/his group to have a look over it for you, as it's in their best interest that you look good for the admissions team. Alternatively, somebody from the country should do.

Add a comment if you need to know something else. I just translated my entire CV so I'm happy to clarify additional stuff.


Is it always OK to ask for a copy of the lecturer's slides?

It is always appropriate to ask. But some people are unwilling to share their slides for a variety of reasons (none of which I think are particularly good, for basically the reasons you mention in your quote).

So you may or may not get the slides, but it is certainly ok to request them!


My code is published as original work by a different group. What should I do?

This seems to be a clear case of plagiarism, and potentially a copyright violation.

The BSD license contains a line "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer". If that was included in your Original code, then it seems that this was breached by the article authors.

But even in the case that this line was not included, then it seems to be still a case of plagiarism, as they are passing your work as theirs.

Contact the editor (or editorial office) of the journal. Provide them with a description of what happened (basically as you described in your question).
Also provide links to your originally online published source code. If you can, add proof of when you published it there (e.g. log files).

It would not hurt to also keep a copy of their present version of the source code they published, just in case it 'vanishes' from the internet and you want to show (e.g. to the editor/publisher) how they plagiarized you.


What do you call research that has no hypothesis?

It is a thesis. From what you've written, your hypothesis is that

  you can tailor the [information-systems] management theory for it to be useful under economic constraints to a real specific problem

You might also be doing exploratory research, or blue-skies research, where you don't start with a research question, you start with a direction, subject or area, and go wandering off looking for interesting problems.


Pass/Fail decisions on 1st year PhD report

When a candidate enters a program, the admissions materials are intended to help a committee and/or an advisor make a prediction about successful completion. If they are sufficiently conservative, then the predictions, when positive, are fairly, but not absolutely, reliable.
This interim analysis has the same purpose. We, the faculty, need to make a prediction of success. The sorts of things asked for in your description seem fairly well focused on that. The real question, is, "is this a serious student" who is currently "doing the right things" that will lead to success - probably.
But, if the student is really doing research, then, just as you suggest in your addendum, it is impossible to predict with perfect accuracy. True research can't be scheduled and the more you learn, the more questions should arise.
So, while the pre-admission judgement should be conservative, I think an interim judgement needs to be more "liberal". That is, the benefit of the doubt should be given to most candidates if they are actually working. But the combination of the student's answers and the advisor's judgement should be able to find situation in which a student really isn't serious and is just wasting their time. I would think that 20% in this category is too high, however, and might indicate a failure of the system as a whole or the admissions process. Perhaps after the two month review it turns out a bit less.
But getting advice about life choices after a year of study seems like a good thing, as long as the student has a chance to explain what might be the reasons for an apparent lack of progress. And getting faculty advice about getting back on track, is also probably a good thing for those few having problems.
As I noted in the comment, I would also expect that a fair number of students for whom success was predicted don't, in fact, complete on time, due to a variety of factors, some personal, but many also related to the uncertain nature of research itself.
After all: “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ~~Albert Einstein


Is Characterizing an Algorithm's Behavior worth Publication?

It may be thin, but you won't know until you write it up formally and submit it to some appropriate journal. The real feedback will come from reviewers and/or the editor.

The question here is just a hypothetical. Make it concrete and ask someone (the editor) who is in a position to make a determination. You will have to make your case there.

In general, to answer the topline question, it may be publishable or not, but the details matter.


What is the best way to find an external examiner for an MSc (e-government)

Although I haven't needed to recruit external examiners, I have served as one and have watched colleagues recruit them.  Typically, the advisor is working with students in an area related to the their own work, and thus can reach out into their normal professional network to others who work in a related area.  Thus, I doubt that a forum for making these types of connections exists---usually, you already have a bunch of colleagues who would be good candidates and who you already have some sort of relationship with.

It sounds like for your case, however, the student is doing something that pushes into a new area where you don't yet have a network.  Other people in your institution, however, probably do.  I would thus recommend starting by finding out who works in the area at your institution and approaching them: since you are both at the same institution, you are more likely to get a collegial response rather than a "who are you?" failure to respond.  Your same-institution colleague, then, can make introductions to good candidates for external reviewers.

If there's nobody working in the area at your institution, though, you'll need to fall back to what you are already doing.  I would recommend, however, that the best people to contact are not the luminaries in the field but others in a similar position to yourself: relatively young, and thus more likely to find it valuable for their CV to be an external reviewer.


How do I create a diagram in this specific style?

This definitely looks like LaTeX rendered fonts, however, there looks to be some imprecisions in the alignment of the wheels, which might imply they are organized by hand.

Perhaps it is a combination of LaTeX and Inkscape?  Inkscape can export to LaTeX-embeddable files so that LaTeX is in charge of rendering text.


Email to two academics of differing familiarity

"Dear all" sounds perfectly fine to me, and using plural is an easy way out, especially if not all the recipients have a honorific. "Dear professors/ colleagues/ both" are other options, although in that case one of the recipients would not like the first one. For two recipients only, using both names as @vonbrand suggests is fine but I would avoid it for more than two.


Submissions do go through a moderation process to ensure that the paper has "refereeable content"; at minimum this means that the paper must present "original or substantive research" but it does not require that the research methodology is actually sound or that the findings are actually correct.  Establishing soundness (and to a certain degree, also correctness) is the point of the full peer review process, which is something arXiv lacks by design.

In summary, the reason there are so many bad papers on arXiv is that arXiv intentionally makes it easy to post unreviewed material.  If you are doing a literature review and finding high-quality papers is important for you, you would be better off browsing or searching an expertly curated list of papers, such as those contained in a journal or a volume of conference proceedings.  Of course, even some bad papers can make it into such publications, though the proportion will be astronomically lower than in an (almost) free-for-all self-archiving service like arXiv.


What is the next step after received acceptance from the Editor

If the editor emails you an acceptance, the paper is accepted.  Don't worry about the website not updating.

The acceptance email should contain instructions as to what you have to do next: presumably, make any changes suggested by the reviewers and submit a final version of your manuscript.  If it doesn't, wait another week or so to see if you get an email that does have the instructions (this might be sent automatically by the management system when the editor updates it). If not, email the editor then.


How to evaluate the quality of a conference that has a high ERA ranking, but whose organizer has a lot of negative reviews online?

You shouldn't take the ERA rankings too seriously.  Ranking ten of thousands of journals was an enormous job, and they did amazingly well given the size of the task.  However, in the process they made a few questionable judgment calls and every once in a while an outright mistake.

For example, in my field of mathematics, the list of A-rated journals looks rather good overall, but there are a few surprises and at least one journal I am convinced doesn't remotely deserve an A (Fuzzy Sets and Systems).

I'd recommend asking your advisor or other faculty members for their opinion about the IASTED biomedical engineering conference (rather than relying on opinions from random people on the internet).  If they are familiar with it, then they should have an opinion about whether the ERA A rating is well deserved.  If they aren't familiar with it, then that is itself a bad sign.  Not being familiar with a C journal in your specialty is understandable, but not being familiar with a genuine A journal would be more surprising.

You can also investigate it yourself.  Have they published any papers you've read or seen cited?  Can you find any papers in their proceedings that impress or excite you?  If so, then at least your paper would be in good company.  If not, then that's another bad sign.


Is it possible to ask for reviewing the corrected Galley proof in Taylor & Francis journal

It's impossible to tell from the outside since this is going to be specific to the journal's production staff.

It's possible that the 30-changes limit is just to dissuade authors from submitting hundreds of changes and/or requesting a fresh typeset from the original source files. It is also possible that this is a hard limit and the the typesetters will go "this author wants 50 corrections?? I refuse to do it!". It's possible that if the typesetters say this, the desk editor will persuade them to do it anyway. There really is no way to tell, even for the same publisher, since the typesetters/desk editors for each journal will vary, and this is a decision at the individual level.

The same goes for requesting a 2nd reading. You can certainly ask, but the desk editor might not oblige. It's a juggling act here because if they don't send you a corrected galley proofs and publish anyway, and the published paper turns out to be poor, they'd have to deal with an angry author (which nobody wants to). On the other hand if they do show you the proofs, then you might make even more corrections, and ask for a 3rd reading followed by 4th reading etc, and that is also not ideal for them.

That said, since it's only the 2nd reading, I would likely oblige if I were handling your paper. If you want to see the 2nd reading, you should let them know quickly, for their convenience.


USA (or worldwide) Equivalent of H2020-ITN program

The closest analogue for this mechanism in the US may be among those available through the NSF Division of Graduate Education (DGE) - see active opportunities here. The training topics involved are often very macro-level.


Copyright for lectures, slides and textbook: university or professor?

This answer is about the US only. United States copyright law has a concept called "work for hire." The copyright of a work for hire belongs to the employer, if the work fits in one of the following categories:

  1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.

Materials such as lecture notes or scholarly papers have traditionally never been considered works for hire. This is sometimes referred to as the "teacher exception." For some history and explanation, see this AAUP page. There are a couple of legal precedents described in the same AAUP article, Weinstein v. University of Illinois and Hays v. Sony Corp. These court decisions say that materials like scholarly papers are not a "requirement or duty" of the job, and that a school doesn't "supervise its faculty" in writing this kind of thing. A later Supreme Court ruling in 1989,  Community for Non-Violence v. Reid, was not specifically about academic work, but is important because it changed the criteria that had been assumed in Weinstein. The 2006 case Bosch v Ball-Kell reaffirmed the teacher exception, but may have had a negative effect on teachers' rights because it held that fair use applied to lectures. The AAUP article also describes some good reasons why the school probably doesn't even want ownership of the copyright. It is not well positioned to benefit from ownership, and ownership could entangle it in legal disputes.

Many schools have policies in which they attempt to lay out what they consider to be a work for hire. These policies have little legal force, because under US law, work for hire is defined by the law. A work cannot be made into a work for hire by the unilateral declaration of an employer that it is so, and even an agreement between the employer and employee may have no legal effect. Usually a school's policies simply reads like a summary of the law and historical practices.

All of this was basically settled law for many decades, until distance education became a big thing. At that point, many schools started to envision an online course as a type of commodity that they could own and exploit, and they started to get more aggressive about trying to call online course materials works for hire.

But in general, any lectures, slides, textbooks, or scholarly articles you write belong to you and not your school, and this is true regardless of whether the school posts a policy on its web site claiming otherwise, and possibly even regardless of whether they get you to sign a contract stating otherwise. You are on the strongest ground if your work is not written to the school's specification and if the school never had any say over whether the result was OK.

Putting your byline or a copyright message on materials such as lecture slides has no real effect on anything. You own the copyright automatically as soon as an original, copyright-eligible work is written down, assuming it's not a work for hire. By modern copyright law, the only real purpose of a copyright notice is that if you have to sue an infringer, it makes it harder for them to make the defense that they didn't know the work was copyrighted -- but that's a flimsy defense in any case, since copyright is automatic these days.

If you want to prevent the university from using your materials under the fair use exception to copyright, an analysis of Bosch v Ball-Kell gives the following guidance:

  This case also suggests that publishing teaching materials, documented plans to use them in research or a textbook, or other demonstration of market value can give faculty greater control of their teaching materials if a dispute arises over them.


Most efficient way of booking academic supervision appointments

Not sure what you need beyond standard calendaring software, such as Outlook or Google Calendar or whatever. Simply set up a recurring meeting and meet at that time.


I received an offer letter from a university abroad, should I continue to interview locally until my visa application goes through?

You should definitely continue interviewing locally. I have personally seen several potential hirings fall apart because of visa issues. This is a real possibility.

Consider this: You would never stop interviewing until you have a sure, written offer on the table. Simply do not consider this offer to be sure, until visa issues are in the clear.


Emailing a student corrections to their typed notes

Since the notes are shared via an online system, it seems like a good idea to collect all found errors and typos in the very same online system, e.g. if the system provides a kind of a forum. This would have several benefits:

Everybody who spots an error can report it right away.
Everybody who suspects an error can check if it actually is one.
The author of the notes or the instructor can answer in the forum and indicate if this is an actual error and announce when it has been fixed in the notes.
There is the possibility of discussion around the issues - sometimes one thing appear as an error for one person, but not so for another one and in the end it may just be a matter of convention (this is also true for mathematics…).

Note that the etiquette of the forum is very important: Everybody has to be polite, ask and answer in good faith and no blaming shall happen. But if this is supported by a moderator (e.g. the instructor) this can work very well.

I used a system like this for the lecture notes I typed and I even announced and awarded bonus points for everybody who found an error in the notes (this seemed to be a good idea as it makes it pretty clear that all lecture notes may contain errors…).


"Help needed to improve myself" sounds weird and spammy. I would suggest something like "MS application help", and make sure the body of the email is concise and to the point.


What happens in a thesis defense when the non-committee members leave the room?

I don't think there is any universal answer to this question.  I just defended about 8 hours ago, in my case there was a pre-defense and a defense.  The pre-defense in our program tells the student what needs to be done to successfully finish the program, the actual public defense is largely ceremonial.  When I met in private with the committee they just shook my hand and that was the end of it.

I am aware of other defenses, where there is an oral exam after the non-committee members exit the room.  But, from what I have been told the questions in this exam are largely for clarification, and to determine what needs to be done to graduate.

I'm sure some others can clarify, but usually your dissertation advisor has your back, and you have already done the work at that point.  So the defense is more of a chance for you to share your work, than a second order comprehensive exam.

It really depends on your country, institution, department, and program.


Submission of two papers in one conference?

There is nothing wrong or unusual in submitting two papers on a single conference. For specific detail you should refer to the conference author guide. In my experience, there exists an upper bound of papers (about 3-4), but I have never encountered a conference where only a single paper was permitted.

The acceptance or rejection is individual, every paper is peer-reviewed on its own account.

You should keep in mind that the conference will charge every paper separately. You should also watch the presentation schedule for any conflicts (though, they are very unlikely)


Is it normal for a PhD student to be asked to contribute to a grant proposal?

You should have no cause for concern. If the grant is related to your work in any way then it is appropriate for you to be involved in the grant writing.

But you aren't going to "shoot it down". In any reasonable case your work will be reviewed by others putting the grant together and also, especially for a large grant, a grants management office at the university. You might be asked to re-write your contribution once or twice with advice from those others.

It will be a good experience for you. If such large grants are an important part of your field, then you will want to learn what goes in to them so that you can lead it yourself later in your career.

You might try to find writing samples from other grants to aid you. The research office or the PI can probably provide some older work. You can also try to work as closely as possible with others on the team. They likely have more experience than you do and can provide some guidance.


What is a good grade for an MS student expecting to apply for a PhD in a top-tier school?

Anything above a 3.5. Grades higher than that are unlikely to make much of a difference for your application. The most important parts of your application are letters of recommendation, research experience, and personal statement. As long as the GPA is above 3.5, with no unexplained low grades in highly relevant courses, the precise GPA is not relevant.


What research has examined the cost in time and money of conference attendance?

I published a paper:
 Anderson, L., & Anderson, T. (2009). Online professional development conferences: An effective, economical and eco-friendly option  Canadian Journal of Learning  Technology, 35(2).

in which we calculated the costs (transportation, hotels, meals etc.) in dollars and in Carbon costs using a medium sized conference in the UK.
We were interested in showing the HUGE cost and carbon savings if the conference was held online and used this data in our book on Virtual Conferences.


Can deadlines for PhD admission in US be approximated?

It varies greatly.

There are the fixed deadline places, for which there are deadlines starting from Nov 15 or thereabouts, all the way upto Jan 15.
There are also places with rolling deadlines, where it's better to apply early.

In general, you should have your materials ready to go in the beginning/middle of November and that should take care of most deadlines.


PhD student where TA work leaves little time for PhD. Is it even worth it to finish this PhD?

Everyone in academic CS gets below market pay. It sounds like they made you a department IT guy, and I've never heard of that, but it may not be too unusual.

You might be burned out, they overwork you. You can:

1) talk to your advisor about all this. Maybe they can lighten the load. TAing and being an assistant sounds like too much.

2) take some time off. Go into industry for a year. It sounds like you want to do that anyway. Departments have a process for being on-leave. Make some money, get a hobby, don't think about your research for at least three months. Then decide if you want to go back and finish your PhD.


Research between different campuses of the same university

With the growing prevalence of networking technology, collaboration is easier than it ever has been before. I would think that collaboration across two campuses of the same university would be even easier. It is very probable that funding and resources can be more easily shared and that graduate students will have even an easier time working in such collaboration. I see nothing that would impede collaboration here.
I have worked with a national lab (which, although not a university, can at least somewhat resemble academia a little bit) that had two locations. We collaborated commonly between campuses. It made funding considerations quite simple and we produced quality research.


Can I include online reading guidance as research experience?

This is something I would just explain like you did in this question. From a potential supervisor's perspective, it is important to know that a PhD candidate is willing to go an extra mile and you clearly did that. Since a paper came out of this, you even have some evidence that you did not make up a nice story to impress someone, but you did actual research work.

I would just put a line in the cv like "independent research work jointly with xxxx, resulting in publication [yyy]".


What are good tips/ways to improve my writing on chalkboards?

This is going to sound stupid, but I've seen it work. Try dividing the blackboard with vertical lines to create narrower "pages." This will make it easier to write in a straight line and will discourage you from writing too large. Of course, the "pages" need to be large enough that you don't write too small.


The standard dichotomy of quoting vs. paraphrasing makes sense for prose (where an idea can be expressed in many ways), but generally not for mathematical equations: F = ma cannot be meaningfully paraphrased.  An algorithm straddles the boundary (which is a source of much intellectual property difficulty): in some ways, after all, an algorithm can be thought of as a rather extensive equation.

A prose-style block quote is not appropriate for an equation, and I would argue that it is likewise not appropriate for an equation.  What I instead tend to do in this circumstance is say something like, "Here is the definition of Algorithm X, as reproduced from [citation]:" and then state the definition.  If I am adjusting notation or making other such presentation changes, then I will replace "reproduced" with "adapted."  This gives the citation and makes it clear that you are using somebody else's formulation, without breaking into a prose-style quote (even better is to place it in a figure or table).

The explanation of the algorithm, on the other hand, is prose, and that you should write yourself, paraphrasing and adapting for the context in which you are discussing the algorithm, which is no doubt different than its original presentation.


How best to use "downtime" during undergraduate research

It's often a good idea to have multiple things to do in parallel on a project, so that if one avenue is blocked for a short period of time (e.g. waiting for code to run, waiting for a supervisor to return a draft paper with comments) you can put effort into another avenue.

The things you're already doing sound good. You are basically using your time well - spending some of your time enhancing your base knowledge and skills pays off in the long run. You just feel uncomfortable because you don't see immediate tangible payoff for your current project. There are things you can do while your code is running that have a tangible payoff i.e. they directly contribute to things that you will have to do for your project at some point in the near future:

working on the slides for the next presentation you will have to give (the parts that don't rely on the results of the code that's currently running)
adding to an ongoing draft of a report, paper, or poster that describes your work (the parts that don't rely on the results of the code that's currently running)
searching for and reading literature that is directly relevant to your project
data analysis: when your code finishes running, start the next "run" and analyze the data from the first run while that's going

You can spend most of your time on the thing that is most immediately important (e.g. fixing and running your code) but work on the others in parallel when that is blocked.

For bits of work you can do that generally advances your knowledge and abilities, but not necessarily specifically for your project, see What productive academic work can you do with minimal attention in a small (<30 minutes) block of time?


Comparing things is a method.  You cannot judge novelty base on methods.  Novelty is based on conclusions.
For example, if two papers have identical methods but different results leading to different conclusions, they would both be novel.  However, they might not both be correct.


Re-examinations: how common are they and what are they good for?

Are other countries also doing this?

Yes, sure. In my country, Italy, Bachelor's and Master's exams are usually structured in that way: in theory, you can retake the exam for an unlimited number of times. I had once a student who set a kind of record in this sense, by failing one of my exams 21 times, along 4-5 years. As a student, I failed several exams 2-3 times. In practice, however, there might be other time limitations or local policies that can prevent a student to retake an exam an unlimited number of times.

  If I think I am going to do really badly on an exam, I may as well fail it on purpose

For what purpose, exactly? And where's the abuse of the policy? What do you think you're going to achieve by coming unprepared? Do you want to rely on the tunnel effect to pass the exam? It's mostly your time and knowledge that you're going to waste.

  Or, you can take the exam just to get a taste of how it's going to be like, what kind of questions you are going to be asked,

Maybe in your country is different, but most professors in my country, and I'm among them, distribute to the students all, or most of, the past exam papers: if you want to get the taste of an exam, you can get it already, without the need of going to an actual exam.

  So is it really as 'bad' of a policy as I feel it is

No, it's not. Such a policy, like others (e.g. the level of fees), is usually deeply rooted in the attitude that a country has toward education.


Is it possible to finish my PhD at a different institute?

My writing of the thesis will be finished soon...Is it possible to defend my work at some other institute and with another supervisor(s)?

Do you have a supervisor in mind? If there is a particular professor who supports you, they may be able to help you navigate this and waive some of the usual requirements.

If not, there are many issues:

Residency requirements. You generally have to be "in residence" at an institution for 1-2 years before that institution can award you a degree. So, this would put you behind schedule.
Admission. You would effectively be a transfer student, and would have to apply for transfer admission like everyone else. This could be non-trivial: admission committees are not going to be excited about admitting a student who is already ABD somewhere else, left under less-than-good circumstances, and is eager to graduate as soon as possible.
Letters. You've spent enough time at this institution that you will be expected to have at least one or two letters of recommendation; their absence will be suspicious.

So: you're probably better off trying to patch things up at your current institution. If that's truly impossible, I would at least try to get a master's degree (if you don't already have one), a few good publications, and a letter of recommendation from someone at your current school before transferring somewhere else.


Paper got rejected, should thank original referees when sending it to another journal?

I don't see a gray area here at all.  If someone has helped improve your paper, you must acknowledge their contributions, either by co-authorship, citation, or acknowledgment.  Yes, even in the submission.  Yes, even if there is some small chance that the new referees will notice that your paper was rejected elsewhere and will let that fact unprofessionally bias their review.

Even if your submission is double-blind, you can always thank ███ █████ and ██████ ██ for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Less forcefully: It is never a mistake to sincerely express gratitude.

  even if the referee was anonymous, given his tastes and comments, I am almost sure he is someone I already thanked in the paper but of course I can not be 100% certain of it.

You are not supposed to know who the referee is.  So don't guess; just thank the anonymous referee.  There is absolutely no harm in acknowledging the same person twice, once by name and once in their role as anonymous referee.


As you as you are professional and upfront, this shouldn't cause any hard feelings. Go with the one you like the most, after all, it is your research and time that you will be spending. You can always change your mind and email professor at A with a brief message explaining that you prefer to go to a different school. Keep in mind that you will be just starting your PhD and who knows if you will have the same opinion about going for a post doc or maybe get lucky and find a faculty job! Opportunities can rise out of no where.

One more question, why did the other professors suggested that you go to A and not B or even their university? Do they know the professor at A? Or because of the university's reputation or lab?


In the UK, who owns the intellectual property of a thesis?

Depends on the University. The university (in the UK) I most recently worked at had an Intellectual Property policy that all IP rights for students stayed with the student automatically, which differed from the policy for research staff. But the university would be happy to get involved to help commercialise in return for a share, much as your suggestion about an agreement. However, other universities have other IP policies. But whatever their policy is, it should be easily available from their intranet though it might not be available to people outside the institution.


Is it OK to name discrete research areas as your research interests in the statement of purpose?

I assume that you are talking about a Ph.D. program rather than a Masters (which are typically rather shorter and more focused).  Beginning Ph.D. students are not generally expected to have a well-developed research agenda.  Learning how to focus and formulate a good research agenda is an important part of what you learn in the process of getting your Ph.D., and it is generally understood that your focus and area may shift along the way.

What the professors considering your application are more likely to be interested in is whether you are thinking clearly and carefully about what you are interested in and why.  If you are sincerely interested in both areas, then explain clearly why each one interests you and how you see your background as supporting that interest. Make sure to say that you could see yourself focusing on either one, depending on the program and professors that you work with.  This will give the committee clear evidence that you aren't just non-committal, while at the same time avoiding artificially restricting your possible matches.


Do short journal papers ("brief reports") count less than regular papers in psychology?

I think this will depend completely on who's doing the "counting".  For purposes of faculty evaluation, tenure, promotion, etc, different departments may have different rules, so there won't be any general answer.

One would like to think that each article would be evaluated on its signficance, rather than length, and that decisions would be made based on overall contribution to the field, rather than a number of papers.  Of course, this doesn't always happen.


How to write an email to a professor to inquire about a visiting researcher position?

I think your email is fine! I'll speak from my experience doing several research internships (I haven't completed my PhD, therefore no postdoc). It obviously depends a lot on your field (ie, your field might be different than mine), but even though I had previous experience and publications, I sent about 100 emails before I got my first phone interview.

If you have the time to change your email, I might soften the tone a little. You do come off as very eager. For example, I might change the following to:

  "It would be my great honor and appreciation if you could find time to read this proposal at your convenience and I hope my background in mathematical modeling and experimentation could help me to have a valuable contribution."

To something more like:

  "My background in mathematical modeling and experimentation makes me a strong candidate to successfully [work in your lab/collaborate/publish papers/etc].

I suggest this because:

saying it would be a "great honor and appreciation" could be interpreted as brown-nosing/sucking up. In America, people are not usually this humble, nor do we usually speak this honorifically about others (but this could depend on your field/where you are applying).
In America, it is very acceptable to state why you are a strong candidate. Saying things like "I hope I will be successful at..." or "I believe I can..." can make potential bosses feel like you're not sure if you will be successful. Instead, I'd recommend saying "I can..." or "I will..." or "I am..."


Post Doc referees related to one another

I don't see any problem with listing them separately, just as if they were any two other people.  Of course it is good to have an additional reference who is not related (and from a different institution).

I think it would be inappropriate to omit one of them, or lump them together with the other, solely because of their family relationship.  It would look like you are devaluing their professional opinion for reasons unrelated to their professional work.


What if your advisor does not know anything about your research field?

Well, then go and find another advisor. Do not get me wrong, I don't mean a new one, I just mean someone else to talk to. With a PhD, you are supposed to show that you are able to do independent research, that you are able to do more than just work on minor problems that dropped out of some paper/publication by your advisor (as it is often the case in Bachelor or Master thesises).

I think a PhD (at least in Mathematics, I don't know that much about other fields) where you only worked with a single advisor for multiple years is really uncommon. Go find other people, other professors, etc. to talk to.
Your advisor should help you with the following points in case you get stuck there (list might not be complete...):

How and where to find research material, maybe giving you access to institute libraries that are normally closed to regular students or access to the universities subscriptions to online journals.
Establishing contacts to other researchers on the field, giving you advice on who to talk to, maybe even recommending you for a research stay of a few months at another university for a project related to your research.
Administrative processes. That also includes questions on "How and where to best publish this result I came up with?" or "Which conferences should I visit, should I maybe even present something there?"

During a PhD, it is not the advisors job to do your research. You yourself have to decide what you look into, what you do, how much time you spend on one problem until you deem it too hard and move on, etc. If your professor could answer all your questions, then that would mean that your research is not really original and/or rather trivial and thus might not yield a PhD (or at least not an excellent one, and I'm sure you are aiming for that :) ).

So don't worry if the professor can't help you solve your problems. Maybe they will turn up to stay unsolved for centuries, who knows? Try to rephrase your questions, don't go and ask "How can I solve this?" but rather "Do you know of experts on this topic that might be willing to talk to me (maybe even at the same university)? Can you put us into contact?" or maybe asked more generally like "Do you have a suggestion on which direction to look from here on? Should I continue down this path or maybe try a different approach?".

So long story short: Even if the professor knew your research field, he would not be able to always assist you with your problems.

PS: As I am also writing a PhD in math just now I'm a little curious: What is your research field, for which there are no research groups and your professor has no idea about? :)


What happens if a reviewer finds a fatal flaw in a proof in one's mathematical PhD thesis?

I'm aware of a thesis that unravelled at the oral defense: one examiner found a small error and it turned into a big error that invalided a substantial part of the thesis.  The candidate was required to make major revisions.  (The party scheduled after the defense was promptly cancelled.)

I'm also aware of a thesis that was downright rejected by the external examiner before it reached the oral defense stage.  The candidate also has to make major revisions.

These occurrences are very rare: most programs have various milestones to satisfy before a thesis can be submitted, and these roadbumps are there precisely to avoid this kind of mess (which makes everybody look bad, especially the supervisor and the supervisory committee.)  It's rare but it does happen, and on both occasions the candidate dug in, cleaned up the work, resubmitted some months after and eventually graduated.

(One thesis was in physics, the other in math.)


In what situations would "self-plagiarism" be authorized by a professor?

I first note that the idea that students' work is somehow not a part of their personal body of work, thus owned by them, and re-purpose-able however they like, has always struck me as very strange. In fact, this seems to me quite contrary to any notion that universities are creating intellectuals and scholars. That is, there is a powerful implicit assumption that students would never do anything at all if not commanded to do so by instructors in officially scheduled courses, so somehow do not deserve credit for any work, and do not truly "own" it.

I myself have absolutely no objection to anyone's re-use of work they happened to do before I asked them to do it. :)

All the better, in fact, if they had the sense and drive to do it before being asked.

I much prefer the idea that each student develops a body of expertise, often expressed in write-ups of various technical sorts, if only as notes-to-self, which can be brought to bear in various situations. Not that everyone is required to give up all fruits of their own prior work, to avoid some highly commodified, artifactual stigmas about "self-plagiarization". Sometimes the answer to a question does not change just because it is asked repeatedly.


Or should I not sweat it and move on?

Very much this. As Buffy said in the comments, there is not much you could do at this point either way, so time to move on. But in a larger sense, you clearly have an absolutely excellent undergraduate record, no one is going to "frown on" you taking one elective course P/NC (and passing it).


There are many papers out there with parentheses in my title. In particular, there are at least three articles (from different publishers) starting with a parenthesis:

(Patho)physiological Significance of the Serum- and Glucocorticoid-Inducible Kinase Isoforms
(Patho)physiological implications of chronic dietary sodium restriction during pregnancy; a longitudinal prospective randomized study
(Patho)physiological implications of the novel epithelial Ca2+ channels TRPV5 and TRPV6

Thus, there is at least some publishers who do not object to this.

On the other hand, this probably does not hold for all publishers, and there very likely is at least one out there, who objects against parentheses in titles.

Unless there is a clear rule in the publisher’s guidelines, it will be impossible to predict its opinion on this matter. Thus, I would suggest to just use the parentheses and let the publisher or the copy editor, respectively, worry about this.


Get a second master to have better references?

I wouldn't if I were you. Of course grades and reference letters matter but to spend another year or two putting yourself in debt just for reference letters seems like a lot. You will also be two years older, and with no guarantee to get the position you want. I would try to apply for PhD's anyways, or if needed, try to find a project for a few months in the group/area you are interested for the PhD. In Europe there is funding for exchange students/projects. I spent a year in Sweden after finishing my MSc. back in the Netherlands. This was paid for by a stipend from my supervisor in Sweden.

Doing a project will allow you to see if this is the topic you want to do a PhD in, and also if this is the right group. If you do a good job and the supervisor has money for a PhD student, you can apply. If not, you can apply elsewhere using this supervisor as a reference.

Good luck.


When to use professional e-mail address during PhD application

I am not aware of any guidelines on this, and doubt it will have any impact whatsoever (after all, your current position/university should be clear from your CV). However, there is another reason for using your personal email: access. If you apply for a job somewhere else, there is a good chance you will eventually lose your current professional email adress. And this type of correspondance can be useful to hold on to.


When Corresponding Authors Don't Correspond

Authors, corresponding or otherwise, geneally do not respond for one of two reasons. The first is they miss the email. This could either be because of a wrong address, spam filtering, or a huge email backlog on their part. The other is that they do not think it is worth their while to respond. They could be so busy, that no matter how simple of a request, that they just are not going to respond.

Providing an explanation on how the nuts and bolts implementation works, is not an easy task. Providing a working implementation, can be even harder. Your want to make your request as easy as possible for them to (1) understand, and (2) address/answer. This means ideally asking yes/no questions where you provide enough background so they can see where you are coming from.


A journal published my paper without finalizing the proofs -- is this normal?

Is this normal? I'm quite perturbed, because the copy-editors had made lots of inappropriate edits, and I wanted to double check that they had fixed everything before the paper went live.

I'm a journal editor (Taylor & Francis) and have edited special issues (Springer), so in my experience this is not normal in the slightest. Even though it is an "Early View" article, this is a standard part of the publishing pipeline, and we'd expect those to be the finished version (just waiting for the formal assignment of a volume/issue number as space opens up).

If this happened to me, I would be disappointed.

You should e-mail the handling editor who you corresponded with.

My guess is that something has happened in the interplay between editorial staff and the back-office Wiley people, and I would guess that the handling editor would be just as disappointed and surprised as you. You want these edits to happen as quickly as possible, as once the DOI is minted and its an "early view" article - as you know - people will be getting their Google Scholar alerts etc. and beginning to read and cite the piece.


How to manage literature when writing a dissertation/paper

Throughout working on the paper (including thinking before I start to write and then writing), whenever I find a paper that may be relevant, I save it. I make sure not to save anything that I see but only after checking the abstract and when I decide that there is a good chance that I will want to mention it in the literatere review part of the paper. I use Mendeley for this, but I can imagine google drive or even just a folder with PDFs would work.
I also do some searching on Google Scholar before I start working on the problem (to make sure that it is not already known) and then before I start writing (I have a better picture of the problem and my result by then; I also catch new papers this way). I also throw all the papers into Mendeley. Again, not anything that I find, only those I decide I will probably want to cite.
When the time comes, I go through all the papers, decide which ones to include, and write the "related work" part of the paper. Because I have filtered out the not so relevant papers before, I only usually have about 30 papers. Those I decide not to include, I usually move to some other folder to make the writing easier.

The nice thing about Mendeley and similar software is that it allows you to save notes, this can be useful if you read through a paper, decide it is relevant but it is not obvious at first glance how. By making a note, you don't have to think about how it is related when you are writing the literature review.


Without any indication of university, I have to assume that yes, they will keep records of all the things you do. Furthermore, you can assume that your next application will go through the same persons, as they are probably the only ones working on your particular type of application, so even if they don't have records, they will likely remember it.

Plagiarism is extremely reprehensible in the research/academic world, hence you should never ever do it if you want to be considered worth doing research. Here (France), students can be banned up to 5 years from taking any examinations for these kind of faults.

If this is only a problem of time, have you considered asking for an extension for the submission? If you weren't aware of what had to be done for the submission, you might be able to get away with it by proving you only got the request 2 days ago. Otherwise, they might deny it because you could have prepared it without knowing the answer.

It's august, so university will probably be on holidays now they probably won't mind the delay. Bottom word: I can not answer for your university, but doing wrong things will impact your career, so you'd better refrain from doing it.


In the social sciences, is it easier to get a post doc than a PhD?

If you already have a PhD, the chances of being admitted into a second PhD program are quite low, I would imagine. Furthermore, I would not recommend such a strategy: the possibility of being labeled as a "perpetual student" could have negative ramifications on one's career.

That said, there is funding for post-doctoral associates in addition to graduate students, even in the social sciences; in particular, there are a number of fellowships that are designed specifically for postdoctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Of course, there is relatively more funding for PhD's than for postdoctoral associates.


How to respond to threats by disgruntled, powerful former collaborator

Right now, given the lack of details (and maybe you don't want to add more), it's hard to say what to do.  One thing that would be good to know is: what are you actually worried about?  If you are tenured (I guess mid-career means this), you don't need to worry about that.  What sort of influence does this person actually have?  Disputes happen from time to time, and if your collaborator is a jerk and people know this, they may not pay much attention to their rantings.

That said, my suggestion is to reply with something along the lines of:

  Sorry we neglected to mention my preprint with you.  That project came about independently, and I should have told you about it earlier.  I've added an acknowledgement and a reference to that preprint.  See attached.  Other comments welcome.  By the way, what do you want to do with our preprint?

From my point of view, it makes sense to mention your preprint from 3 years ago in your newer paper, and being generous with acknowledgements costs you nothing.  (Presumably you've had discussion about related things, which, even if your colleague did not actively contribute to your understanding of things, may have been helpful in some ways.  Though again, I don't know the specifics, so you have to decide this.)

Even if you can win, no one wants to get into some big fight about who had what idea when, so if there's a reasonable way to mollify your colleague, it's probably worth it.  Admittedly, your colleague doesn't sound reasonable, but if you add an acknowledgement and reference to that preprint, I imagine most people would think you behaved ethically even if your colleague goes on a rant-page.

You should also discuss this with your present coauthors before doing anything.


Stuck without progress working on thesis - worried about failure

Having worked with master's students in an applied research lab, I am fairly confident that you are not expected to come up with a solution that will dramatically change the production process and lead to great profits. Your stipend is not contingent on your work delivering monetary returns; research doesn't work like that.

You are engaged by them to apply your skills, use your time and energy to contribute to their problem. The magnitude of that contribution and its ultimate impact on the company could vary wildly. So steer yourself out of both extreme expectations (that you will fail completely, vs you will create a revolution through your work) and put in your honest, best efforts. Be systematic and document everything. What you see as a negative result or failure now could be a positive confirmation to a more experienced researcher at some time in the future. Don't worry too much about the ultimate outcome, but don't procrastinate either. Keep executing chunks of work, and once again, document everything.

Remember, you justify your stipend through your efforts, not through the outcomes.


Ratio of applicants to jobs for engineering professor or assistant professor

At my institution I would say the ration is about 1:6. But this is a really bad metric for 'hardness of getting hired'. For example in the humanities typically applicants' hair is already greying, while engineering applicants almost still have their milk teeth. That is a much stronger indication that humanities jobs are much harder to get than engineering academic jobs.


Should marital status and its international characteristics be included in a CV/cover letter?

For US applications, you absolutely should not include such information, as it can make for awkward situations during the hiring process.

For applications in other countries, you may mention such issues in the CV where appropriate. However, you should not mention it in a cover letter, where it will seem contrived, artificial, or "stretching." People reviewing your application will not read anything into the characteristics of your marriage.


Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context?

Good design is invisible.  The goal of design is to increase understanding/clarity. If your design is truly good then it will go unnoticed but your content will be better understood.  If your design is noticed and distracts, then it is bad.  I feel these principles are universal.

So to answer your question, yes, good design is worth it (it increases the amount that your content is understood), but just adding "design" elements without a good understanding of the audience and their expectations will not likely result in good design.


Everything you have named count as research experience and are good enough for applications in graduate programs. At the moment your master thesis is the most important proof/measure of your research experience.

The main goal of a phd program is to train you to be an autonomous researcher. With that in mind, they are not expecting you to have worked as a researcher outside the university before achieving a Ph.D degree. There are students with some luck that are able to publish an article before the phd, but that is not common.


What should I do with award certificates?

Give it to a relative (parent, spouse?). My mother has a "wall of Sergio" in the house where she displays different types of significant awards, letters, etc. I think it's a little weird, but giving them these awards is a nice way to let them have a handy reminder of what you're up to at the time, and parents certainly appreciate it sometimes. My mother and I came from not very much at all, so she is so happy to hear I am doing something with my life -- maybe your family may feel the same.


Publication fee paid, but no response from editor

Before jumping to conclusions, the first thing to do is to send a polite email to the editor for an acknowledgement or current status of transaction. Short delays are manageable, but how long or short differs from one journal to another.

There are several factors that you might have to think through to determine your next action.

Whether you have submitted your manuscript to a hijacked/predatory journal; these journals might pretend to be a reputable journal by sounding the same but differing in spelling to mislead you.
Whether the journal is reputable; one of the ways to rule this out would be to check the volume and issue number. This would give an idea of how long was this journal was publishing.
Whether this level of delay is usual; sometimes even if the money is credited on the other end, it may take some time reach the necessary department.

Resorting to legal action would be the last thing to do.


Graduate courses as undergrad vs master's degree

Not counting research experience, is it advantageous to 'formalize' one's graduate courses by getting a master's degree, from the viewpoint of career opportunities?

For industry, yes, it is advantageous to get the Master's degree if you're doing basically the same work.  The Master's degree is generally considered a terminal professional degree for many industries, so there's some value in getting that rather than just a Bachelor's degree.

For academia, no, it's typically not advantageous.  Most US-based PhD programs will require you to do core coursework roughly equivalent to a Master's degree regardless of whether or not you already have one.  (I do not know enough about European programs to comment on them.)  They will also typically present you with an opportunity to earn a Master's on the way to your PhD.  Thus, getting one before you start a PhD program at another university is, perhaps, redundant.  The only exception is if you are planning to switch your focus a bit.  For example, you might get a Master's in Public Health and then start a PhD program in Computer Science focusing on applying computer science research to public health problems.

You also mentioned that you were interested in a PhD, but wanted solid letters of recommendation so that you could have a reasonable chance at a top university.  The best way to do this may not be through coursework.  Obviously, coursework is important, but you may find that working with a research group as an undergrad allows you to more closely interact with a faculty member and get a more personal letter of recommendation.  Professors write letters of recommendation for students based on coursework all the time, but it's more rare for them to write one for an undergraduate with whom they have worked on research projects.  Also, this would allow you to determine whether or not you enjoy research and learn a bit more about what you would like from a graduate school.  Research is quite different from coursework.  It's more of a career than a school experience.


In the absense of writing experience in my target field, how do I find assignments and evaluate them?

The obvious way to get experience along with feedback is to enroll in a formal writing course. But try to find one in which the instructor is amenable to you making suggestions about general areas and topics. But any writing will be better than no writing.

A second, but riskier way, is to publish a blog somewhere in which you express your thoughts but allow readers to comment and give you feedback. The world is full of trolls, of course, so be prepared for that, including a way to shut them off and/or back out of the whole project.

Even writing here on this site you get some feedback in the comments.


Going to academia after research job in industry

Sure it's possible. You just need a strong-enough CV to compare against the people who did do the more traditional postdoc route. Couple of examples of people who did it:
Ivar Giaever became a professor at Rensselaer (RPI) without doing a postdoc, but after accumulating a lot of research experience at General Electric.
Anwar Ibrahim had teaching positions at Oxford, Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University without doing a PhD or postdoc, but with a lot of government experience.
W.E. Moerner after getting PhD worked at IBM research center, served as visiting professor, and later gained tenured professorship


My PhD seems daunting and overbearing. How shall I regain motivation and interest?

my supervisor (...) keeps saying she has no concerns

Believe her.

Having lots of comments and suggestions for improvement does not mean she doesn't like what you have done. It may be the exact opposite: because she likes what you have done, she wants to make sure your research is presented in the best possible way, clearly demonstrating its potential and value.

I would suggest taking some time off to recharge your batteries and then working through the list. You've made it this far, now do what it takes to complete your PhD. Judging the value of the research is most likely better done in a less stressful situation (i.e. once your done).


The acknowledgements are the only part of the dissertation where you are writing as yourself instead of the Impartial Professional Narrator.  Just relax and be honest.  (Yes, that can be hard, especially after so many years of writing as Impartial Professional Narrator.)

Don't worry too much about writing it the right way.  Just be yourself.  Of course your acknowledgements will sound trite to the average reader, but you're not writing to the average reader; you're writing to your mentors, colleagues, friends, and family, who will value the sentiment far more than the specific words.

And don't forget to send a copy of your dissertation to each of the people you acknowledge, especially your family.


Best path for a PhD in CS from a top school?

Research experience will help you a lot more in getting into a good PhD than an extra degree. For this reason, I would recommend 1. to meet your goals.

Additionally, having dual degrees in not a requirement for doing inter-disciplinary research. Working with an adviser that has the relevant experiences, taking a few classes, or reading on your own are all great ways to learn about a second field, and then to start to apply your research from your primary field to your secondary field. You can also transition to your secondary field for your PhD if you choose, even if you don't have a degree in that field. My Bachelor's was Math, I am now pursuing a PhD in Computer Science. Doing extra research as an undergraduate helped me more in getting into my program than taking extra CS classes would have.


Take a few courses in another university

Go by direct exchange program to the university that have bilateral
  agreement with my university (in my case, I'm not satisfied with
  offered transfer destinations, so it's not really an option)

That would be the easiest way.

  Go as an Erasmus student (not sure if I qualify being non-EU citizen)

If you are not qualified for Erasmus, you are certainly qualified for Erasmus Mundus. Just talk to the Erasmus coordinator at your university. If you are going with Erasmus they (should) have already taken care of the getting credits problem.

If all that does not work out, you could also organize it yourself. That is more work but sometimes worth it. Then you have to take care of most of the things yourself:

Funding: 3 possible sources come to mind: the country you want to go
to (for Germany that would be DAAD, but similar options also
exist in most EU countries, e.g. France or Belgium BAEF), the
country you are comming from, or your home country.)
Credit: Talk to the director of your program/ the dean of student
affairs / international relations person
Enrollment in the foreign university. You also have to apply there.


Academic position in the UK, do universities in the UK pay for dependent tuition?

I am an American and was an assistant professor in a UK university. They laughed at me in the polite British way for being a stupid Yank when I asked about benefits like this. With the single pay spine and the craziness of British tax law, they wouldn't even know how to do it in a formal way.

If your daughter attended your school (department in US speak), they could probably work with you to wave the international fees and only charge you home fees (9k a year), but with Brexit looming, you cannot really count on any future promises (or even a guarantee that she would legally be allowed to attend a university).


The topic of a one-semester research project really has little bearing on your future career. You might as well explore something interesting to you, since you’re learning about your field at this stage. It won’t have much impact on future prospects, because you’ll be evaluated for positions based on your research potential at the time of your application. You’ll also be expected to diversify beyond your PhD topic.


Does anyone look at the transcripts of PhD students when they are looking for jobs?

I wonder if any company in industry or postdoc admission committee in academia need to look at the transcripts of job applicants (PhD students).

There are 200 million companies globally, so the only possible answer is that some will and some won't. As discussed here, it usually does not make sense to use it for purposes other than internally tracking the students' progress. But as discussed elsewhere, people do this anyway.

If you're asking whether there are any possible reasons for doing so, I can imagine the following:

To verify that they have the degree in question [though you don't need a transcript for this]
To see what kind of courses they took and what they already know [though this discounts whatever they learned in research, which is the whole point of a PhD]
To see if they failed classes or had to repeat classes [also not a good predictor for research]
To compare applicants against one another [but impossible to normalize]

Note also that in some countries, PhDs have no coursework and so there is no transcript to look at.


How to create incentive for students to take surveys?

I think that giving some small course credit for a survey like that can be a good idea. Taking the IRB protocols as a model, you might give course credit for the survey, and also some alternate assignment for a student who has some point of principle that makes them not want to disclose personal info like that. Then you've really covered your bases.

In my own case, I give a study survey like that after the first exam. Since this happens to be in sequence and in the same format as three earlier quizzes, I think many students assume that it's for credit and complete it without me saying one way or the other (it's not, and has a different title, but it serendipitously works in my favor that way).


When translating an article into English, how do I quote the author’s quotations of translated versions of English works?

In my research I need to cite a work by a Russian author, Gnedenko, say, who, for reasons unknown to me, published in French, in an American journal. There being no published translations of the original French (if he really did write in French, which I doubt), I have translated the French into English. When I need to quote I will use my words followed by  "(Gnedenko [reference] - my translation)".

In practice, in my subject, statistics, Gnedenko's exact words matter much less than his ideas, and if I wished to cite another author who studied Gnedenko in translation it would not matter much which language that author had read the paper in.

If in your subject it really matters what language other writers have read a paper in, then you have no alternative but to quote those words, in whatever language was used. You may provide your own translation, identified as such.

The point is that you must leave no doubt in your readers' minds as to where the words you cite came from.


Research Fellow on Paper They Did Not Contribute- Solicited my Mentor

Putting an asterisk by his name and mine saying we share first co-authorship.

That alone, on a draft shared for comments, would have been enough to anger anyone. In my opinion this RF is trying to carve a space in the paper by discrediting the quality of your work, which is unprofessional. The quote is also irrespective of any actual problems with your work - assuming the RFs suggestions have some merit - and any self-respecting academic would flat out refuse, unless it comes with an extensive research plan.

The behaviour you describe is so crude that actually improves your position. However, the personality of your mentor and your relationship with the mentor does weigh in. If you have a good working relationship with him, the issue can be resolved with a polite, honest and most importantly calm chat. The fact that he shared the draft without you knowing is not problematic, in my opinion, as academics do so very often. The liberties taken by the RF, however, may hide something more than a request for feedback - they go beyond a bad report. You cannot know, and you should not jump to conclusions, but you should be cautious, suspicious even.

Some arguments that are generally valid, but for them to work you would need to stand as a professional academic, not a student:

1) Adding a co-author dilutes everyone's, but particularly your, contribution. Both you and the data-editing colleague can argue that you are not willing to add a 4th co-author (field specific), and for an entry-level academic first authorhip is very important and you are not willing to share.

2) The paper is mostly finalised and the suggestions are not substantial enough to warrant co-authorship, plus a debate on the most factually wrong comments (irrelevant self-citations etc). There is not enough work left and you are not willing to consider a change in direction due to time constraints and the distraction it will cause you.

3) Brush off presentation comments by saying that they will be corrected in the finalised version and insist that polishing up does not warrant a co-authorship, especially first authorship (similar to (2))

4) (very context dependent) Express some surprise on the nature of some comments and point out to their relevance. If you want to be cheeky, ask why the RF would be interested in participating in a paper he himself criticised so harshly.

It is important for you to be the one that frames any discussion as discussing feedback on a draft and you have not even considered co-authorship. If you are presented with the idea, e.g. in an off-hand comment, just say "no". If pressed further, politely yet firmly keep refusing. This is where your mentor must take a position and either drop the issue or force you to accept a co-author. If the latter happens, I see two options.

The first is to withdraw your participation in the draft. You are perfectly entitled to do so and maintain agency of your work, but I understand this is difficult from someone in your position and may cause further frictions and issues. The second is to accept (grudgingly), but by stating very clearly and in a non-negotiable manner that the RF will be responsible for any additional work and you will not be adding anything more to the paper, especially results/ experiments. Even if you receive some drafts or emails, you can politely repeat your stance. This is confrontational and also not desirable, but at least you will not be exploited.


What should I do if the editorial process 'may' cost me my publication?

Based on the discussion in the comments, i.e. given that your primary concern is that the paper might be rejected after a very slow editorial process and then be hard to get accepted at another journal because it is no longer relevant/"hot"/topical/etc ...
I think you have only two (not entirely distinct) choices.

As suggested by @EthanBolker, try the editorial office again (politely but firmly).
Contact the editorial office and let them know that you're withdrawing the paper from review. Unfortunately, this means that you have to start the review process all over again at another journal (you should probably explain the history of the paper in your cover letter). If you are willing to sacrifice impact factor for speed, you might try an 'open' venue like Faculty of 1000 Coronavirus papers or (if you or one of your collaborators has Wellcome funding) Wellcome Open Research.


Electronic version of diploma in the US universities?

Some U.S. universities do release electronic copies of transcripts. They treat these as completely official document, and the documents are supposed to contain additional security features, which the recipient can verify.

For example, there is an information page about electronic transcripts from the University of Michigan.

However, if you are concerned about the electronic copy, you could just ask for a paper copy. It is not in any way unusual in the U.S. to ask applicants to have their university send official paper transcripts by mail directly to the potential employer. The applicant will pay the university a small fee to do this, of course, so many employers only request the official transcripts at later stages of the hiring process, and accept informal copies for the initial stages.


What to do when two months after submitting a major revision, its status is still "Editor Assigned"?

It's impossible to know what "Editor Assigned" means without knowing the particulars of the journal's system.  I'll presume this is different than what you saw during the prior round of review, however, and it would in fact be unusual for a paper to be stuck with an editor for two months without going out for review.

If you've emailed the handling editor a couple of times at reasonable intervals and gotten not response, then the next step would be to send a polite query to the next level up, which would typically be the chief editors of the journal.  If you get no response there as well, then you've basically got two choices: wait it out some more, or withdraw and submit elsewhere.


How should I credit co-authors of a paper in conference proceedings I prepared myself?

The practice I'm most familiar with is that a coauthor is a coauthor is a coauthor.  Anyone listed as a coauthor on the title page of the paper should be listed on the title slide of any talk about the paper, and explicitly acknowledged ("This is joint work with...") when the talk begins.  Whether any of your coauthors helped you prepare your slides or the proceedings abstract is none of the audience's business.

But this attitude is clearly specific to my field, where papers only rarely have more than three authors.  It might not scale so well in fields (like particle physics?) where a "small" group may have 100 members.


Do Physics grad schools accept non-physics students with good Physics GRE score?

Graduate admissions is based on lots of different factors.  I don't think any one thing will make you in-eligible for acceptance, at even the best institutions---including not being a physics major.  That being said, unless you have physics (or similar) experience, or are in a related field, it will hurt your application.  I know numerous people with math, computer science, engineering and chemistry backgrounds who have joined (and are doing well in) prestigious physics programs (e.g. stanford, chicago, columbia).

If you have experience in a not-too-distant field (e.g. chemistry), one way to make your application more appealing - would be if you are interested in subjects somewhere between physics and chemistry (for example).

If you can demonstrate that you have excelled in your own field, and have an aptitude for physics (e.g. good GRE scores), you shouldn't have a problem!


Should I tell my supervisor that I will consult someone else?

I would approach your supervisor with request for advice and depending on what the problem is, (s)he may recommend you speak to some other scholarly expert in the field. If (s)he doesn't, you could suggest yourself that it might be an idea to speak to some expert. Your supervisor and you could work out a viable solution.

This has happened to me numerous times during my PhD - the nature of the project meant that other scholars had to be consulted.  My supervisor had no problems with this, but I made sure that I always let him know, and in many cases, he had recommended I speak to other scholars and was also able to recommend various experts.

It is always polite to keep your supervisor in the loop.


It depends on where you are and more on the details of the degree. Many other places than France use some variation on Information *, rather than Computer Science. Denmark for one. Others as well. In the US an information science or informatics degree is more often closer to a management degree than a CS degree.

However, details matter. Algorithms, Languages and Compilers, AI, and such will make it a CS degree whatever its name.

However, if it lacks those but has courses such as Information Processing or Transaction Processing or Decision Support Systems it may be not CS but something related.

Such courses as Database Management Systems could be in either, though a CS degree will focus more on the theory of databases and such things as Entity Relationship modeling.

In the US at least it is a bit confusing. But the general idea is that a CS degree is more focused on theory and an IS (Information Systems) degree is more (but not completely) focused on practice.

Careers can be built with either degree.

However, I'm surprised that anyone would think biomedical information systems is somehow a lesser art. There are many very serious issues that still need to be resolved in such systems and such study should cover such "hard" topics as security and encryption. But, details matter.

On the other hand, your advisor is correct in that to make progress in an interdisciplinary field you should start with a firm grounding in one or the other. There will still be a lot to learn, but the grounding in one will help you focus on what you need from the other.


Should the personal/research statement be technical?

At least in computer science: Yes, but.

What admissions committees are looking for in your application is strong evidence of research potential.  One of the indicators of research potential is the ability to write about your chosen field in its native language; not just technical terms, but their proper usage and context.  In particular, if you are describing your past research results, or a particular future research problem, you should describe it just as any professional researcher would.

However, there is technical language and technical language, and you want the former.  The vast majority of your statements should be understandable to a general audience of (in your case) applied mathematicians, not just to experts in your chosen subsubsubfield.  For the really technical details, cite the literature or point to your own work on your web page.  (The ability to effectively explain your research to non-experts, demonstrated knowledge of the literature, and willingness to embarrass yourself in public by posting your work to the web are also strong indicators of research potential.)


A few ways to perpetuate reproducibility:

As a stipulation to publication, publishers could require the software and data used for a research paper to be made publicly available so that others could reproduce the results.
Academic institutions could provide repositories to allow its members to publish their code or data, to encourage making the code or data publicly available.

Difficulties regarding reproducibility requirements:
A major downside--perhaps a dealbreaker--is that there are significant issues with intellectual property. Large numerical models often take years to develop, benchmark and test, but once they are completed, they can often be used several times for several publications with minimal modification. Sharing the code they spent years developing in many cases would allow others to use the code to make discoveries before the original developers had a chance to do so. Allowing the original developers to protect their code gives them incentive to develop it.
Many data sets (especially in the social sciences) are protected/restricted because they contain classified, confidential, or personally-identifiable information. Moreover, many data sets that contain no personally identifiable information can actually be de-anonymized though careful computer analysis, so even protected data sets that have been "anonymized" are not necessarily safe to be released to the public.
Another difficulty is that some codes/scripts/routines may use commercial software (e.g. MATLAB, SPSS, etc.), so while the code themselves may be freely available, they might not necessarily be usable without paid software. This would exclude certain people from being able to reproduce results.
Some data sets are so large as to be an unreasonable burden on repositories. For example, I collaborated on a simulation that produced over 50 TB of data -- and there are other data sets that make 50 TB look tiny! It could cost a lot to maintain repositories on the order of hundreds of TB or several PB.
Summary
There are a few things that could be done to strongly encourage reproducibility, but they come at a cost. Releasing code, exact methodology, data sets, and other intellectual property would impact different fields in different ways and may not always be possible from a legal perspective. My guess is that data reproducibility will need to be treated on a field-by-field basis.


The status of my paper is "Ready for Decision (30 days)". Should I write an email and ask?

Yes. 30 days is well past the normal range to make a decision after all reviews have been received.


Are 'Dr' for medical doctor used in the same sense as a PhD?

While all those titles share the same linguistic roots, obviously, the meaning is somewhat different. When referring to a Ph.D., term doctor is used in the context of general knowledge acquisition. That is why the full title is doctor of philosophy, where philosophy implies "love of wisdom". On the other hand, a medical doctor (M.D.) or Doctor of Osteopathic medicine (D.O.) title or one of dental doctor titles refers to a specialist in one or more areas of medicine. A relatively popular alternative term for medical doctor is physician, which some people might confuse with with physicist. The origins of the word "physician" and its relation to the word "doctor" are discusses in this interesting article in Science Friday.

The original meaning of the word "doctor" as "license to teach" has likely been transferred to the medicine knowledge domain IMHO due to the important role of one of the cornerstones of science that medicine played at that particular time period and place (medieval Europe). You may also find additional interesting information in this related discussion on StackExchange.


How to write better teaching evaluations?

I love that you're asking this, because we talk a lot here about how to respond to evaluations, and sometimes about how to get more useful responses, but not much about what students can do.  I'm going to assume that your goal is to help the professor improve future versions of the course.

The most useful things you can do when giving feedback about a course are to be concrete and to avoid subjective judgements about pedagogy.

Concrete is probably obvious.  General complaints (or compliments, for that matter) just don't give any information about how to proceed; things like "this professor is terrible" or "the lectures are unclear" are going to be ignored, even if the professor really wants to improve.  It's a lot more useful to pick one specific thing and focus on that.  Even if lots of improvements are needed, the professor is only likely to be able to make one improvement at a time anyway.  "It would have been easier to follow lectures if the professor had given an outline at the beginning" or "There was so much material each class that by the middle of it, I was having trouble remembering what happened at the start" are a lot narrower than "the lectures are unclear".

By subjective judgements, I mean things like "there's too much homework" or "topic X is too difficult for this course".  Most professors won't take complaints like those very seriously because we don't expect to agree with our students about what's too much or too difficult.  Instead, you want to present more objective evidence a professor might agree with: "I was spending 20 hours or more a week on homework, and most of my friends were, too", or "when we hit topic X, I was studying twice as hard as usual, and still struggled with it".

Even if you want to mostly give positive comments, it's still a lot more helpful to point out specific things that helped you, because it makes it more likely the professor will continue doing them (or maybe even do them more or expand on them).


Is it acceptable to solicit answer from university?

If their own deadline has passed, yes, you can ask. Send a polite email to whoever is handling the admission. As long as you don't demand it, no one will take offence.

There are many reasons why you wouldn't have received an answer, but note that some institutions, as a policy, never notify rejected candidates (ESA is among the worst at this, they never tell, even the candidates that have been interviewed).

Best of luck.


What to do when your name appears second instead of first?

If you're the legitimate first author of the paper, I wouldn't even bother to find out why the error happened in the first place. Instead, my answer focuses on your question of what to do now.

There are two good reasons why you should insist on a correct authorship record: (i) First authorship of a (good) paper is a valuable asset. (ii) So are citations of your paper. With inconsistent information in the repositories and the paper itself, citation counting tools like that of Google Scholar might not index all of its citations. Keeping that in mind,

the most important party to contact is the publisher of the paper, since these people maintain the official record. In particular, they distribute the meta-data of their publications to other repositories. I can't tell if they will actually distribute individual error-fixes as well, as would be the most convenient option in your case. Still, they can correct the faulty data in their own repository, which will strengthen your case when you contact other parties.
Some databases/repositories, like DBLP, allow you to submit error reports individually. You can google for "(name_of_database) error report" or just look on the respective database's website to find details.
With Google Scholar, the situation is a bit more tedious, since they do not provide a process to submit error reports. Information usually gets checked and updated automatically after some months; there is nothing you can do to trigger this process. The thing you can do is to create a new, corrected entry for the paper in your profile. Then you can "merge" it with the existing entry, so that citations of the paper with its current authorship information are counted.


First, let me say that I share your feelings about the way biology is typically taught (i.e. as a collection of facts). I believe this will change in the not-so-far future.

Now, some historical perspective:

Biology was, for a long time, a field of science which was mostly concerned with making observations and collecting data. Even though people were interested in the underlying mechanisms, they were often very difficult to understand in a principled way. This is mostly because biological systems are complex systems, in the sense that very complicated system-level behavior (often referred to as phenotype, e.g. mitosis) emerges from interactions between many (e.g. tens of thousands) different types of elements. This makes these systems very difficult to understand by only looking at a handful of elements.

As our ability to collect and analyze data has improved due to technological advances (computing power and high-throughput biological experiments), along with a better ability to perform genetic perturbations (e.g. genetic engineering), biology is becoming more and more quantitative. This has given rise to new fields such as computational biology and systems biology. Still, this approach to biology is very new, and so most biology courses (and books) are taught in the "classic" way. In many cases, we simply do not understand yet the logic or mechanisms underlying certain phenomena in a quantitative way.

Since courses that teach biology from the systems biology / physics / mathematical perspective at an introductory level are still quite rare, I suggest starting with a book (for example, "Physical Biology of the Cell" by Phillips et al. is one such example of teaching biology from a physics perspective; SPOILER: statistical thermodynamics are very useful).


What does "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr." in a professor's title mean?

You would list the "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations" if you were, for instance, issuing a press release about Prof. Brett's accomplishments, or writing very formal correspondence. You might also mention it if you were introducing Prof. Brett in a seminar.

Under most normal circumstances, however, such information is not needed, and could come across as being almost pretentious.

As for what the "Dewitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor" represents, it's what's known as an endowed chair or named chair. Mr. Buchanan was the person honored by the chair—either because he gave the money to establish the chair himself, or others gave the money on his behalf or in his honor.


To cite a publication with two authors in a presentation, should I write "X and Y" or "X et al."?

This was addressed on English.SE, Is "et al." acceptable for citations with exactly two authors?

The answers there indicate that major citation styles (MLA, Harvard) do not use "et al." when there are only two authors.

APA style also does not use "et al." for only two authors.

I'm not going to exhaustively check every citation style, but I'm not personally aware of any where "et al." is acceptable when citing a publication with only two authors.

Also of interest to those who happen to like grammar: the English.SE answer also points out that using "et al." for two authors can be considered incorrect, regardless of style considerations (text in brackets is added by me):

  The Latinate abbreviation "et al." is short for "et alii," which means, "and others," and always refers to people, not objects. So if you had two authors, adding "et al." would indicate that there were [plural] other authors  - and since there are no[t multiple] other authors in this case, it is incorrect to use it.

While "et al." could also technically stand for the singular "et alia" which would be technically correct, that's certainly not a conventional abbreviation.


I think the following won't apply to you, but may be useful for people in other fields with the same question.

If you work in a field where putting preprints online is an accepted practice, then write up your work and upload a preprint.  In this way you clearly establish priority without needing to wait for the article to be refereed.

For instance, in Physics, CS, and Math, most researchers put preprints on arXiv.org.


Publish collection of papers into a book?

It is very likely that you would have assigned to the journal publishers the copyright to some or all of the papers you published, so you would not be allowed to publish the book without getting permission from those publishers. With that said, book anthologies of previously-published scientific papers are fairly common, and my understanding is that journal publishers are generally inclined to give their permission for a paper they hold the copyright to to be published in such an anthology.

A separate question is who would want to publish your book anthology. Unless you are a famous academic, I don't think such a book would be of interest to mainstream academic publishers, regardless of whether you need or can get the necessary permissions.


What do I do if no one admits me to a PhD position?

I think that everyone who is applying for PhD programs should consider their backup options. Admissions are not a guaranteed thing (unless you have a truly exceptional record), and even if you get in many people decide that a PhD is not right for them partway through. Identifying a backup plan is an important insurance policy to have.

This is especially important if you are applying during your last year of undergrad. If your applications don't go as well as you hoped, finding a job or other opportunity starting in April can be an impossible task.

If you are sure that you would still want to get a PhD even after a disappointing application round, make sure to research 1- to 2-year opportunities that can strengthen your resume. Research jobs, RA positions, masters programs, some industry positions, etc. are all things to look at, though availability may depend on your field and situation. If possible, you should also ask your adviser if they know of any opportunities or can put you in contact with anyone who might.

Depending on the culture/positions, I would even consider applying to some along-side graduate school applications if you are unsure how they will go. I worked at a PhD stepping-stone-type job for a couple of years before applying, and we regularly interviewed applicants who were also applying to PhD programs. Many places won't be so understanding, so be careful with this, but we were fine with that situation.


APA style attempts to resolve ambiguity related to the names of authors in both in text citations and the reference list. As far as I am aware, and this APA Style Blog comment confirms my belief, APA style does not attempt to resolve ambiguity about authors. In other words, as far as APA style is concerned in text citations do not need to differentiate between two different people with identical names.

As your example has no listed author, I would argue (although it does not appear to be addressed in the APA Style Guide) that as far as the citation is concerned the authors have the same name. In the case of multiple works with authors with the same name and year the in text citation just appends a, b, c, ... to the year.


What are the basic things to keep in mind in order to write a good looking paper?

First of all, you want to clearly present the problem you are tackling and the approach that lead you to the success (or failure). This is the meat of the paper that most of the time should be spent on.

It is common to write papers starting from the core that later naturally expands into sections like Introduction, Conclusion, and Abstract. There are certainly other approaches, but based on the list you outlined, I would certainly stress that the clear and correct presentation of the paper essence (which is usually not in the introduction, title, or proper references) is the most important thing.

After a good content-wise version of the paper is finished, then the time of the items in your list come into the play: typos, grammar, references, title choice, appropriate writing style, paper flow.

Several things I would point to be important (in addition to your list), but not necessarily essential:

Look into how the papers in your field are usually written. That will help in getting the basics right. Avoid uncommon abbreviations and notation, unless justified. If you have a journal/conference in mind for submission, take a close look into the guidelines for the template, paper organization, editorial & referencing style.
Look into the flow of the paper. Ideally, most sentences logically flow from the previous one, every paragraph logically follows and is expected after the previous one, and so on.
Consider adding quality figures or diagrams that help to illustrate your problem/idea/approach/results (if any of that is relevant to your field).
Since you mentioned equations, consider double- and triple-checking your typed equations and derivations, maybe even using a symbolic math processing engine.


Can I Submit a Professor's Recommendation Letter from my Personal E-mail?

This seems like a bad idea and I would do it only as a last resort.  Even with the disclaimers, it could raise questions in the reader's mind as to whether you forged the letter.  I think it was not appropriate for the professor to ask you to submit it yourself.

If the letter writer isn't able to submit the letter himself, a common alternative is for some other university employee, such as an administrative assistant, to submit the letter.  I would suggest pushing for something like this.