Why do Americans care so much about recommendation letters?

I think Bryan's answer gives a nice perspective on the issue. A perfect system does not exist, and different continents have developed different (imperfect) ways of dealing with the fundamental recruiting problem that it is hard to judge whether a specific student (or employee) will perform or not.

What I want to add is that, if you peek behind the covers, the European and American systems don't actually differ all that much. You assert that in Europe "your CV is all that counts". That is, unfortunately, quite naive. The CV of your average student is simply not expressive enough to be "all that counts" - good grades are at best a weak indicator of research potential, and (despite your counterexample from France), also in many places in Europe many students have very good grades, to the extent of being low-value as a discriminator in hiring. Grades also do little to measure the soft factors such as motivation or being a good team player, which ultimately matter more than whether a student had an A or a B for some largely unrelated undergrad course.

How professors in Europe largely have dealt with this uncertainty is by personally asking the professors that the student worked with before what their impression of the student was - so you still have your "recommendations", but not through written letters but through informal email or telephone exchanges. This was possible because traditionally, students in (at least central) Europe were not particularly mobile - most prospective PhD students did their undergrad in the same university, a close-by university, or a different university where the professors are already in close contact. Applicants from other places were often rejected outright. Now times are (slowly) changing and more and more PhD students come from abroad - and, lo and behold, suddenly formal recommendation letters are becoming important as well.

Another aspect that I am missing in your question that at least central and southern Europe has historically had a problem with rampant nepotism in academia. So I find it particularly curious that you draw Europe as a haven of objective hiring strategies.


What should I do to prepare to apply to a math PhD program?

(US-specific) The REUs don't matter much for admission. The problem with not having analysis at all on your transcript is that most programs use it as a litmus test for whether you are able to write proofs and handle graduate coursework. The fact that your weaker courses were number theory and abstract algebra is also going to raise red flags in that regard.

There might be programs that would be willing to take you as an MS so that you could remediate, but probably the best course of action is to just register for a year as a post-bac or nonmatric somewhere that offers upper-div math courses.


Rejection because the paper is too specialised

You can send it elsewhere. What you can't do is force a journal to publish your paper. The time isn't especially significant. A year or so would be a problem.
But reviewers have other tasks in their workflow. I doubt that it was forgotten generally, but some reviewer might have been busy/sick/whatever.
There may even have been some discussion about the paper, not making the decision an easy one.


What do "mention", "promotion", and "situation within your promotion" mean in this paragraph describing a CV?

This sounds like a bad translation from French (and it's not unlikely that the coordinator has no clue how to explain what these terms mean).

The French "promotion" means "promotion", but also "class" or "cohort". "Mention très bien" is an exam passed with "distinction". "Situation" means "situation" but also "position". So what they probably want is:

  CV outlining the following information: exams passed with distinction, rank of classification, position within your class/year/cohort, number of students in the class/year/cohort, diplomas with indication of specialty, date of graduation, any special distinction/honors and final marks certified by the institution.


I will answer this question in light of @paulgarrett 's comments:

A Visiting Professor position is a full time job and not combineable with a full time TT position
A Visiting Professor position is no guarantee whatsover for anything else in the future so one should not give up her TT position for this.
Visiting Scholar seems to be the type of position that is combineable: you start a research collaboration with the second university but officially affiliate 100% with your current one.

I ended up going for something in between which I hope will combines the best of both worlds: having the visiting scholar position for a year and simultaneously giving up 20% of my TT at my current institution in order to get a temporary 20% position as visiting professor at the external institution.


Difference between Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) doctoral degrees and traditional math, physics, cs, engineering and biology degrees

In interdisciplinary research the course works you opt need to be cohesive to help you develop an in depth understanding of the scope and application of the undertaken project.


My lab achieves better results than another lab on the same problem – should we collaborate?

First, it not just to say "Let's us collaborate with them!" That's not how collaborations start in the first place. To get a collaboration started you need several prerequisites: Genuine interest in the same problems (seems to be given here), similar knowledge and similar goals but also complementing expertise, being open for new ideas from the other side, and most important: Genuine interest in a collaboration in the first place.

Based on the above, I would never approach somebody (or some group) with the question "can we collaborate on this" but always start differently. The start may be different in different cases, it can, e.g., be just informal discussion with an individual without any particular goals besides getting to know each other, it could be a meeting of the workgroups with the purpose of exchanging ideas or it could be an invitation of somebody to give a talk. To see if this may lead to a collaboration is the second step…

  Should my research group collaborate with them?

I can't answer it, and probably nobody here can. If you think that a collaboration can be beneficial, than go ahead and contact them.

  Is this a proper way of collaboration?

I don't see an answer here either, since I do not see any collaboration yet. I can say that working on the same problems may be a basis for a collaboration. What would also be helpful, would be if your groups attack the same problem with different methods so that combining expertise may be helpful.

  Should they feel that our group is weaker than they are and that this is why we are trying to collaborate (a feeling of insecurity)?

I don't think that anybody will jump to this conclusion just because you asked for collaboration. I would also not jump to this conclusion based just on results for one single project (but you told that your results are even better than their results…).


How should you approach your adviser and tell him that he has a communication problem

I would advise you to approach him on a different base than he has a communication problem, namely on the base that you have a problem with his way of communication. Note the slight shift.

Phrasing it that way eliminates the problem that you may accuse him of something or even offend him. For example, you would not say "your handwriting is poor" but "I have a hard time to read your handwriting and it costs me a lot of time to read it". Also, you would not say "your slides are unclear" but "I do not get the main idea from the slides and would find it helpful if [...]". Finally, instead of "your notation is unclear" you would say that "I consistently get confused since the book X uses the notation Y while you use Z".


A copy editor is usually the person who runs through the manuscript checking that it adheres to the style of the journal. this includes checking references, checking figure numbering but also spelling and language, in short almost everything. The copy editor improves the paper from these formal/technical points of view. It is not usually the copy editor that typesets the paper because that is usually done by a typesetter involved with the printer. Having said that, with purely electronic publication it is more likely that this task would also end up with a copy editor. Thus the old demarcation lines between copy editor and printer may be less and less clear.

The editors usually handle scientific content and managing contacts between reviewers and authors on matters of the scientific content as well as making decisions. The name for this varies a lot between journals.

So who are you? Your current "title" may be OK but if you also improve the formal and technical quality of the paper, copy editor would be most appropriate.


Are automated online quizzes effective for formative feedback to students

If your school uses any sort of online learning platform (like Moodle), they often (and I know Moodle specifically) do this.


Scopus gives a list here. Is it what you are interested in:

https://journalmetrics.scopus.com/


Why do journals require authors to provide funding information?

Funding information is often required even when a journal has no open source option to it. The source of funding is a major potential conflict of interest, and as such is a key piece of information in evaluating a paper.

That being said, it may also be used to determine things like whether or not they should give a break on open access fees, whether it needs to be deposited in Pubmed Central, etc.


Can individual sharing of a published article form a copyright violation?

Sending a published article to a colleague, or to someone else who has requested it, or even to a co-author, almost certainly qualifies as distribution, which is one of the six rights reserved to the copyright holder under US law. So yes, technically it would be illegal. There is a fair use "exemption" that could be relevant in some cases, but that varies depending on the specific circumstances.

Whether this also applies to a preprint or to an earlier draft depends on whether those things are included in the copyright transfer agreement.

Of course, as mentioned in the comments, it's unlikely that a journal publisher would care enough to actually make a court case out of a researcher sharing just a few copies of a paper. Honestly, it's unlikely they'll even find out.


Citing multiple references in one number

You are right about the function of this, but I think it's often not the best practice (although this is strictly my own opinion).  Personally, I avoid combining references entirely.  In my opinion, it can be used legitimately, when the papers combined into a single reference are by (mostly) the same authors and cover the continuous development of a single topic.  However, I mostly see it used by people who want to pour a large number of references into a single number, perhaps to save a little bit of space.


How do I follow famous authors in my field on arxiv and other venues?

At the end of the day, you will have to manually subscribe to an author or something else to be notified about new submissions. Scopus has a notification service where you can subscribe to authors or even specific search tags. Then you can choose an interval to be notified in (like "every 4 weeks"). That way you can collect all new publications that are of interest for you in a relatively simple way. Caveats are that you have to have a Scopus account and you have to be really careful about your search terms or you will get hundreds of suggested papers per notification. The article must also be indexed by Scopus for it to show up.

Alternatively, you could of course go the old-fashioned way and subscribe to whole journals that are related to your scientific interests and read them. This is probably way too expensive and my first suggestion will be more reasonable.


Do employees in public universities pay less taxes than those in industry?

Not in the US. There's no special tax breaks for non-profit or government employees here. They probably pay less in an absolute sense because their salaries are somewhat lower, but they don't get special rates.


Is there a way to get a job in biology for chemistry graduate?

The difference between chemistry and biology is not so great that it's tremendously difficult to transition between the two. (Versus, say, transitioning from a historian of first century Mesopotamia into quantum physics.)

If you're looking for a postdoc, then I'd suggest looking for a lab that's doing the same sort of thing you want to be doing in the end, then figure out how your current skill set could potentially be applied toward that problem. For example, if you're an organometallic chemist and want to move into biochemistry, look for labs who are working on metalloenzymes, or with protein structure determination using paramagnetic metal ions.

Chances are, there's someone out there who is working at the intersection of your current expertise and your desired expertise. Get a postdoc position with them. At first you'll be "the chemistry guy", called upon to be the expert on you Ph.D. topic. But over time you'll pick up more and more of the biology, and can transition into more straight-biology research. Once you leave your postdoc, you'll have the biology experience (and publications) under your belt, and will be able to demonstrate competence to people interviewing you.

One caveat with this is that - like all postdoc interviews - you need to feel your advisor out on your plans. Many will be fine with your transitioning from one topic to the other, but there will be a few who will want to rigidly slot you into your Ph.D. role, making you a chemistry mercenary for your lab. Obviously, don't take a postdoc with those sorts of people.

If you're talking about a "real job", then things get slightly more complicated. A postdoc is technically a training position, and so broadening your horizons is expected and desired. For "real jobs", though, people are typically hired to do a particular role, and they're expected to be mostly accomplished for that role. That's not to say that roles don't change over time. A similar approach to the postdoc can also be used here. Find a company which is primarily a biology company, but needs your chemistry expertise. At first you'll be doing just the chemistry work, but over time you may be able to pick up more involvement with the biology side of things.

One type of place I might recommend you try for is a startup. The environment in a startup company is constantly changing, so people who work there typically need to be flexible and do many jobs. If you get hired at a mostly-biology startup, you might be brought on as a chemist, but it's likely that you'll be called upon to pick up biology as the job requirements change.

Again, feeling the company out in the interview is key. Ask how they see the position changing over the next 2/5/10 years. Do they seem receptive to you picking up a biology role, or do they want you to rigidly slot into a chemistry-only slot?

Regarding picking up another degree, I personally don't think it's worthwhile for two subjects as close as Chemistry and Biochemistry/Bioinformatics. A big part of a Ph.D. is training on how to do research, and there's not that much difference between how research is done in Chemistry and Biochemistry. If you have a Ph.D. in Chemistry, you should be competent enough to pick up biology research on your own. If you're interested in having a dual Ph.D., by all means go for it, but if you're just interested in doing more biology-focused research, learning it in a non-degree setting is probably better.


Am I plagiarising if I publish something that has been independently discovered since?

Plagiarism is the explicit use of someone's work without attribution or permission, usually with the intent of passing it off as your own.

In the present case, the mere existence of the same work elsewhere does not make your work plagiarism. If you used their work and did not give them credit, that would be plagiarism.


Tenure and faculty rank are somewhat independent in that a faculty member may be hired as an associate (or even full) professor without immediate tenure- in those cases the faculty member is typically awarded tenure after a shorter than usual probationary period of a year or two.

The more common situation is when a faculty member is hired as an untenured assistant professor and then awarded tenure and simultaneously promoted to associate professor after a fairly long (up to seven years) probationary period.  I'll focus on this common case in the US.

  Does your salary increase automatically?

There is typically a pay raise given to faculty who are promoted, but this could be small (a couple of percents) or large (twenty percent) depending on the institution.  There might be a standard pay raise, or it might be determined on an individual basis.  At institutions with unionized faculty that pay raise would be part of the contract.

  Does your teaching load change?

At some institutions, tenure-track assistant professors have a reduced teaching load which goes up when they're promoted.  It would be very unusual for the teaching load to be reduced due to promotion and tenure.

  Do you get (additional) grad students?

Graduate students in the US are typically supported by research assistantships (which are under the control of the faculty members who are PI's on the grants that fund the assistantships) and teaching assistantships (which are awarded to students by the department.)  Students typically ask to work with an academic advisor and then either get an RA from the advisor or are supported by a departmental teaching assistantship if they can get one.

Thus promotion to associate professor doesn't really have any direct effect on your ability to support graduate students.

However, students may be more interested in working with you after you've been tenured.  Students are rightly concerned about starting to work with an inexperienced assistant professor who might not get tenure and leave them with a half-finished thesis.  Another issue is that in some disciplines (pure math is an example) it's traditional for assistant professors to focus more on their own research than supervising graduate students.  In that situation, a newly tenured professor might be more willing to take on students.

  Are these changes negotiable?

It's always possible for a faculty member to ask for a pay raise or a reduction in teaching load.  However, you're unlikely to be able to negotiate a pay raise or different working conditions just because you've been recently tenured.  The norm is that faculty members who are tenured will simply accept a pay raise and continue their work.


How to maintain a good relationship with advisor when there is no need for it but I want it?

Keeping your advisor up to date with how your work is going is important. You might think that your work is going along the correct path, but it is quite possible in research to start heading off down a path which - while possibly interesting - may not be the route your supervisor wants you to go down (at least, not without discussing it first).

One way of damaging a good working student-advisor relationship is to end up in a situation where your advisor is demanding to know why you have taken the research in a new direction, without consulting your advisor for his/her advice.

I do not think that a monthly update is going to overload your advisor's email account - unless he or she is an internet hermit. If you are worried about annoying your advisor with information overload, you could always end your initial email reports with words indicating that you are more than happy to talk face-to-face about your progress, or say that you are happy to make the email updates less frequent.

No advisor wants to be left in the dark about what their students are doing. A good advisor will not consider a regular email update from their student a negative prospect - so long as you don't try your advisor's patience with multi-page long emails. For an MSc thesis project - where time is tight - I think that reporting on a monthly basis is about right.


How to response to the editor for a minor suggestion given by the reviewer via a formal letter?

"posting some related questions" -- is that a typo? Should it be posing? Either way I'm not quite sure what it means.

However: It does not seem you are in danger of getting the paper rejected. You should write a polite response letter, list all of the changes suggested by the reviewer(s), respond to each one (e.g., "Done." or "We opted not to do this because..."), and thank the review team. If you do not follow the suggestion to "post some related questions," explain why not.

Congratulations. This seems like a good outcome for your paper.


Which blacklists of poor quality scientific journals are run formally by a government agency?

Here's one:

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Malaysia have blacklisted (at least) four publishers. I don't know how to find the official source, but the list can be accessed from at least two university websites: Universiti Utara Malaysia and University Teknologi Malaysia.


How much customization of letters of recommendation is necessary?

I have two levels of customization. Firstly, if the letter is for an internship at a lab, or an application to grad school or a job, I tailor the qualities that I emphasize and link those qualities to the specific job.

A second level of customization is if I have any connection to the institution (for example, when writing letters of recommendation for AT&T Labs - where I used to work - I might mention this explicitly in order to convey that I understand the local culture)

This is above and beyond the usual pro-forma customizations for the addressee etc.


Can I use an Encyclopedia as a reference in an essay?

Yes, but, it mightn't be the best source.

For instance, Britannica* has an entry on Coronavirus, as do many other encyclopedias. They probably aren't the most authoritative though. A better reference could be sought, e.g., the World Health Organization. The same is true for other topics, such as culture.

An encyclopedia may give you what you need, but other sources might be more authoritative/better.

* The first encyclopedia produced by a Google search.


Professor won't let me see final exam grade

In most universities professors are encouraged to be transparent about grading, but whether they have to show you your grades is up to university/department policy.
If it’s important to you then seek recourse elsewhere: does your school have an ombudsperson or undergraduate academic support? If so - ask them to help mediate. It may also be helpful if you get other students on board: if you’re the only one complaining it’s less likely that you’ll be taken seriously.
In my department, for example, I have to tell students exactly how much they got in each assessment criterion (assignment/project/exam etc.). In addition, I must tell them (in the syllabus, before the course starts) what the numerical to letter grade conversions are (so what grade qualifies you for an A+/A/A- etc.). But this is by no means the norm in other universities to my knowledge.


Appropriate time to announce current research topics

In the field of economics, I believe you are safe to go out with your paper and discuss it after you have produced a working paper or presented it in a conference.


Can a Professor move a class an hour earlier?

It depends on your University's policies. At my University, professors are not allowed (see [1]:34-83). Your University might have some stipulations regarding this (e.g. was it done with due notice? what happens to students who were absent the day it was decided?).

Your best choice would be to check the policies and see if you have the right to give your presentation during office hours or at another time.

References:
[1] http://senate.psu.edu/policies-and-rules-for-undergraduate-students/34-00-course-scheduling/#34-83


Should I sleep less to achieve my thesis targets?

Reducing sleep may work for a day or two. However, after that, sleep debt accumulates, and sleep deprivation will lead to a reduction in productivity.

Sleep is essential for your physical health, and in particular, it is essential for mental functioning. You may find it better to view sleep as a form of "work time". The cognitive structures you have about your thesis will be refined and pruned while you sleep. You'll make novel connections while you sleep. Sleep will also enable you to have the mental energy to engage in focused activity on the thesis.

In particular, the kind of deep creative thinking required to analyse data and write a thesis is helped greatly by being well-rested. Sleep also helps ensure that the work you do is directed towards your goals.

Thus, allocating enough time to sleep so that you are well-rested is essential to overall academic productivity.

So in general, if you are looking to maximise productivity in the medium-term (i.e., from a week or two to perhaps a month or two), then look at things other than sleep and thesis-time that can be trimmed. If possible, remove all other work commitments (i.e., no tutoring, RA work, consulting, etc.). Other work consumes largely the same set of limited mental and time resources that you have available each week. If possible, reduce non-work commitments.

Also, in the medium term, many people do pull back from social and leisure activities a little bit. But in the longer term, you want to think about a balance to your life that truly works for you. I also think that incorporating at least a moderate amount of physical exercise is also important.


How should I highlight extensive changes in a revised manuscript?

If the editor's already asked you to highlight the changes, then you should highlight the changes even if it's 85-90% of the text.

As for color tags, it's up to you. Both are equally good. I would highlight on the PDF since I find it easier to do, but if you prefer color tags that's just as good. Be sure to pick a color like red or blue - something that makes it easy to discern the changes from the rest of the text.


Is a humorous "easter egg" in the academic homepage acceptable?

The hard thing about using humor in a professional setting is that different people have different tastes, and so you're pretty much guaranteed that your joke will fall flat with a significant percentage of the people who interact with it.  That is one of the several reasons why it's generally inadvisable to use humor in an "unattended" situation like your website where you can't be judging and metering to your audience.

That said, the nice thing about a (non-offensive) little easter egg is that most of the people who won't like it are also people who won't ever notice it or click on it.  The sort of person who goes to click on a random odd little widget on a web page is the sort of person who is interested in easter eggs and wondering what they will find.  They might like it, and they might not care for it, but as long as it's innocuous, you're almost certainly not going to be doing yourself any harm.


Is it possible to agree on feasible expectations with my supervisor or should I surrender to her demands?

She has the right to make a numerical suggestion, since the guideline does not specify any number. The first thing is to determine if this is feasible. Check the thesis and publications of other PhDs coming out from her lab and if this has been the norm, then at least you know that i) it's been done (whether you can or not is another matter) and ii) she is not making an unreasonable request.

The second thing is to determine if you have the drive, time, energy, and determination to churn out five papers with publishable quality in three years in your field. And thus far is it likely to happen if you're 4 months in and she has only been treating you as a RA.

The third is to check if you really like to do this PhD with her. Your questions have a lot of resentments and mistrusts, on top of negative wordings such as "surrender," "fight the battle," etc. Do you really want to work with her? Or are you victimizing yourself a bit too fast too furiously? You'll need to ask yourself that. If you're only 4 months in and already hating her at this extend, I'd frankly suggest think, hard, if you want to stay.

Lastly, whatever the agreement will be, have it clearly stated in writing: How many, in what time duration. And what is considered "a paper." Don't guess her meaning by saying "preferably published". Define the meaning: is it a chapter with publishable quality? Is it a real submission with at least one round of review? Or is it actually published?. Notice that if your work does not pan out and you never have the papers put together you may just end up miserable and PhD-less. Use that as the benchmark and negotiate (not fight a battle.)


How to ask a, probably angry, PhD supervisor for a letter of recommendation after graduation from uni?

If you were my student, I would fully expect you to take full credit for your work. If I helped you it is good for both of us, but a lot of other people helped your development before we ever met.

As to the letter of recommendation issue, I would do this in two separate parts, separated by a bit of time. First, make contact and thank him for past help and bring him up to date on your current life/research/whatever. If at all possible, do this in person. I don't know what you mean by a "long way" but a visit back to the university to meet old professors (and thank them) is always fun and worthwhile. If I'm the professor, I will be very happy to see you and hear about your current successes both academic and IRL.

This meeting should give you feedback on his feelings about you, though if you are both a bit awkward, it may be difficult to judge.

But a bit later, it needn't be long, ask for the letter of recommendation. Your earlier meeting will give you an idea of how formal you need to make the request. Or, if you are completely comfortable in the first meeting, you could do it then, but don't force it.

As to the answer of aeismail, the video suggestion will work with some people, but not all. If he is a frequent user already then it should be fine. But that, or even a phone call, won't work with everyone (me, for example). In person is best. The more formal the person is, the more important to meet face-to-face, I think. For a generally informal person, first name basis, less formal communication is possible.


Given how far away from your original undergraduate degree you've moved (several years' work experience, change in degree program, and so on), it makes it very hard for a PhD program to give your undergraduate transcript too much weight in the admissions process. You will also be able to stress how far you've come as part of your application, either in the statement of purpose or in a "other notes" section—and you should take avail yourself of the opportunity.

As for being female and a veteran, that will matter much more to schools than being a first-generation college student. (Being a female applicant in CS certainly can't hurt your chances if you're a qualified candidate.)


You have been scammed. I recently went through a rather similar situation, see the thread below:

Persistent issues with salary pay as a postdoc in China: What can I do?

Apparently there are several cheaters fishing for foreign postdocs into such schemes. Tracing the parallel of my situation onto yours, I was hired by a Chinese university on a false salary expectation under their pretence that all my project ideas sounded interesting. They were keen in that I would convince my wife to move as well to another department, and kept encouraging us into joining the university later as professors.
As soon as I landed and lodged, salary was "unexpectedly" irregular and much lower, and they started pushing to work 12/6 on other undiscussed projects. Their strategy of manipulation was exactly as you describe: no email communication unless where I complied with their demands.

I played their game until the end of the contract. I am sure they hoped I'd give up. I was actually benefitting from investing time on personal projects, saving money, and learning a foreign culture while they shunned me. I kept wondering whether they'd eventually kick me out, which they never did. But I do not recommend this line of action: I do not like playing games, and everyday I felt angry. Furthermore it is a waste of time, in the end.

My advice to you is that you focus 100% on networking and finding another job asap. Apply for an industry position within the same region. Of course the PI will feel you're up to something but try to keep this person isolating you. (A trick is to look miserable whenever you're seen.) They expect you to just settle, and they probably will not fire you unless given a good reason. So don't fall for any provocation, play victim, and invest heavy on getting a new position. How is your LinkedIn profile? Ever heard of The Cheeky Scientists Association? Aware of any networking fairs around your location? There is a lot to be done.

You will win: just bite the bullet and cheat these cheaters. Good luck.


If you're talking about the PDF of a paper published in an academic journal, then the answer is unambiguously: refer to the journal page numbers, i.e. the numbers at the bottom of each page. Those are the ones features in (almost all) citation styles.

Otherwise, if the document is a random PDF found on the web (not coming from a journal), just avoid referring to pages. If you absolutely must, refer to the page numbers printed on the paper, as it is the only thing that makes sense to someone who would print the document.


Publishing a paper in an academic conference being someone who works in the industry

There is no requirement that a person be employed in academia to publish papers or submit them to academic venues, including conferences. Papers are supposed to be reviewed for their own qualities and insights, not the position or reputation of the authors (though some abuses occur).
But before submitting to any venue, you should spend some effort looking at the sorts of things that get published there, so that you style isn't too different and the quality of your results is at a similar level as that of successful submissions. There is no real bar, but, like most things, first attempts aren't always successful.
You don't even need to associate yourself with your employer for this. Independent Researcher is fine as an "affiliation".

You should, however, also explore whether your assumptions about how to get accepted are valid. It would probably be worth the effort to talk to some potential advisors and see if your current qualifications are sufficient.


I don't think getting 4 years of funding is necessarily a red flag all on its own - the amount of funding you get offered will vary widely both between schools and between fields.  I think there are three things for you to consider:

Non-financial issues.  How good is the school, where is it located, and most importantly, how good of a fit is it for you?
If all else were equal, offering more years of funding is (obviously) better than offering less, since it gives you more time to work.  Even if you don't think you need it now, it's still a benefit in the form of lower pressure, and padding in case something disrupts your work (illness, research setbacks, etc).
Offering you better funding is potentially an indicator of how much the program wants you there.  That is, the program offering you 5 years of funding (with a possibility of 6 even), is signaling their interest in you quite strongly, while the program offering only 4 less so.

The problem is how to compare number 1 to numbers 2 and 3.  What are the merits of the program offering you 4 years of funding?  If there's a strong non-financial argument in their favor, maybe ask the department to put you in touch with some of their current PhDs and recent graduates.  Ask what the program is like, ask if they offer 4 years of funding to everyone, and ask how practical they find that deadline to be.  At least in my field, this was a fairly common occurrence for prospective students.


Updated my literature review for my thesis

Tell your supervisor and ask if she'll email the authors (ideally addressing emails to someone she met at the conference or already knows). She might be more successful than you, because she is more senior and because she was there (and because she knows them already).


Are there any "tells" for faculty hires?

Positive early signs:

you helped write the job specification;
one or more of the selection panel advised you to apply for the vacancy;
they take up your references;
you hear through the grapevine that members of your target department have been asking around, about you, after your interview;
you get an additional interview, where the main topics of discussion are pay & other benefits, when you could start, and what facilities you'd require in post.

Regarding formal paperwork,: all applicants at our place are required to show eligibility for employment, at time of interview. So there's no additional requests for paperwork between final interview and job offer.


Is it appropriate to have multiple recommendation letters for an application?

You should submit what is asked and nothing more.  If they ask for 3 LORs, submit 3, not 5 or 7.  If they don't want any at all, don't waste everyone's time submitting any.


Is it correct to refer to a neurosurgeon with many scholarly publications as a "scientist"?

At the research company where I work, there are three parallel career tracks: scientist, engineer, and manager.  Manager is obviously quite different than the other two, and eventually ends up with the person doing little or no technical work.  The only distinction between the scientists and the engineers, however, is determined post hoc by observing what the person tends to do: scientists are the people who tend to publish a lot and lead research projects, and engineers are the people who don't do those things much.

Science is not a tribe, nor is it a credential, nor an award.  Science is a behavior: performing investigations that contribute to human knowledge.  Any person who does this in a consistent and sustained manner, I would call a scientist, in addition to whatever other labels may be appropriate.

In the case of your example, Ben Carson, a quick Google Scholar search shows he's got a lot of publications, many well-cited (easily 2000+ citations, H-index of around 35).  Even without reading any of it to see if his work is ultimately borne out or refuted, it is clear that this is a person who has made a significant intellectual mark on the scientific discussion of their field.  This is not surprising: careful and well-presented clinical reports are an important contribution to knowledge!  Complementarily, a non-scientifically inclined doctor might simply treat their patients and not write the cases up for publication, merely keeping their private records in accordance with normal medical practice.

In short: definitely a scientist, no matter what else he may or may not be as well.


Is it possible to find a PhD position in social sciences without having letters of recommendation?

It really does not matter where you come from. In general, to apply for a PhD program in the U.S., you need: application letter, resume, reference letters (usually 3), master's degree (mostly required), transcripts from bachelor's and master's program, and GRE score (many programs require it). In addition, TOEFL score if your native language is not English.

Most of the time, if you are admitted to a PhD program in social sciences, you will be granted with assistantship / scholarship at the same time. Mostly, it's an assistantship, which means you will teach or do something else for the department. The stipend of the assistantship usually is only enough for you to live, not for your research study. If you need funding for your research study, you have to invest your own savings, or get research funding from the department or other grant institutions, which is not easy to get.

For the resources, use Google or Google Scholar to look for related publications or scholars. Actually, it is a good strategy to contact professors for the research topic first. If a professor is interested in your research topic or finds you competent during the discussion, it will increase the possibility for the professor to accept you to his/her program. But, be carefully prepared, don't send email before digging into the literature.


Is it Common to hire and fire people in lab frequently?

First, it is uncommon to hire and fire people that quickly in almost any context.  Evaluating and hiring good people takes time.  Training people to do anything useful takes time: usually more than two months of time.  What you're describing is incredibly inefficient and, as you note, bad for morale.  It's also bad hiring practice in a small lab to not conduct a group interview with the potential coworkers.  To be frank, your adviser does not seem very good at the HR aspects of running a lab.

However, as a counterpoint, it depends very much on the funding situation.  A new professor, unless they're particularly lucky, may not have very much funding on-hand.  Especially if their funding agencies pay out the award in installments, they may literally have to let people go because the funding has run dry.  To be quite honest, a new professor supporting 2 full-time PhD students and their own summer salary is already looking at an annual outlay of $100k-$150, at least in the US (most of which is tuition, since they're supporting two students through grad school).  Many grant agencies (e.g., NSF) typically award $100k-150k per anum grants.  So they could be scraping very low on their funding and have to cycle through people for that reason (e.g., can afford them for the summer, have to dump them in the fall due to tuition costs).  Funding has been particularly tough the last few years.

Secondly, if they are not sure if they can cover your tuition, but the other professor certainly will?  It's possibly time to jump ship to the other guy.  Currently, having just finished your masters and early in your PhD, this is the best time to do so.  If I were you, I would do the following:

Talk to the tenured professor to ensure this is a serious offer, backed by grant or internal money.  Inquire about how long currently awarded funds are likely to last.
If the situation sounds good, ask if it would cause any political problems to talk it over with your adviser.  Ideally, you want to do this (they are a reference), but not if it might sink the sure offer.
If it won't ruin the new opportunity, tell your current adviser the situation and ask the same questions (is there money, how long).
If they're comparable, choose the one that seems like a better fit for your interests and your academic security.
If it's lopsided, go for the funding security and find a way to work your research into what you are doing.  To be frank, I would avoid any PhD that you can't get funded for.  If there's not enough money in the area to train you, why would there be enough to hire you when you finish?

Finally, if your adviser takes it personally that you are exploring other opportunities when they can't assure you funding next semester?  Jump ship.  A boss who takes things personally is a bad boss.  I had a great programming intern last summer, who we would have loved to keep as an RA.  Unfortunately, a big chunk of funding was delayed due to Congress playing chicken.  A company affiliated with the university offered four years worth of tuition and stipend, guaranteed.  We do work he is more interested in and we could almost certainly cover him over that whole period.  But the key word is "almost."  I told him that I would not blame him at all if he took their offer (which he did).  I hope he's doing great over there.  If your adviser doesn't have that attitude, it's time to go.


Can someone get his previous credits counted in a new Master's programme in the EU?

They will decide what credits / courses they will be prepared to accept.
All you can do is show what you have covered so far, even including syllabi may help make a case but, remember they get to decide what is accepted.


Is it appropriate to promote my article to a professor related to the article's field?

Quite the opposite, I think. In mathematics, in the days before the Internet, people did this by mail. The mailed reprints of their published papers to their peers.

It is important to consider the time of people you interact with, especially busy people. Giving your professor a copy of the paper will take only very little time. He or she can then choose to read it or not and it would be polite to accept also the case that he/she does not read it.

In this sense, asking about feedback would be a completely different ballpark already, because that would imply asking him/her to read it.


How is a MSc thesis evaluated in an application to a PhD program?

Given the fact that is extremely rare to have a decent publication out of a Master thesis in pure maths, the content and quality of your thesis will be reflected on the recommendation letters.

This, together with your grades and other activities you may have would be the ticket to your admission.

Note that nobody will read your thesis. For the admission committee should be enough if it is apparent from the letters that you did a decent work in your thesis. Your application should show that you have potential of doing research but nobody has the time (or the will) to go through a thesis document.


How to politely take back a request to be on an exam committee?

Be straightforward but tactful about your situation. You have a limited number of spaces on your committee and they are now filled, despite some initial confusion. This is just one of the challenges of assembling a committee and ensuring they're all in one place when they need to be. This additional professor will likely be understanding about that difficulty and will likely appreciate you letting them know about this change well in advance of any necessary committee meetings.


In APA style, what is the appropriate way to differentiate between two organization divisions that both have the word "and" in their names?

If following APA style you should not use quotation marks or italics for names of organisations.

You could use an in-line list to make it clear.

To apply this to your example:

  There are two major divisions: (a)  Information Technology and Technical Services and (b) Academic Outreach and Services.


Collaborator published paper on ArXiv without my name

[…] he claims that the idea belongs to him and he also has copyright for it as he already has published a pre-print for it.

Publishing content does not give you copyright for it; creating content does¹. There are exceptions if you sign over your copyright, but that would involve an actual contract, which I assume not to be the case here.

If you wrote parts of the paper or generated figures, publishing the paper without your name and consent is a copyright infringement. Hence, if you have proof of this, you have a legal case against your “friend”.

Moreover, publishing this paper as a sole author and thus denying you authorship constitutes a severe academic misconduct, which may very well end your “friend”’s academic career if you can convincingly prove it.

  Any suggestion will be very helpful on how to tackle this problem.

Collect and secure all evidence that you contributed to the project, in particular any statement from your “friend” that implies this. Get a time stamp for the full paper as soon as possible.

Assuming that you do not want to or gave up to save your relationship, take the issue to a relevant authority, e.g., your advisor, your “friend”’s advisor, your university’s legal department, the ethics board, or similar. The best choice here depends on the detailed situation and relationships. For example, if you are both students under different supervisors who are friendly with each other, I would take it to your supervisor first.

You might also be able to take the issue to the ArXiv. I am not sure about their protocol for such cases and whether they have any, but I do not expect that they will just leave the paper as it is if you can convince them that you are a worthy co-author.

  Does a preprint of the paper (contains the idea and some results,not the complete one) in his name, gives him an advantage if we both try to publish it?

If you fail to convince others of your authorship claims, yes.

¹ In any reasonable legislation and in particular every legislation that complies with international copyright conventions.


My advisor wants to co-author a paper on my thesis work, but drags out the submission, claiming it isn't ready. Should I submit without him?

The first things that jump out at me from this question are these:

Why do you think that your advisor is dragging his feet?
Why do you think your advisor is incorrect about your paper not being clear?
What is the time schedule on which you expect to publish?

Now, this may in fact be the case, but in my experience, in most cases even graduating Ph.D. students are not very good at writing effective scientific papers.  Your writing here does not argue you are particularly different: I am not speaking of grammar (which is relatively minor), but the fact that you have made strong assertions without presenting supporting information or giving key pieces of contextual information.

I would thus guess, a priori, that your paper is indeed unclear and not yet ready for submission.  Moreover, I would guess that your frustration is coming not from your advisor "dragging feet," but from you feeling unclear on what steps you need to take in order to edit your paper into a state that he finds satisfactory.

That is what I think you need to address in your plan to move forward.  Focus on one piece of the paper at a time, e.g., start with the abstract and ask for specific and concrete feedback on how it is problematic and how to improve it.  If you can meet regularly with your advisor and start learning the pattern of what is missing and what you need to do to improve it, then you can likely get the paper into a submittable state in a reasonable time.


What qualifications are required to teach undergrads at college level in the United States?

I am not aware of any officially required qualifications for teaching higher education. While often universities "require" supervisors, committee members, and examiners of PhD students to have a PhD, these can often be waived if the person in question holds another comparable degree (e.g., ScD or MFA) or has sufficient experience.

From a practical standpoint, to be competitive for a full time teaching positions in the US, you will likely need a PhD, or the equivalent terminal degree in your field. Individuals without a terminal degree and lots of work experience can sometimes teach individual classes in their area of speciality. Even at community colleges, a PhD is a desirable qualification that improves your chances of getting a job.


recommendation letter from professor who doesn't know me very well

I think you have a couple of good options for the second recommendation letter:

Ask the statistics professor to write the recommendation letter. Struggling in the beginning, but overcoming the difficulties can be a good point in his recommendation letter if he perceived that situation the same way. If you ask him over the e-mail, please, give him enough information to connect yourself with a student he had. You don't want to write his recommendation letter, but want to give/remind him of certain facts (term, grade, progress, course contents, what you learned). Meeting in person will be probably even better, but be prepared to introduce yourself with some story and keep a piece of paper with the factual information you wish he uses in the recommendation letter. The professor will either decline (if he doesn't feel comfortable) or will become one of your references.
Ask the lab instructor. And follow the same procedure. The recommendation letter from him might feature your hands-on skills and ability to analyze the experiments, which is also valuable.
Find somebody outside of academic circles. It would be nice if you worked and volunteered somewhere and your manager is able to recommend you based on some other set of skills.

Again, none of those are ideal references, but usually, for a Master's program, people don't have reference letters that are from perfect sources. And your potential ones are certainly not bad at all. Especially, if they decide to write a good recommendation letter.


How to ask for advice regarding a position?

I would keep it simple. Typically at this stage I have asked questions like “Are there sub fields that the department is particularly interested in hiring for?” “What courses are you hoping this position would cover?” Or the fallback/generic options “Is there anything beyond what is in the job description that I need to keep in mind when applying?” And “What aspects of my CV do you recommend I stress in my application?”

The goal is to use the conversation to introduce yourself and to tailor your application.


What do I do if somebody asks me to join his accusation of my colleague of academic misconduct?

Delete the email (or move it to one of your folders where you keep old ones).

From what you describe, you have no business joining the complaint since you have no complaint again colleague A. It is, in other words, not something that actually affects you: someone has beef with colleague A, and that is their business, nor yours. Worse, if you did get involved -- even if just by writing back to B --, there is nothing for you to gain, just collegiality to lose. It's neither worth your time nor your reputation to act any further than reading, then ignoring the email.

If anyone ever asks you whether you got the email, just tersely say "Yes, I got it; it was none of my business, so I ignored it."


Why do universities have a reappointment process before tenure?

It is not totally pro-forma; I do know of examples where the contract was not renewed, though it certainly does happen less often than a tenure denial.  I think the standard is basically "is it reasonable to hope this person gets tenure?"

I think the purpose is to try to get people ready for their tenure review by having a look at their case early, and trying point out where they are doing OK and where they could do better.  If nothing else, it focuses the minds of people in the department who might have let things slide otherwise.  It seems pretty logical to me.


How to submit code (visual studio projects, C#, OpenCL) with my IEEE paper submission

I ended up using code ocean

I can run my program in a docker container so others can see my results and reproduce them. It also allows me to choose between sharing publicly and with specific people.


May I use my former-yet-active email address of an institute as a contact channel in my current CV?

I can see no legal or ethical problem with using an email address from a former institution, as long as you are clear about your current affiliations in your communications.
That said, there may be better options:

Professional societies often offer an option of an email address. As a roboticist, for example, you can almost certainly affiliate with the IEEE, whose excellent email service I use myself.
One of your former institutions may offer an alumni email address (or at least forwarding service). I believe this is more common in the US than Europe, but it's fairly arbitrary which institutions do and do not offer this.

Both of these can typically be set up very quickly and also have the advantage of being permanent, even when you change institutions.


Etiquette for returning to do research as grad student in same field as undergrad lab in same institution

Absolutely not rude or inappropriate, I'm a bit puzzled where you got the suggestion that it might be. There is also nothing wrong with going to a different group. You can certainly let your previous advisor know, and they would be a good reference for you who can speak about your research ability to other professors you are interested in working with, but you don't have any obligation to that professor to only ever work for them.

However, is it normal for people in medical school in your area to take a year off to do research? That part seems a bit more of a potential issue to me. Certainly there are joint research/medical programs (e.g. an MD/PhD in the US), but they typically involve much more than 1 year of research. If this is not a problem where you are, though, then there is nothing wrong with going back to a lab you have positive experience with.

One other thing to consider is whether you could gain some additional breadth of experience in another lab, but this is more about your future goals rather than an issue of what is "appropriate."


Can master's thesis be simply a description of an original algorithm?

Write a chapter of your thesis in the shape of a review paper, which is good enough to submit for publication. Submit it. Write another chapter which builds on the review and uses that as an argument for the derivation of a new algorithm. Present the algorithm. In the discussion, highlight the steps needed to implement the algorithm and point out the problems encountered when you tried implementing it yourself. That's a MSc for me.


After contacting a potential supervisor, is it ok to ask if my application is competitive?

You can ask us but this is a very difficult question to answer for faculty members.

On the one hand, we don't want to say "yes" and make you feel as though you've been guaranteed a spot when we have no idea of how competitive the pool is this year (see multiple questions/rants on academia.se that reflect just this kind of misinterpretation) --  nor do we want to say "no" and shut you down prematurely.

So you end up with a qualified "maybe" which doesn't help you (the student) much.


Prof. never responded to email about LoR

Some people answer emails the next day, some after a few days, and some forget about all emails that they do not answer immediately.

As a rule of thumb: I would write a gentle reminder after about two weeks. If he still does not answer, I would try to meet him in person. If you yourself are under time pressure to get the LoR, then you might need to react sooner.


Having a low tier publication as an undergraduate student?

Let me answer the important parts of your question:

  Is a good thing for an undergraduate student to publish in a low-tier conference as first author ? Or should the student avoid from such places and only publish in at least reputable places ?

Yes, especially if the venue is peer-reviewed.

As the answers to this question suggest, graduate schools look for evidence of research potential. The undergraduate research experience is about developing some basic skills and demonstrating that you are capable of handling a research project. Publishing at a third-tier conference, so long as there is some level of peer review, is better than no publications. Would publishing at a higher tier conference be better? Sure, but it might not be worth the effort or the risk of rejection. Publishing at a third-tier conference would look better than being rejected from a first-tier conference. Being first author on a paper at a lower tier conference should hold more weight than being a middle author on a paper at a higher-ranked conference.

Your research adviser probably has some wisdom about the level of conference at which your work should be presented. Choosing a lower tier conference is not about making your work seem less important. The choice might be about guaranteeing you get the change to present it at all.

  If it is a good thing, how should the student present his study in graduate admissions process to admissions members, since the conference name is mostly unknown to much of them?

Present your work and conference presentation the same way you would present any other similar experiences. If you have to provide a personal statement as part of your application, write about the experience and how it benefited you. If they ask for a list of relevant accomplishments, include this presentation in that list. Put it in on your resumé. Ask your research adviser for a letter of recommendation.

Do not use any negative language or derogatory language when describing your experience. For example, don't mention that the conference is lower tier or that you thought you could have presented at a better one. If the admissions committee knows about the conference, then they already know about its ranking. If they do not, then you should not be the one to give any hint that you think your experience might have been sub-par.


A specific term was first coined in a preprint but publication took many years. What to cite?

I would try this:

  Miller et al. (2000, p. 13) coined the term "underwater spaghetti knitting" (see also  Miller at al. 2005, p. 8).

Or this:

  This phenomenon became known as "underwater spaghetti knitting" (Miller et al. 2000, p. 13; Miller at al. 2005, p. 8).

Here, Miller et al. 2000 is the preprint and Miller et al. 2005 the final publication.


Documentation I don't have, but anecdotes, sure.

Actually, I'd be surprised if what you describe as "backward learning" isn't pretty ubiquitous in mathematics for new researchers, say doctoral students. Another name for it might be "just in time" learning, or "just enough".

Suppose a doctoral student is trying to get going on some problem suggested by an advisor. The advisor gives the students a paper or three that might be promising for extension. Those papers might have been authored by the advisor.

But the advisor had a certain history of learning and a certain base of understanding when the papers were written that the student is very unlikely to match. Even though they have taken advanced courses in the general area, this is different and very specific. So, to understand that paper(s), the student looks, also, at the papers referenced there, or even just their abstracts. If that is enough to provide a base, then fine, but one level is not always sufficient. I'd suggest several levels is usually required. My own doctoral research required me to work through a forty year development of the topic, just to be able to state a problem.

Forty years might not be much in a sub-field that isn't very active, of course. But the student needs enough of that backward look until most of the things stated in the papers are actually captured in the typical course. Or, if not captured, derivable from them in a straightforward manner.

However, once you become thoroughly familiar with some highly specialized topic, you have gained a lot of knowledge that isn't in text books and probably isn't worth putting in text books due to its specialized nature (and appeal). So, such a person can continue to move forward without so much backing up as was first required.

And math papers are written for other math experts, not for school kids. The jumps between steps can be quite large. So, a working mathematician will fairly often ask "where did that come from" while reading a paper. They may just assume the jump is valid, but if not, then it requires a deeper look and perhaps going backward to specialized sources (i.e. the referenced papers).

So, pretty common in math, I think. With no basis for saying so, I'd guess it is similar in other technical fields as well. The basics that you find in text books can be pretty far from the research frontier in math and maybe other fields as well.


Postdoc: established project vs your own

Your second option many not even have a "supervisor" as such. It might just be an opportunity for an aspiring academic to work with a small research group on questions of mutual interest. This might be especially true in mathematics, for example. It is a way to get some experience, possibly even including teaching a bit.
I've been in a department where a post doc was hired specifically to work with a junior faculty member to boost their mutual CVs and experience.
Another situation involved a person who had an interesting (to some of the other faculty) research program so they hired him to work with the others, bringing new ideas into a research group. It was mutually beneficial as was my other example. In this case the long term intention was to offer the postdoc a permanent position later if possible.
There are hardly any disadvantages as long as the postdoc works well with others as a colleague and both gives and accepts help.


How to cite the terminology that has different meanings in different contexts but with the same name?

I'd suggest:

Introducing attention maps;
Discussing the specifics of sub-classes gaze maps and importance maps,
without reference to their names; and
Mention that subclasses are known as attention maps by <> [X] and gaze maps  [Y].

Depending on whether gaze maps and importance maps are the same sub-class, distinct sub-classes, or intersecting sub-classes determines some of the specifics of how I'd handle the final point. As written, I've assumed they are the same-sub-class.


best practices for organizing digital and physical articles

I have them organized similarly to the blog post you linked. I'm not sure it is the optimal way, but it works quite well.

The central search key for me is (First)AuthorYEAR. By now I know my way around in my field so that the author names are meaningful. And easier to remember exactly than title abbreviations.
I try to have almost all papers also digitally, and organize them with jabref. I started using jabref before Mendeley, Zotero & Co came up and didn't change.
jabref allows to assign the papers to topics/groups, which can be hierarchically organized, but a paper can also belong to several of them.
This is important for me, because one paper may be about an application (e.g. tumor diagnostics -> group with tumour or cell type), use specific measurement technique (group that), and maybe use or invent an interesting data analysis technique (group there).
Jabref stores its information in a .bib file (with a few non-standard fields and some more info in comments at the end). But essentially I can work with this file as with any other .bib file.
.bib and digital versions are in a git repo which basically solved the mess of having lots of copies that go out of sync while I'm still able to work completely offline. As .bib is a text format, version control works fine with that. Papers usually do not change, so it doesn't really matter for the version control that they are binary data.
When looking for a paper, I usually search for it in jabref, and then look whether I do have a printed copy (I'm too lazy to keep track of printed status).
physical copies I keep in two drawers with a suspension filing system. One has collections of important papers on topics I'm interested in. The other keeps other physical copies alphabetically by author name (one folder for each letter so far, some will be split soon).
I tried before with normal lever arch files, but was too lazy to put papers away into their proper place.
For a while I had the luxury of working with dual monitors. During that time I printed considerably less papers. Now I have to work with only a single (and not too big) monitor again, and again print most papers.


Is this plagiarism? Can I publish my work

There are a number of other questions on this site relating to these issues, although I'm not going to search for them now.

There are different issues going on here:

Firstly, you want to publish the bit of research you have done so far, but the PI thinks it should instead be turned into something more substantial before publishing. In this he is almost certainly right. It is not considered good practice to slice work into small pieces to get more papers.

You are considering publishing work with someone else against their wishes. Don't. Especially if you want to stay within the research community.

I take it you are concerned about having material for your PhD. Unless you are somewhere where publishing is a requirement for graduating, this is actually irrelevant. A PhD thesis should contain what you have done, and the normal progression of research is considered when assessing it.

You want to work remotely. I am confused as to who your PhD supervisor is. If he is your supervisor then you should expect to see him in person. If you are doing a PhD elsewhere, then how do you expect to have time to work on this project while also working full-time on your PhD topic?

Note also that writing a faster algorithm does not in itself really constitute new research in maths. Is there a particular theoretical change that made it faster? Or is it just that you coded a bit better? Does it actually make a difference in practical computational time, such that it allowed you to test some new examples that gave you the key insight for a theorem (or at least conjecture, or counter-example)?

The professor has said your name won't go on the final paper if you do no further work. It's possible that the professor is being unreasonable, and you can look up other questions along those lines. But the more likely situation is that your name won't go on the paper because what you have done doesn't count for authorship. Generally in mathematics the authors are only those who have contributed to what appears in the paper. It sounds unlikely that that would be true of the work you have done.

An unconventional solution, but one that would perhaps be more to your liking, might be to agree to release your write-up of your algorithm alongside the final paper, either as an appendix or as a separate paper. It probably won't do that much for you career-wise, but it might make you feel better and preserve your relationship with the professor. Also, by the time that happens you may be in a better position to admit that he's right. I know for myself it's hard to admit that your work isn't really that valuable, because it matters a lot to you. Over time you will become a little less emotionally involved.

Also, remember that this is someone you will want a reference from, if you are to stay in academia.


Publication fee will not be paid at deadline – what will happen and how should I proceed?

Definitely contact the publisher about this. This is a publisher-level question, and likely not something the editorial board will be able to handle.

The good news is that the publisher is almost as interested as you are in getting the paper published. They (or the editorial board) have already put in the effort to get it peer reviewed, and from your description, they've likely also put in the effort to copyedit/typeset/get a DOI/etc. They have little to gain by not publishing the paper, and while putting a paper online for free is not ideal, there's something to be said for building goodwill as well.

I suspect the most likely result is that they'll hold off on Open Access. In other words, your paper will be available to subscribers only. If this isn't possible (the journal is open access only), they might delay publication until the payment is received. If the payment is never going to come, they might publish anyway but hold on to the copyright (free access, not open access), or provide a heavy discount or even just give free OA. For example, if the editorial board tells the publisher your paper is really good, they might be more inclined to give free OA.


The French school of mathematics "has entered a demographical dip"

Here is some additional info compared to the other answer (which does not have a lot of detail).

Loïc's comment is mainly about fundamental (AKA pure) mathematics. The IMJ-PRG is a pure math research institute. There is a trend in French academia that funding is going more and more towards research that has immediate applications, with some level of disregard for fundamental research. This is the case in pretty much all fields of science (maybe with the exception of computer science). It goes without saying that the situation is dire in social science and the arts, apart from economics, management, and law. (I did not choose these at random, they are legally treated separately from the rest.)

The French ministry periodically releases some demographic information. Here is the latest one for faculty in Section 25, i.e. pure math. Even if you can't read French, the graphics speak for themselves. On the first page, the first graphic is about professors, the second about lecturers (maîtres de conférences), the third about the total. The brown line is pure math, the light blue line is "Group 5" (pure math + applied math + CS), the dark blue line is Science, the black line is the whole of French academia. The graphics are normalized at 100 in 1998. You can get graphics for other years and fields on this page.

To summarize: the number of faculty in pure math has decreased by 15% in France between 1998 and 2018. This is enormous. The number of students increases every year. Administrative tasks are always increasing. This puts an enormous amount of stress on the remaining faculty. (As a comparison, the number of faculty in applied math increased by 11.4%.)

The situation is also dire for new doctors: finding a permanent position is an ordeal, even more so than in similar countries. In the PDF I linked, Figure 3.2 on page 4 is especially telling: in 2018, there were 420 candidates for 22 lecturer positions, and 136 candidates for 14 professor positions. This does not include candidates who were rejected from the "qualification" (94.7% of candidates for professorships and 88.7% of candidates for lectureships are "qualified").

Note that this graphic also shows that there is not much shortage of talent. The number of candidates per position (column "Ratio B/A") decreased between 2014 and 2015, but it's increasing since 2015. The decrease in 2014–2015 was due to the fact that there was an exceptionally low number of available positions in 2014.

A remark, for intellectual honesty: not all French math researchers are faculty. Some are full-time researchers employed by the CNRS. Update: According to the CNRS's official statistics, the total number of researchers in Section 41 (pure maths + applied math, no, it's not the same section as the CNU) is 373: 210 junior and 163 senior. To compare, in 2018 there were 1321 faculty in pure math and 1776 in applied math. That's 3097 total, so CNRS researchers represent about 12%. I cannot say what the distribution between pure and applied is. "Common knowledge" tells me that it's around 10% for pure math.

PS: The ministry's website has a wealth of information. There are statistics about pretty much everything, as well as explanatory notes about the conjonctures. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the evolution of French academia. However, be careful about aggregates: data about a "Group" (e.g. pure+applied math + CS) may not tell you everything about a "Section" (e.g. pure math).


How to be sure services and researches offered by the University are not becoming cases of unfair competition?

I think your assumption that the university and private evaluators "offer the same service" is flawed. A private analysis will be delivered to a client and not to the general public. Being private, it may give some competitive advantage and so has monetary value. The university, on the other hand provides an information "service" to the general public so that all can benefit.

To "forbid" the university from doing some sort of research so that the possible results could be locked up for private rather than general benefit seems to be a pernicious idea.

And, the "service" of the university isn't actually free (as in beer). Resources go in to it that are paid in a variety of ways, sometimes from public monies since the public benefits. But the information it provides is free (as in speech).

But for your question about law, note that laws vary from place to place, and not all laws are wise.


What's the average retirement age in the universities in British (UK/Ireland/Australia/NZ) system?

To be a bit more specific:

ctokelly is correct to say that there is no mandatory requirement age, as this was indeed phased out, but from the UK Government website:

  [S]ome employers can set a compulsory retirement age if they can clearly justify it.

In practice, this seems to vary from university to university. Oxford, for example, do set a compulsory retirement age for their staff. From their website:

  Council has agreed to maintain a retirement age for university academic and academic-related staff[...] All existing members of academic and related staff who have a normal retirement date of 30 September immediately preceding the 66th birthday will be deemed, from 1 October 2011, to have a retirement date of 30 September preceding the 68th birthday, which shall be the EJRA.

Cambridge have a similar policy: see here and here.

Others, such as the University of London and York, seem not to.

In the other direction, UCL suggest that their employees may need to work until 65 to access their full pension. From their website:

  Effective from 1 October 2011, there is no compulsory retirement age at UCL. Staff may voluntarily retire at a time of their choice, subject to providing appropriate notice. Many staff may continue to retire at their pension age (currently 65 years) because this is when they can access their full pension benefits although they have the choice to work beyond this age. Staff may be able to flexibly retire or retire before 65 years (normally accessing reduced pension benefits) depending on their pension scheme rules. (emphasis mine)

The answer seems to be, then, that it depends on the individual university. Oxford and Cambridge do seem to be in the minority in enforcing a mandatory retirement age; most universities stress in their policies that the age of retirement is a choice.

As to when academics actually do retire: I couldn't find any hard figures on this, although the general consensus for the UK across all job sectors is that people are choosing to work longer. I should imagine, however, that the default is still somewhere between the former mandatory age of 65, and the 67 or 68 set by Oxford and Cambridge.


I am interested in pursuing a Masters/PhD program in the US but I do not have a bachelor’s degree

Your experience is not in science, why would you have equivalence in any science related bachelor degree?

I am completely sure that your experience on religion/spirituality/self-help/alternative therapies/human interactions will not guarantee equivalence in psychology or neuroscience related degrees. The knowledge expected from a person holding one of these degrees is completely different.

However, instead of pursuing a PhD why not engage in a bachelor course? The bachelor will give to you many tools of which you will need to work in a PhD.


Final exams: What is the most common protocol for scheduling?

In the two major US state universities that I have either been a student or taught in, the process was roughly the same:

Final exam times were based on the first day of the week course time for the main course meeting, typically a 'lecture' section. Every course that started at 9am on a Monday had the same final exam time. Every course that started at 11am on a Tuesday had the same final exam time. All these decisions were made centrally.

The exam times were mostly unrelated to the actual course times, since the final exam slots were longer than the actual class meetings, but it ensured that no one had overlapping final times because no students would have two courses that met at the same time. The exception was courses that were specifically night courses, which also had night finals, with the assumption that some proportion of the students in those courses were not full-time students and may have had other daytime responsibilities.

I believe there were procedures to allow for simultaneous finals for courses with multiple sections, but I am less familiar with how those processes worked; I believe the centralized time was chosen and then arrangements were made for the small number of students for which there was a conflict.

There were also processes for students who ended up with >2 finals in the same day to make alternative arrangements, but again, these circumstances happened rarely, especially because not ever course actually utilized their final exam slot as anything but a due date for a paper/project/etc.


Effective open-ended student evaluation questions

Actually, based on my experience, it is better to ask the questions to the students at the end of the next semester.

During the semester, an average student usually concentrates on passing the course, rather than thinking about the outcomes of the course.
I think one realizes what the course gave him/her after about one semester.
And this is the time that they use their knowledge of your course to understand or pass another course.

Of course, the questions are highly dependent on what you want to improve.
However, it is always more clear what to improve when the students have a chance to use the course outcomes without any expectation of the grade.
If a student says "I wish you underlined the importance of Unit 6. Thus I could understand XX201 better", this is a good feedback, whereas
"This course is sooooo hard." is not.

As for the questions, this is what I ask to my students after one semester. Not like a questionnaire, but face-to-face:

Do you use what I've taught you for this semester?
Are there any redundant topics that I've covered?
How would you study if you were to take the course this semester?


What to do when the tools I am supposed to compare my work with are no longer maintained and functional?

I see a few ways on handling that:

write to the editor that the tools are unavailable and let him decide what to do with your paper.
add a passage in your comparison section stating that due to unavailability of those tools the comparison was not carried out.
ok, the authors don't reply. But if the reviewers want the comparison that probably means that at least someone is still using the tools in question. Maybe you can get in touch with some other laboratory that has the executables and run the necessary tests on-site there?


Independent researcher reaching out to academia for help

It is common practise to ask domain experts for help and, where appropriate, to offer co-authorship. As professors are busy, you might want to seek more junior researchers. (I'll refrain from explaining how to write an email, since you can find answers on this website.)


If you have severe problems with speaking, is it okay to use more text and equations on slides?

Slides with a lot of text or equations aiming to be self-explanatory tend to:

visually overwhelm the audience and don’t provide visual guidance – which is more relevant in talks than in written text as the audience needs to multitask to some extent, listening to the speaker and reading the slides at the same time;
contain more information than the audience can digest in the given time – regardless of what the speaker does;
have overly small text and graphics;
be read verbatim (which usually is a bad idea).

Mind the tend to: Neither are these issues inevitable, nor are they tied to the slides being self-explanatory. Rather, they are what often happens if an inexperienced speaker tries to make slides self-explanatory. In fact, I would consider most of my own slides self-explanatory and I am rather confident that my talks do not suffer from the above problems.

Hence I think your strategy to make your slides self-explanatory is fine – if you avoid the above problems. In detail, I recommend:

Avoid complete sentences, as they are bad for discontinuous reading such as usually done in talks.
Make sure that the main structure of each slide is easy to grasp.
Find a reasonable trade-off between not putting too much information on one slide and showing slides long enough.
If possible, use some test audience to ensure that your slides can be comprehended within the allotted time.
If a slide is complicated, build it up step by step in pieces that can be assessed by the audience within seconds.
Be careful not to overuse this feature, e.g., by uncovering a list item by item.
The audience likes to read ahead, in particular if you are rhetorically challenged.
Self-explanatory does not mean containing all the details.
In most cases, you barely have sufficient time to communicate your main message – only show what is essential to this message or at least make sure that sidenotes are visually distinct.
For example, if there is a standard way to choose the temperature at which you conduct your experiment, you usually don’t need to write this on your slide.
If you know that there are some people who cannot stop themselves from asking about this or it may be interesting for some members of the audience, give this information on the slides in a smaller font size or visually separate (and don’t talk about it).


Is sharing R code for a dissertation consider to be plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying someone else's result and presenting it as an own result. It doesn't seem you're planning to do that.

In general, there shouldn't be a problem to use a jointly developed software core for research in your and your friend's dissertation. Research is a lot about collaboration, so I'd view that rather positively. But it will be important that you distinguish results that were obtained jointly from individual results, and that you agree on that beforehand to avoid potentially difficult discussions down the road. Things to clarify would include:

In how much detail do your dissertations need to describe the jointly developed core, and how much overlap is acceptable there? That is something you need to discuss with your advisor as well. It may be problematic to include a substantial amount of jointly written text in the individual dissertations.
Is there potential for a joint paper that you publish independently of your theses to describe the core software? In your dissertations, you can then simply refer to that paper and avoid overlapping text there.
Can you agree on specific contributions that everybody made to the software, have each of you focus on that for his dissertation, and refer to the friend's dissertation for the other part?


Edit after some exchange in the comments below: I recommend that you contact the writer of the third letter and tell them that what you really need is them to send the letter directly when asked, and to pass on contact details now. This problem seems to be the result of a misunderstanding, and busy high profile researcher or not, if a misunderstanding is happening, it makes sense to clarify things. If you don't get a response, you can still use the letter you have.
Original answer:
Personally I wouldn't have worried about simply including the letter. What's wrong with that? It's a good letter, and if they don't believe it is genuine they can contact the writer. Where I work, such letters are not that important anyway. Personally I'm fine if a candidate is able to present two or three such letters by qualified people in which there is nothing worrying, and that's it. As most candidates fulfill that, these letters play no further role in decision making (frankly even unsuitable candidates can come up with glowing reference letters, so these are not that informative; even some high profile people write nice letters for everyone). Of course I can't guarantee it's like that everywhere.


Is using the same topic title as a book title plagiarizing?

There are no official policies on things not being allowed to have the same name.

It doesn't seem to be a legal problem: How many books are called Algebra? and how many songs are called I love you? How many companies have been called Smith and sons?)

It is not a technical problem since title is not the most relevant citation information

Is it an ethical problem? I don't think so.

Still, if the other book is well known, it can lead to confusion and people can think that you are a bit bizzare to reuse the title. I wouldn't do it.


Fine line between "figuring it out on my own" and "asking for help" in research labs?

Can you ask your colleague (or whoever wrote the code) a quick question to ascertain whether it's a simple error in the code, or some more complex hurdle that you need to work around?

Don't be afraid to ask for help! You'll be a lot more productive if you ask for help when you really are stuck, rather than waiting too long.

A more experienced mind can usually tell quite quickly whether it's an easy or difficult problem to solve. There's no use banging your head against a brick wall for days if your supervisor has a sledgehammer hidden in his cupboard!


Can I trivially change a definition still citing the main reference?

If you are using quotation marks, you have to maintain the sense of the original quote, even if you excise or reword elements for clarity in the context of your document.

In this case, it is clear that they are considering only computer systems, so it is not a trivial modification. I would thus say that your options are:

Use the narrower quote, then explain that you are extending beyond computer systems.
Find another quotation source that is more general
Don't use a quote at all in establishing your definition

Personally, I would go with the latter, since reconfiguration isn't a particularly obscure or specialized concept.


How did Milton Babitt teach math at Princeton and research math, without an undergraduate degree in math?

The first part of the answer is that in the 1940s, requirements for hiring at American universities were clearly different than they are now. American universities at the time had not developed the world-leading position they have now, and hiring decisions may have had something to do with it -- though it also goes the other way around: If you're not at the level of Harvard today, you need not shoot so high in your hiring; you may also not be able to attract the same level of talent.

Secondly, the early 1940s were particularly difficult, with a large number of talented people needed elsewhere in the nation and not available to hire at universities. In addition, many others needed to get an education and so the demand for teachers was particularly high -- formal qualifications be damned.

Thirdly, in reality, universities have always (and continue) hired people who are qualified, but degrees do not equal qualification. It is generally true that qualified math professor applicants will have a PhD today, but that is not universally true and universities can and do hire people who don't have one if a candidate has demonstrated exceptional qualification in other ways. Babbitt may have been able to show that he knows what he was talking about in ways that convinced those who hired him that insisting on some kind of degree or title was pointless.


Are NSF RUI proposals evaluated separately or are they evaluated against the general pool for that program/division/directorate?

At least in mathematics (and presumably in other fields, although I have no direct experience with that), they are evaluated in the same pool as all the other proposals.  In practice, there seem to be two key differences in how they are treated:

Panel members can be a little more forgiving for certain aspects of RUI proposals.  For example, if the PI publishes excellent papers but not very many of them, then this low publication rate would probably be considered a bigger drawback in a non-RUI proposal.
The NSF may give some degree of preference to a few RUI proposals, as described below.

The review panel classifies proposals into three categories: roughly 10% that are highly recommended for funding, 30-40% that are recommended for funding, and 50-60% that are not.  The available funding is never sufficient to cover all the proposals recommended for funding, so further decisions need to be made after the panel.

The ones not recommended for funding are automatically eliminated, and the ones highly recommended for funding are more or less guaranteed to be funded.  The ones in the middle are ranked in order by the panel, but the NSF is not required to follow this ranking.  They largely follow it, but they adjust it based on their own criteria (for example, balance of fields, geographical diversity, etc.).  My understanding is that if no RUI proposal in a given panel would otherwise be funded, then the highest-ranked RUI proposal may be bumped up in the rankings.  However, this is not guaranteed, and it depends on having a high enough ranking from the panel.  The program officers may also compare how panels in different areas ranked their RUI proposals, to see which ones seem most worthy of funding.  However, there is no RUI-only panel.


The editor has not rejected because (s)he believes that the shortcomings in your paper can be tackled by you. If this entails performing experiments, then further acceptance will be conditional upon that.

Whether or not you should do these experiments is a different issue and requires knowledge of the case- perhaps you can write a good rebuttal and justify why these added experiments are unnecessary. In general I would recommend against this, but you and your co-authors must make this call based on the issues raised.

Don't think that the editor will necessarily override the reviewers. You need to satisfy the reviewers, either through corrections, rebuttal or a combination of both. Once reviewers are satisfied, editor will be more inclined to accept.


University does not explicitly request either a motivational letter or recommendation letters

Finnish students are typically granted a permission to study the Bachelor's and Master's degrees both with a single application after completing upper secondary school. Therefore, there is practically no culture of writing recommendation letters before the PhD level, and even then it is kind of a rare thing.
The situation is only slightly different for foreign students, since the universities want to make sure they are recruiting good students, given that there are no tuition or other fees except the compulsory 100€ per year for almost all-inclusive dental and other health care.
In the specific page you link to, it is stated that

Admission will be based on the grade, applicability of the previous degree, the motivation letter, and the possible preliminary assignment which is used to assess the applicability of the applicant’s previous competence.
The applicant must enclose with his or her application a copy of the diploma, an official transcript of completed studies and a motivation letter describing the applicant’s personal goals and reasons for applying.

Therefore, it would appear on a first look that no recommendation letters are sought, which is what I would expect.
The comments asked for additional clarification. For example, the Faculty of Social Sciences of University Helsinki writes

Please, submit only documents required. Any additional documents like articles written by an applicant, recommendation letters etc. will not be included for evaluation of an application. If a research plan (including references) is longer than 5 pages, the extra pages will be cut out.

in their PhD application guidelines. In most cases, the system here is just very different.
Anyway: better safe than sorry. Ask them what to do.


How is auditing a course viewed by professors teaching the course?

It is fine.  If it makes you feel better though you could clarify that the reason you're not taking it isn't just worry about the class.  I have used the line in an email before "I have an amateur interest in learning the material" which I think deflects any concern about why you're not committing to doing the course 'properly'. When I said it, it was true, and even if you think it might be a field you wish to participate in later, technically you're currently just dipping your toe in the water right?  So perhaps the same line would work for you.


What are the criteria for effective academic journal websites?

I would also not worry about search functionality (as you probably can't beat other engines in the long run), but I one more point:

Besides making the access to the pdf easy you should also

make access to a correct and complete bibtex entry easy.


What is considered as unethical omission of information on an application

No.  You did not attend and it should not be listed.


Is there any way to pick a right direction in research while solving a problem?

Short version: no.

Long version: absolutely no. Having experience in the field helps (and experienced people are those that have already taken lots of wrong directions in their life), but ultimately encountering road blocks is a part of research. It happens all the time. You take lots of wrong directions, you waste time.

What you read in the papers is the road that works and gives the best and shortest solution to the problem, but the people who wrote them typically have also tried several approaches that didn't work, or were a lot more cumbersome.

If it is already clear from the beginning what will work, it's not research anymore, it's just an exercise. :)


Schedule a time to talk in advance.  Email him again, mention how he came to be identified as your mentor (as a reminder, in case he forgot), and ask if you could get lunch with him or meet whenever is convenient during the conference.  In my experience, many researchers have packed schedules during conferences and may not have the time to speak with you when you find him.