Is it ok to ask a potential PhD advisor for more information about their future grants?

I think you can certainly ask (nicely) for some more details about her ideas and the research she proposed as part of the grant. Especially so if this is going to be something you end up working on, or close to your own projects. You are, after all, possibly going to work for her! I don't think she will think anything else than you having interest in her research, which is quite positive.

However, don't ask for the grant proposal (i.e. the written text) itself, as it could be seen as assuming. Ask the questions you have, and let her decide if she wants to reply or simply give you the document to read.


How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously?

It is quite likely that there is an overlap in who gets asked to referee the two submissions, which would lead to the double submission being detected.
Double submission of papers is sufficient ground for retraction - even after the paper has been accepted for publication. As some journals publish submission dates with published papers, it is conceivable that your double submission is uncovered after publication - and that you end up with a retraction, ie no published paper.
Academic misconduct (and double submission is such) typically is sufficient for dismissal from a PhD program.


Can professors have romantic relationships with post-docs?

Policy on this may vary from institution to institution, so those would need to be specifically consulted.

However, the whole "when is a romantic relationship taboo?" question hinges most importantly on one thing: does one of the individuals involved exercise some sort of power over the other. It would be odd for a professor to have a relationship with one of his or her own postdocs, where the postdoc will likely need a letter of recommendation or decision on financial promotion from their now-conflicted lover. I think, generally, there is usually not a policy against this but might be frowned upon.

This is why it isn't a good idea for a president to sleep with a white house intern, or a teacher to have a relationship with one of their current students. Even if it were technically legal, and no bias was ever realized, the potential for bias and conflict is too strong.

A professor in one department and a postdoc in another department should present no problem though, if there is no potential employment/financial promotion conflict, e.g. English Dept. vs Physics Dept.

Another question to consider is whether the relationship precedes both individuals being a member of the institution. For example one member of a married couple gets a job at the institution and the other enrolls in school there. But even in this situation, I can see potential for conflict if they are in the same (or closely related) departments.

As long as everyone is open, honest, consenting adults, and clearly discusses potential conflicts with the appropriate personnel then there may be no issue though. Trying to keep it secret, especially if there is potential for a conflict of interest is probably not a good idea.


Tests: at the beginning or the end of class?

For all the reasons you give, the first hour is much better. Just make sure that they are told beforehand (previous day) there won't be an adjustment made for late comers. They will likely be coming to class "psyched" for the exam. The intervening lecture will get in the way of that. The material discussed might even, being the most recent, be what sticks in their heads during the exam, rather than the material tested. They will also be more likely to ignore or forget the material in the lecture. But you say something similar yourself.

But why do you have to give a one hour test every three weeks. Is that a rule imposed on you? Suppose you start each class with a 15 minute quiz that covers recent material (not just the previous day). Would that be acceptable? It makes each exam less consequential overall and gives you better up to date information about what they have learned. If you end the previous session with a five minute review, perhaps led by the students themselves, on what are the "big ideas" today, and then base the quiz on those ideas (primarily), you may turn out to be more effective.


Are author names typically visible to reviewers for paper award decisions?

In my experience with computer science conferences, I have encountered two general classes of award processes:

Reviewers nominate for an award, and then the organizers consider and choose between the nominees.
After reviews have been submitted, the organizers consider the top N papers by rating and choose between them.

Sometimes the decision is made entirely from the paper and reviews, while in other cases presentation at the conference is taken into account as well.  In all of these cases, however, notice that it is the organizers and not the reviewers who actually decide the award, and the authors are generally not blinded to the organizers.  If the first procedure is followed and the conference happens to be double-blind, then nominations will be made blind, but the decision is still typically made with knowledge of the authors.


Lack of a unit never implies that a clear label isn't necessary.  How can time not have an appropriate, non misleading label?  How about "Index" or "sample number"?  Just because it doesn't have a unit doesn't mean that you can't come up with an appropriate label?  Even "Normalized Amplitude" or something.  If the lack of a  unit isn't immediately apparent, sometimes "unitless" where you would normally include a unit will clear things up.

Lastly, look toward your literature.  If you can't find an example close to what you're doing, you may be reading the wrong literature, or not reading enough of the right literature.  Having to ask about something like this is somewhat of a red flag on your due diligence.


Are university professors allowed to use any computer they want for work?

University purchasing systems are very complicated and they are all different.  It is common for universities to make a contract with a supplier stating that they will use that supplier exclusively in exchange for a discount.  Often there will be loopholes.
Your supervisor can certainly refuse to purchase certain brands with funds the supervisor controls.
If you have a grant, you will be required to follow the university's purchasing policies.
Traditionally, most universities allow faculty and students to do their work using personal computers of any type.  However, this could be limited for confidential information.  There are laws limiting the use of educational and medical information which vary from place to place, and there are also policies.


They want to meet you face-to-face. This is always a good sign - it means they're seriously considering your candidacy. It doesn't mean they're offering you a position, but it does mean you're one of at most a handful of candidates they have.

If you aren't busy with something else during that period, you should probably go. You get to meet them face-to-face too. You get to see the atmosphere in their department firsthand. You get to experience the city, a sense of how expensive it will be to live there, check out potential places to stay, and so on. If they're covering travel & accommodation you won't even have to pay much to go. Worst case scenario, you could treat it as a holiday in Sweden.


How to list a series of related experiences in CV

The issue is that the items (a, b, c...) become too many (8 in my case). Or maybe I need to split them base on milestones (based on preprints and thesis results).

Perhaps have a single list entry per publication. (Each list entry can highlight several points.)

  I have taken two projects-based courses, where the professors talk about details about each particular algorithm and we need to do projects which use the algorithms. The same question re-emerges, do I split these [two projects-based courses] project by project or maybe organize under one common entry? If the latter is preferred, what should be the entry called, maybe something like "xxx Project Series"?

You could list all the courses you've taken. (Under the title 201X-201Y, Degree classification, subject, university, country, for instance.) You only need to discuss those with particular relevance, e.g., related to your PhD field. It seems unlikely that you'd need to discuss particular algorithms, unless they are in the field of your PhD and you are interested in pursuing them further.


Using Paper under review as a Scientific Report in PhD application

So long as this is for an internal evaluation process that doesn't involve any form of "publication," it's hard to see how this could be a problem. You retain rights as the author of a paper, especially if it hasn't been published.

If you have concerns over whether it is allowed, you can always ask the conference organizers if it's acceptable. On the other hand, if you are concerned whether the department you are submitting to will accept it, ask the department.


Advantages to article submission in LaTeX from the publisher's side

If a publisher accepts LaTeX manuscripts they likely use LaTeX also for the final type-setting. I am sure there are exceptions but could not point you to one.

The benefits, apart from obvious LaTeX benefits such as equations and built in standards for references, numbering of equations, figures and tables etc., lie in the way a manuscript can easily be taken from a manuscript form to a finished product.

Many journals have class files that allow you to move from manuscript to essentially "proof" mode by changing a switch in the document and "re-compiling" it. This also means that the journal can go to typesetting without moving file contents to a new format or another program (not many journals are type-set in Word).

In the case of journals that do not have class files for use by the author, moving a manuscript from a generic LaTeX format into a specified journal format is not necessarily difficult. There are probably many different approaches to this but from a LaTeX point of view all definitions of a document are there in the plain LaTeX file and it would be easy to apply a class that re-defines the plain format to something that will yield a finished layout.

With LaTeX focus is on writing the text, not formatting the manuscript. As Editor-in-Chief for a journal that uses both Word and LaTeX, I have spent many hours weeping over hopeless Word formatting  (including field codes that do not work) that is both unnecessary and complicating moving the document to the type-setter. LaTeX is a text file and so does not contain anything that cannot be easily spotted and changed if need be.

So, to be fair, one can mess up with LaTeX as well, and I want to point at an overarching rule which is to always strictly adhere to any instructions for authors provided by the journal and not to send in material that is of a format that differs from what is asked for.

So the benefits of LaTeX is that the move from manuscript form to finished layout is simplified and reduces the amount of manual work for the type-setter. But, in all type-setting there is always need for manual control so LaTeX is not 100% automatic, just closer to it.

About BibTeX referencing: Most journals and I would guess type-setters want the manuscript in as few parts as possible. therefore many provide a .bst for the reference style but ask that you run BibTeX to produce the .bbl file (containing all references properly formatted with \bibitem formatting) and then paste the content into the document to provide a complete and correctly formatted reference list inside the document file itself.


What is the typical flow chart for college mathematics courses?

This depends heavily on the student and his/her interests. You will need almost all of these courses, but it's a bit murky after linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and differential equations. Did you learn proofs in any of those courses? If not, then maybe a proofs course. This all depends on the department that you're in and how they arrange how they teach mathematical maturity and theory.

Since you asked for a flow chart, I can give you an example of one department's flow chart for their courses. Hopefully this can give you an idea: http://www.math.uga.edu/~curr/prereqs.html

What the numbers all mean can be found here: http://www.bulletin.uga.edu/CoursesHome.aspx?Prefix=MATH

Hopefully this gives an example of what one department's "flow chart" looks like. You can clearly see there's a lot of choices to take and a huge 'choose-your-own-adventure' part to it.


Should a list of typos go in thesis defense presentation

I wouldn't suggest a slide for what is probably just a minor matter.

However, you could print out a list of them, deliver them to the committee prior to the event and say they will be corrected in the final version.

It may even happen that one or more of your committee members will have read your dissertation (shocking, I know) and will provide you with a few more.

But for the talk, focus on the insights in the work, not such minor details. Most people attending talks want that, in any case. The details can be found in the paper.


Order of author names in a textbook that is to be published

First of all, I agree with @tonysdg that A and B don't sound like they deserve any form of authorship. The same may be true about U, V and W, but I feel less strongly about that. So Z can simply argue his/her case forcefully, and if necessary appeal to the department chair or other outside objective parties. The facts are on Z's side, so I expect he/she will win the argument, though possibly at the risk of alienating his/her colleagues.

Second of all, with regards to your comment that "The problem is, Z's last name is the last in alphabetical order and making A and B authors will push Z's name to the back of the author list", I don't see this as a problem at all. There is no rule that the list of author names on a book has to be in alphabetical order. So, it is perfectly acceptable and legitimate to list Z's name first, and indeed sounds like a very good idea (regardless of which other names end up being on the author list) considering that the project is overwhelmingly Z's intellectual offspring.

Third of all, one idea for an author byline that allows including minor authors but would still make clear the large disparity in contributions from the different authors is to use the "with contributions from" pattern, as in:

  The Great Book of Science

  By Z
  With contributions from U, V, W, [optionally:] A and B

See here for a real-life example.


Usage of a TV show transcript in my Thesis is under fair use exception?

The description of your activities that you have provided, using a 'script' from a popular TV show for research purposes in a machine learning algorithm is allowed within the 'fair use' description of copyright. It is my understanding that the following descriptions place the usage described within 'fair use':

  Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

Since you are using the script to train a machine algorithm, and not the video, audio, nor are you reproducing it for your audience, it seems to be well within fair use.

  Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Using a script to train a machine algorithm, it seems, would have virtually no effect on the 'potential market or value of copyrighted work'.

Highlighted portions from "More Information on Fair Use by Copyright.gov"

Another possible solution you could consider is to train your machine learning algorithm on a different humorous show whose copyright has expired and is therefore in the Public Domain. Here is a list of humorous televeision shows whose copyright has expired, including "The Beverly Hillbillies".


Only the last option applies.

Once you assign all rights to the IEEE (or anyone), then you no longer have the right to license the work yourself.

And the IEEE statements is pretty clear that they retain almost all rights. It doesn't mean that they might not give a more permissive license at some point, but you no longer have that ability.


What topics should one master if one wants to pursue a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university?

The simple answer is that if you're interested in a subject and expect to continue on to a master's or PhD (or even if you're not expecting to go for an advanced degree, you simply expect to pursue it as a career), you should take as many classes in that subject as you can.  Pick the best or most interesting to you from whatever is offered by your department to fill out your electives and do your best.


What are the most important actions after starting as a junior lecturer?

As commenters already point out, ultimately this is a question that only people within your department can answer. However:

  Some people suggest to apply to all grants possible, but I am tempted to get my backlog of papers submitted instead.

In general, and assuming you are in the sciences, the people that say that you should be focusing on grants are probably right. I kind of understand the temptation to write up all the things that you did not yet have time for due to needing to wrap up your dissertation, but this seems like short-term thinking to me. Sure, you will appear fabulously productive for some time, but then your backlog is empty and you have not acquired funding for new students nor started any other longer-running new initiatives.

As a faculty member, you will now need to start focusing more on the longer term, and sadly this often means that grants are more important than individual papers.


Etiquette question: is there such a thing as accepting an offer 'too early'?

Actually, it is simple courtesy to accept as soon as you know you will do so. This helps the institution deal with its obligations to you and others. It isn't a game you play for "advantage". You hope to develop a long term relationship with this institution. Treat them with respect and expect them to reciprocate.

Don't accept before you are ready, such as when other offers might come in, but don't delay for any perceived "strategic" reason.

Similarly, once you have accepted the offer, extend the other universities the courtesy of letting them know you will not be accepting theirs.


If anyone notices then you may be in trouble. You will have to deal with that if it occurs. Since you are "guessing" then it may not be clear that any actual rule, as opposed to an implicit expectation, was violated.

However, it would be helpful to your university for the future to clarify policies in writing. My suggestion would be that the policy make clear that all old exams are explicitly open for use and study. The opposite policy/assumption seems unrealistic in the extreme. Professors will need to deal with the fact that giving an exam is like "publishing" it and adapt future exams accordingly.

I note that a number of universities do, in fact, treat old exams as if their contents is available and well known. It makes the professor's job just a bit harder, but, again, the opposite assumption assumes they are a bit lazy in coming up with ways to determine the knowledge of their students.

There are also universities that would treat such things as a serious violation. Some of those, and I would hope all, ask the students to formally sign an Honor Code, listing what is allowed and what is not. Violations are serious, but there is clear notice at the beginning of the course of study.

If you want to short circuit any sanction, though what I suggest is a bit risky, I realize, you could bring up your actions to the faculty on your own and suggest that the policy be clarified if necessary. If the policy wasn't clear to you ("I'm guessing...") then it isn't clear to others. This disadvantages some students in a way that can easily be avoided.

But it also sounds like your university has a permissive policy about exams, from your statements about the library. If there were "violations" it would seem to me to be those of students who would remove materials so that they aren't available to others.

But you will need to asses the risk of coming forward unbidden.


When should service providers (core or external) expect authorship?

In materials science, there are many companies that will provide a service for payment. Examples include places such as the Evans Analytical group (once Charles Evans) for materials analysis of many types. You send them a sample, they send you results from generally standard analytical techniques. It is a purely transactional relationship - they get paid, you get the data. You generally would indicate in a paper that the analysis was performed by them, but they do not get authorship. The same goes for various other things, like ion implant houses - you send a sample, they implant with the ion species and dose. You are getting a standard service performed, not intellectual effort.

There are other situations where you need to interact with the external entity to develop a new technique, or new twist on the technique. This is no longer purely transactional, and may result in authorship. Clearly the reverse can also happen - if you are a beta site for a new instrument and are working closely with the company to test it and expand the capabilities, you would get on any papers written by the company as well.

My analysis: if you and anybody else can walk up and pay for the service, they are not co-authors. If you have a joint project, with dollars and intellectual effort from both sides, they are. And then there is a broad grey middle ground...


How should one deal with fellow students constantly asking for notes?

Giving course notes is probably ok, if you are happy to provide them as a one-off.

If becomes a regular occurrence and the person has no very good reason to not take their own notes (disability or serious family constraints), I think it is perfectly reasonable not to be "their mule". Once is fine, twice is perhaps ok, three times is being exploited. You are not being rude by saying no. It is simply unfair to you for them to exploit you. Don't let them define what is acceptable middle ground, they clearly push the limits to their own advantage.

However, in my time some students produced LaTeXed versions of course notes for everybody to use. If that's what you want to do, it's your perfectly acceptable choice (but it would be a good idea to check with the lecturer - in my time, our lecturers were enthusiastically in favour of a student-typeset version of their lecture which could even serve as a basis of a book; these days, copyright issues may make some lecturers wary of agreeing to that, so - ask!).

Giving out homework is a strict no-no - it's an assessment offence (collusion), and plus, you do not really help them this way to learn.

Addendum: since you are worried that they blame you for later failure, if you give them out make a clear disclaimer that the notes are incomplete and inaccurate and you take no responsibility for their content.


If the lecture room is usually full, is it appropriate for a TA to compete with the seat of students?

Ask the professor

The professor should be the one to make this decision, weighing the potential positive and negative impacts on the students.

As a TA, you should in any case ask the professor before planning to attend lectures, whether the course is full or not, and you should particularly ask whether it is okay for you to ask questions.  In some classes, the professor might think having a TA present would be distracting, and may or may not share your view that your questions would be "beneficial to the students".

If you do end up asking questions, it would be good to check in with the professor periodically to see if they are still finding it helpful.

If the professor asks you not to attend the class, then it is your responsibility to find some other way to get up to speed on the material (i.e. reading on your own).  If you do not think that will be possible, then you should ask to be assigned to a different course.


How to inform an emotionally abusive advisor I don't want to work with him?

My answer assumes that you are convinced that your presumptive advisor is emotionally abusive, and that you have made a firm decision not to work with him.

However, you haven't given a first- or even second-hand account of abuse or neglect; it's also possible that the postdoc is blowing a personality conflict out of proportion by spreading false accusations.  The only direct red flag I see is your presumptive advisor's expectation that you will join his lab directly without doing rotations.  You may want to have a confidential discussion with another senior faculty member about your concerns, before jumping off this particular cliff.

Pretend that your presumptive advisor is a reasonable adult human being.  Talk to them in person.  Be straightforward and honest.

  "Thank you for your encouragement and your support, but I have decided not to join your lab."

That's it.  You do not owe them an excuse, an explanation, an apology, or a description of your alternate plans.  (I think you do owe them thanks.)

If you would be more comfortable giving an explanation, then do so respectfully, honestly, and carefully.  But if you have no intention of working with this advisor in the future, do not suggest the opposite, even indirectly.  In particular, you should not say "I want to do rotations before joining your lab" unless you actually intend to join their lab after doing rotations.  It would be better to say something like

  "I have decided to do full rotations before joining any particular lab.  I want to explore a few different subareas, and I think the breadth of experience will help my long-term academic career."

Be ready for the advisor to pressure you to do a rotation in their lab, or to argue that you're actually damaging your long-term career by not joining a lab directly.  Thank him again for his advice and encouragement, but stick to your guns.  Or he might surprise you by being completely supportive and giving you good advice about other labs to work in.

Under different circumstances, I might suggest being direct about your suspicions of emotional abuse and neglect, but as you say yourself, that could backfire on the advisor's other students and postdocs.  That's their fight to have, not yours.

If the advisor is as emotionally abusive as you suspect, he may try to pull you into an argument or blackmail you.  He may say things like "I got you admitted to this department; you owe me." or "I'll have you kicked out of the program." or "I'm big and famous and important, and I know everybody, and you've just signed your academic death warrant."  Do not engage.  Do not argue.  Do not back down.  You have neither signed a contract nor sworn an oath of fealty.  The most you owe him is your sincere thanks and your future success, on your own terms.  Assuming you work in a healthy department, his threats are idle.

That said, you should have someone in your corner, just in case his threats are not idle.  Before you dump your advisor, I strongly recommend having an honest and confidential discussion with the graduate director, ombudsman, department chair, or another trusted senior faculty member.  (The other students will know who to talk to.)  Be completely straightforward about your concerns, especially about possible repercussions from your decision.  Hopefully they will reassure you that your concerns are groundless, or at least that someone else is willing to fight for you to be treated fairly.

If not, you're better off in a different department anyway.


Feedback for a student showing improvement

Just personal opinion + some experience.

First, if it's graded and the grade shows a large jump, then I'd just leave it as is.

Second, perhaps the first homework was not a true reflection of the student's ability (sickness, etc.) Just be mindful but I trust that you have gotten a clear impression of the class by now.

I feel that it's okay to remark on the improvement if the last homework was apparently bad (say, like a fail or near-fail.) Otherwise the student may not even realize it was bad all along, and this "better" comment can be a harsh blow of reality.

My desire to remark will grow stronger if I have written some suggested improvements in the last assignment or highlighted the common errors in class and the students actually followed my advices. My rule is to pair each good remark with a reason, and each bad remark with a suggestion. So, rather than "good job!" I'd suggest "good job on [whatever done right]" in order to reinforce such positive behaviors.

And lastly, just my thought and I expect not everyone would agree with me: I don't think giving customized remark or suggestion is a sign of being unfair. If someone struggles and wants to put in the effort to perform better, I wouldn't mind giving more detailed guidance in my feedback. The important thing I always remind myself is while past records are important, we should be prepared to evaluate our students with fresh eyes as well whenever possible. Don't give the impression that we had already given the final grades in our head after the first couple classes.


Can I resubmit an unpresented conference paper to the same conference?

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, most people would consider withdrawing from an in-person conference to be a smart and ethical move.  In this situation, it should be fine to resubmit.  If the conference is peer reviewed, you should draw the conference's attention to the resubmission so they do not waste time re-reviewing a paper.
Do not make a habit of withdrawing papers.


Should I cite the source of a definition in a thesis glossary?

If you use something from another paper, then you should cite it. Make that a general rule. There are a number of reasons for it, only one of which is to avoid a charge of plagiarism when someone notices that they have "seen that before."

The other, perhaps primary, reason is that scholars want to know how a paper is situated within the scientific/mathematical literature and if previous work isn't cited it is difficult or impossible to do so. A future reader of your work may want to know where else this definition appears and what its history is. Citations make this possible.

However, for things that have become common knowledge, such as the definition of the derivative (math) or ph (chemistry) you don't need to give definitions as you can expect that they are known to every scholar in the field. But you probably wouldn't repeat those definitions in the first place unless you were doing a comparative history study of some kind, in which case you would cite the original sources.

Don't quote or paraphrase the work of others without citation.


Shorten, shorten, shorten, and rewrite.

When writing directly for the thesis, people often are elaborate and generous. You have all the space in the world, and having 180 pages instead of 150 might be a plus.

In a journal paper you have, say, 10 pages of a condensed formatting and that's it. So, the writing has to accommodate this.

I have three suggestions:

In most cases you would like to pick some aspect of the thesis, not the whole work. So start from the relevant chapter.
It depends a lot on the writing style and personal preferences, but for me personally it's often easier to read a paragraph and to come up with a way to tell this in one sentence (i.e., rewriting) than to edit said paragraph to be shorter and more concise.
All things that are somewhat relevant, but too large or not immediately needed either land in the supplementary document, or you directly refer to the thesis for more details.


Should a postdoc advisor be on a journal article published out of the postdoc's PhD Thesis?

No, not unless he made a significant scholarly contribution.  Your friend's institution almost certainly has a co-authorship policy that prohibits this type of honorary co-authorship, urge her to look it up.

However, she should be aware that this might permanently harm her relationship with her post-doctoral adviser.


Working from distance as a postdoc for a Company

Only the company can know how much they're prepared to pay, so we can't answer that. It could be more than the postdoc salary, it could be less. It could be higher, but for fewer hours. A consultant position might come with much fewer benefits. You really need to negotiate this with them.

For the future, you'd ideally negotiate this with them before you begin to work. If the company is unscrupulous, or if they didn't give the green light to start the project, you might never get paid at all for the months you've worked. If there is an actual written contract it's much harder to pull stuff like that.


Is it a bad sign if I do not get anything from problem discussions with professors or fellow students?

I suspect I have similar issues as you: when others talk about complicated subjects, I find they're speaking in English, but they're also not speaking in English (because I don't understand them).

I've thought about this a bit and although I am by no means an expert, I think the cause of the issue can be understood with the VAK learning style model. (Note that this model has been heavily criticized; however my perspective is whether it's correct or not is unimportant if it works for your particular case). Basically, people can be very broadly divided into three groups: those that learn best by doing something, those that learn best by listening, and those that learn best by reading. You are good at learning by reading, but poor at learning by listening. If you go to a lecture where the lecturer does not prepare lecture slides, only stands there and talks, you find you struggle. Comparatively if you do get lecture slides, then everything makes sense and you learn smoothly. If you can have only the lecture slide or the talk, you would much prefer the slides.

The bad news is, being bad at learning by listening is of course detrimental. It's just so much more convenient to explain something instead of get out pen and paper. The good news is, if you know what the issue is, you'll able to compensate for it. You'll need to concentrate on these conversations because if you drift, you won't be able to recover easily. Don't be afraid to say "can you repeat that?", and don't be afraid to ask for clarification if something is not immediately obvious to you either. You can also try bringing around a notebook and immediately writing down something you hear, since you are liable to forget quickly otherwise.

If you are so bad at learning by listening that face-to-face meetings with your supervisor are unproductive, try telling him that and suggesting email instead.


Are fear and concerns stemmed from being sexual assaulted generally understandable by grad schools? Would it be seen as a negative trait?

There are two parts of your question - how to get accommodations and whether you will be judged in some way.
Also, this answer assumes you are a current student, not a prospective student.
The first part of the question varies a bit from university to university. It sounds like you would like to figure out accommodations without making a formal report, which should be possible. You can start by visiting the website for the Title IX office at your specific school. You might need to click around a bit, but this website likely has quite a bit of information on resources for victims of assault. Some of these will be confidential (and labeled as such), including mental health services and often some sort of victim advocacy office. So you can start there to figure out how accommodations work at your school. Generally, accommodations are determined by trained administrators, not faculty.
For my institution (perhaps this is universal in the US, not sure), once the administration has decided on an accommodation for you, the faculty members affected simply get letters or emails explaining what they need to do. If I have any questions or concerns, I contact the accommodations office rather than putting the student in an awkward position of justifying themselves.
The second part of your question is about others’ judgement. The first point I’d like to make here is that very few people who actually matter to your student career need to know your personal business. In the information I gave above about how to get accommodations you note that no one in your department needs to find out anything until the administration has determined what accommodations you should get. Within your department, you could choose to be very vague about what is going on ("personal situation" or even "traumatic incident") and generally people know not to pry. If you do decide to disclose, also know that no one in their right mind is going to correlate your emotions about handling a sexual assault with your skills as a student. Those are such different domains of life that I can’t imagine any connection.


Should I still submit if my final results are not good?

There is a big problem called publication bias: only studies that "find something" get published. In part this bias is due to journals being less likely to accept papers with negative findings. In part this is due to researchers not even submitting the papers. So, the fact that you submitted those papers is an important and positive step you have taken to (try to) reduce publication bias. However, it is an uphill battle.


Study of code share practices in science

This study is more qualitative than quantitative but might provide you with some more information about the scientific software space.

James Howison, Ewa Deelman, Michael J. McLennan, Rafael Ferreira da Silva, James D. Herbsleb; Understanding the scientific software ecosystem and its impact: Current and future measures. Res Eval 2015; 24 (4): 454-470. doi: 10.1093/reseval/rvv014


What is the proper CV listing for an accepted paper that was not presented?

The paper does appear in the proceedings

Its appearance in the proceedings makes it a publication, so you can (and should) include it in your list of publications.

If you separately list your conference presentations, you can't include this paper in that list, because you didn't present it.  Similarly, if your list of conference publications indicates which papers you presented [for example, by writing "(presented)" or making the presenting author's name bold], you can't give that indication for this paper, because you didn't present it.

  where you are are a) solo author, or b) a co-author?

This is irrelevant.  The publication list in your CV should list all authors of each paper, ideally in the exact order they appear on the paper's title page.

tl;dr: Just tell the truth.


Dealing with low-quality legacy student-work

The same way you deal with mind numbingly boring work in any area: one page at a time.

I've found the Pomodoro Technique very helpful. Set a timer for some short period of time like 25 minutes, and work without a break. Then take a short 3-5 minute break and repeat. It's like swimming. You go underwater for a period of time and then come up for air for a short break when you need to. (n.b. I have very little experience swimming)

If possible, try to have other things to do at work and work on each thing every day. This way you're not stuck doing the boring stuff 8-10 hours a day. If you do this, it's helpful to try and get as much of the crappy work done at the start of your day. This way you're not dreading and putting off the tedium all day.

Also accept the fact that some days will be more productive than others. If you set a goal to do X number of pages a day, you can easily get stuck in a spiral of unproductivity and procrastination that bleeds over into the next day. Do as much as you can, but take breaks and try to keep your spirits up.


One of the key things about U.S. system of higher education is that it is, for the most part, not regulated by statute.  For all of the "rules" that you explained, there are institutions that do not follow them (except the freedom to depart, which is guaranteed not by regulation, but by the lack of regulation, which creates a free market).

In theory, anybody in the US can found an institute of higher education, at any time, for any reason.  People in fact do create all sorts of new institutions all the time: some turn out very well, and some do not.  In practice, admission to the "club" of credible institutions is regulated by accreditation organizations, such as this one.  Every institution that can meet the fairly basic requirements for accreditation can set its rules as it wishes.  Public universities are typically regulated by the state that runs them (e.g., U.C. Berkeley) or the relevant federal agency (e.g., the Naval Postgraduate School), but private institutions like Harvard have a great degree of freedom in how they organize themselves.

In short: there is no document for the rules on how the system works, because the nature of the system is that there is no system, only a market loosely managed by accreditation.


Supervisor wants me to add my name on someone else's paper to be published

Publish it. As you mentioned that your supervisor obtained permission from the original author and you will be working/editing it, then I assume its 100% ethical to put your name as coauthor and will be no negative sequences. Indeed, this kind of preparation that your supervisor follows is beneficial for you. At the level of PhD, I got the same task. I converted 3 years old master thesis to conference work and I put my name at second coauthor and the original author was mentioned before the name of the professor in the affiliation! since your supervisor is involved in this task, I assume that he knows what he is doing.


Supervisor not giving helpful academic direction

As a phd student your job is to ultimately create your own track of successful research. An ideal advisor would suggest reasonable lines of research, help you develop your ideas, and give guidance and advice if you ever get stuck. In practice, advisors tend to fall in one of two camps. In the first camp, advisors treat their students as employees who produce results for the advisor's group. In the second camp are 'hands off' advisors who don't do much at all. It sounds to me like your advisor is the hands off type. Take initiative, decide what makes the most sense to work on, and do that. Unless your advisor has explicitly told you, "I expect you to work on X and your graduation depends on finishing X", they probably just want you to do something publishable and don't care much past that. Take the opportunity to work on whatever you feel is most interesting or most beneficial to you in the long term.


How does one denote that a cell value is not available / doesn't make sense in a table?

If it is self-evident (remember to look at your table from the perspective of a reader) I would just leave the cell empty. Less clutter is better. When not, I would tend towards --. More importantly I would add a footnote to the table explaining what -- means. I think the footnote is in that case more important than the difference between -, --, and ---.


What funding to include in an old paper?

As I often try to remember, a stable baseline for such things is honesty. So, perhaps something like "the main part of this work was partially funded by X. Revisions were partially funded by Y and Z".
(I'm assuming that "partially" is the correct thing in your situation...)
In the U.S., in math, the funding agencies not only "require" such acknowledgements, but do want to be able to "point to" them to make an impact on higher-ups, including the U.S. Congress. I somehow doubt that Congressional staffers are fact-checking the NSF's claims... but, still. :)
Similarly regarding affiliations, I think, though in that regard the more functionally relevant item is probably "current contact information". At the same time, you could also credit former employers/institutions with "partially funding" the research. Although I don't see this in any U.S. math rule-book, it would certainly be honest and fair.
(Years ago, a senior colleague of mine here in Minnesota, Steven Gaal, in the intro to his very nice monograph on linear analysis, explicitly thanked "the farmers and workers of Minnesota" for supporting him while he did that work.)


Contact potential thesis advisor with no topic in mind

I'm a professor in Germany and I throw any master's students out who come asking me for a topic. It needs to be a question they want answered or some computing question they want to explore. Bachelor's I do a bit of hand-holding on.

You should research the interests of the professor and see if he or she is likely to be interested in your question. And do check if the professor is male or female before writing your letter. All emails addressing me as Herr Professor get piped to /dev/null.


What is the duration between a conference and its online proceedings?

Depending on the particulars of production on both the conference side and the IEEE side, you should expect anywhere from a few weeks to six months.  Both the IEEE and the conference staff can introduce delays here (I was recently publication chair for a conference whose proceedings were delayed by five months by the IEEE simply because they kept dropping the ball).

Note, however, that the IEEE allows authors to put a copy of their own work online.  This means that you can make your own work accessible much more quickly, and can often find PDFs of the works other others as well, well before the official version appears in IEEE Xplore.


Is it common to provide digital notes (slides or handwritten) for students?

I used to distribute slides before class, and found that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.  I now distribute them shortly after each class.  I tell students to jot down important points during the class, but not to worry about things like lists because they'll have the slides available.  I also suggest that they merge their classroom notes onto the slides.  The ones who listen to me tend to do very well.

I base my decision on the premise that learning should be effortful.  I think, hope, and expect that providing slides after class is a compromise between no slides and slides before class.

As an aside, I also record my lectures and make the podcasts available.  I do that because I have students for whom English is a second language, and non-traditional students who are sometimes called away for work.  I'm a little torn about the recordings because some students do try to use those as a substitute for coming to class.  I console myself with the thought that they were destined to fail the course anyway and would do even without the recordings.


Should I take PhD application recommendation letter from academic advisor?

Speaking from social sciences:

If it's easy for both parties to produce the letter, go ahead and have it. It wouldn't hurt, and perhaps you can suggest some general stuff that is absent from more specialized letters.

If it's too much hassle, then simply have an agreement to have the letter produced "later on" if it's wanted.

Your view about such letters is generally on the money: they refer to either class or research performance. But perhaps there are aspects that your advisor's letter can highlight. Bear in mind that many applications, etc., ask for a maximum of letters - so, if you already filled it with specialized letters, then this general one won't be needed.


Should I leave this citation in?

Definitely. A paper on arxiv is still related work regardless of its submission/acceptance status.

  Should I say that it has been rejected?

No. That seems inappropriate. The paper may soon be accepted elsewhere in which case your comment about rejection will be outdated.

Just cite it like you would any other paper. If you want, your bibliography could link to the openreview page where people could see the reviews and decision.

  Should the knowledge of the rejection change the way I talk about the paper?

Not really. Perhaps the reviews include some useful information. Otherwise treat it like any other paper.


Political Topic all (most) students would agree on

Poverty is bad.
Polluting the environment is bad.
Murdering people because of their race or religion is bad.


Style in citing two authors in the same sentence

First off, citing papers is not about giving credit to first authors, it is about making literature traceable to readers. This is a key part of scientific writing, providing sources. The format for citations is of course focussing on first authors who may, or may not, be the main contributor (remember that author order varies between disciplines). A secondary aspect is the fact that many evaluations of academic status is based on authorship and as such authors may not be credited as much as they should. This is, however, not the reason for why we reference the way we do. So, from this perspective, I do not see why you necessarily need to emphasize the name of someone other than the first or second author (I am now thinking Harvard-style references where two-author papers have both names listed in the in-text reference).

If there is a scientifically based reason for highlighting the originator, one could write

  Concepts One and Two (reference to B) were first developed by A [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is scientifically important should follow or be included]

or

  A originated the concept one and two (Reference to B) [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is scientifically important should follow or be included]

Note that this would seemingly take away the importance of B, which in many reference systems would look strange and implicate something may not be right with the articles. I therefore think it is wise to clarify why you feel the work of A is such that it requires highlighting. Clearly, I cannot judge the case since all details are unavailable. As a side point, reviewers will likely pick up on any inconsistencies and ask for clarification in a case such as this, unless the reasons for the formatting is either clear from your writing or well known in the community.


Competition in department among professors

There is always pressure to succeed in life, and further, people who get prestigious jobs are often those who are self-motivated to do exceedingly well.  I've also noticed athletes who cannot have "fun" playing softball or whatnot because they are so upset when they or their teammates play badly.  Unfortunately, these are the types of people who often win in competitive situations.

There are enormous differences between departments both within and across institutions. Believe me, even one crop of PhD students or a year of undergraduates can make things more or less pressured, let alone university or department executives.

Why do people become academics?  Two reasons: because they love what they do, or because they feel like they can't do anything else.  The latter is nuts. If you do not love what you are doing, get out now.  Anyone who can make it to a PhD let alone to faculty can get a good job in industry. But academia really is about getting to spend at least some of your time pursuing and talking about things that really truly interest you, and might change the world.


You can look at https://scirev.org/ , where people can submit there experience with different journals. Quite a few are missing (in my field) but a lot are there.

A nice feature is that you can look by field / subfield and have all the things summarized in a table.
If you look at electrical engineering there is a surprising number of them with fast turnover and considered as "good" by the people who submitted there.


Are graduate school applications processed before the submission deadline?

In my experience (in a large public American computer science department), review of applications begins as soon as they are submitted, but no decisions are announced until well after the posted deadline.  Reviewing graduate applications actually takes significant time, and admissions decisions are based at least in part on comparisons with the rest of the applicant pool.

My university actually forbids announcing admissions decisions before the application deadline.  Other universities/countries may have more relaxed policies.


If you found a book that discusses the statement, and you really can't track down where it comes from (does the book cite anything?), then citing the book (with chapter/page numbers) is acceptable.


How should I thank mentors that I connect with via the Internet?

A simple email is really all you need. Thank them for their help and update them on your recent progress, say by mentioning that you have been accepted to ...
Don't bother with gifts as they will embarrass many people and might be considered improper. The one exception I can think of is the situation in which you are from a different country or culture. Then a token tourist level souvenir from your country might be fine. Something like this if you are from Sweden (not the world's biggest, though). I find it harder to come up with anything appropriate if you are from the same culture/country, though. The gift should have personal value, rather than tangible value.
Later, when you finish a doctorate, say, and get a great job, you might think of something more elaborate.
But for people you have met and who have helped you, say a teacher, it is a good thing to go back after several years and thank them personally for their mentorship. Just a meeting in a hallway with the statement of thanks for their help and guidance is a deeply satisfying thing to do and to receive.


What is expected if one wants to visit a research lab as a fresh PhD graduate?

Is it okay to e-mail...labs[, after getting a PhD, to ask] if people [I] can visit the lab(s) for about a month?

Yes. Your email should explain what you want and what you'll provide in return.

  What is expected in return? Do [I] have to give a talk, or produce some result?

A contribution should be expected from both sides. That contribution might be in the form of research that both sides conduct together, either side learning something from talks or by teaching, and you might be paid.

  Or is it okay to just learn from them, without directly contributing anything?

No. Any visit has to be mutually beneficial.


How to appeal against an unfair decision - conference paper

What you need to do is to understand why your paper was rejected. I'm pretty sure your paper was not rejected from what you describe as "a top CS conference" for such obviously false reasons. Reviewers don't decide whether the paper is accepted or rejected: they advise the programme committee. The programme committee evaluates the reviews before coming to a decision and a review containing such obviously nonsensical comments will carry very little weight. If your paper was rejected because of the reviews, it was the other reviews, not this one.

Note also that, at top conferences, many papers are rejected simply due to bad luck. Usually, there are many papers that are a good enough quality to be accepted but the conference isn't big enough to take all of them. The actual reason for rejection may just be "We liked your paper and it's of essentially the same quality as papers we accepted, but there just wasn't room for yours and we liked these other ones just slightly more."


Potential Supervisor Said She Will Contact References- No Response

I know she contacted one already, and I know they gave a great feedback, but it's been more than two months now without hearing from her. Should I contact her and ask if she needs any extra info or wait?

Definitely contact her! There was genuine interest between you and you have nothing to lose, everything to gain.

It is easy to fall under the impression that contacting professors/supervisors is "a bother", and that you are being annoying by doing so. However, I have found that the opposite is often true: some supervisors use whether you follow up as a way of gauging your true interest in the position. So although I don't know the full context, I think waiting two months was not the best. Worst case scenario, she has now assumed you aren't interested anymore.

As long as you are not officially admitted, I would therefore follow up ASAP to make sure she knows:

That you are still interested
That you are waiting to hear from her (i.e., she has to do something), and what it is she has to do

Depending on her response you can follow up repeatedly as needed, for instance:

If she doesn't respond I would follow up again in about 1 week
If she responds indicating some delay (e.g., she is waiting for a response from reference X), follow up again depending on the expected delay, maybe 2 weeks or so

Also, you can directly talk to your other reference to see if they have been contacted by her. That could also help in case the reference is causing the delay.


Is it normal to suddenly become clueless about your PhD topic and how to rediscover one?

Don't consider your time reviewing the field necessarily wasted. You say that you've discovered that the research topic that you wished to pursue has already been thoroughly investigated. If this is true, then you are in the happy position of finding this out now before having invested more of your time.

Now, is it indeed true that the topic has been exhausted? Perhaps this is the basis of your supervisor's request that you continue reading around the topic. Is there a line of investigation still remaining that you can work on? Are you sure all the extensions to the primary findings have been looked at? Is there a way of extending into new and unexpected territory?

On this last point, talking to many other people in the field - or closely related fields - might spark off ideas in your head. Discuss with them whether they think all aspects of the topic have been considered. Find people who are not experts in the specific topic, but are conversant with it who might offer a difference perspective. These people might draw you toward research across two fields. Can the results of the research topic you were looking to work on be extended into other, surprising areas?


Asked to write a letter of recommendation for promotion for an abusive former professor

Get your former advisor to sign the letter now.

After that has succeeded or failed, you should contact the person who runs this process and ask them verbally how the letter will be used and what it contains.  Probably this is a dean.  Probably the dean already knows about your advisor's behavior.  They might be seeking a letter that will help them get rid of your former advisor.  At well-run universities, these letters are not requested from random students.  They come from known students.

You should write an honest letter.

There is an option you do not mention:  You can "damn with faint praise."  This is done by writing a letter which says nice things about a person, but none of the nice things are relevant to the person's job.  E.g. They are funny and well-dressed.  I don't recommend this but it is available to you.  If done carefully, it can prevent promotion while giving the illusion that you intended to help the advisor.


Should I describe failed iterations in methodology?

I wouldn't outright reject the utility of discussing failed iterations in your thesis. If handled deftly, a discussion of failures could be just as informative as a discussion of your final approach. Far too often, such discussions are omitted from papers owing to lack of space.

Think of it from your reader's point of view. What does s/he stand to gain from reading about failed approaches? If you could provide an analysis of the "nature of problem" and the "ill fitting approach", and put it in a larger perspective, it might help readers avoid repeating your (very tempting) mistakes in their works.


Does the journal editor have authority not to publish my article after clear acceptance?

If they've accepted it, they will publish it (eventually). They have nothing to gain otherwise by holding your paper. That it's not been published in the latest issue isn't a sign that they're not going to publish your paper at all - they could for example have a lot of papers that are online ready waiting for an issue, and they've hit their page count limit for this issue.

Whether the journal has the authority to reject your paper after accepting it is a separate question. In principle, they can: nothing gets published without the editor-in-chief's approval after all, and he can change his mind. In practice, this happens extremely rarely. If they find out for example that the paper is plagiarized, then it can be rejected. But to reject it because they changed their mind about whether it's publishable - that's almost never going to happen.


How to ask for more details from a US university professor without being rude if he says I should apply through the university?

In the physical and natural sciences in the U.S., it is almost always the case that Ph.D. students are funded, meaning not just having tuition paid for, but also having a stipend / salary sufficient to live on. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I haven't heard of any, and I will guess that they are rare. Also, importantly, this stipend is tied to work of some sort, typically either teaching assistantships or grant-supported research positions, with the general idea being to transition from the former to the latter in a year or two. There are various details -- e.g. making adequate progress to degree, actually finding a research advisor who will take you and who is likely to have grant funding, etc. -- but in brief, when applying you should not be worried about the things you're worried about.

To directly answer your question, though: don't pester the professor you wrote to with funding questions. (His response is very similar to the one I usually send!) Check departmental web pages or administrative / admissions contacts if you have specific questions about this. Though it does matter whether your potential advisor has a track record of funding, and how likely he/she is to take on students, you won't get a clear answer about this, especially because it is quite difficult to predict what will be the case ~2 years in the future.


Why was Israel rejected a membership in Bologna process?

My understanding is that it's a formal matter:

  Israel's initial application to the Bologna process was submitted in January 2007. The application's re-submission in 2008 was rejected. The rejection appears to rest on formal-political grounds: non-European states cannot sign the Bologna Declaration and join the process; they may only observe the process and its implementation

The rejection was likely based on the 2003 Berlin communiqué, which states that a country needs to be a signatory of the European Cultural Convention to be eligible to join in the Bologna process:

  Countries party to the European Cultural Convention shall be eligible for membership
  of the European Higher Education Area provided that they at the same time declare
  their willingness to pursue and implement the objectives of the Bologna Process in their
  own systems of higher education.

This means that it's mostly members of the Council of Europe (not to be confused with the European Union) that have joined the Higher Education Area. There is a short list of exceptions, but Israel is not one of them.

How is an Israeli PhD evaluated in Bologna member countries?

That's a rather broad question... I'd say that an Israeli PhD would usually be viewed quite favorably, when awarded by a university of international repute. However, exactly how a foreign degree will be treated is going to depend on the Bologna member country in question, and the specific degree (e.g. medical degrees tend to be highly regulated). Usually it's down to the specific university/employer to evaluate your degree. Notably, Germany is rather strict when it comes to recognition of foreign degrees, but according to aeismail's answer here, Israeli PhDs are recognized as fully equivalent to "Dr." in Germany.


Is there an official way to include an image from the internet in a paper?

This is a really good example of why it's important to be careful about copyright from the beginning: there's really no good way to ensure that you can actually secure permissions to use a random image.  In terms of scientific ethics, you can credit the source, but that is completely unrelated to the fact that you may have no legal right to use the image.

As I see it, there are three good paths to proceed:

Track down the source of the original image (e.g., via reverse image search) and see if it happens to come from somewhere that you can acquire a copyright from.
Search for a similar image that is less restricted by copyright (Wikipedia is often a good source of such, due to their restrictions).
Make your own image.  Since you're dealing with a popular piece of consumer electronics, you might even just lay hands on one and take a picture yourself, then enhance and crop as necessary with image editing tools (there's lots of good free tools out there).


Can we submit accepted and online published IEEE journal (IEEE-JBHI) article to arXiv?

Based on few research on the question, I found the following:
As per the IEEE policy,

Can an author post his manuscript on a preprint server such as ArXiv?
Yes. The IEEE recognizes that many authors share their unpublished
manuscripts on public sites. Once manuscripts have been accepted for
publication by IEEE, an author is required to post an IEEE copyright
notice on his preprint. Upon publication, the author must replace the
preprint with either 1) the full citation to the IEEE work with
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or a link to the paper’s abstract in
IEEE Xplore, or 2) the accepted version only (not the IEEEpublished
version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with
a link to the final, published paper in IEEE Xplore.
What other steps are necessary for authors who would like to post
their accepted articles?
The following copyright notice must be displayed on the initial screen displaying IEEE copyrighted material:
© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission
from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or
future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for
advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works,
for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any
copyrighted component of this work in other works.

And as per ArXiv,

Note on IEEE submissions. Please note arXiv will currently take the
'Accepted' IEEE version but not the 'Published' IEEE version. For more
information on IEEE policies.

More Info:
IEEE Author FAQ 1, IEEE Author FAQ 1, arXiv Submission


English requirement for Teaching Assistantship for Ph.D students

As you might expect, the specific requirements to be eligible for a teaching assistantship vary from one university to the next, and from one department to the next.  The only people who can answer your question are staff at each of the departments you're applying to.  Ask them!!

To give one example: My public US R1 university has a strict requirement of a 24 or better on the speaking portion of the TOEFL, or an 8 or better on the speaking portion of the IELTS, in order to be a teaching assistant.  Minimum TOEFL/IELTS requirements for admission without a teaching assistantship are somewhat lower; however, many PhD programs (like mine) have a TA requirement, and so the requirements for TAships are also de facto requirements for admission into those programs.  Some graduate programs have higher TOEFL/IELTS requirements than the campus-wide minimum, and some graduate programs also assess English proficiency independently through interviews, writing samples, and the like.

Of course, meeting a department's English-proficiency requirements for a teaching assistantship does not guarantee that that department will offer you a teaching assistantship.  It just means that you're eligible.


How long should I wait after PhD interview in Denmark?

As you already assume, it's likely that they have settled for another candidate. However, the fact that they didn't reply to your request indicates that they're not quite ready to dismiss you. Maybe their preferred candidate has not agreed to the position yet, and they want to keep their options.

The only thing you can do is write them another polite email, expressing your sincere interest and motivation to do the project, stating again why you think you are the best candidate. In case their first choice declines, you might be in for a good start.

But in any case, I'd wait out Monday morning, assuming that that's the deadline the other candidate might have negotiated for a decision.


This depends strongly on the field. In some, it is a big deal, in others not so much. But it is always a good thing to be an author, wherever you appear in the list.

If you are comfortable with it, don't worry too much. Your preferences may change, of course, in which case you may want to take more of a lead in the research and thus in the "perceived rank" of authorship.

Of course, your institution might put more emphasis on "first" authorship and it may affect your advancement. Don't neglect that.

In some fields we don't worry at all about that and just list names alphabetically, assuming that if they are listed, they contributed.


When should you require to be addressed by your title?

A lot of admin documents are produced by machine these days, the ones that aren't are usually done by clueless people who aren't paid an awful lot. It would be ideal that they addressed you as 'Dr.', but unless they deal with a lot of doctors they probably just shoved your name into the standard mail merge template.

If you'd rather be addressed as 'Dr.' then raising the issue with them wouldn't be stepping out of line, after all you are the one providing them with a service.


Why does arXiv not have an impact factor? Are there any "un-offocial" estimates of arXiv's impact factor?

arXiv does not have an impact factor because it is not indexed by Clarivate Analytics (for good reason, since not everything on arXiv is sensible).

I'm not aware of any unofficial estimates of arXiv's impact factor, but presumably you can get one by adding up all the citations that are generated in the field (multiply the impact factor of all journals by the number of articles if you have to) and dividing by the number of articles on arXiv.


Ok to independently investigate questions of interest to previous advisor?

Go ahead and work on the project on your own.  The fact that your former advisor introduced you to the general topic does not give him veto authority over where you will go with the topic in the future.

Having a former advisor who is interested in the problems should be an asset, not a liability.  If you find an interesting result, you have somebody more knowledgeable and senior in the field who you can show it to.


Published paper containing well-known results

It is simple enough and not rude to just send them a note with a reference to the older work. "In your recent paper, you haven't discussed the relationship to ...".

And note that even if they have some fault, which you don't suggest, it is shared by editors and reviewers who, themselves, missed the older work.


What must a researcher know or understand about another researcher to ensure successful research collaboration?

The most important thing to know about a potential collaborator is what their expectations are with respect to the collaboration.

For example,

Division of labor - who is responsible for which part of the work? If new tasks come up (as they will), how will the collaborators make decisions as to the division of labor?
Authorship - who will be an author on publications resulting from the collaboration, and in what order? If the collaborators are students, are they planning to involve their advisors in the joint research effort to the point that they'd also be authors? If the are professors, will they involve their students? How will decisions on changes to the author list be made?
Publishing - where will they publish articles resulting from the collaboration? Is one collaborator or another set on a specific venue, or specific level of prestige? Do the collaborators have a similar minimum level of reputation for conferences and journals they're willing to submit to? How do the collaborators feel about pre-publication dissemination of the work, e.g. preprints, presentations?
Timeline - what is the timeline for this research collaboration? Is this a strict timeline, or is it OK if things end up taking much longer?
Communication - how often will the collaborators check in with each other? Will they meet regularly, or just contact one another to share news (good or bad)?

There are of course no right or wrong answers to these questions; it's agreement that matters. More than any particular skill, compatible expectations are necessary for a successful collaboration.


How to write recipients address in electronic cover letter for PhD program

This may vary by culture, but the common procedure for this case (letter that looks like a traditional letter, but is only sent electronically), the common procedure in Germany is to write something into the place where the recipient's address would normally go - but not necessarily an address: Something generic such as

  University of ...
  Admission Board

should do.


What is suitable format to present a Psuedo Code in academic paper?

This depends on the journal's author guidelines. If no specifics are stated, you can often add the pseudo-code like a figure in your text (just labeled with Algorithm 1 instead of Figure 1).


I think it is a non-issue. If you ever see any evidence to the contrary, just disassociate yourself from the professor's recent views. What you did as an undergraduate has nothing to do with what he has recently said or done.
No one has control over what others might do in the future. Only by now associating yourself with those views would you share in any condemnation of them. But that would be for your acts, not his.
Relax and be glad that the past is past.


Looking for a good repository for academic drafts

If you are familiar with LaTex, use it with git.

Edit and mess around with paper on master branch, and push some good, meaningful and confirmed improvements on your work into release branch.

If you need a repository private until you decide to make it public, use Bitbucket or GitLab, instead of github. They provide free private repository. When you finished your paper, you can change repository settings to public.

I am not sure whether Diff-ing PDFs---your previous and current paper---is easy problem or not. But you can choose a solution among several: pdfdiff, DiffPDF, pdf-diff, diff-pdf and etc.


Adjective order in academia: "Italian young adults"

I speak English only as a second language, and I don't do research that involves young adults, but my guess is that it's because "young adults" is a fixed expression that is very close to a compound word. So it feels weird to split it with an adjective. This would be a good question for English.SE, but I think that we are in the middle of a linguistic process where this expression is transitioning to become a true compound word.

Anyway, it is a common saying that "the international language of academia is broken English", so you shouldn't take academic texts as an example of style. For most academic writers English is a second (or third, fourth...) language, and many write by translating word-by-word constructs from their native language. It shouldn't be surprising to find the wrong word order.


Online Postgraduate (Statistics / Mathematics)

Open University offers a Masters in Mathematics, available to anyone (even outside UK). See http://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f04.

A simple Google search on "masters" "mathematics" and "online" or "distance" gives enough results which you can then cross join with university rankings.

Is there a particular area you would like study? If online only, why restrict yourself to EU? (e.g. there is applied math at UW, Seattle etc).


When a research statement of a fixed page length is required, are references counted in the page length?

Unlike the NSF, where references often do not count towards page limits, I would assume that references do count as part of the 3-page limit for a research statement in a job application.

At the same time, few research statements I have seen in mathematics are as thoroughly referenced as an NSF proposal. The main goal of a research statement when applying for a job is to describe your own research and to demonstrate that you will be able to meet the research expectations of the job. As such, you want to keep the research statement relatively brief.

If you really need more than 3 pages including references, you should email the chair of the search committee to find out if it is acceptable.


I'd say the typeface should match the one used in the equation or listing, so that the entity always appears the same no matter where it is located.

If you're using Latex, variables from equations should be put in math mode, i.e. $n$. Class names and data types should be inline code, e.g. \lstinline if you're using the package listings.


Using substantial parts of a paper you authored in your thesis

The statement seems pretty clear and I'd suggest you are correct that the first paragraph applies. However, I'd also suggest adding the permissions paragraph (your bold) to the thesis itself as a foot/end note just to be clear to readers. Self-plagiarism is actually a thing these days.

I don't have actual experience with this, but can suggest a strategy. It seems conservative enough to satisfy IEEE given the above.

Include your work as you like. However, don't just incorporate it, but actually quote the relevant parts of your papers, listing yourself (and others as appropriate) as author(s). This avoids the "self plagiarism" issue. You are treating your work just as you would that of another.

You are also listing IEEE as the "publisher" of record by referencing it, so their interest in your work is preserved.

See if there is some way to send a late draft of your dissertation to IEEE along with pointers to the referenced material, asking them, again, whether they have any objections. They may reply or not. If they do, you will have clear guidelines. I doubt that you would need to do extensive revisions even in the worst case.


Why not use the standard article entry type?

  An article from a journal or magazine. Required fields: author, title, journal, year. Optional fields: volume, number, pages, month, note.

Seems like a magazine with articles from different authors to me. If you would want to cite from one of the articles in the magazine, e.g. the first one, it could simply be:

@article{Farronato2015,
 author = {Farronato, C. and Levin, J.},
 journal = {Global Investor},
 number = {2},
 pages = {06--13},
 title = {{The rise of peer-to-peer businesses}},
 volume = {15},
 year = {2015}
}

Please make sure the citation info is correct before using it though. Quick googling seems to report more than one magazine called 'Global Investor'. Please note that I am also not familiar with this field at all.


Any suggestions to create and maintain a good research atmosphere

I just started working in a small lab a few months ago. I don't know if the way our lab is functioning is right or even good, but I like it, it works for me and I feel good here, so let me explain the lab dynamic here.

Just to give some context, the lab is so small that the division to project teams (although it exists) does not make sense for any informal activity. At any given time, there is 7 - 10 PhD students in the lab, maybe 1 or 2 exchange students/interns, and we have some PhD students that are in the lab only a day or two a week. Also, the lab is almost circular, all the offices are very close and we have a habit working with open office doors.

The common topic denominator among all of us is "Computer Science" (very broad), although each of us can find one or two more student-people working a similar topic.

I find that it's much easier for me to talk science to somebody I feel comfortable having a beer and a few laughs with as well. Not saying that you have to get your lab drunk, but:

in the morning, the first one in makes the coffee, and we linger in the lab-kitchen for 20-30 minutes until our eyes are open. Everybody is free to join, heavy coffee drinkers are almost always there, while the others wander in from time to time. Sometimes even the senior researchers have coffee with us.
we all go to lunch together (partially cause we all have partially refunded meals in that resto). We have a guy who talks much and eats slow, so by the time everybody finishes, we usually spend a quality 30-40 minutes talking. We also do a coffee after lunch.
When somebody's leaving the lab, we try to buy some trinkets (last time it was 1euro/person), organize small going away "party" in the lab with juice and cookies, and dinner followed by drinks in the evening. Food setting is more inviting to the shy students, and after that the outgoing ones go have a few pints.
Students sometimes just wander in other student's offices (usually in the lazy afternoon hours) for a few words. This habit is nice because you feel less uneasy when you stroll into somebodies office to talk science, cause you're practically doing the same thing. As a less imposing version, we sometimes just wave to each other while passing in front of the office.
When we have organized (boring) activities / administrative seminars / things that finish early, especially out of the lab, we try to go sit for drinks if we have time.
the only nice idea specifically targeted for professional exchange we did was organize a "PhD students day" where we all presented our subjects in very basic streaks, from 10 - 15 minutes, so that everybody would know which students are working on interesting problems (for them).
every project team has team meetings at their own pace, where we present our current research, recently accepted papers, exchange students present their topics or students that went to an exchange present what they did. My team does it usually two times a month, in a fairly casual setting.

Now that I mentioned all this procrastinating, let me say something that's always been true for me among Computer Science people wherever I went (studied in Croatia, Austria and now France, and had some holidays with CS people): you can't stop computer scientists talking about tech. Tech talk bleeds through beer, we eat some of it for lunch and drink it in our coffee. When we're happy about our work, we feel comfortable enough to share it with people around us. When we're angry and stuck, we are all around people who saw us in various kinds of settings, so we don't feel that uncomfortable being grumpy and complaining.

All this said, for some more context: I'm a PhD student in France. I have a feeling that the work environment here is much much more relaxed that in the States, and than a lot of European countries as well. They seem to believe that if you do everything slowly and relaxed (except a day before a deadline), you will do a good job. So, my advice might be only applicable to similar work cultures, but I still think there's some good things there, because, at the end of the day, we all enjoy our times in the lab.


Copy pasting sentences from abstracts of other papers for describing related work

So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper.

This seems absolutely appropriate, as long as you quote them correctly. Which brings us to:

  I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.

It is not only a good idea to do that, it is required. You need to make explicit that those are verbatim copies. The semantics of copying text from a paper and summarizing the key points yourself are different for a reader, and you need to make this difference explicit by demarking which parts you have taken in verbatim.

  Can I get in trouble for this?

Yes.

  I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work. Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you may have a different view.

This reminds me a bit of a few high-profile cases of plagiarisms that were going around lately in the german-speaking areas. Often, the excuses presented by the accused authors were similar ("hey, the text I copied wasn't really that important - it was just the introduction after all!", "I cited it anyway, I just did not make clear that the text is actually copied from there", etc.). These excuses never fly. Be rigorous with your handling of sources. Everything else is just playing with fire.


How big is the difference between the sustained PhD thesis and a version publishable as a book?

It depends mostly on whether publishing your thesis as a book is a requirement in the PhD process or not. As JeffE notes in his comments, publishing the thesis as a book may be a university requirement before you get your PhD. Though, in the cases that I know, publication is after the defense, and you are allowed to make smaller modifications to the originally defended version, as long as the thesis reviewers agree to these.

Things would be different if publication is not part of the PhD requirements (maybe you have your certificates already in your hands). It's your work, and unless there are specific regulations to the contrary, I'd assume you can do whatever you like with it. In particular also publish a derived work as a book. In this case, I'd still recommend to state that it is based on your thesis (not your thesis), and discuss it with your PhD advisor.


Can a PhD from a non-TU9 German university become a professor in a TU9 university?

Of course you can. Otherwise their pool for hiring would be awfully small.

But don't take my word for it. To provide some evidence we can look at a department at one of the TU9 universities. For example the Computer Science Department of TU Darmstadt (mainly because I'm somewhat familiar with it)

If we look at the list of full professors and eliminate those that have non-German doctorates, we are left with 18 Professors, 9 of which did not receive their degree from one of the TU9. (Though in practical terms almost none of them did, as the TU9 was only established in 2003.)

Carsten Binning TU Darmstadt
Christian Bischof Cornell
Johannes Buchmann Universität zu Köln
Dieter W. Fellner TU Graz
Marc Fischlin Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Johannes Fürnkranz TU Wien
Iryna Gurevych Universität Duisburg-Essen
Reiner Hähnle Universität Karlsruhe
Matthias Hollick TU Darmstadt
Stefan Katzenbeisser TU Wien
Kristian Kersting Universität Freiburg
Andreas Koch TU Braunschweig
Heiko Mantel Universität des Saarlandes
Mira Mezini Universität Siegen
Max Mühlhäuser Universität Karlsruhe
Jan Peters University of Southern California
Christian Reuter Universität Siegen
Stefan Roth Brown University
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi Universität des Saarlandes
Thomas Schneider Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Neerja Suri University of Massechusetts, Amherst
Orkar von Stryk Technische Universität München
Michael Waidner Universität Karlsruhe
Karsten Weihe TU Berlin
Felix Wolf RWTH Aachen


Should I tell my postdoc advisor I'm intending to leave?

There's nothing standard here. Give as much notice as you can, to be nice, and as much notice as you are legally required to if that's applicable in your jurisdiction. Don't burn a bridge if you don't have to. Even though you are leaving academia, you current boss may have connections to industry that they might be willing to use to help you find a non-academic job, so it might be worth talking to them now rather than when you find something.


Is there a ranking of mathematics positions at a given university?

An assistant professor (in the US, anyway) has a continuing position subject to achieving tenure. An Associate Professor has achieved tenure and has a long term commitment from the university. Postdocs normally have a term limited position that may be renewed a small number of times, if at all. A lecturer normally doesn't have a long term commitment. It is probably subject to annual renewal. A Senior lecturer is a bit more trusted and earns more, but is still just a lecturer.

In some places the first couple of years of the undergraduate education are mostly taught by either lecturers or a special category of professors of the practice. The latter have regular appointments and are expected to know more about pedagogy and possibly less about technical research. Some quite fine institutions have such a system (Duke, CMU, Stanford, at least). This relieves the senior faculty from teaching low level (possibly large) courses and still gets a quality education for undergraduates. It is also a stable career path for those who would rather teach than do research, whereas "lecturer" can be quite risky.

Note that in the US, there is no national system or nationally recognized definitions and rules. In other countries titles such as these may be regulated by law.


I believe the term you might be looking for is a "non-degree seeking student". Many colleges - at least in the US - allow students to pay per credit-hour of course they take, with the explicit arrangement that they will not count towards a degree. Exact requirements, costs, and arrangements vary by University, but here is some info about the options at Michigan for example. Michigan's School of Education has its own page on this, with additional options.

The 'catch' is mostly money, whether or not you can get classes that interest you (Universities might reserve some classes for their own degree-seeking students first), and whether or not courses taken in such a way will count according to your employer (you'll have to check with them on that).

As for the money, non-degree seeking students generally receive no form of financial aid or tuition assistance, and in the US I would be surprised if you could take even 1 course for less than $1000, but the exact cost will vary wildly by University and program.


How to find if a paper is in top 10% most cited articles in a journal?

Go to Web of Knowledge and search by publication name. Then sort by citation count and find the 10% cutoff (e.g. if there have been 10,000 papers published in that journal, then the article with the 1000th highest citation count is the 10% cutoff). Then find the paper you're interested in, and see if it's above or below that 10% cutoff.


Contacting university for potential PhD collaboration without the presence of my supervisor

Actually it seems wiser to go ahead and look for suitable programs and doctoral advisors. It shows initiative that would be valued in most places. You don't need to accept anything, of course. But if people are interested (or not) it is good to know that.

I find it hard to imagine a boss who would think it improper, though I've had some pretty bad ones.

You never know what you'll find until you look.

Moreover, once you are in a doctoral program your work supervisor will play little part. It is your doctoral supervisor who will be your guide.


Can I upload a national report which I reference in a paper to a preprint server so it has a permanent location and/or DOI rather than a URL?

It would be very good to upload the reports in a repository, for the reasons you give. You can do it provided this is not explicitly forbidden by a copyright statement on the reports. If the copyright status is absent or unclear, do it anyway, the worst that can happen is that you are asked to remove a report. (This once happened to me after I posted financial data on journal subscriptions on my blog, but these data had never been made public before.)
Asking the authors may not succeed, why would they do it now if they did not do it previously? On the other hand, it would be nice to inform them after you post the reports.


Creating a permanent URL to put in a publication

Maybe Zenodo or other "Academic Data Repository". Googling this would give you a list. Zenodo have some advantages.

Gives you a DOI, Digial Object Identifier, a unique link and a academic standard for citations.
You don't need acceptance to publish your data.
Is a official EU project, used for giving research grants in Open AIRE project.
Is hosted by CERN.
Runs free software in the entire stack.


Any data for average number of papers per year at different career stages?

Italy introduced a few years ago a habilitation process which involves heavy bibliometric evaluation, and in the process they computed median values for all the professors in Italian universities for:

number of papers published in 10 years
citations per year
a sort of normalized H-index: the number h such that the person has h papers with score >=h, where a paper published Y years ago with C citations has score 4C/Y. (more precisely defined here (Italian) and here).

The medians are separate by discipline and academic role (associate and full professor only --- not for assistants, unfortunately). You can find them here: associate full, and a legend for the codes of the scientific disciplines is here. The documents are in Italian, but you can google-translate them (or guess the meaning of most words, it's not too difficult for an English speaker).
For instance, in computer science (01/B1) the medians for an associate professor are

10 journal papers / 10 years,
9.15 citations / year
"contemporary H-index" 5.

and for a full professor

12 papers / 10 years
14.8 citations / year
"contemporary H-index" 6.

The calculations are of course imperfect, but they are very interesting to browse and give an idea of how wildly these numbers vary across different fields. For instance, the typical professor in nuclear physics (02/A1) publishes 59.5 papers over 10 years and gets over 104 citations per year, while one in mathematical logic (01/A1) publishes 5 papers in 10 years and gets 1.74 citations per year.


How/where do I publish a 50-page-long writeup?

The options are really to either find a place that will publish in the format that it is or to figure out how to break it up.

The first thing I would do is try and get an accurate estimate of the length. A 50 page document with the standard LaTeX font and margins that includes a TOC, index and big diagrams may not actually be too long for a lot of journals. Depending on the complexity of the article, you can try creating a "preprint" to get a pretty good approximation of length. A 20 page article can probably be made to stay under the maximum length requirements of many journals. Getting a 40 page article to work will likely not be possible.

In terms of breaking it up, you need to figure out how to chunk the work.

  Either it would have no grounding and be based on hand-waving; or it would be bits-and-pieces all over the place; or it would be a long series of definitions which doesn't go somewhere very interesting.

Trying to publish bits-and-pieces all over the place is going to be painful. Most reviewers want some sort of cohesive story. The other two options sound like dividing the work into two chunks. The first chunk seems like something you could publish in a good journal if somehow the theoretical grounding was published.

The second chunk seems boring that no good journal is going to want to publish. I see three approaches to getting it published. The first is to publish the second chunk as a stand alone item. Depending on your field you might be able to publish it as a methods article or in a methods journal. You could also target a low impact journal/conference that is targeting work that is slightly better than pay-to-publish quality and doesn't really care if things are interesting. Finally, you could use something like ArXiv (or whatever your field uses) to self publish the work.

The second option is to publish the second chunk as supplemental material in a journal that allows that. Here is an example of what APS supplemental material can include.

The final option, and probably the most difficult, is to find a journal that allows big appendices.


What are valid publications to put on a grad school application resume?

The type of publications that you should list in the publications section of an academic CV are those writings that contain technical work at the level of a typical scientific publication.  This can include non-peer-reviewed and unpublished works, but they should be the sort of thing that, if circumstances were different, might be reasonable to send through peer-review.

With regards to the examples that you list, then:

Confidential company research paper: this would be reasonable to put in a non-peer-reviewed research section, with a note that it is not available due to confidentiality restrictions.
Company teaching materials: these would go in "teaching experience," not publications.
University research project papers: these would generally not be listed, unless something above and beyond the usual happened, like they were actually sent off for peer reviewed publication.


Is it acceptable to submit more than one papers to a conference?

Yes, it is acceptable, particularly since the author lists will all be different.  Go for it!

One word of warning: The papers themselves must have clearly different content.  If you submit five nearly identical papers, the editors are likely to accept at most the best one and reject the rest.  That will annoy your other co-authors mightily.


How to notify Elsevier or Clarivate when then they are indexing predatory or very low quality journals?

First, Elsevier or Clarivate Analytics already monitor things like dramatic increases in the number of articles published. It's why excessive self-citation can and has lead to journals getting delisted.

However you can still write to them to highlight potential problems. If you want to do this, the best way is to use their "contact us" forms on their website. Here's Scopus's page on it, and here's Web of Science's. Be prepared for the exchange to go like any other investigation - you may be asked to provide proof.