You should apply for grants at the beginning of the funding cycle. Most funding agencies provide specific dates during which they accept grant applications. Depending on the subject, there can be a funding cycle every 6 months, 8 months, or a year. For the NSF, as far as I know, the funding cycle for the Social Sciences and Economics is an annual cycle, with the deadline in August.

If your research is around halfway through by that time, I think it would be best to apply, because if you choose to wait for the completion of the work, you might have to wait for a long time. However, if you have just started your research, maybe it would be a good idea to wait and apply for funding in the next cycle. So basically, I would recommend preparing for grants application once you have enough clarity about the direction in which your study is heading.


Acknowledge somebody whose advice is not relevant to the current manuscript anymore?

How to decide who to include in the acknowledgements?

Generously.
If people gave up their valuable time to help you in the process of developing that paper, it is kind to acknowledge that.  This is true even with contributions that are very helpful but may not be directly reflected in the final text, such as avoiding a long rabbit-hole or programming for some data collection or analysis part of it.
Per Mad Jack's answer, you can have the acknowledgement accurately reflect that the contribution was to an earlier draft, or whatever the contribution was, but they still helped.


Regarding self-archiving embargos, what is the "official publication" date?

From Nature Neurology Reviews (bold is my emphasis):

What is the 'official' publication date?
Many journals, and most abstracting and indexing services (including Medline and Institute for Scientific Information) still cite the print date as the publication date. This is an evolving standard, however, and the trend now is for publishers to state both the 'Online Publication Date' and the 'Print Publication Date'. Nature Publishing Group currently publishes both dates for its own papers, and we hope that the scientific communities and abstracting and indexing services will recognize these dates.
For the time being, the reference lists in our papers will continue to follow the standard convention of citing by print publication details if they are available. We expect, however, to review this policy regularly as community standards evolve.
For legal purposes (e.g. establishing intellectual property rights), it is our assumption that online publication will constitute public disclosure. This status is, however, for the courts to decide; our role as a publisher is to provide clear documentation of the publication history, online and in print.

In summary, it seems like the print publication date was originally the standard, but now it is becoming more common to treat the online publication date as a form of official publication as well, as online publication becomes the norm. It's probably up to the journal how they exactly define official publication for purposes of repository deposits, however, and you will have to check with the journal for clarification if it is not already clear.
The US National Institutes of Health requires that NIH-funded research must be archived in their PubMedCentral database 12 months after "official publication." Their FAQ on the matter defines this as follows:

NIH determines the official date of publication for the public access policy based on information received from the publisher and the National Library of Medicine (NLM).  The official date of publication is listed in the PubMed citation display for a paper immediately after the journal title abbreviation.
NIH uses the official date of publication for determining the public access compliance status of a paper and calculating when a paper should be made public on PubMed Central. An "epub ahead of print" date for a citation in PubMed is not considered the official date of publication, and these papers are still considered in press.
Note that when only partial publication dates are available (e.g. Month and Year, Season and Year), NLM calculates the date as the first date of that time period (e.g. March 2013=March 1, 2013). See http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/licensee/elements_article_source.html for additional information about NLM dates.

Based on these guidelines, it would suggest that it is the print publication date that is important, but it also seems like they leave it up to the publisher to some extent.


Future prospects after Phd in Robotics from Australia?

A PhD is a research degree. Only get one if you want to do research.
Simply put, the point of a PhD is to train you to perform scientific research and to provide accreditation to the fact that you’re capable of doing so.
If you want to get a job in academia or some big company’s R&D department you may want to get one. If you just want to be an engineer working in development you probably don’t.


Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?

This is of course a sensitive issue. However, the ethically correct behavior is to notify someone responsible about the problem. Etiquette says to go to the advisor first, as the advisor is the person who, after the author who committed the plagiarism, stands to lose the most from the accusation.

However, if you feel squeamish about doing it by yourself, you can talk to your advisor about the best way to proceed.

The main issue on your part is if you will need to rely on the plagiarizer's advisor for recommendation letters. Then you should definitely proceed with caution, and with the support of your advisor, department administrators, or both.

Of course, make sure that you've done your due diligence before going public with your charges, and to have the evidence with you when you meet with anyone about this matter.


As others have noted, the difference between ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) and DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is that ISSN identifies a periodical publication (i.e. journal, conference proceedings) as a whole (i.e. it does not change between volumes or issues), while DOI identifies a single published work (i.e. article) from that periodical (more specifically, it also identifies a version of that work).

Most journals provide a DOI for their publications, even if it is not immeadeately obvious. Typically it's somewhere close to the top of the page while browser-viewing the article.

To obtain a DOI from a reference, take a look here. It seems to be an official service from Crossref that will search for a DOI based on a bibliography entry.

So, you just enter text in there (I tested the service by copy-pasting the first 7 bibliography items from the reference list of my latest publication), one reference per line, click "submit" and it will try and find a DOI for each entry. Out of the 7 references I submitted, it succeeded for 6, while the last one was a book and did not have a DOI.

Note that not finding a DOI through the suggested link still does not guarantee that a publication does not have a DOI (but some do not); in that case the next-best options are to check the journal website as well as how other papers cite the work in question.

Finally, it was suggested that posting a preprint of a paper on ResearchGate will allow you to generate a DOI for it. This is true, but with one caveat - as mentioned, the DOI identifies a single instance of an article, and therefore the DOI generated through ResearchGate will be linked specifically to a preprint (or "author's version"), and not the version of the work published by a journal or in conference proceedings.


My department promised graduate students a particular teaching load, but has found a loophole to increase it

I think this is unfair, but there is probably nothing that you can do about it.  In my STEM department, TAs all nominally are responsible for the same number of work hours (twenty hours per week), but with different courses and different grading responsibilities, it is inevitable that there will be some iniquities—including some students teaching more sections that others.  Sometimes students unfortunately get saddled with extra work unexpectedly.  Mostly, the students grin and bear it, knowing that we try to have the extra work average out over time (see below).

As a practical matter, funding for teaching assistantships at an R1 institution mostly comes from outside the department (probably from the dean's office).  There is a set number of fully-supported TA slots available, and the department has a certain number of courses that it needs to have covered.  There may be a bit of extra money in the departmental budget, but if the department suddenly and unexpectedly increased the teaching load for some of its TAs, that suggests that the department may be in a precarious financial position, with little to no extra money available to support the TAs who are working harder.

It will not hurt to ask for additional money.  However, even if there was enough money to pay the overloaded TAs a bit extra, the department would probably say no.  If they did start paying some TAs more than others, that could provoke even more ill will and dissension among the graduate students; the ones who were not assigned extra sections would be (quite reasonably) angry that they were not getting the same opportunity to make extra money as some of their fellows.

So, I think it is quite unlikely that you will get any extra funding for teaching one extra class section per year.  What you can realistically ask for is to have the extra teaching load spread around between different TAs; this year, maybe half the TAs have to duty extra duty, but next year, those additional courses will fall on the shoulders of the other half.  The department may already have it in mind to do this, but it would not be a bad idea to get it stated as an official policy goal to handle things this way.

One final thing that might be relevant.  The amount of teaching that faculty members do in R1 STEM departments is far from uniform.  In biology, chemistry, and physics, full load for professors is typically teaching one or one-and-a-half courses per semester.  In other STEM areas (geology, mathematics, neuroscience, etc.), the course load for faculty can be about twice that.  That means that different kinds of STEM departments have different amounts of slack in what the faculty are available to teach.  Depending on your field (and the local departmental culture), it might or might not be viable to have professors take up some of the extra course responsibilities.  It is too late for that to change for this semester and maybe the next semester too, but things might be different next academic year.  (Again, however, this is probably something that the departmental faculty have already thought about and discussed, so any complaint you make is unlikely to make a great deal of difference in what ultimately happens.)


Life after graduation; should I update my academic reference on my career progression?

Do professors empirically appreciate their former students keeping them in the loop of their career progress?

You know your professor's personalities better than anyone here on SE. If they seemed cold and remote to you while you worked with them, then you probably won't gain much by keeping in touch. But it seems you have 'a rather a close relationship' with them. If that is the case, then I would say: Yes, get in contact with them.

Understand, you aren't just 'keeping in touch'. What you are actually doing is professional networking. If these professors work in your field, or have any similarities, then it is to your advantage to stay in touch with people in your field. At some point, you may find that they can help you with future employment. Or perhaps as your own career advances, they will come to you for help in something. This is part of the 'game' of being successful in the professional world.

Tip: If you haven't seen these professors in a while, ask if you can stop by. Just try to have lunch together. Tell them about your new role. If you learn that someone did help you by being a reference, see to it to send that person a Thank You card. It's all part of the networking game.

Lastly, Now you haven't tagged what country your are in. If it is the case that in your particular country, in your particular culture/society, people don't network like this, then ignore my answer.


Are you expected to bring poster presentations to academic conferences?

Usually if you are presenting a poster, it's because you

submit a poster abstract to a call for posters, and it is accepted, or
submit a paper, and you are informed that it is accepted for a poster presentation instead of a talk, or
are otherwise informed by the organizers to bring a poster.

If you don't fall in any of the categories above, then in my experience, you aren't presenting a poster.


Tenure-track reference letters: previous supervisors versus outsiders

It's a lot harder to have non-advisors write letters for a tenure-track application in most STEM fields, largely because of the more direct connection between projects, funding, and supervision in STEM fields versus humanities fields.

In the applications I've reviewed as a hiring committee member in engineering, pretty much every letter came from either a PI or co-PI of a project the applicant worked on as either a graduate student or a postdoc. If there was a letter from an "external" member, I don't recall seeing it. However, it certainly wouldn't hurt if such letters were available, so long as it's a helpful letter of recommendation.


How do I stay motivated in my PhD research when my advisor doesn't seem to like me very much?

What a shame that your professor hasn't been giving you constructive feedback as you've been going.  I think I would end up depressed, working with someone who waits, and then dumps a lot of negativity in a complaining and blaming way.

So... I see two choices.

1) Find a different advisor.  OR:

2) Try to make the best of a less than ideal situation:

a) Take all of his feedback and rewrite it, with positive phrasing.  Read the constructive version a couple of times a week, telling yourself, "This is what he meant, only he was held back from expressing himself this way by his own cultural upbringing, personal shortcomings, etc.  This is like the Fats Waller song, "I'm gonna sit right down, and write myself a letter." (lyrics).

b) Pick a couple of his feedback items at a time to tackle, to see if you can make some progress with.

c) Guide him to give you guidance in a more positive, constructive way.  Here are some ways to do that:

(i) Next time you share a powerpoint draft with him, include the extra material, and in the body of the email, when you send it to him, say, for example, "I know that this draft needs to be pruned down.  Can you help me cut it down, by suggesting which slides should be removed, and which ones should be edited?"

(ii) Ask for an appointment specifically to speak about coping mechanisms for your condition.  Take an outline on an index card with you.  Use I-messages.  (You and I know that he has contributed plenty to the difficulties in your relationship, but it won't help matters to let him know that.)  For example, "I need constructive criticism, as part of my training.  But I get easily discouraged and overwhelmed by negative criticism.  So, when I share a draft with you, could you please find something positive to say for every three negative things you say?  That will help me keep my perspective."

(iii) Make sure to give him positive feedback whenever he makes a step in the right direction, for example, "Thank you so much for helping me edit my powerpoint.  Your comments were extremely helpful."

d) As others have suggested, work on breaking your isolation.  (I understand completely your explanation of how it came to be.)

Last comment.  You might be right, he might not like you very much.  But what struck me more clearly was that you don't like him very much.  Sometimes when a person struggles with depression, it is hard to give oneself permission to have strong opinions of this type.

Here's hoping that if you decide to stay in this group, the two of you find  more to like about each other!


What is the perception of students who take a gap year between their graduation and starting graduate school?

When I was looking into this for a former student of mine I spoke with the head of the graduate program at the US Top 20 program I was working in at the time. He actually viewed a gap year as a good thing. His rationale was that students who had held jobs and managed to live for the gap year were more likely to have the work habits useful in graduate school.

When it comes time to write your applications you just have to remember to explain how that year has made you a better candidate for their program. It might not be more math that you've learned by it may be maturity and a renewed sense of purpose. If you chose to take a year off do something worthwhile and don't just study for exams.


How to abort one post-doc sub-project politely

Bad news is almost always best conveyed:

Immediately
In person

You cannot change that you probably should have said this earlier, but you can prevent it from being further delayed now.

So go find your colleague and tell them you are not going to be able to collaborate with them. Probably best to apologize to them as part of this conversation, too.

A lot of this will depend on how long ago this agreement was and how long you've been procrastinating saying anything. If we're talking a week, it's less important than if this other post-doc has been waiting for you for a month. If it's been a long time, make sure to apologize for taking so long to tell them, too.


I am not in your field, though I have been a faculty member in several PhD programs in the social and health sciences. So, I'm not sure how much of this would be relatable. However, PhD programs typically have a minimal GPA requirement. You do not mention what your GPA is exactly, but typically programs don't require an A (4.0) average. If the application requires a cover letter or personal statement, you can explain challenges you have had in the past, though you should make sure that you describe how these challenges would not impede on your future success. Also, you mention a good TOEFL score, though I would suggest working on your writing in English or have a native English speaker proofread your materials, if you are applying to US programs.


Avoid plagiarizing other surveying authors when describing the work of a third

I would just comment, but I can't. Building on ff524's question (in comment) "Are you citing the survey(s) (in addition to the original papers)?", I would simply say "algorithm AWESOME does this and that (AUTHOR OF ALGORITHM OR ANYONE ELSE RELEVANT, 1908; AUTHOR OF THAT GREAT REVIEW YOU THINK READERS SHOULD ALSO READ OR CHECK, 2043)", as "(BURGUER, 1908; FRIES, 2043)" for example (or format it in the same standard you're using). This gives due credit without overcredit nor plagiarism.


Cannot complete thesis and blocked to go non-thesis. What other avenues towards a degree exist?

Where I am, a non-thesis option requires only the approval of the department (meaning the department chair) and the graduate school. A "non-thesis advisor" is considered an oxymoron. At best, graduate students in this position are advised by either the Department Chair or the Chair of the Graduate Programs for the Department.

Put together a Program of Study (PoS) based on the Graduate Catalogue for your university and department / program. Your university probably has an on-line form to complete and submit. Confirm that you have met all of the administrative requirements. Then ...

Talk to the Department Chair.
Talk to the Dean of the Graduate School.

When you meet all of the PoS requirements for the degree, and with their approvals and signatures, you should be done.


In a research group, is it better to have few post-docs and many PhD students, or viceversa?

That's an interesting question. In all of the following, I am assuming computer science here, other fields may have completely different dynamics:

  What do you think is the best ratio between the number of PhD students and the number of post-docs in a research group? Why?

PhD students and postdocs fill fundamentally different roles in an university. PhD students are the heart and most important part of a research group. They are where the actual science happens (everybody else is just too busy most of the time). The role of postdocs can vary between "more senior PhD student" to "assistant professor with bad job title", though in most larger research groups it tends to be more the latter than the former. As such, the most common task of postdocs seems to be to take over the day-to-day advising of PhD students from a busy professor. I would say the optimal "formula" for such postdocs is roughly (number of PhD students / 3) - number of professors. The idea being that, as long as the research group is still small, no postdocs are actually needed. In a larger group, you need roughly one postdoc to help about 3 PhD students, minus the few people that the faculty can / wants to actually supervise themselves. In reality, though, the real ratio fluctuates widely based on available funding, people finishing, postdocs moving on, etc.

Let's go over your examples:

  one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), zero post-doctoral fellows, and nine PhD students.

That seems a bit borderline in terms of PhD students per advisor / senior person, but probably still ok.

  one principal investigator professor, one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students, and no researchers.

6 PhD students per senior person seems already tough to provide good guidance, especially as the professor certainly will have lots of other things to do as well.

  I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, ten post-doctoral fellows and two PhD students.

I guess this is a group where the postdocs are more in the "glorified PhD student" mode. I am not a fan of this model. If the responsible person thinks that 10 postdocs are more productive than 10 PhD students, I think they are sadly mistaken. Or paraphrased from Jorge Cham "as a postdoc you can finally spend all your time on what your PhD training has prepared you to do - applying for faculty positions" (source).


What is the proper way to cite an image source, if they were given to me by a company?

The most important function of a citation is to inform readers where they can find the information you are citing.  If the information you are using was provided for your privately, then your source is “personal communication”, meaning that the information cannot be found in any published literature, but only through personal contacts.

In this case, I would do the following:  In figure captions and/or the body text discussing the figures, make an explicit statement that you received the images from the company involved.  One statement may be sufficient (something of the form: “Figures 3–6 were provided by Prescott Pharmaceuticals,” when you are discussing figure 3).  For each figure, also provide a citation in the caption to “Prescott Pharmaceuticals, private communication” (or however private communications are formatted with the citation system you are using).


Is it reasonable for an anonymous reviewer to add the completion date to their report to show they completed the review in a timely manner?

Would it be "correct" or "ethical"? Probably.

Would it do anything? Probably not. There are often reasons for a review to come in late, and some of them are not just "The reviewer is a slacker". Beyond that, the editorial staff at a journal has their own discretion beyond just "What do the reviewers say?", and that can (and should) take time.

Assuming you're anonymous, I can't really see an upside as an annoyed author of a delayed paper behind knowing that "It's totally not Reviewer 2's fault".


How to survey recommended course readings?

This is indeed a tricky task, as you are quite correct, many universities won't necessarily publish online and there are scant compilations for course readings specifically.

However, having said that, I found this Middle Eastern Teaching tools link list from the University of Portland and this compilation by a Dr. Alan Godlas.

At the bottom of the 2nd link is information regarding listserv's which may be of help.


If you were an editor-in-chief, would you appreciate to be informed that an associate editor has published sloppy information in his journal?

Reading your post, I did not understand exactly what the problem is with their article. It may be sloppily written, but your post comes across like you are looking for reasons to complain about it.

It is unfortunately common for articles to be poorly written. Of course, depending on the journal one expects varying quality, but even in top journals writing and presentation quality may not the primary concern for publication.

On the other hand, if you have comments on how an article can be improved, you have to be very careful when emailing the authors. Unsolicited criticism does not usually go over well.

  A handful of other co-authors follows. They are also affiliated to serious education establishments and hold positions with some standing.

This does not seem relevant to the question.

  Author and co-authors are associated by a grand research project.

Similarly, this doesn't seem to be relevant.

  Parts of the article have been copied and pasted, or slightly edited, from grey literature related to the same research project.

Are you accusing them of plagiarism, or did they only copy from their own past papers? If the former, that is a major concern and you should contact the editor, but only about this particular point, not the rest. If the latter, note that attitudes on self-plagiarism vary and while it is inadvisable, it is not always considered unethical.

  some terminology is plainly wrong (apples-for-pears)
  some terminology is subtly wrong (community-bound misnomers)
  some formulas lack
  the references do not contain information integrating these lacunas

These are issues for the presentation but not issues with the work itself. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas for how to improve the article, but as you are not the author of the article, there is no direct and easy way for you to do so. If you feel strongly about presenting their work more effectively, you could consider writing a blog post or other piece of exposition putting their work in a positive light and clarifying such issues.

  I asked again for that integration
  radio silence

Were you polite in your emails? Did you compliment their work at all? Did you express interest?

If not, I would probably respond with radio silence too. Yes they could improve the article, but they did not ask you for your unsolicited feedback. They are not obligated to answer your email.

  I then discovered the article, pointed out to the inconsistency with the paper, and urged for some integration

It sounds like you emailed the authors and just told them to change their paper. This comes across as rude. You need to be more tactful in your suggestions.


Is it okay to explore other grad school options while deferring admission for other reasons?

I think it is at minimum rude, and probably unethical.

In deferring, you have still accepted a position. If you use the remaining time to do things other than what you said you were going to do, you are taking advantage of the generosity of the offered deferral (which, I would add, is not a guarantee everywhere - they are generous to offer it).

I can see a couple possible exceptions:

If the reason for applying to another school is also related to a serious personal issue (for example: to be near an ill family member, to be near an institution responsible for your own care, because a certain climate is important to your health, for immigration/travel reasons).
If there is no offer of funding/support from the school, then in my opinion you are less beholden to them, and they are less impacted by if you are to later withdraw your acceptance. In this case you should almost certainly pursue other offers.
If the deferral process really is that simple, where the reason you give doesn't really matter: they are just allowing you to take a year for any reason. I think this sort of thing is more common in undergraduate rather than graduate admissions (especially for a PhD), though I don't have enough personal experience to say. I would still suggest talking to someone at the school before deciding this is the case.

I would also add that I think you could be vastly overestimating the importance of attending a particular school and paying far too much attention to ranking. While I was writing this answer, @JonCuster posted what I think is a very important comment to consider, coming from the perspective of someone who has spent a lot of time here at Academia.SE:

  ..."I see too many questions here about changing to get into a ‘better’ school, with little thought given to what makes it ‘better’ - some random ranking does not make it better. You appear to have thought through it a bit more, so keep thinking!"

If you do want to look at other options because you aren't certain about attending this school, I would suggest discussing this with them rather than rescinding your acceptance outright. If I were them, however, I would have much preferred to admit a student this year that actually wants to go to this school rather than waiting a year to take someone who doesn't.


Is there any source where to find samples of Research Proposals?

Awarded NSF proposals in the US can be requested from NSF via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). They give the authors a chance to redact non-public information like salaries or corporate secrets, but NSF gets a chance to edit it back in. Salaries are weird because lots of us work for state universities and our salaries are public already. The requestor’s name is not anonymous. My organization has been subject to many of these, every time we win a new big computer. Other agencies are subject to similar rules but may have different responses based on their missions (DARPA, NNSA, etc). Doing such a request is tedious and exacting, and you’re probably better off asking colleagues you’re not likely to compete against to look at one of their successful proposals.


How to send TOEFL score to a particular department?

The website lists the following:

  Appropriate exam results must be submitted directly from the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or directly from the IELTS Office (International English Language Testing Systems) to McGilll University (Code 0935), Department code for: general Math (072) and Statistics (059).  An institutional version of the TOEFL is not acceptable.

If those codes are not available, I would reach out to the department for advice on how to proceed via email. Screenshot the list of departments on the website to show that it is not listed. Perhaps also CC the testing center/company.


How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?

It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.

Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.
I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.
Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.


It is worth to get a bachelor degree in education?

If you want to teach at any level, even in industry, a degree in education is valuable, and, in many cases, especially at the lower levels, is a requirement. It can also be a gateway to graduate degrees for a person who wants to do educational research, especially in academia. My former spouse, for example, was professor of educational psychology, a common specialty.
In most places in the US, perhaps all, a bachelors is required for a teacher. For elementary education that mostly means a bachelors in education, but there can be exceptions. For higher levels it may be somewhat less of a requirement that your degree be in education specifically, though you probably will need to take courses in education to advance in either elementary or secondary level teaching. Usually, the credits you are required to learn can also be applied to a masters in education.
But note that a degree in education has many possibilities. There are differences in programs that focus on elementary education and secondary education, for example. And some programs, geared toward teaching adults, can be valuable for a person wanting to be a "trainer" in industry.
For university teaching, such qualifications are seldom needed unless you want to teach in an education department. But if you want to teach math, for example, in a university, math degrees are normally needed, not education credits. But a math degree, alone, will probably not qualify you for teaching at the elementary level and may or may not at the secondary level. And, again, someone teaching secondary level math will probably be required to earn several education credits to keep their job, though, perhaps, not to get hired initially.
Whether it is "worth it" or not depends on what you contemplate for your career.


I'm biased, as a long-time IEEE member, but I recommend IEEE Dataport as a good place to store large data sets that are likely to be of interest to others.
As their About page says:

IEEE DataPort™ is a universally accessible web-based portal that serves four primary purposes:

Enable individuals and institutions to indefinitely store and make datasets easily accessible to a broad set of researchers, engineers and industry;
Enable researchers, engineers and industry to gain access to datasets that can be analyzed to advance technology;
Facilitate data analysis by enabling access to data in the AWS Cloud and by enabling the downloading of datasets
Supports reproducible research.


Should I embed a related work section in the introduction, and how would I do this?

The structure of your paper should make it attractive to read and easier to understand. So keeping to the common structure in your field is usually helpful, but not a dogma that should be obeyed when it's not useful.

Introduction -> Related Work -> Main Contributions is a pretty common start for CS writing, so making it a separate section would be the default option.

However, if you have to lean heavily on a literature discussion to motivate the need for your work, it can make more sense to pull them together into a single chapter, perhaps with subsections.


Reply to a professor's response to my email or not?

As an instructor, when I write a nice personal note to a student, it means I spent some time thinking about them and how I could help them.  I appreciate when someone says thank you.  Here's how to do it without inviting another round.

  Thank you.  I really appreciate your help and advice.

  Turtle


Is it legit to change from one university to another?

There is no way to be sure about this—but what is certain is that you would need to be apply for admission and be accepted at the second university if you want to enroll and attend classes at that university. Whether or not this is possible depends on the policies of the other university. Note that many universities will require you to provide transcripts from previously attended institutions as a condition of application and enrollment, while financial holds are often used to "block" the release of transcripts from universities. So you may find yourself in a bit of a catch-22 situation.


It would seem weird for you to disclose your issues this late in the application process (a week after they said that they'll "announce shortly"). Even if there was some benefit to being honest about your past, it's probably too late to do it now. It would have been a good idea to mention your past problems, how you dealt with them, and how you are feeling now if it would give a better impression of your current state, at some point early on in the process, e.g, during the interview, preferably brought up by yourself, but if you contacted them about it now, it would seem more like a desperate attempt to salvage an application process you think is failing (even if it actually isn't).

Even if it could make a difference between being accepted and not being accepted, you have to then wonder why the commitee haven't brought it up themselves then? If this is the issue that'll be the decider here, then I find it highly unlikely (and highly unreasonable) that the commitee haven't given you least a chance to talk about it from your perspective. So, if they know about it and haven't brought it up, it's probably not what's going to decide whether you are accepted or not, so bringing it up now is likely to have no effect.

But, if there's a next time, and you're sure it will be mentioned in your recommendations letters, then bring it up yourself. But remember, nobody is expecting you to disclose the detailed circumstances of what and why. That's your private life, it's nobody's business. But you should at least explain how you overcame it and how you are feeling now. and make clear that it's entirely in the past now (if that's true, obviously, but I can understand how you may not be fully aware of whether it truly is in the past yourself. Just make sure to act in good faith).


What Happens When Schools Cannot Provide A Placement Exam?

Schools and even individual departments probably differ greatly on how they handle such issues, so your best bet is to talk to your academic advisor as soon as possible to figure out what your options are. At many schools the "director of studies" (undergrad or graduate) for a program has some latitude to waive requirements and allow students to make substitutions—I know that was certainly the case for me when I was an undergraduate student because I had come into the major with a relatively unusual background that meant I needed to replace some classes that could not be taken (I had taken similar courses in a different "track").


When applying to grad school with a mediocre past how can you make yourself stand out

Why do you think you should be admitted?

The admissions committee will ask themselves: if this applicant has mediocre qualifications, why should we admit them?  Why should we believe they will be successful?  So, you should be asking yourself that question, and thinking about what your answer would be.

If you have a good answer to that question, that might tell you how to make yourself stand out: emphasize the parts that make you think you are well-qualified to succeed.  Your application is a chance to tell your story and answer that question for the admissions committee.


Career options after teaching oriented position

If you have experience with any kind of programming (I'm guessing you do!), you could join the throngs of people who used to teach or do research but are now doing any number of things involving programming computers.


My first day as a teacher, how should I proceed?

Calm down! easier said than done. Remember you know more than they do but do not put on a suit that does not fit. If you get questions you cannot answer, do not get nervous, simply say: it is a good question and you will check up the answer. Don't start putting out excuses that you are inexperienced, haven't done this before, or whatever. Let what you do speak for itself, I am sure it is more than fine.

Now that the emergency is over, what can you do? Be prepared. Check out the material ahead of time and if you are in a lab or have to help out in exercises, run through them yourself to figure out where problems may arise. This takes a little time but will help you run things smoothly. In the case of a lecture situation, you also need to be prepared, read up on the material, make a good series of slides. Show what you plan to do to someone more experienced to perhaps get feedback and pointers on improvements. A typical rookie mistake is to overwork things, put too much stuff into a lecture and set the level too high. Assessing the right level is something you learn but if you have a chance to look at others' lectures or perhaps go back to what you experienced, you may be able to find your level quicker.

If yo want a quick check on what you have done you can do a quick feedback at the end. Give each person a small piece of paper (e.g. index card) and have them write one or a couple of things they found good on one side and something they think could be improved on the other. Do not use the word "bad" on that side, you want to know what you did well and what might improve. Collect the feedback and check it immediately. It may help you get a sense of how you came across. You can do this on a regular basis if time permits.

In the end, it is tough to get started, we have all been there with different amounts of self-confidence, experience etc. Expect some things to go less well, it is bound to happen, we all have off days. If something is less well, use it to improve. Use your colleagues as support if you find it rough, everyone has some experience of that sort.

I wish you luck. It can be really fun to teach. Look for pointers on teaching on the web and check out journals for higher ed. teaching to get ideas. There is no reason to approach teaching less seriously than what one would do, say research. The butterflies you will inevitably feel when you start will disappear and your confidence will grow with experience. Just keep calm and on top of matters.


Journal paper and conference proceedings note appear to be identical, is this plagiarism?

It's hard to give a precise minimum amount of copying that constitutes plagiarism, and there are always various subjective mitigating and aggravating circumstances to consider. Ultimately, though, any official response to plagiarism should come from an organization that has a statement about what they consider to be such.

In this case, the latter article is published in The Astrophysical Journal. The publisher's ethics policy has the following points to make (all emphasis mine):

  Plagiarism is the act of reproducing text or other materials from other papers without properly crediting the source. Such material is regarded as being plagiarized regardless of whether it is cited literally or has been modified or paraphrased.

Thus here the standards are pretty loose; even inexact copying counts. Certainly a change in one equation does not make this non-plagiarism.

  Deliberate refusal to credit or cite prior or corroborating results, while not regarded technically as constituting plagiarism, represents a comparable breach of professional ethics, and can result in summary rejection of a manuscript.

Even if there was no overlap in text, loose or exact, omitting something you know to be relevant is just as problematic.

  Strictly speaking, authors are not formally required to cite unpublished or unrefereed materials, especially in cases where the veracity of the unpublished work may be in question. However, when principles of common professional courtesy dictate that such attribution is appropriate, authors are expected to honor these conventions.

Here's where that subjectivity comes into play. It's not clear how refereed the earlier work is, nor what level of "professional courtesy" is considered "common." Conference proceedings are rather rare in astrophysics, especially in the US (where the latter article is published). Most conferences are for oral talks and posters, not written papers. To the extent conferences do catalog what happened in a permanent way, one still looks to cite "real" articles rather than proceedings.

Does a proceeding count as prior work? Does it matter (with regard to professional courtesy) that the first article's intended audience was probably largely confined to Korea? These are questions that ultimately the publisher must answer, and I could find no statement of theirs addressing them.

The community or its practitioners are also free to develop their own opinions and take whatever action suites them. For example, a tendency for self-plagiarism will get a researcher noticed as producing water-down rehashings of old work and will thus lead to people not paying much attention to that researcher in the future.

The issue of authorship is only loosely related. In astrophysics, authorship is understood to be in order of significance of contribution, where in cases of large author lists people at an equivalent tier of contribution will be ordered alphabetically. At some level, there's no way to reliably tell who really did what, and so unsurprisingly I could find no official statement from ApJ about author order.

The fact that the bulk of the content of the latter paper was written by the second author years ago would seem to be strong evidence that the authorship norms of the community are not being followed here. A journal has every right to object to this (or any other feature of a submission), and maybe they would take action if notified, but I cannot be sure. The practice of gifting authorship, either to help students' careers or to help one's own, is thankfully not so common that strict guidelines have been set up to deal with it.

Finally, an update on this particular case. The journal was notified of the earlier article, and it has indeed issued a retraction for plagiarism. There does not seem to be any mention of gift authorship one way or the other.


(re-writing my answer after some further reflection)

It seems that right now, you have a burning passion to be studying Math and Computer Science, which is very commendable. However, my advice would be to spend some time now working on a longer-term plan for your future, and how your passion for these areas fits into it. At a basic level, I would suggest a key goal of this plan should be: 'how do I get to a position where I am doing what I am passionate about and getting paid a live-able wage to do it?'

So, your plan might be to go to a top tier college and major in CS, then go on to do a PhD, then become an academic in that area. Or, alternatively, it might be to major in that area and then go and work for a particular company in Industry that is doing work in an area that excites you, which is closely-related to those fields of study.

Then, once you have that longer-term plan, you can look more closely at the details of how can you get to that destination as quickly as possible and what the next step should be. You can also look more closely at what the requirements are for that next step. For example, you can (and should) reach out to some of the top 5 colleges you are planning to apply to, to see what their entrance requirements are.

You might find that they are looking for candidates that are fairly well-rounded and have shown excellence over a range of courses, not just one or two. You might also find that you would need to get a good score on an SAT-style standardized test, which might require knowledge beyond just Math and CS. If this is the case, then you know you can't afford to neglect your other courses. However, knowing that they are required for you to take the next step towards your longer-term goal should give you more motivation to study them, because now they are no longer pointless and irrelevant to your life.

On the other hand, you might find a college that would be willing to take you on sooner, if you are showing exceptional potential in one or two subjects, regardless of your performance in other areas. If that is the case, it might provide you with a quicker path to your destination and then you may be able to afford to slack off a bit more in those other subjects. But, I think it's very important that you verify this first. I.e. you need to do your research to see what options are available for your continued education and what they require.

You might also find that some colleges prefer candidates that can show evidence of extra-curricular activities, such as sports or music. If that is the case, then it might be well worth investing some of your extra time into some of those activities, as a means of helping you to reach your end goal, of being paid to do what you have a passion for. This is probably a healthy thing to do anyway, as it's good to have some balance in your life and make time for social activities and to keep yourself healthy.

So, in summary, give some serious thought to your longer-term plan of where you are going and how you are going to get there. Simply succumbing to the immediate burning desire to study Math and CS might not be the most effective way to realize your long term goals. Unfortunately, the education system has to cater for a very wide range of students and it's not always possible for it to be tailored perfectly for every individual. So, keep an eye on the longer term plan, so that even if you end up spending a year or two doing things that you would ideally not be doing, at least you know they are helping you work towards those goals. As you progress further in the education system, you will find you get more control and say over what subjects you study.

Good luck!


Post-Bologna process, is my sociology degree an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree?

Just call it a Licenciatura and indicate in parentheses that it is a five-year undergraduate course of study.  For example you might say (obviously adjusting to the format of your C.V.)

  2004 - Licenciatura en sociología (5 year undergraduate degree in sociology), Complutense University of Madrid.
  2004 - Lic. Sociología (equiv. B.S./B.A. Sociology), Complutense University of Madrid.

The reason I'd recommend not translating it as a masters is that the licenciatura not considered a graduate level program (you could homologar 4-year undergraduate U.S. bachelor programs into licenciaturas back in the day), and seeing the abbreviation M.A./M.S. would imply that it is graduate level.  You can discuss it in a cover letter if you feel the need to explain it further.


When submitting a CV as part of my graduate school application, should I include hyperlinks?

The issues you point to are real and good to pay attention to, but links are too useful to simply not use them in situations like this. Here is how I approach this issue:

Definitely use links (unless there is an explicit prohibition or a guideline discouraging their use), where appropriate. They add a lot and can be very useful to showcase your work and projects (and general tech savvy and resourcefulness).

Don’t use the “click here for blabla” format for links in a PDF document. This would be confusing to someone reading the document on paper or on a PDF from which the link has been stripped. Instead the link text should be equal to the URL it links to (although it’s okay, and may be preferable, to strip the “https://“ header). Example: “see academia. stackexchange.com for blabla”.

In general, don’t assume that any reader can or will visit the link. The document must stand on its own and make sense even if the links end up being stripped out. So, consider the links as extras that can add useful context but don’t use them to communicate any critically important information.

Link text should be styled (color, underlining, monospace font etc) so it’s easily seen and understood as a link.

Don’t point to web pages with very long URLs that clutter up the page and will lead to visually jarring line breaks (which LaTeX’s hyperref package doesn’t handle well). If the URL is somewhat long but not too long, consider putting it in a footnote and shrinking the font size.

Don’t use URL shorteners to get around the issue of long URLs. They obfuscate the link destination and require the reader to visit the link to find out where it points to, which is an annoyance and a security issue.


What, if anything, is accomplished by formal assessment?

People who promote quantitative education assessments believe that "educational achievement" is a valid research construct  (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_assessment)  With the proper instruments (a.k.a. tests and scoring systems), and with proper analysis (norms, scales, etc.), they believe it is possible and useful to draw inferences about the education system as a whole, or in part.

Broadly speaking, the advocates of standardized testing strongly believe that the only way to improve the education as a whole is to have "objective" measures of "reality" across teachers, across departments, across schools, across geographies. This "ground truth" data provides the basis for deciding what works and what does not, and for determining who is effective as educators and who is not.


In your specific case, I would rank them 1, 3, 2, 4, with 4 not actually being a real option if you can avoid it.
My reasoning is that a truly good letter from an individual familiar with your work will always outweigh a mediocre letter from someone who doesn't.  Given that, it then becomes more important who exactly is writing the letter.  A letter from a famous faculty member with decades of experience and awards that just says "this person came to class and did their homework" is not going to help you stand out, even assuming that person would agree to write such a letter.
Number 4 doesn't know your work, and probably doesn't really know you either.  It doesn't matter how influential they might be; they simply can't write a letter recommending you in anything more than generic terms.
Number 2 sounds like it could be the most important writer, and while the degree of exposure you've had to them helps, the lack of a close working relationship probably hurts a bit, which is why I would rank them after number 1.
Number 3 lacks the prestige, if you will, of the others, but as one who worked closely with you and saw your work ethic up close, they should be able to write a very good, very specific, letter.


Telling letter writers who already submitted that I am not applying to graduate school

I had neglected to research the PhD students recently admitted to the programs to which I have applied.

Please don't compare yourself to others.  There are other, more productive comparisons to make, if you really need to make comparisons.

Compare your transcript with the course sequence at the schools you were going to apply to.  Do you have all, or almost all, of the prerequisites under your belt for your first two semesters?  If there are one or two courses missing, can you take those in winter, spring or summer?

It's often easiest to get a good start to graduate study if one doesn't significantly delay beginning.

I understand that you are concerned you may be being overambitious at this stage.  But if you received or are about to receive a Bachelor's degree, with good understanding and good grades, let that be your can of spinach to help you keep going with the applications.


Help - drowning in non-thesis related work from supervisors during PhD

This is an unpleasent, but not uncommon situation. You say you "feel like I am being treated how you may a member of staff", and in fact many supervisors, particularly in the bio-medical world do treat their students exactly this way. For many students are the only mechanism to get any hands to do research. It is a bad thing, but it is common.

Firstly, no one should ever ask you to do work that won't get you an authorship, unless its group maintenance sort of work (organising the seminar rota, or making sure there is always milk in the fridge etc, monitoring everyones disk space usage). I know you say you don't care about this, but you should. Authorship is the currency of academia. It is how we are paid for our work.

Secondly SOME amount of off-topic work helping others is part of the payment you make to them for training you. When the time comes, you might need help from someone else to achieve something your project requires, but you are not capable of. However, you need to be careful of this becoming too much. In the run of things, your 10-15 hours a week is probably on the edge of what might be considered too much. If you are work 50 hours a week, then thats 20%-30% of your time. Not nothing, but not leaving no time for your own work, probably just starting to interfere.

Finally, expecting someone to do something immediately, when they are doing it as a favour is plain bad manners.

You have two approaches. First, if your supervisors are being cold and formal, then be formal back: arrange a set of expectations that both sides are expected to uphold. This doesn't have to be confrontational, it can be approached from a neutral stand point.

You time scales make it sound like you are in the UK. In which case, you should have an adviser - an academic in the department that is not scientifically related to your project. They are there for exactly this reason. The way this usually works here is that we have meetings with our advisees and if they report this sort of worry we go to their supervisor and say "I ask student X about their day-to-day and the answer made us worry that they are spending insufficient time on their primary project" - makes it sound like the advisor worked it out rather than you complained.


How do successful undergraduate and PhD students differ?

I'm not a big believer in "types" of people. But yes, some succeed in an undergraduate program but don't in a doctoral program. The difference, I think, is largely determined by the nature of the programs, not the people.

As an undergraduate you are mostly exploring what is already known and the connections that are already known between them. Too often the method of evaluation is poor. Poorly designed multiple choice questions, for example, test memory primarily. Memory is a useful skill, but more is needed to complete a PhD. An undergraduate degree, even when focused on a particular field, as in UK, is still pretty broad.

A doctoral program, on the other hand, is an exploration of the unknown. You can't plan for success in research, only work effectively so that you can find it eventually. But it is much more frustrating for many people than is the exploration of the known. You are trying, among other things, to make connections that others have not yet made. It is a different kind of thing. The boundary between the two isn't smooth.

So, the undergraduate degree is only a partial preparation for what needs to happen in a doctoral program. Being successful in the one doesn't guarantee success in the other. It gives a basis on which to work, but that is all. Some people learn, too late, that they just don't like researching the unknown, even though they love what they did as undergraduates.

In mathematics, for example, if you are studying things already known and come to a hard part, you can find someone, or a book, say, to explain it to you. You can find exercises to deepen your knowledge. But as a mathematician researching some area, there are no such resources. You are a creator, not a consumer. There is no guarantee that you will ever succeed in answering some particular question.

So, I attribute the effect you see more to the different nature of the two levels of learning than to the "types" of students who succeed or fail.

However, as an afterthought, I think that most people will start out in their education finding things fairly easy to do. The things are fairly simple, of course. But usually people reach a point where it isn't easy anymore and they have to work to continue. I think that the people who don't reach this point early in an undergraduate program, or at least by its completion, will have a hard time in a doctoral program. If you've never had to work hard to advance, research can be a shocking awakening. I was lucky enough to learn my limits in secondary school and so learned to work hard at learning. Others, who far surpassed me early on, didn't advance as far. I doubt that this is a universal, but think it is pretty common.


Pagebreak within tables of scientific articles

I would avoid breaking a table that does not need to be broken (that is less than a single page).  It is much easier on the reader instead to have some blank space in the text and turn the page.  This is especially true in a thesis, where there is strong emphasis on clarity over space economy.  (Theses tend to have wider margins, spacing, etc. versus printed journals.)  So, yes, a page break is much better than a table break.

You can just expect the reader to go to the next page(s).  Does not need to be a facing page.  That is fine for numbered figures, tables, etc.  And basically required if you have text that discusses several figures or tables such that they can not all be easily embedded because of the number discussed in a small section of text.  But after all, that is what the numbers are for!

I have even seen it acceptable to put all figures, tables, endnote citations, etc. at the end of the chapter.  Similar to how you submit a journal article.  Basically required in the typewriter era.  And still acceptable when I wrote my thesis c. 2000.  (And yes, using Word.)

Note:  If you have tables in Word that cover more than a page, please DO turn on the Word feature that copies the header row to each new page.  (Highlight the top row cells, right click...table properties, "row" tab, click the box that says repeat as header row.)  It is also useful if you have bold or shading or the like to call out the header row of the table, so it is not confused as a data field.

Also if you do have tables breaking across pages, make sure you select the whole table and then DEselect (uncheck)  the same-place row tab box that allows for rows to break on separate pages.  Don't allow that.  No, no, no.  ;-)


"Official" journal abbreviation of MAGMA

There is probably nobody but the particular administrators of the various organizations involved who can speak to the exact details of why this journal's abbreviations are inconsistent.

I suspect, however, that the answer that you would get, if you could track them down would be something along the lines of:

  I don't think it's inconsistent... hmm, I guess maybe it is?  We should probably try to figure out how to get that sorted out at some point.

The point is that curation is hard, curation of periodicals is harder, and curation of periodicals over long time frames and across multiple organizations is particularly difficult and easy to get wrong.  Worse yet, repairing a problem will often create more problems for the future (e.g., an inconsistency might get fixed by hard-coding in an alias).

Even within a single organization, it's difficult to handle different parts of a process consistently: for instance, yesterday I proofed my final version of a paper for a major journal and found that some of the links to instructions that the production staff supplied were incorrect.

All of this is a long way of saying: probably it's just an unintentional mess.  You can point it out to the people involved, and they might be able to fix it; they might also have work-arounds in place already and not care.  At the end of the day, however, it need not be your problem, unless you are in charge of curation of the journal or other resources involved.


The first thing I'd do in your situation is to get as much information as possible from the evaluations, especially from the students' comments. What exactly did they not like? Was it something about you or about the course?    There are lots of reasons for bad evaluations. Some reasons are things you should pay attention to and change. Other reasons are beyond your control. Did the student population consist mostly of students who didn't want to take the course but needed it to fulfill some requirement? Did the course meet at 8 a.m. (or earlier)?

If you haven't taught this course before, you might want to get some statistical data on the evaluations other instructors got in the same course. Some courses are just really unpopular and produce lousy evaluations even for the best instructors.

As for renewal of your appointment, that depends on your department's administrators and the numbers of students who need to take your department's courses. The administrators may know that the course you taught always yields lousy evaluations, in which case there should be no problem. Other presumably relevant factors include your general reputation as a teacher (e.g., your past evaluations) and the actual evaluations that you just got.  (You said they were "horrible" and "the worst" you've ever gotten --- but might it be that your past evaluations were excellent and these new ones are mediocre, so they're your worst and they look horrible to you but might not be horrible on an absolute scale?)  But in general, the only way to find out about your situation is to talk with the relevant administrator(s).


How much time does it take to come up with a specific theoretical research problem?

At least in my experience, one's PhD adviser helps with finding a research topic, or even provides one. Depending on how mature and technical the field is, it might be very difficult to come up with a reasonably problem by oneself.

I suggest discussing the question with your advisor.


What is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland?

I can speak for Austria (place where I did my PhD) and Switzerland (current place of employment), but my answer should be applicable for Germany as well.

  I wonder what is the Phd application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the Phd postion?

Both models exist, but the far more common one is that you are just employed as a researcher while doing your PhD. This has advantages and disadvantages. Typically these positions are financially rather attractive (at least as far as PhD student salaries go), currently at about 2400 EUR 14 times a year in Austria for full-time employment, a bit more in Germany, significantly more (around 5000 CHF 12 times a year) in Switzerland. All of these salaries allow you to conveniently live (no need for a diet of Ramen noodles) in the respective places. On the other hand, as a researcher you are not "just" working on your thesis. In addition, teaching has to be handled, support in administrative matters will be part of your job, and you will need to work on matters of your research project that you find neither interesting nor advance your thesis work in any way.

The application process is generally as for any other job - find out what jobs are offered, contact the person per mail, send in CV, (usually) do an interview via Skype, wait for an offer. The hardest part is probably finding out what research groups currently have job openings. Positions are generally not announced very widely (if at all). However, just because you cannot find an ad for an open position with a specific professor does not necessarily mean that he does not have a position available. Both places that I worked at had open positions almost at all times for a really qualified student. What really helps here are connections - do you know somebody who is already an "insider" in academic circles, maybe a PhD student or postdoc? If so, ask him to put you in contact with some faculty.

If not, look for universities that you might consider joining, find out from their web page what faculty there handles your topic, and send them a short mail. Keep it crisp - both of my professors so far have been insanely busy, and any mail from an unknown person with more than one short paragraph will never be read carefully. Just tell who you are, what your current university is, and that you would like to talk about the possibility of doing a PhD. Give them a week to answer and then send a quick and friendly reminder (my current prof is the dean of the faculty, and given the size of his inbox mails sometimes do get lost - that does not mean that he is necessarily not interested). Maybe, the professor will put you in contact with one of this postdocs or PhD students to "chat" via Skype or in person (if possible) - consider this the technical interview, because afterwards the prof will ask the person that you talked to whether they think that you have the technical skills that are required for the selected field. What you should not do is send an overly long formal application - most professors get many of those from rather dubios applicants from the far east, hence formal blind applications are generally discarded unread. Don't be one of those.

  is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?

You are generally not expected to "come" with your own topic. Your broad overall theme will be defined by whatever project / position pays your salary, and on top of that you are expected to define your concrete research project together with a postdoc and/or the professor some time into your PhD (say, about a year after starting). What you should know is roughly what interests you research-wise and contact only professors that really do this research. This sounds like a given, but I work in services and software engineering, and I have lost track of many applicants interested in robotics, AI, formal methods, etc. I have already discarded. Don't be one of those, either.


Asking a commitee to replace a letter of recommendation?

You can ask. They can say yes or no. But it might be an even better option to ask them if they will accept an additional letter that arrived too late to include. This respects everyone.

If the answer is still no, then the professor who wrote the "replacement" letter might be convinced to send it directly to the hiring committee on his own initiative. It might be harder for them to reject it if he has a well established position that is known to them.


Can I and how to offer to translate papers (on COVID-19)?

At the scale of one person, you could do the following. If you find a paper that you think merits translation, contact the authors and offer your services directly to them. They might not be able to help much if their research is ongoing, but would, I think, respond positively. You could also suggest appropriate English language journals to them that might publish the translations. I can't predict how that would work, but archives might be appropriate.

I think that a lot of researchers in China (as everywhere) have a working knowledge of English and so could probably vet any translations you do for accuracy.

As for the etiquette, just ask, introducing yourself. Or even send along a sample translation of a part of a paper as a calling card.

I don't think that copyright can be ignored unless governments intervene to change the rules. It might happen due to the seriousness of the issue.

But being in contact with researchers who have been with this since the beginning might actually be an advantage to your career also.


New postdoc and I am asked to draft a whole plan

I'm writing a partial answer initially; if you provide some more information I might be able to expand.

Some hopefully-useful suggestions / points to ponder, ordered from harsher to mellower:

It's your post-doc - you (mostly) decide. (In principle, anyway). You are a capable independent researcher - which is what your Ph.D. attests to. Perhaps that's not entirely true and you were hand-held more, or you don't feel mature enough as a person to lead research? That happens, no shame in it; but you will need to step up, for your own good and regardless of what you're asked/required to write. You yourself need to formulate plans of what you intend to investigate, what you want to self-study, which skills you are missing and want to acquire, which/what kind of people/groups you want to strike up collaborations with and so on - even if no-one were to ask you to put any of that in writing.
Work on being able to write anything and everything. Writing is a skill of critical importance for an academic. Of course there's academic-paper-writing, but expressing yourself in written form is something your're going to be doing a whole lot of, in many ways. If you feel you're not proficient enough or not experienced enough, definitely put that as one of your skills to improve - and talk to the senior group member with whom you're closest, explaining that you've had limited writing experience and you want to work on that first of all. Alternatively, you could go ask personnel, or some secretarial entity, whether there's a writing workshop/course for graduate students which you could take without credit.

Also, writing your research plan is an opportunity to improve your writing in general. Have a friend from inside or outside the group read a pre-draft of yours and give you comments on your language and writing style rather than the academic content.
Nobody said you had to come up with the plans alone. Schedule a meeting with one or more tenured researchers in the group, to discuss research ideas and directions. No need to hide the fact that you're doing it also for writing that plan - you can say that outright. Especially the "acquisition" part is a hook for getting their input, since, after all, nobody expects you to know how acquisitions work in a new workplace, or what budget is available etc. For these meetings you need to prepare, of course, but not by writing drafts; rather, think of ideas you want to pursue and the reasons you applied for a post-doc in this group.

It might also be useful to talk to other post-docs or PhD candidates to see if what they're doing is something that you want to augment or complement with your own work (before or between or after meetings with the more senior researchers).
Stand on the shoulders of midgets (or giants, whatever). Other people have been in your exact position and were asked something similar, right? Well, ask for other people's plans as an example of what these look like.


What can cause a delay of several weeks between an editor receiving reviews and you receiving a response from the editor?

There are a number of possibilities. Off the top of my head:

The editor is traveling or otherwise occupied. In my experience, this is particularly likely if you are dealing with a journal that employs professional editors rather than relying upon academic editors.
The reviews are mixed and the editor has decided to careful assess the manuscript himself or herself--which may take as long as writing a review would take.
The reviews are mixed and the editor has decided to seek additional reviews, but this is not yet reflected in the manuscript management system.
The editor wishes to speak in person to one of the referees to clarify something that the referee wrote, but has not yet been able to reach the referee.

You could go on and on and imagine any number of other possible scenarios. I agree it is not optimal for this to happen, but nor is it unusual. As an editor, I try very hard to return a decision within 2 or 3 days of receiving all reviews, but as an author I have found that waits of a week or two are not unusual.


What is important in choosing a Ph.D. program?

The students in this lab are all from top universities

it is an irrelevant criterion for choosing a Ph.D. program for your

... not as interesting

Unless you don't mind being miserable throughout your P.hD, you shouldn't work in this lab if you don't have to, which seems to be the case.

... the professor is very young

I think it is a plus, instead of a negative.

the students are so hard-working that the work-life balance might be bad.

Just because they don't know how to balance their work-life with their life outside of work, it doesn't mean you won't be able to too.


What are good reasons to write my thesis in English?

Clearly, in the time you have performing research and interacting with other people in your field, you were using at least one language, likely more than one given your research on a country that (likely) does not speak either English or German. However, your thesis has some specific audiences to address. If written in German, it certainly addresses your local university department, and the academic community in Germany. Writing it in English will dramatically broaden the potential audience, since many more people in the world can read English as compared with German. But, do those additional people count much? That is up to you to determine, and the university to agree to.

Look at your references, fellow academics you've met at conferences, and those you wish to interact with. Write in the language most likely to be accessible to them.


What are benefits of author's personal copy of article and how I can order it?

I think you are hitting legacy procedures. Before the internet and electronic publication and such, author copies were very usual. Since the publisher was busy typesetting the copy anyway, they would print off some number of copies of the paper to give to the author. Depending on the journal, these might even be typeset in exactly the way they were in the journal, starting at the same place on the page for example. Then when researchers wanted copies they would request them from the author.

It was usually cheaper, and higher quality, than photocopying. It also acted as a nice intro between the author(s) and people interested in the work. The prof I did my post-doc under had a huge collection of author copies.

These days, electronic publication has mostly taken over. Protected PDF copies, with built in water marks, for example, are fairly common. And usually a lot cheaper and more convenient. You don't have to wait for mail just download. And you can use them on your favorite device. They're searchable, etc.


How shall I report a critical error in a given paper?

Talk to an experienced researcher in the field before getting too excited.  For instance, you could talk to the professor of your course, if they are an active researcher in this area.

The question of what constitutes a "critical error" is subjective and often hard for a student to evaluate.  For instance, perhaps the authors are just using conventions that you are not familiar with, or you have misunderstood what they are saying.

It can also happen that although the text of the paper is literally incorrect, an experienced researcher can see immediately what was intended, and won't be confused by it.  These sorts of errors are typically not taken seriously and are not considered to warrant a formal correction to the paper, which requires a lot of work for the authors and editors.

It's good that you've discussed this with your TA, but your TA is likely a graduate student who doesn't yet have a lot of experience with research and publication in this area.

I think it's pretty common for students to get very excited about finding errors of any kind in published work, and to feel that "the world needs to know".  I've had this experience myself.  But community standards may not be what you think they are, and if you try to raise a big fuss about something that the research community regards as trivial, it'll just waste time and make you look a bit silly.

If an expert agrees that the error really is critical, then they can also advise you on how to proceed.  Typically you would begin by contacting the authors, and they would talk to the journal editor about publishing a correction (or "corrigendum").  In the unlikely event that they don't acknowledge the error, you can also raise the issue with the journal editor directly.  If the discovery of the error is itself something of significant scientific interest, then you could think about writing a new paper about it.  But don't cross that bridge until you come to it.


Obtaining followup clarification/feedback from referees via the editor

The simple answer is: there's no harm in sending the editor a polite email to ask. Provided your questions are broadly sensible, they're unlikely to hold a grudge against you for doing so.

However, I imagine that an editor is going to be wary of encouraging a discussion that might irritate his reviewers (who he wants to be able to use again in the future), or which appears to risk developing into a challenge to the review process itself. I suspect that you are unlikely to get a positive response unless your question is very limited in scope: for example, "Reviewer 1 comments that my results would appear to generalise the Jenkins-Smith theorem; however, I cannot find a statement of this. Would the reviewer be prepared to give me an appropriate reference?"

Have you asked a colleague to look over your reviews? Sometimes, counterintuitively, things are clearer to a reader with a shallower understanding of the intricacies of your work.


Do two-column format journals publish one column for special cases?

Yes, you can ask, but you will almost certainly be turned down for such a request, because journals do not normally keep separate templates for single-column layouts. Moreover, at the type used by journals, a two-column format is essential because long lines of text are difficult to process. (Readability studies show that about 65 to 70 characters per line works best.)

That said, many journals do have to deal with long equations, and in such cases they will have equations that cut across both columns, and indicate how the text "flows" around the equation. As Jon Custer's comments indicate, if there are enough such equations in a row, the page in question may be set in a single-column format, before reverting back to two-column format after the "run" of equations is broken up.

As an example of how this looks, here's a page from a paper published in Physical Review D:


Advisor asking me to work on research not covered by my grant

I think it's true that the time-sharing between grants is quite normal within the research world, at least, I've observed it a lot, and in any case, you shouldn't have to worry about that, because it's under the responsibility of your advisor.

Actually, one of the problems when it comes to funding is that in order to make a grant proposal, you somehow need to know precisely enough where you're going, otherwise you have the risk not to be able to achieve what you promised. Hence, I know that it's quite normal that when applying for a grant, some parts of the results promised at the end of the grant are already done, although maybe not finalized. So, you can use the time you would have spent doing the research you promised (but already done) to do some other research on another topic, so that you can apply for another grant on this topic.

That's why in the end, the main question is whether it benefits you, as a first-year student, to work on the other project. Clearly, working on a different topic is always a good experience, especially when there is a potential publication at the end. I don't know how long is your grant, but if it's 3 years, then spending a few months on working on something different will not really impact it. Of course, if you have a grant of only 6 months, then maybe you can't really spend half of it working on something different.

So, to summarize: don't feel guilty about it, I believe this kind of things is pretty common, and just consider whether it can be good/interesting for you or not.


As a filter.

The main purpose of asking for GPA in grad school admissions is to quickly weed out people (like me) who have actually low GPAs. Nobody is admitted to top PhD programs solely on the basis of their GPA, or even primarily on the basis of their GPA.  Other factors, including which classes you took, are more important.

If you have a high GPA, but no evidence of research potential, you will not be admitted.


Getting a teaching recommendation as a mathematics postdoc in the UK

It's important to remember that teaching is not the same as "giving lectures in front of a class". So you (or your letter writers) have some leeway in deciding what exactly the letter should cover.

In practice, lots of people are in your situation. (I was too, when I was looking for faculty positions.) What is important is that one of your letter writers covers how you teach, and this can cover the style in which you give professional presentations, interact with students you mentor, etc. All of these are, when explained by someone who has a lot of experience as a teacher, predictive of how good a teacher you will be in the future. Of course, most potential employers would ideally like to see a discussion in these letters how good a teacher you are in a regular classroom -- since that's one of your primary job duties as a professor -- but the selection committee will be able to extrapolate to that from what they find in a letter.

If you do have the opportunity to teach any regular class, then I would try to do that -- it doesn't matter much in that case whether it's an undergrad or grad course. It just rounds out your resume, and gives you more options for potential letter writers, and more material for letter writers to write about if they choose to sit in on your class once or twice.


Should the postdoc interview focus on my research findings or transferrable skills that could be value of the research team that I am applying?

Actually it doesn't need to be either-or. Make it both. But don't do it in two parts. Weave it together if at all possible.

But another reason this is happening is that they want to know something about you as a person and as a potential colleague. How do you present yourself. Are you formal? Pedantic? Friendly? Lots of things. Along with that, they want some idea about how you go about handling such public talks. How do you present ideas whatever they are. If you seem natural it will probably help. Unfortunately that normally comes with a lot of practice over time. But they probably understand that.


Journal copy-editors: why is their work productive?

The writer of a document is often the worst person to verify its wording. There are two reasons for this.

Often, when we write something we have a certain mind set. But we aren't perfect, so we occasionally make mistakes. Then, when we revisit it, we make the same mistake again, "seeing" on the page what we thought we wrote, rather than what we actually wrote.

Second, and more important, the author of a manuscript has a lot of background knowledge that they bring to bear on the subject that isn't actually written in the document. The reader, on the other hand, may not share this background, and usually won't to the same degree.

An informed copyeditor can correct for both of these situations.

I've learned that I can't really reliably proof my own writing and make both of the above "errors".

But copy editors don't just make changes without the advice of the original author. They provide a new version and the author gets to approve, reject, or improve the "corrections". It is a very valuable service.

But even just in the use of language. A good editor can improve the presentation of ideas by improving the structure of complex sentences and suggesting where the statements made could be confusing to a reader.

It does require some subject level knowledge to do it well, of course.


My paper has been provisionally accepted, but my latest results are not as reported in the paper. What should I do?

A good review panel would not select your paper purely due to the impact of your result but also with respect to your approach to solving the problem. This may include how existing methods were modified and how novel methods are applied. This would also concern your analysis of the methodology along with related results.

Withdrawing the paper (option 1) should be the last thing you ought to be thinking about. That is unless you plan to publish it in a different journal after much improvement, but this also has its own implications.
There is nothing wrong with going for option 2. In fact it is to be most welcome in the ethics of research. Hopefully the reviewers would also appreciate such honesty.
Most may prefer option 3 as this would mean that your paper is published without any further ado. But since this makes you -- the author -- uncomfortable, you rather don't do it. It is not worth the feeling of regret once it gets published.

Convey your points precisely and see if you could try to describe the fallacy of the overly optimistic result in your communications. You may also include this as part of the updated manuscript if possible. Note that all communications to the reviewers must pass through the editor as part of the procedure.


Is it worth regularly publishing in unknown business & management journals?

For someone who already has a solid academic record publishing in non-traditional, but more visible, venues can be a way to get some recognition in the wider world - outside academia. But I doubt that it has a lot of effect on the things that lead to an academic reputation.
Even in other fields, there are "public scholars" who spend time and effort on making the results of research known to non-academics whose practice might benefit from it. Think of it as a public service, not an academic reputation builder.
In physics, for example, Carl Sagan was such a public scholar, even though he had a solid academic reputation as well. In fact, it was that academic reputation that gave him credibility in the larger world.
For a young scholar, however, it may mean less.


Number formatting: use of digit separators in manuscripts

Digit separators differ between countries, particularly since the decimal seprator is comma in many countries but a period in English/American. Hence in English you may use commas as digit separators while in other countries periods are used. Space is therefore the only separator that is not confusing. A general rule of thumb is to not use separators for single-thousands but start to use them for tens of thousands and up

1000
10 000
100 000
1 000 000

When using spaces in writing, it is good to remember to use non-breaking spaces so that numbers are not broken over lines.


Is it appropriate to use University/Company logos for Biography Slide?

For information purpose this is unlikely a violation. The type of uses here is considered as nominative use. You're not infringing the institute or speaking on their behalf; it's simply "I graduated from XXX university and here is the name and the logo of that place." If you are very concerned, add a disclaimer at the bottom saying something like "Logos are for reference only, I do not represent any of these organizations."

I, however, do consider this potentially inappropriate. For audience, mentioning the name is fine, but slapping the logo, emblem, or seal onto one's work seems like a much bigger deal. I have the following concerns:

I specifically mention it because you said "design purpose." Most school have required design rules when their logo is used. For example, there can be no any alteration of color or scale, no neighboring art components, no incorporating into any other artwork, etc. If you want to slap them all side by side, or worse mashing them into a "design," chance is one of the rules could be violated. It's not a big deal usually (aka you are unlikely to get a lawyer contacting you), just bad practices. I seriously doubt a university will come after any alumni just because they showed the logo inappropriately.
Depending on the audience this action may appear insecure or show-off.
What does this add to the purpose above the name? I can see there is a point if, say, you have emblems in blue, red, and yellow colors, now you just need a green to complete your Harry Potter school color collection, then I'll think "ha, pretty funny." Otherwise, just putting the logo with the name feels redundant.

Here is a page on upcounsel if you wish to learn more. Regulations may differ geographically. Ask the schools for permission if you're in the slightest doubt.


Does my education before master matter for phD?

It would be dishonest to omit your first place of study (and it would be a glaring omission on an application that would probably disqualify you).

In a PhD application you basically want to convince the admissions committee that you are capable of research or learning to do research. Therefore, if you show this potential in the process of obtaining a masters, the place you studied before your masters means a lot less.

That doesn't mean you can just ignore your first degree, but you are doing exactly what you should do if you want to get a PhD but have an unimpressive undergraduate record (due to grades, place of study, whatever): get into a masters program that will be more impressive and show your research potential. Try to get involved in publications and make connections with professors who can give you solid letters of recommendation.

Since you are changing fields slightly, you should also make sure that you take as a masters student all of the prerequisite coursework expected for applicants to the PhD program, particularly ones that might have been missed in an engineering-focused line of study. I can't give any suggestions for particular courses, but you should look at some representative programs you might be interested in for the future and make sure you have those courses covered.


UK Higher Education Academic Teaching Qualification

Option 1 is for training courses run by universities (mostly in the past, before most of them became HEA accredited) that are roughly equivalent to options 2 or 3, but that were not officially accredited by HEA. Their demands and standards used to differ wildly, but I am afraid none of them were a one day workshop on "survival skills".


This is just a different word for the most senior executive of a university. There are many names for this position. In the UK alone they may be called (most commonly) the vice-chancellor, the principal or the president. Broadly speaking, countries where universities are operated by the state have more consistent names for positions in the hierarchy, whereas countries where they are independent organisations have more of a diversity of names.


I have a few suggestions.

Check out LinkedIn and join groups based on your field of interest. Simply having a profile and stating your field of study will help people find you. Comment on articles, or even write posts, because it will help people see your name. Don't be scared to message people you don't know.
If you have the money, let your supervisor know you're taking a week or whatever off and go to the conference yourself.
If you don't like the last point, look up speakers at conferences and point out ones to your supervisor that would be applicable and helpful for your studies. Remind her that it may bring you more insight or better ideas for your own work. Let her know that you can work on your studies during non-conference hours if necessary.
Watch for alumni events within your own faculty. If there are none, ask other professors or the department head if they know of any talks coming up that may be of interest. Just because you have a supervisor doesn't mean you can't talk to other professors.


Submitting theory papers to EECS conferences with hard 8/10 page limit

A common approach is to submit an extended version of the paper to arXiv containing all the additional material needed (e.g., full proofs), referencing the arXiv paper from the submitted conference paper for further details as necessary.

If that does not sound like a good idea, it might suggest that the paper is better submitted to another venue, or perhaps directly to a journal.

Edit: Just looking now specifically at INFOCOM requirements, peer review is double-blind, which means publishing on arXiv becomes more complicated (obviously you cannot reference an extended paper where the authors are given). What may perhaps work is to informally publish an extended version of the paper online (in a "neutral" location of course, not giving away the identity/affiliation of the author(s)) and reference that in the submitted version, then if the paper is accepted, consider publishing the arXiV version with author names and reference that from the camera ready version. Admittedly this gets more complex, where you should probably contact the PC chairs of the specific conference to see what it the norm in such cases.

Searching further in the case of INFOCOM:

  Papers with the same title and abstract should not be posted on a public website, such as arxiv.org, or transmitted via public mailing lists.
  We allow the use of an anonymous Microsoft OneDrive link for the reviewers to download an extended version of the submitted manuscript with details of mathematical proofs. Needless to say, the extended version of the submitted manuscript will need to be anonymized, following the guidelines above.   It is the responsibility of the authors to make the OneDrive link (and its content) anonymous, with respect to both the owner of the link and people who visit the link. The reviewers, however, are not obliged to read the extended manuscript when evaluating a submitted paper.


What should I do when a professor is teaching inaccurately?

Your professor sounds simply incompetent - sorry you have to deal with this, but it is an unfortunate fact of life that one runs across such people every once in a while, in academia and pretty much everywhere else.
As for what to do: about the unfair grading, follow the process for appealing a grade. About her general incompetence, if she is grossly incompetent, a reasonable option would be to complain about her to the art history department. If she is only mildly incompetent, you can drop the class or leave a bad review at the end of the semester. Those are your options really, I doubt anyone will be able to offer anything substantially different. Good luck!