Conflicts with colleagues as a postdoc - reason enough to start looking for the next job?

I have often heard that the most valuable thing you get out of postdoc positions is the contacts you make.

I always thought the most valuable thing you get out of postdoc positions is the research experience and the research papers. The contacts/connections would be the by-products after you conduct quality research.

You said "I'm also quite sure I haven't been able to prove myself to him yet.". If you leave now, you wasted all the efforts you spent to apply for your current postdoc job and the time you spent on the job so far only because you don't like your colleagues?

I understand you are at a well-regarded foreign university. My guess is that many of your colleagues came from different cultures/locations than yours. That's probably why you feel that they are intolerable.

My advice: concentrate on your research (which is your job). Work with your professor and those colleagues if needed. Do your best.

Edit after the OP put in some more details:

Your example sounds like you are in the wrong group in the sense of research direction. I don't quite understand why you went there in the first place. But, you are there now. I would try to stay there for a while if I were you. I would collaborate with my colleagues. I would learn beetles of Borneo from them. I would show them why beetles of New Guinea are also worth studying. I'll do my best. If it still doesn't work out after a while, then I'll quit and find another postdoc job, the right one this time.


For a doctoral thesis this would be bad, but not so much for a bachelor's thesis. Assuming that you worked independently of the other work (i.e. no plagiarism) then your work has value to you for personal development.

You don't have anything publishable, of course, but you did learn something about research process. But, for later work, you will be expected to spend considerable effort in a literature search to know what has already been done with your topic. This is harder at your level due to lack of time (fixed deadlines) and the fact that not such work is available (i.e. unpublished).

If your faculty and university are happy with your work then you should be also.  But as you move on, the standards get higher.

One major difference is that a bachelor's thesis is expected to be done in a fixed amount of time. A doctoral thesis has no such constraint and some take a long time to complete. So the very nature of the problems that can be undertaken at your level is very constrained.

But let your advisor and/or faculty guide you here. The fact that you had a successful defense is a positive point in your favor. Relax and congratulations.


What are the options for fellowships for international grad students in USA?

The Smithsonian offers fellowships for international grad students, specifically a ten-week summer internship for pre-dissertation grad students and 3-12 months of funding for post-dissertation grad students. Also, you get to work at the Smithsonian.


I don't think that you have much to concern you. You can't get a letter from someone who won't write one, of course, but if your own advisor is on the faculty of such a university the assumption is that his/her word can be trusted.

What you need is someone who knows you well and can speak honestly about your background and prospects for success. Your advisor is best placed to do that and support you. The superstars, if they could be convinced to write, would probably need to say things less directly applicable or useful to you.

You need to put together a good case that you are well prepared and are likely to succeed. Your advisor's letter will help with that.


I have a proof of a result in number theory, shorter than the existing proofs. Can such results be published and how?

As @Nat says, do post in on arXiv.  Many journals have a "Notes" section for short results like yours, which people would find interesting, especially if they were teaching similar results.  The MAA Monthly does this, e.g.  After you have the proof up on arXiv, submit it to the "Notes" section of an appropriate journal, following the specific directions for that section.  At least one professional mathematician will look at it, so you'll get some vetting.  Have a look at the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences.


will I get money back if I drop out of college?

It is common that universities will refund a almost all of the tuition you have paid if you withdraw from the university within the first week. It is often gradated after that, with a smaller percentage of tuition and fees being returned the later you wait to withdraw.

If you attend Colorado State University (CSU?), then it looks like you can still get 75% of your money back. They give you until September 2 to withdraw and get 75% back. The first day of school was the deadline to get 100% tuition back. You would need to talk with the registrar's office directly about all of this though.

https://registrar.colostate.edu/faculty-staff/important-dates/


How do you differentiate STAT/ML/DS in SOP?

wouldn't it be weird to say "Through my research experience in DS/ML, I developed an interest in STAT, so I'm applying to your STAT program"?

I don't think so, especially if you modify it a bit:

  "My experience as a STAT major, combined with my research experiences in DS/ML, have inspired me to further study STAT."

I think you can, and should, blend the two together. As you noted, they are related, and the committees know this. Use that to your advantage.

If you are applying to a school with both and you feel like you must justify your choice of STAT over another program, then I think you've already got your justification: you are drawn to the theoretical and rigorous nature of the program. I think your major is more than enough to prevent you from seeming like an outsider.


Let me try to give you some perspective on mathematics and mathematicians.
First, there are lots of kinds of mathematics. Algebra and Geometry were studied early in human history and other fields split off from them. At first glance these two seem quite different, but now there is Algebraic Geometry, a field of its own. There is also Analysis which studies certain kinds of relationships and Abstract Algebra which studies certain kinds of operations on things. No, there is more to it than that, but it gives you an idea. Topology is something like Analysis in some ways and something like Geometry in others. So there are some overlaps.
But the differences between mathematical fields are big enough that it is possible, even likely, that you can have true insight into only one or two of the many fields. And it is insight that is required for mathematics.
Mathematicians study problems. Applied mathematicians study "real world" problems and apply mathematics to their solution. Pure mathematicians study problems in mathematics itself. They study what has been shown to be true over time, but try to imagine what might be true and then set out to explore whether it is true or not. This is where insight is required.
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that you have discovered something new. It is less likely, but still not impossible that what you have discovered is significant. It may have been noticed in the past and not explored deeply, for example, seeming obvious to someone who has studied it deeply.
But, one thing that mathematicians do a lot of is work with others and share ideas. They bounce "new" ideas off of colleagues and get feedback. So, for someone in your situation, teachers and professors are the people most likely to be helpful at this stage.
If you want to be a mathematics researcher then put yourself on a path to eventually earning a PhD from a good school. Most pure mathematicians are also academics, though there are exceptions. Even an amateur can be a researcher, but will probably need to build up a circle of contacts and collaborators over time in order to be effective.
In a certain sense mathematicians work literally all the time. There are no breaks. But you don't sit at a desk for most of it. Your mind will work whether it feels like "work" at all. I often go to sleep thinking about some sticky problem and wake up with the solution. The insight comes sometimes when you let your brain relax, rather than trying to force it through some complex logical argument. The crux just falls into place.
Working with professors, especially on a doctorate, will give you a sense about what problems are important as well as ideas about how to attack them. But it is the "imagining what might be true" that makes a mathematician. The proofs are hard work and require training and practice, but it is that insight that makes the difference.
Only a few of us are "exceptional" as the word implies, or spectacular. But we all work toward excellence. Do that and you should be fine.

As a young person, I suggest you study widely (and not just mathematics). There is plenty of time to specialize later. And if you want to do serious work in any field, get in the habit of carrying a notebook (or equivalent) so that you can quickly jot down any insights or ideas that pop into your head while you are doing other things.


Usages of "sic" when citing old spelling

Yet another possible way to handle your problem is by way of introduction. In other words, instead of merely saying:

  As Vanmulken wrote: "Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much."

you could say:

  As the Dutch philosopher Vanmulken wrote in 1871: "Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much."

With a casual mention of the author's nationality and the time period of the quoted material, most readers will be able to figure out the reason for the "olde" spelling, without drawing special attention to it.


Question on etiquette while trying to secure a postdoctoral position

How close are you to graduating? If you're still a few years away, then perhaps get an introduction from your advisor to that professor and see if there are natural ways to seek feedback or advice from that professor.

If you are thinking about the next year and a half, then your questions should be more concrete. In particular, you might tie your question to funding, as that determines a lot of the possibilities. Even if a professor loves your work, they can't hire you if they don't have the money for it.

If you see from the professor's CV that there is an active grant, you could ask about whether there is space on that grant.
If there are regularly postdoctoral openings in the person's department, you can ask about whether the professor is looking for another postdoc soon. (You may learn that people in the department tend to take turns hiring postdocs, and the professor is (un)likely to be up this year. Apply anyway, but know your odds.)
You could say that you're preparing to apply for an external grant for a postdoc (e.g. NSF in the U.S.) and wondering whether the professor would be open to having you work with them on that. (Often a faculty sponsor is already required to apply.)


How much flexibility does one have in selecting their PhD coursework in the first year?

It varies dramatically, by university, field, and country.

It can be any of:

There is a fixed curriculum that everyone takes
There are a few required courses and the student can choose the rest
The student has a committee which recommends courses to take
The student can take any courses but has exams to pass
No coursework at all (I understand this is common in Europe, where Ph.D. students come in with a Masters)

Usually there are upper and lower limits on the number of courses to take.  In the US, one usually has to take at least 3 or 4 courses to be considered a "full time student" and be eligible for funding.  (But one can often count research as one or more of these courses.)  And it is often not allowed to exceed 5 or 6 courses without special permission.


Can I request a Ph.D. in a different department having done research in another?

Talk to your supervisor. This probably differs from country to country (maybe federal state to federal state) and university to university.

However my experience is that people either want to know if I have a PhD or not, or, if they need more details, then they want to know the topic of my dissertation. The intermediate level of the discipline has never come up. So I would not worry too much about it.


Do all references in a reference list need to be cited in text?

A reference list is the list of things that are referenced. A list containing other items that were used is called a bibliography.


Must you attend a conference to attend/present at an affiliated event?

Is it possible to attend/be published at only affiliated events and skip the conference?

This depends a bit on the conference, but in most cases, the relationship between a "main" conference and its satellites and workshops seems to be like this:

Nobody really cares whether you actually attend the main conference, and there is no reason to be quiet about this. However, some conferences require you to register (I.e., pay) for the main conference in addition to any satellite events, even if you have no intention of attending. So you should keep this, probably significant, additional costs in mind.
Satellite conferences often have their own proceedings, so it is definitely possible to be published only at the satellite, for whatever that is worth. Associated workshops often publish their proceedings in a companion volume of the main conference. I am not sure whether you would consider this "be published at the main conference", or why this would matter for you.

That being said, the best persons to answer this for you reliably are the organizers of either the main event, or of the satellite events you wish to attend.


Conflict of interest statement for Elsevier

If you intend to license a patent, this might be a conflict of interest.  For example, the interest in getting accurate data might conflict with the interest in getting money from a license.
I recommend disclosure if there is any possibility someone might perceive a conflict of interest.


Is it possible to do a self funded Ph.D. without masters in Germany?

I cannot comment due to low rep. There are fast-track PhD programmes in Germany, but a bachelor degree is necessary to enroll in such. Often PhD students are payed for teaching duties 50% TV-L, engineers mostly 100% from group budget and/or external funding. But this often implies trying to use results from such external projects for the PhD thesis. When you are paid by university/group budget for teaching duties, your PhD work is often more or less your private hobby/side job apart from teaching. This varies heavily among different universities, for humanities sometimes people working on a PhD have no long contract (> year) or only a temporary one (during semester for some month) to my knowledge. In STEM, especially if you work in experimental scienes (using facilities/expensive devices), a master degree is necessary. I didn't hear of fast-track programmes there, but I'm sure very bright students in theo. physics, computer science, math... could find a university willing to let them start PhD without a masters. In experimental sciences I would not recommend it, as a researcher needs to gather experience in small, mid, big (bachelor, master, PhD) projects in my humble opinion and the risk would be unnecessarily high that the phd students fails or needs more time for his PhD than master graduates.

So these are some hints how the system works. Technically I think there is no-problem to do a self-funded PhD and in the spirit of open/citizen science I would promote it, how big the likelihood for this is that some Professor is willing to let you work in his group, advise you, spends time, offers you the use of his devices probably depends on your branch, research idea (you should have one), pre-results/experience, less on grades as we have an inflation of very good ones in Germany.

But, in my opinion, there has to be a strong link between your bachelor work/experience and the future PhD work (theory and methods), otherwise I would not start to search for a group, as the professor will have to deal with additional bureaucracy for your case.

The other thing is, it's better to have publication(s) in peer-reviewed journals before submitting a PhD thesis to the faculty. You need the name and institution of your professor to gain some likelihood that your papers get into review at all. Uploading your "stuff" to arxiv.org will not be sufficient... Finding a professor for self-funded fast-track PhD is one thing, the other one is not to get robbed of your results after years of research if you technically do it privately. This risk is uncalculable. Personally, I would only think on self-funded PhD under supervision of a   full professor with permanent position in his 50-60s ;-) And such ones have on average per month a few hours to talk to their PhD students...

To conclude, technically possible or not, there are a lot things you should think about and outline and check in advance before starting a PhD odyssee. But also, when you do non-self-funded one. I see to many just jumping into a PhD due to wrong reasons or without good reasons, about the failed PhD's you can read nowhere.


Will working after bachelors reduce my chances of getting into a PhD program?

When I started my PhD the majority of my fellow students had spent time working before they started. Some of them had been in full time employment for years (I believe the most was 7 years). As someone who went straight from BSc to PhD I was definitely the exception and not the rule. It shouldn't be something to worry about.

My supervisor's take on the subject of how he chose candidates was: "Whoever seems right at the interview."

From my experience of interviews having relevant experience and showing a good work ethic is as important in academia as working for any other employer. Working outside of academia for a spell is no limitation and can in some case be a boon.

Passion for the subject area and proof of regular hard work will get you a very long way with most academics.


What you propose seems fine to me. Make sure, however, that the professor understands why you are asking and that his/her help doesn't become authorship. Academics work together, especially at the idea stage.

Some departments provide a coffee room with a table and whiteboard just to encourage this sort of collaboration.

Note that the answer might be different if you had no ideas at all about where to start. But the prof can, as a minimum point you to places to help you develop the proposal. I think that most professors would consider this to be fine, or would tell you (gently) if they didn't. Ask.


Are students who are asylees eligible for National Science Foundation (NSF) grants?

That's a great question to ask the NSF directly, but generally everything the NSF does distinguishes people only by the following categories:

Their position in their career. For example, some programs are only available to graduate students, to early career faculty, etc.
Their citizenship status. Some programs are only available to citizens and  permanent residents, but not others.

I have never seen a distinction based on the exact non-citizen (non-permanent resident) status. That would mean that it doesn't matter whether you are a student residing legally in the US because you have an F-1 visa, are an asylee, or are in the country through any other legal means.

(I will say that just because I haven't ever seen such a distinction doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But I suspect the NSF doesn't care about these things.)


In general, it is difficult to transfer between universities in different countries unless one is moving with the thesis advisor. This is in part because of funding rules: usually, money in one country cannot be used to fund graduate students working or studying in another country. (In the US, for instance, graduate fellowships are normally valid only at US universities.)

If you were to attempt to transfer on your own, the most likely scenario is that you would be expected to start the PhD over; depending on the department, they may not recognize coursework completed at your old school, or at best may choose to give you placement out of the equivalent courses, but still expect you to complete additional electives. It would be even more challenging to move your project over, if funding isn't available to work on the same project.

Since you are just starting, perhaps it would be possible to complete a master's degree in Singapore, and then try to transfer to another university for the doctoral studies. (I'm not sure how doctoral programs in CS handle an international master's. In my department, though, students with master's from abroad were still expected to complete the "core" coursework requirements.)


What to do if I can't find the book of this chapter I found so I can cite it?

It is chapter 3 of the following thesis:
https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/864

Title: Economics of solid waste management in Calicut corporation


You need to ask your professor. Opinions about this may vary substantially from instructor to instructor. In additional a lot of can depend on the nature of the assignments (are you writing a paper on a topic of your choice, or proving a theorem that has been assigned to you, for example?).

When writing scholarly papers, you should always cite your own work if it is relevant enough that you would have cited it had it had a different author. Furthermore, if you re-use any figures or substantial amount of text from a previous paper, you need to be careful to indicate this very clearly lest someone complain that you are committing self-plagiarism. (No judgement implied here; my own views on the issue of self-plagiarism are complicated and probably go beyond the scope of the question.)


I don't work in a field with essay exams, but I do ask my students to write proofs, so maybe my advice is still useful.

TAs at my university are contractually limited to at most 20 hours of work per week.  You have 60 exams to grade in one week; that suggests an absolute limit of 20 minutes per exam.  Since each exam has three essays, I would aim to spend at most 5 minutes per essay.  It'll probably take longer at first, especially if you also have to develop a rubric, but you'll get faster as you work through the pile.  Aiming for 5 minutes leaves you lots of slack.

Also, I strongly recommend grading vertically—grading all of essay #1 before reading anyone's essay #2—instead of horizontally—finishing each student before starting the next.


Is it true that having no prior connections with the university makes me a less desirable candidate?

I could be misreading this but it sounds like he means that to get in, someone actually has to want you.  I think he's saying it's unlikely you would be admitted to some sort of incoming class of new graduate students and then get assigned to an adviser as you likely experienced as an UG.

One big reason for the difference can be the money.  At many (most?) research universities, if they accept you as a PhD student, you will be funded.  But that funding has to come from somewhere.  If it's not from some big department pool but from an individual faculty member's grant money that they sweated to get, they're going to want to pick someone they like, not uncommonly someone they already know and have worked with.


What to do with students coming to office hours asking to check their homework?

Answering from the point of view of a physical scientist, and in keeping with my personal take on what kinds of help are appropriate or inappropriate.

(I haven't been a TA for a long time, but I teach at an all-undergrad department so I have to be my own TA.)

These are great teachable moments if you have the time (and it can take a lot of time).

You don't check their homework, you ask them to explain their solutions to you.

But there is a catch: you don't let them get away with "I used this formula, and I solved for [variable]"; instead, make them explain their logic and the conceptual basis of their work step by step. When they are stuck or are proceeding incorrectly, you probe their understanding of the problem in a Socratic style.

The kind of questions you might ask include:

Conceptual basis

What physical principles apply to this problem?
Are their any hidden assumptions here? If so, what are they?
What statements in the problem or facts about the world brought you to select that particular approach? And why did you use that expression of the principle in mathematical form?
How well do the explicit assumptions in the problem match the real world (i.e. is this a PhysicsLand (tm) cartoon or a somewhat realistic treatment)?
Are these results reasonable for the real world? If so, why? If not how do you expect the world to differ and what neglected effects would make the answer more realistic?

Math basis (where they'll want to spend all their time at first)

Why is is that the right value for that variable?
Why is that substitution allowed in this case?
What does it mean that there are two solution to that equation? Which one do you use and why? Is the other one meaningful as well?
Does this situation actually meet the preconditions used in deriving the result you want to use?
Can this problem be stated as a special case of one we're already done? Why or why not?

Problem solving basis

What is the goal here? (You'd be surprised how often they lose sight of that.)
What can you learn from what we've been given? (If you don't know how to proceed just try shotgunning it; forward version.)
What list of thing would get you in position to find the answer? (If you don't know how to proceed just try shotgunning it; backward version.)
Do we already know the correct solution to a simpler version of the problem? Does that hint at a way to proceed here?

Most students will find those questions very difficult at first, but as they become more adept at handling the questions they should see their homework and exam scores improve markedly.

If they have the patience they will solve the problem for themselves right there in your office.

Though this is very time consuming most students will not be regulars. Some will simply become frustrated at what they see as your unwillingness to "help" and look elsewhere; and others will get better at the discipline: as the term progresses they'll bring you fewer problems and ask more perceptive questions about them.

In addition to wanting to talk about formulas first, they are going to want to talk about values ("and then I plugged in the 18 from the problem..."). Don't let them do that either. Make they say what quantity it was ("and then inserted the given initial velocity ...").

Beginners are all about numbers and formulas, but learning the discipline is about principles first, problem solving process second, and particular results last.

Philosophical note: As I see it the purpose of homework is to facilitate learning. I wouldn't even grade it except that there is no other way to insure that they will do it. That's why it doesn't bother me that they are getting a lot of support doing the homework for my class: when they come to me I get to make it a learning experience for them.
(The first time they come in they may think they are going to get one for free, but they're in for some skull sweat.)

Admittedly, I get to decide that for my own class and when you are a TA, you may have to abide by the professor's opinion about how much and how directly you should help with assignments.


I need help with my potential PhD Supervisor who showed interest

This is end of term, with classes to finish, assignments to return, exams to prepare, and if this person is the Chair all the non-sense that comes with the end of term: students complaining, special accommodation, etc.

If you have not heard in one month, start to worry.


I am not sure whether this is a serious typos in a published article

If readers or the editor have not complained to you - they probably smiled to themselves and continued reading - likely thinking "ha, done that typo myself"...

So, unless you have been contacted don't worry.


What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

hey. i was wondering of your students write like this

Alas, yes, they do (however, I'm a non-native English speaker who teaches international students whose level of English is extremely varied, and there's not much I can do about grammar).

Anyway, during the first lesson I give the following pieces of advice (which are frequently ignored, though):

Sender address: please, use your institutional email address and avoid personal fancy addresses like "dirtydeedsdonedirtcheap@hardrock.com". But if you really want to use such an email address, at least configure the email client to show your real name and surname.
Subject: write a meaningful subject: if you don't put a subject and respect point 1, I'll surely delete your email without even reading it, thinking that it is spam.
Course information: please specify which course you are attending or have attended: I teach several courses and if you don't specify this I may not be able to answer (this piece of information is the most frequently missed).
Express your issues clearly: if you have long questions or complicated issues, just ask for an appointment instead.


How can I replicate a search strategy described in a publication?

You should probably take a look at the Cochrane Handbook. What you have are two searches. The first is a search for papers about 3rd molars. The 2nd is the CHSSS and is used to find the RCT studies from the search of the 3rd molars. You need to enter the search items exactly as the history shows since some steps refer to previous steps (e.g., step 9 of the first search refers to steps 7 and 8).


Most universities have detailed "travel policies" that describe their rules for allowable travel expenses.  Try to find your university's policy; it may state explicitly whether or not visas are an allowable expense for reimbursement.

If you can't find the answer yourself, then it's certainly fine to ask whether this expense can be reimbursed.  I don't think you need to worry about this being seen as "special treatment".


Is there any mechanism to prevent an author from cross-sending a manuscript?

The only mechanism is that being found out is typically both rather embarrassing and, in case of pre-tenure researchers, can also be very detrimental to career development of the researchers in question.

Further, note that being found out is in many fields not as unlikely as you might think. For many more narrow topics, there are only so many researchers out there that are "natural candidates" for reviewing a given paper. Despite not being very senior yet, it has already happened to me that I received basically the same paper twice for review from different (in that case) conferences.


The gold standard is blind, independent replication. However, this almost never happens because it costs a similar amount (of materials and time) and there is less benefit to the researcher who repeats the experiments, so there is little incentive. Next down would be independent replication by another group, then replication within the same group. The bare minimum is that the experiment be described in sufficient detail to be reproduced. For example, the 'Instructions to Authors' in the Journal of Infection and Immunity (which is fairly typical) states:

  the Materials and Methods section should include sufficient technical
  information to allow the experiments to be repeated.

Reproducibility is one of the most important issues when describing or reviewing a scientific paper (ref). Knowing that a result is less likely to be attributable to a chance combination of uncontrolled parameters, or a mistake on behalf of the scientist conducting the experiment or recording the experimental conditions, increases confidence that the result seen is a 'genuine' phenomenon. As Karl Popper, the founder of the scientific method, put it:

  Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science.

(Popper 1959, The logic of scientific discovery. Hutchinson, London, United Kingdom.)

Unfortunately, most journals place a high premium on novelty and therefore it is more difficult to publish reproductions of previous studies, and when these are published they are often in less important journals. Funders, similarly, direct reviewers to score grant applications based, amongst other things, on novelty. This greatly reduces the incentive to replicate published studies - if you can't get funding to do something and you wouldn't be able to publish it anyway, it won't get done. Two other major and common obstacles to independent validation are:

that it requires the involvement of another lab with the same resources and skills, which might be very rare;
For experiments involving animals specifically, there is an ethical requirement to minimise the use of experimental animals.

The lack of reproducibility of experiments is a problem in most areas of science and awareness of this is growing. In 2012 this prompted the Reproducibility Initiative, where researchers can pay a fee for blind, independent replication prior to publication.

This sounded like a step in the right direction at the time but as far as I know awareness of the initiative remains fairly low, uptake has not been great and 'proper' reproduction remains very rare indeed.


Is there a "scientific" online source for famous direct qoutes?

How about Quotedb? It seems awfully relevant although risk might be quite a specialized area to be included in it. Quotes tend to be rather general.


Impact of Master's Degree on Physics PhD Admission in the United States: will I be held to a higher standard?

You'll be held to the same standard as everyone else - they are looking for people who are going to be successful graduate students.
You mention in a comment:

I want to stay in school longer to get more research experience

I think that's a great way to improve an application in that more research experience gives you more space to demonstrate you'll be a successful graduate student. The number or type of degree earned along the way will mean little compared to the total research and academic experience and proficiency you can demonstrate.


My personal assessment is that the professor is correct. A good PhD student in my opinion is someone who is committed fully to the completion of the thesis, and spends 100% of working hours (and let's face it, even much beyond that) on it. There is no way around it, if one wishes to be a good academic.

Also:
"expects PhD students to be committed to PhD completion above all else, regardless of subject interest or circumstances on the part of the student. Basically he wanted someone who would 100% be his yes-man."

My impression is that the premise of the sentence does not imply anything about being a yes man. It simply means full dedication.

Following clarifications, the Professor did insinuate the candidate he/she should be a yes-man. This is a warning sign, and is unrelated to the question of dedication needed to complete a PhD thesis.


What is the admissions process for top UK graduate programs? What is a considered competitve resume/application?

UK PhD programs pretty much universally require a MSc or equivalent so I would expect a MS to be required. For some lower ranking universities you may be able to make a case based on the differences between US and UK bachelors, but I think even this is doubtful.

Thinking about it this is not entirely true. There are some doctoral training centers which offer combined masters and PhD courses for which you don't require a Masters, but outside these a masters is required.

Academically, I expect top UK institutions have similar requirements to top US institutions. Specially, they will require a 2:1 or equivalent, with some top universities requiring a 1st. There is no simple conversion to GPA or other systems. But, roughly speaking at 2:1/1st corresponds to 3.2/4.0 in GPA.

However, academics are mainly just a minimum requirement. The main determining factors are the enthusiasm you can show for research, particularly related to the area you are applying for. Most UK applicants will have at least some research experience from experience from their course and the majority will have also done a summer research job or similar.

I would still expect applications for to places to be quite competitive. Less in terms of raw numbers compared to undergraduate, but more the quality of applicants. Some interesting numbers for Cambridge can be found here. About 1/3 of applicants get an offer and about 1/4 applicants start the PhD (the difference presumably fail to make their grades or take another offer). This is much higher than undergrad, where a low estimate would be 1/10 get an offer.


Masters Student in Math: Picking an Advisor

If nothing is set in stone yet, it would be reasonably to explore the possibility of switching advisor.

However, I don't think it's necessary. You are not expected to be doing exactly the same thing for a masters as a doctorate. Or indeed, even anything massively close. Within the UK at least, many doctoral students will come through the MMath rather than a stand-alone masters, and in theory may not have done any sizeable project. My project was completely unrelated to my thesis topic.

Indeed, personally I would suggest not switching topic. The way you are describing things, the topics are close enough that having the additional breadth will actually help your doctorate. You should develop an understanding of material around your thesis topic, not just the exact question you study.

But also do start talking to the potential doctoral adviser, and start to get a feel for whether the two of you are happy to work closely together.


The short answer is no, you cannot use A-levels to establish equivalency to a junior college degree.

A junior college degree, or having junior status at a four-year university, is equivalent to two full years of study at the college level (typically about twenty classes). Three A-level courses, if they're treated as the equivalent of AP courses, would likely equate to less than two semesters of study.


Why don't some encyclopedias have references?

Why is this allowed and accepted?

In short, because Encyclopædia Britannica is independently published and can make its own rules. If they want to publish an encyclopedia with no references, they're free to do so. And there's clearly demand for it, since it's one of the most popular and respected encyclopedias in the world.

Since an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, there would indeed be a great deal of merit in citing its assertions, a model used by other encyclopedias (like Wikipedia). But its general audience probably care little and the publishers don't see it as worth the effort of obtaining, formatting, and maintaining reference lists that very few readers will ever use.

Britannica makes a big deal of its contributors' impressive credentials, and expects you to trust their word as experts in their fields. Since the majority of the encyclopedia's content is likely to be uncontroversial common knowledge within the relevant field—and a great deal of the knowledge therein likely predates the formal system of publication and dissemination of research in an easily citeable format—they think that's enough.

If you disagree (which is an entirely reasonable stance), read a different encyclopedia, or start your own.


Should I mention that I'm currently studying in CV?

Since you said you have no previous work experience, it is essential that you include as many information -true facts- as you can that imply that you are a serious candidate for the job. That course might show the motivation you have, so I think it will be taken under consideration.


In a publications list, how to categorize paper from conference whose proceedings are published in a peer-reviewed journal?

Allow me to disagree with @xLeitix.

No.  It's a conference paper.

A paper qualifies as a "journal publication" if (and only if) it passes through the standard peer-review process for the journal in which the paper is published.  If a paper is reviewed only by the program committee for a conference, it's a conference paper, even if the proceedings are published in a journal.

As a particularly confusing example, consider SIGGRAPH, the flagship conference in computer graphics.  For many many years, SIGGRAPH has published its proceedings as a standard issue of the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (aka "TOG").

SIGGRAPH accepts two types of papers: (1) direct submissions to the conference in response to the call for papers and (2) papers published in TOG in the last 12 months.  Papers accepted from TOG are clearly journal publications, because they went through the standard TOG refereeing process.  (Those papers are not republished in the proceedings issue of TOG, but they are listed in the "table of contents".)  But direct submissions accepted by the program committee are not journal publications, because they did not go through the standard TOG refereeing process, even though they are published in TOG.

The distinction is all the more confused by the facts that in the graphics community, "SIGGRAPH paper" is a considerably more valuable label than "journal paper", in part because the reviewing process for SIGGRAPH is (or has been historically) considered more rigorous than the refereeing process for graphics journals.

Of course, the rest of the world doesn't share this preference—or perhaps more accurately, doesn't believe that anyone sane could have such a preference—which is precisely why SIGGRAPH publishes their proceedings in a journal.  Put bluntly, the graphics community chose to defend itself against lazy scholars who value the imprimatur of a journal above the quality and impact of the work through deception.  Or if you prefer a slightly less inflammatory term: camouflage.

It's worth noting that ACM now explicitly forbids conferences from publishing proceedings in an ACM journal.  (SIGGRAPH's practice is grandfathered.)  But this doesn't stop non-ACM conferences like VLDB from wearing similar camouflage.


How secure is a post doc job offer in an email from the department chair prior to receiving the official written letter?

Don't count on an offer until you have it officially, in writing.  A verbal offer is not an offer.  An email or call saying you will get the offer is not an offer.

You say you "emailed the postdoc place".  Who did you email?  If it is an administrator they may not understand the urgency of the situation.  I would email the professor you will be working for and (politely) make it completely clear that you have a non-negotiable deadline for replying to another offer.  You should also state that if you don't have at least a scanned copy of an official offer from him/her before then, you will have no choice but to accept the teaching position, even though the postdoc is your first choice.  If they really want you, they will take the 5 minutes to scan a copy of the letter.  If they don't, maybe it's best to turn down that offer anyway.

In the meantime, I would also negotiate with the second place for an extension of the deadline.


How does a PhD student make meaningful comments or suggestions regarding a professor's work?

The other answers make good suggestions for the asking of questions or posing ideas to professors. Most professors are open to questions and new ideas. I personally love it when my students come to me with something that I hadn't thought of before. As for getting recognition, it depends on the relationship between the Ph.D. student and the professor.

If you, as a grad student, ask a poignant question at a visiting professor's lecture, and then the professor returns and gets his or her group working on the matter, the you will very likely not receive any further communication about the matter. You will, however, be able to determine if your question had an effect when the publication came out. If nothing else, you can have that warm little feeling that something came of your question.

If you, as a senior graduate student, pitch something to your adviser that is relevant to your project, your adviser should listen. At some point you know more about your project than your adviser does. I pitched many things to my adviser over the years. Sometimes I was shot down, and then did them anyway. One of my questions, however, transformed the direction of my thesis work. I started and finished a whole new project in my last year based on an idea I pitched.

Senior graduate students weighing in on other projects going on in their group also tend to get listened to, and occasionally acknowledged in the publication for "helpful discussions." Yes, sometimes those names are graduate students. For one example I know of, see the acknowledgements in this article. "The authors would like to thank... ...Mr. Benjamin N. Norris for helpful discussions."


Failing a student for attendance or grade?

Ask an Administrator At Your Institution

I honestly think there is only one answer to give here: you need to talk with someone at your University who understands the policies of your particular institution. At all institutions I am personally aware of (having attended or read through their student handbook), there is no such thing as a difference between failing because you didn't show up and failing because you showed up and got everything wrong. But given the extremely large variance between institutions, and especially between countries, your institution may have it's own unique rules.

If at your institution there is no such thing as "fail by absence", then of course you cannot comply with the student request.
If your institution provides a policy of "fail by absence", then you need to look at the definition of what this and whether or not this student qualifies. If indeed the definition is "did not complete X% of assignments or tests, or did not attend at least Y%" of classes", and your student meets this guideline, then you absolutely should mark "fail by absence" in accordance with your University policy.

One needn't actually agree that there is any difference in "not trying" and "trying and failing", and one need not even agree that one is not as 'bad' as the other. If your institution honors such a concept, and asks you to indicate which occurred, it is your duty to answer honestly and correctly.

The student might be a nuisance or annoying, or give you no good reason for their failure to attend - and the reasons might very well be none of your concern. But if your system distinguishes between attendance-related failure and exam-related failure, then you should too. Problems with the policy should be addressed to policy makers, not enforced willy-nilly on students.

If you wish in the future to go against such policies, and assuming you have the authority to do so, you really must place this in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester so that all students necessarily understand that policies normal to your institution will not be applied to that class. You should of course check with administration to ensure you  have such an option.


How normal is it to get email replies in ungrammatical English by a high indexed journal (in the context of lack of communication)?

There are a number of explanations, but the most likely two are carelessness or a non-native English speaker who is assistant to the editor. In a lot of places like, for example, NYC the workforce is composed of people from many lands. And some high end journals may have a widely distributed (world wide) staff. So, some awkwardness with the language can be expected, and I hope excused.
The other, carelessness, is that people sometimes get interrupted during their work and leave out a word. I know that here, since I'm old and may my typing is sometimes awkward, the spell corrector will substitute a word and I don't notice it.
And, of course a single word inserted, "recommend patience" rather than "patience", would make it just about right.
Don't overthink it.
Also, a month with no change in status means little, though it is worth pinging the editor as you did. Journal time, like academic time, can run very slowly, slowly, slowly. Some folks wait six months or more for a change. Mystifying, but there it is. And if you got back a quick reply to your query, you are luckier than some.


CS PhD Addmission: Contacting prof about unpublished work

As I understand your question, you did already submit your application, but didn't include the unpublished papers nor any reference to them? Because that is what I would have suggested: if you have an unpublished paper with high relevance to the field of your application, you could include it with your application documents.

In your case, since you didn't include it in the application, I wouldn't send it unsolicited to potential advisors, especially not if you didn't send your application directly to these people. Rather, you could ask the contact where you submitted your application whether you could amend it with a recently finished paper relevant to the proposed research topic. You would have good arguments if the paper was only finished after the application deadline.

I wouldn't expect too much though. If decisions are already taken, it's unlikely that they will be reconsidered. Anyway, since you mentioned the papers in your CV, I don't think it would be a major factor for your application whether they are included or not.

Note that these suggestions would only apply to unpublished work which is already submitted for consideration in a journal of conference. If it is not yet submitted, I wouldn't send it with the application nor to potential advisors.


Reputed journal publications, yet I have small number of citations

First, let's forget the number of citations in the predatory journals, since they are fraudulent trash and no conclusions can be drawn from them.

Let us instead focus on why some work gets well cited and others does not. In order to be cited, a paper needs to be:

noticed by other researchers, and
considered credible by other researchers, and
significant in its contributions, and
relevant enough to the citer’s own work that they have cause to cite it.

Publishing in a top venue helps with #1 and #2, but only sort of helps with #3 and doesn't do a thing for #4. Complementarily, if your work is useful to other researchers and they become aware of it somehow, then they'll happily cite it many times even if it's in an obscure workshop or even a non-peer-reviewed venue (e.g., arXiv), as long as they have reason to find it credible.

So let's get to the heart of the matter: are your low citations actually indicating a problem in your work?  I would advise reflecting on whether your contributions matter to your field and the feedback that you get at conferences.  If your contributions matter and you are gaining respect, but you happen to be working on something extremely specialized, it may be fine to not be getting many citations---as long as you're getting cited by the few people who matter in your niche.  If you aren't getting citations because your work is correct but not very interesting or relevant to others, however, then you may wish to consider why that is and whether a shift of focus would be useful.


Why would an author forward my inquiry about a paper to all its other authors?

Why did this person do this?

There is a long list of possible reasons:

If something is unclear in the paper, it makes sense for the other coauthors to know in case somebody else asks the same question later.
The author you emailed might not have worked on that part of the paper, and thus is not able to properly address your question.
Or perhaps they did work on that part of the paper and simply have no idea how to answer you, and are hoping another author will be able to come up with a good response.
Your question might inspire one of the other authors to come up with a followup idea.
The other authors may want to know that somebody is reading their paper and is interested enough in it to want to ask a question.
Perhaps the author you emailed doesn't feel qualified to speak on behalf of the group, or doesn't want to take the chance of misrepresenting the group's opinions.
The other authors may have requested to be notified about any communication regarding the paper.
As some other answers (like keshlam's) mentioned, the author you wrote to may simply think it's an interesting question.

And so on...

  Is this a scary situation to be in?

No, why would it be scary? I suppose if you feel that way, who am I to tell you your feelings are wrong... but it's a very normal thing.

In fact, as a general rule, any time you email one author of a collaborative paper about that paper, you should expect that your message will be shared with the other authors.


Formatting and grammar of sponsoring scientist statement

Not a direct answer, but:

I suggest you ask colleagues of yours who have been sponsoring scientists, or who have been sponsored by others, for copies of their sponsoring scientist statements. Then you could just immitate the format
Ask the people at the NSF to whom you (or whoever) is supposed to submit that statement - either for formatting guidelines or a "will this format be ok?" question.


Sending a follow up email for a research assistant position

The answer written here assumes the position is still open and they are still searching for candidates.
Send a follow-up email to person A, cc'ing B.
Then, give them one week to reply (I mean, wait one week, not giving them a deadline :) ! ). If they do not react, try to call them on the phone (A or B, they seem to be equally involved in the decision process).
It is by far less time consuming for both parties (you and A, or you and B) to discuss such a thing via phone.


Are there open-access, free, non-topical academic data and research archives?

In addition to the already mentioned figshare service, I would recommend you to take a close look at Zenodo service. While Zenodo also offers a set of features, similar to figshare, including an automatic DOI generation and assignment, there are at least three significant differences (and Zenodo's advantages, that is, for the appropriate cases) that ought to be considered, as follows:

Zenodo offers git and GitHub integration, so, if you plan to publish your research source code, I would go with Zenodo (and I actually did with my dissertation research source code - it's a bit tricky, but nothing that cannot be solved);
Zenodo is backed by world-famous CERN and its solid IT cloud infrastructure, so your data is IMHO more safe than with figshare in the long term.
Additionally, from an organizational perspective, a related argument is that Zenodo backed by a stable organization and European Union's multi-year projects (and, thus, funding), whereas figshare, while an independent organization, is backed by two not very well-known private (and, thus, not so stable) companies.


Six-month post-doc on J-1 Research scholar visa, can one apply for another J-1 if physically departing before end of contract?

Yale University has a very nice explanatory page for those 12 and 24-month rules, which are more complicated than the excerpts you quote:

This seems to contradict your quote. Note that it says specifically “for any amount of time (one day to five years)”.


How to tell a professor at a foreign university politely and impressively that I can’t cover the costs of living for my PhD?

As a prerequisite you would need to take care of your own funding to cover the costs of your entire PhD project (4 years, cost of living, housing etc.). If you have such funds I would be happy to discuss with you the possibilities.

This is the professor's polite way of saying, "We do not have funding to support you as a student.  If you obtain your own funding let's discuss further, otherwise there is little reason to continue this discussion."

  I don’t have any money to cover the cost of living.

Then the appropriate response is, "Thank you for your time and consideration.  Please keep me in mind if a funded position opens up in the future."

  How can I answer him politely to impress him?

It sounds as though you'd like to respond in a way that causes him to allocate cost of living expenses to you.  I doubt the likelihood of that - if there are funded positions available, professors typically allocate them and notify students for them first, then once the positions are filled notify those that didn't make it that they have none available, and self funding would be the only option.  So chances are good that he simply has no funding to afford taking you on as an expense for their program.  It's also possible that they don't fund PhD students at all in their program.

However, if you have some knowledge that they do have funding and are simply not impressed enough by what you've presented so far to allocate some for you, then your options are limited.  You need to sell yourself and help them understand that your ability, talent, and skills are well above average and would be an asset to them that would be worth paying for.

How you would do that really depends a lot on your program and area of study.  Further, if you had more to show them, you should have done so well before this point.  Trying this now once they've already made their decision has a lower chance of success than impressing them when you first apply.

All that said, there's another option you might want to consider: bring your own funding with you.  It's not easy, but you may be able to write a successful grant proposal for them that gets them the funding they would need to fund the first part of your PhD.  You may have to do this a few times during your time there to continue your education.  Honestly, this method also has its risks, as they would have to cooperate, and they would have to allocate the funds received - not all of which would go to your education.

If this educational institution is particularly important to you and you have to get into their program, you might consider some of these options.  You might, instead, have a better chance with a different institution, though.  Lastly, it's reasonable to take a year or two off from education, get a job, and save money.  Industry experience in your field can be quite valuable to some PhD programs and might give you a leg up on the competition the next time you apply, and if not you should be able to bring some self-funding to the table.  In some industries you may be able to make contacts and network with people in a way that makes you more valuable.

Don't get too caught up in having what you want right now - getting a PhD later in life isn't a disadvantage.  It's more important to have good evidence - research, papers - of your skills than it is to have done it earlier.


Is research in private industry more result-oriented than research in academia?

Funding priorities

  It seems to me that the scientific community is too influenced by doing what funding organisms conceive as favorable just to get more points from evaluation committees to eventually obtain more funding.

This can certainly be the case if you allow it to.  As John Baez puts it

  The great thing about tenure is that it means your research can be driven by your actual interests instead of the ever-changing winds of fashion. The problem is, by the time many people get tenure, they've become such slaves of fashion that they no longer know what it means to follow their own interests. They've spent the best years of their life trying to keep up with the Joneses instead of developing their own personal style! So, bear in mind that getting tenure is only half the battle: getting tenure while keeping your soul is the really hard part.

Governments fund a vast range of research.  Presumably you are funded by a grant whose proposal was written to fund the research that you want to do, and doing that research is what the funding organism will "conceive as favorable".

Funding priorities are largely determined by input from academics, who serve on the funding panels and write the national reports that influence them.  For these two reasons, "doing what funding organisms conceive as favorable" is often the same as "doing the research you want to do."

Goals of research

  My impression on private research is that the goals are oriented to get results

This is very true.  Industrial research is not (with rare exceptions) curiosity-driven.  The end goal is to sell more products, create them more cheaply, etc.

  whereas in academic research the only goal is to get the article published (and thus spending eventually more time on writing the article and/or applying for grant calls than on real research).

I would say that in academia you have more freedom to spend time writing up the results of your research.  I think it's true that some academics become so focused on publication that they lose the joy and curiosity that initially led them into research (see the quote from Baez above).  But writing is an important part of academic research, so if you dislike encapsulating what you have found and making it understandable to the rest of the world in this way, then an academic career is probably not for you.

The concern about time spent applying for grants is a very legitimate one, and this is something you will not generally need to do in industry.

Getting more information

I recommend talking to someone who has a Ph.D. in your discipline and has pursued a career in industry.  Your professional society may also have useful information.  For instance, in applied math there is the SIAM careers page with a lot of interesting perspectives.  Let me quote here from someone who worked in academia, industry, and government research (source):

  As an academic, you select the problems you work on, while trying to pick those that will interest your peers. In national labs, the problems you work on must fit somewhere into the needs of one of many ongoing projects; a fit with your own research interests is certainly possible. In industry, there is usually one (or very few) projects, and you will probably spend your time learning about someone else's problems.


How much time should one spend refereeing a paper?

The slightly unsatisfactory answer is "enough time". You should provide a constructive review and that might take time. How much, depends on, for example, the quality of the paper, the complexity of the paper and, of course, your own experience. As new to reviewing, you probably spend longer than what you would with experience. Having said this, I would say that between close to a full workday to maybe two might be expected from an average research article.

Since you are a beginner, I would also recommend that you take your time. A common beginner's "mistake" is to focus on details more than the larger perspective. You need to focus on both. A paper may be poorly written but contain good science (and vice versa) so attending to all perspectives of an article is necessary, and that takes time.

This may all sound like a chore no-one would want to do but reviewing can be a really positive experience since you get to read a paper in such detail as you would probably not do otherwise, you see new science and you get to contribute to science with your expertise in ways other than producing your own papers.


Why do professors ask candidates at PhD interviews what specific problems they are interested in?

Other than the previous answer, we ask this question because a candidate may be interested in an area that is not in fact well represented in the department. If someone wanted to do research on numerical methods for optimization, my department has nobody to advise such a thesis -- but the candidate may not be aware of this.

I personally ask this question because too many graduate students come to me and ask whether I could be their adviser and then expect me to pose a problem they should work on for the 3-4 years. But I don't want to do that: if a student doesn't know what they want to do for research, yes, sure, I can give them a topic, but if it doesn't match their interest, it's going to be a painful 3-4 years for everyone involved. So I typically want that my students come up with topics they find interesting themselves, and then we can see how that fits into my research group and program.


Does simple paper take less time for publishing?

In general, no. Most of the time you wait for your paper to be accepted or rejected is waiting time and process time, not review time.

First, it sits in the editor's queue until they can review it. Then, they have to find and solicit reviewers and wait for their responses.

Then they send it out to the reviewers. Then it sits in their email or on their desk until they get around to it.

Finally, they review your paper! Then type up notes and send it back. A long or a short paper or quick or hard to understand will only change this time chunk here.

Then their response sits in the editor's inbox until they read it, make a decision based on it, and pass it on to you.

(Plus repeat for any additional rounds of revision.)

As you can see, most of the time is wait time, not affected by the length or the complexity of the paper.

I've had papers wait months on a reviewers' desk.


The criteria I think are important here:

Growing your social capital. In academia, the size and diversity of your professional network is a huge determinant of your success (think co-authors on grant applications and papers, colleagues on editorial teams, and advisors for your PhD students as well as diversity of ideas, methods, and philosophies, and, yes, employment opportunities). It sounds like you've already built a great network where you are, so a good thing to do might be to go an build another one somewhere else, obviously without abandoning your current contacts and relationships.
Slightly contradicting my first point, what kind of professor do you see yourself in a couple of decades? Some people love interdisciplinary research projects, leadership positions in international networks and consortia, and variety and mobility in general. Others do their best work spending years or decades looking into one or two big questions, surrounded by good PhD students and loyal colleagues. I.e., it's also a personality question.
How would the move affect your life outside work? Will you have to sell your house, move to another part of the country you've never lived in (or to another country that speaks another language), and rebuild your life? Do you have care responsibilities for your parents or children? Can your finances handle it? All this is a huge thing that often gets overlooked in the pursuit of some imaginary professional success. Over the decades, I've seen junior colleagues move to the UK from the other side of the globe just to pack up and go somewhere else 2 years later, without much to show for it.


How to ask rejected full-time candidates to apply to teach individual courses?

Don't ask them. It's a smack in the face. Advertise the position in the same place you advertised the salaried one; they will see it if they are still looking, and apply if they feel they need to.


What to talk about with academic recruiters?

Go for all the administrative details.
Things you don't want to ask a potential supervisor, (e.g. asking about money)
and things not research related (which a potential supervisor might not know).

What is the official duration of a PhD?

what is the current average duration of a PhD?

What kind of living allowance/stipend is available?

How does that availability change if you go over time?

What is there exact process for applying?

Does this process change if you have already found a supervisor at the university who wants to take you on board?

How many PhD Students are at the university?

How many apply?
How many students in total? (i.e. what is the ratio)

What facilities do PhD student normally get?

is there separate reading areas in the library?
do you have a office? Shared office? Expected to use library?

How many supervisors are you required to have?

Some it is 1, others 2
Some it may be minimum 2 but normally 3

Who is the best person at the university to contact if I have more questions?

Is this the same person I would contact if I were currently enrolled as a student?

Can I have one of those cool free pens/USB sticks/mugs you are giving out?

thanks.

And if they can't answer, move on, you have better things to do.
You can almost certainly get an answer to these via email later.


How likely is it for an international student to secure graduate funding for a subject like Psychology?

My former UK Psychology department ran a neuroscience program. At the PhD level we had funding from outside grants, school funding, and university funding. Typically only the school and university funding could be used for international students. Technically, this means maybe 1/3 of the available funding could go to international students, but the school funding was almost always ear marked for special cases (i.e., a new faculty member or a supplement for getting a grant, or a reward for doing extra teaching). More typically only about 10% of our funded PhD students were international.


How much of an academic presentation should be spent on preliminaries?

There isn't really an easy answer to this; it comes with experience.  Over time you get to develop a sense of "standard things" that you can expect your audience will know.  Sometimes you'll err in one direction or another, and that's just life.  And you can't expect to please your entire audience with every part of your talk.  No matter what you do, some parts will be trivial to some listeners, and other parts will be inaccessible to others.

In the meantime, if you're a student, you have an advisor, and that's a source of experience for you to draw on.  Go over the talk in advance with your advisor, and ask for their advice as to whether you have too much or too little detail on preliminaries.

One very rough rule of thumb is to assume your audience knows any topic that would be covered in a typical first-year graduate course in your field, particularly if it's the sort of course that everyone would be expected to take.


How to find credible sources for a general reference?

I tend to use books for this sort of thing. For example, if I need a definition of "data mining", I do a Google Books search for that term. A book about "data mining" is going to define the term in the introduction or first chapter, so it will usually be in the pages that are part of the free preview.

Another option is to look at the citations used in the Wikipedia article itself, and then look up those articles. Wikipedia tends to be pretty good at citing the key article(s) for a particular subject.

Also, it's helpful to know a few online cite-worthy dictionaries that you can search for common definitions. For example, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is useful for philosophical terms.

There's also Scholarpedia, which is a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia. It's not as extensive as Wikipedia. However, in my field at least, the articles tend to be written by well-known names.


How can I credit an Original Image on my thesis?

In the paper:

  Plotnik, J. M., Brubaker, D. L., Dale, R., Tiller, L. N., Mumby, H. S., & Clayton, N. S. (2019). Elephants have a nose for quantity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201818284.

Figure 1 is an illustration of the experimental approach. The caption for Figure 1 ends with the statement:

  Illustrations by Nuttayapond Doungcharoen (artist).

There is no citation in a reference list because there is no prior publication, and I would not recommend citing as a private communication or anything like that as suggested in another answer (which gives credit but makes clear that you are paraphrasing some element of a conversation), it's a picture that the reader can see, you just want to attribute that picture to the artist.


Is it possible to work on extra activities (start-up project) during PhD?

Honestly, my instinct is "no".

Both startups and PhD advance in the same way - the massive influx of effort. And that effort is often unpredictable. Both settings have "crunch time" wherein for the next few weeks, you might as well have dropped off the face of the Earth.

Balancing that is, imo, a very tall order for a human being and will probably result in one of them suffering, falling to the side and getting triaged if you try to split the middle.

That being said, there are paths you can try, particularly if you can manage to either consult for a startup in a way that has structured limits on your time, or manage to link your dissertation to the startup's work enough that your effort counts for double. But as entirely unrelated projects? Its begging to have one fall apart.


How do you answer "Oh, you're a professor? What do you teach?"

I usually get assigned to teach ____________ (e.g. introductory biology classes), but actually, most of my work at the university involves research in the area of ____________.


Selling of monuments: What does it mean?

Many private schools and other private institutions ask donors for money. Often what they offer in return is naming rights to a classroom or a lecture series. The big items are football stadiums and such.

When I was a kid and our church wanted to build a new school they offered naming rights to things, such as classrooms. The donor would get a plaque. One local library "sells" bricks with brass plaques that are arrayed around the entrance to the building.

Of course, this is in addition to the major donors who put up an entire building or fund a professorial chair.

Usually the "monument" isn't a big thing taking up space, just a visual recognition of a donation. Nor is it usually a donation big enough to actually fund the thing in question. It adds a bit of revenue at little cost. It gives "bragging rights" to donors.

Some publicly funded institutions do the same thing, of course.


Is "short paper" or "tool paper" valued less than full version paper?

I'm not sure that my area of CS is 100% comparable, since "tool paper" and "short paper" don't seem synonymous to me (I haven't seen any conference use "tool paper" as an official track name, but papers about tools feature regularly in the regular track).

But in my experience, yes, short paper is generally for lower-standard work, or more preliminary work. In fact, at all the conferences I have attended recently with regular and short paper tracks, the papers in the short paper track were mainly selected from the papers submitted to the regular track that didn't make the cut. Roughly speaking, first quartile gets to be full papers, second quartile short papers, the rest gets rejected. (Percentages vary with the quality of the conference, of course. Sometimes there's also a third tier of acceptance for posters.)


Do graduate schools read your undergraduate application?

Irrelevant.

Indeed, I suspect that in most or all graduate programs, those reading your graduate application do not have access to your undergraduate application, won't know that you applied to their undergraduate program, and would not care even if they knew.


Potential downsides to requesting an extension

I suggest that if the university has set a rule that they will follow it properly. To make another assumption or guess is a fool's game.
The downside of not requesting the extension is clear; you don't do as good or complete a job. If you want to game that, then fine, but I wouldn't recommend it.
It is a mistake to guess or assume that people are trying to trick you so that they can, for some conscious or unconscious reason, punish you.

I'll note that they could have set a rule that, for example, you can have an extra week for a 5% grade penalty. But it would have been unethical to not say the last part if that was the intention.


Editing example written work for PhD opportunity?

Send the best document you can.  It does not matter if it was marked in the past or not.  It does not matter when you wrote it or when you edited it.
You can ask a faculty member from your previous degree for detailed advice.


what is Matching Funding in grant application?

Matching funds (money) are

Funds not provided by the funding agency and
Funds that will will be provided to the project if the grant is awarded by the funding agency

Usually they come from your university's research office, but they might come from any other unit of your organization or any third party.
Read your funding agency's rules about matching funds and ask the program officer if you are not sure.  Rules vary widely, even within an agency.


Is it normal to be stopped from doing experiments for months due to "equipment malfunctioning" during masters?

In experimental sciences, such incidents are unfortunately common.  I do a lot of work in synthetic biology, for example, and it's not unusual to have a lab run into serious equipment or materials problems that significantly delay the work of the lab.  For example, one lab I was working with had a critical machine start producing strange results and it took a couple of months, several corrupted experiments, more than one technician visit, and also a change of protocols in order to debug it.

If the lab you are in is actively working to fix the equipment issues, and it is just taking a long time, that would not be unusual.  If they are not but are just neglecting it, then that is a very bad sign and you need to talk to the people who run your program to find out what to do.

In either case, you should make arrangements, either with your advisor or with the program heads, about how to adjust expectations given the equipment problems. Equipment issues should not be your problem or delay your graduation at a Masters level (Ph.D. is a different matter).


Paper rejected based on "informal review" - any point in appealing?

I'm going to guess that personalities are involved here and that you aren't going to win any fight you start. However, I think it would be appropriate for you to write to the editor asking for an explanation of "informal" review and how it is considered appropriate. You could mention that your paper seems to have been rejected not using "normal order" and ask, also, if that is appropriate.

I doubt you will get much satisfaction, but it is just possible that they will re-think their process. This might help someone in future, even if it doesn't help you.

But if it were me writing the letter, I would be polite and just ask for information and a judgment of appropriateness.


How do I handle plagiarism professionally and emotionally?

I'm going to suggest that it may not be plagiarism at all, but just parallel work. I don't have evidence one way or the other of course, but please consider the following points.

First, I hope that your advisor is satisfied with your work and that your advancement toward a degree is not at risk here.

Second, a charge of plagiarism is very serious. It is career ending in many cases and can be career ending for an accuser if it is judged to be a false charge.

Third, parallel work is very common - especially in popular research areas. If two researchers start out at the same time they have access to all of the same tools, datasets, publications, etc. In particular, if they are connected to the "grapevine" they have access to the general feeling in the community about what is important and which lines of inquiry are "ripe" for exploration. In fields that have seen a lot of activity over a long time (mathematics, say), this is less likely as the questions get increasingly esoteric and the field becomes a web of narrow concerns. But working in esoteric fields has its own difficulties, of course.

Fourth, your failure to publish could be due to a lot of things. It may just be that the reviewers of the other work had lower standards than those who reviewed yours. You can't control that, of course. But it may be flaws in your paper as, I hope, would be detailed in reviewer reports you received over time. It may just be that the reviewers found the other work more comprehensible. It may even be just timing. The paper landed at a time when some of the reviewers were actually looking for a paper like that.

You may never be able to publish this work as you suggest, but you can move beyond it and publish future work based on it and the knowledge and skill you developed in exploring it.

The only way that I can see it as potential plagiarism is if one of your early reviewers unethically took your idea and specifically set a student to exploit it while rejecting your work. I don't think that is impossible, but shouldn't be a concern with reputable journals. If it is, then the whole structure of review falls apart.

But two people having the same, even detailed, idea at the same time isn't plagiarism. It isn't even uncommon. Similarity of result isn't plagiarism. Ideas are free for everyone. Direction of approach to solving problems is commonly known within a larger research community.

You might be able to salvage some of your work for a new paper, even without extending it. Focus on what is different from and better than the now published paper. You indicate that there is some of that in your work. You can still make important contributions here, though not the ones you originally hoped for.

I suspect that your advisor understands all of this and so is reluctant to make a charge that, if proved wrong, will destroy your career.

For an exploration about how bad it can be see The Double Helix.

Bad things happen to good researchers. Sad. True. You had a bad experience. Don't let it damage your career.

Let me note in closing, that getting beaten to the punch if it is really just that, leaves you emotionally in about the same place. Mad, sad, devastated. All natural.


How to justify research assistant's role in the grant application

The funders are more interested in the research question(s) you intend to pursue and your likelihood of successfully completing the research than they are about who, specifically, does what. Normally the PI has a guiding and supervising role over all team members and is the one to make critical decisions about the direction that the team takes. There is nothing unusual about that. Also, it is understood that some types of research require more than one person to be able to carry out the research in a timely manner.
I suggest that your application focus on the research questions and the need for a small team to be able to do the work in a timely fashion.
The supervisory role, properly construed, is appropriate for the PI. You guide and make important decisions. You provide the concepts/ideas that drive the research. Others help you realize those ideas and explore them. It shouldn't be a problem unless you imply that you wouldn't be "involved".


Can advisor list a former PhD student, who changed advisors, in his/her CV?

TL;DR: Yes, he can.
He can list you; probably he'll hide that you left him, but who cares?
You graduated and whenever you apply, your CV will show that. Nobody will check his CV for your graduation.
Theodor Fontane (a German novelist) famously said, "Happiness is a good stomach and a bad memory." Forget about him and care about your future.


Feasibility of a partially remote postdoc

Ask the PI or recruiting HR department
I think the main consideration will be what the PI thinks of the plan. Some PI's want to be able to chat face-to-face to post docs every day, whereas others are happier with a more light touch interaction. This can also vary for the same PI between different projects with different aims. This will be quickly resolved by asking the PI. If you have a job offer there's nothing to lose here.
There may be other issues such as tax, insurance and other employment law things. I'm not an expert but our university has raised issues about staff working in another country even though most staff haven't been to the university buildings at all since March last year. This will be quickly resolved by asking the recruiting HR department. They should be able to give a relatively quick yes/no depending on their own current working pressures.
In long form,

explain as you do here what your constraints and motivations are.
have a concrete plan of how the remote part of the work will go. For example, are you able to shift your working time to be available for meetings during US working hours.
be prepared for the answer to be no.

You seem to have a reasonable fall back plan so I see no harm in simply asking.
Edited to add: You should also be realistic about how travelling will work during the current on-going pandemic. How will quarantine affect your plans? What if you are not able to travel for a prolonged period of time.


How to tell a Prof you are no longer applying to a PhD program at his university?

It can be hard to get a PhD position, as there are often only few positions but many candidates. Therefore, it is not uncommon to apply to more than one and the professor should be familiar with people finding a position elsewhere.
Telling him as soon as you made up your mind is the right choice, as this gives him the chance to look for other candidates. Thus, I would be honest with him and tell him what you wrote in your question.
As long as you are friendly and honest, there should be no problem. The only thing to remember is that professors are mostly busy people, so don't steal his time (e.g. by changing your mind in 2 weeks and wanting to work under him again...).


Can I cite almost total literature survey from a textbook unit?

Your intended audience should be able to read your paper without referencing other papers. So, unless your entire target audience will already have read the survey in question, you should summarize it for them. Saying "go read this survey, then come back" is a dereliction of duty. Note my reference to "your intended audience" -- a publication in Nature has a wider audience than J. of Machine Learning, and so your Nature paper must explain past work that the latter journal's readers would certainly already know about.

Further, the survey in question is unlikely to be suitable for your specific purposes. Yes, it may contain all relevant information, but it is likely addresses all the major results for the field as a whole. In contrast, your paper is offering a specific advance on a specific problem -- so, you need to explain which aspects of which results are relevant, and which avenues have not been addressed. Further, it is typical for survey to omit results that are unimportant for the field as a whole, but important for the topic of your paper.

Either way, the survey sounds like a great resource -- you should definitely cite it.


Does announcing the submission of a paper on social networks violate the double-blind review?

In the example case, I'd say no. These Twitter posts fail to connect the Twitter user name (which isn't necessarily traceable to a specific human publicly, anyway) to the NAACL2016 submission. There is no title or submission numbers here and only one reference to a sub-specialty ("morphology") and a length ("long"). It'd be hard for a reviewer to break the blinding based just on that.

Also, the whole point of double-blind review is to reduce the (hopefully) unconscious bias against underrepresented groups through connecting names to gender, race, national origin, etc, and the unconscious bias in favor of well-represented, well-known luminaries in the field. A reviewer who breaks the blinding on purpose is working against this purpose and should be summarily dropped by the Program Chair from the Program Committee if discovered.  Unless you think you're a big name with a mediocre paper, it's rarely going to be worth trying to use alternative means to make it easy to unblind the paper. Everyone seems to agree that enough Googling is enough for any bright reviewer to unblind almost any paper they want (even though they shouldn't be trying).

I don't think there's much of a concern in cases like this. I'd be more concerned if someone with a lot of followers and an open Twitter pseudonym tweeted that they had just submitted paper "1234!" to NAACL2016.


Relation of concepts "related work"/"background"/"preliminaries"/"state of the art"?

Every scientific work needs to establish its context.  What exactly you name the sections and how you organize them in order to present this context is less important, so long as you give the reader a good roadmap to understanding how your work fits into the larger intellectual environment.

Personally, I find that references tend to cluster into a few distinct groups:

Motivation of the work and the foundations that it builds upon
Contrasting to the works of others that do not accomplish the same goals, showing that you are aware of them and that your work is novel.
Justification of assertions
Pointers to methods that have been used

The first two are what typically ends up in a related work / background / whatever section, while the other two more typically end up embedded in other prose where they end up being relevant.

Given this, your proposed structure seems basically sane, though of course the details can't be determined without knowing the details of your work.  The most important thing, I would say, is that if you end up with a very large and complex chapter (as often happens in a thesis), to make sure that you give the reader a good map to help them navigate it.


Can I patent a model that I described in a paper or that I adapted from a model proposed by someone else? Is a patent more prestigious than a paper?

You don't patent papers. You patent ideas.

You can't patent other people's published work because their published papers are clear evidence of prior art.

Why do you want to patent a computer model in the first place? Why do you want to restrict people's use of it? How lucrative will it be?


Is joining a lab that publishes infrequently, but in high impact factor venues, bad for academic career?

You can evaluate the likely impact of the lab on your career prospects by looking at where the alumni of the lab have gone in their careers, and comparing it with where the alumni of other labs have gone.

Really, though, you should choose the lab which best combines people that you will enjoy working with and a subject that you will enjoy working on, in the ratio of those two that most fits your social preferences. No matter what else, your career will be best promoted in an environment where it will be cultivated by good peers, good supervision, and work that you are actually interested in.


I would recommend using a numeric citation style. Then you can say some like:

"Fooing the bar using the whats-it is regarded as producing the best results ([1]-[12])"

For even:

"Fooing bars has been addressed in many places ([1]-[5], [9], [102]-[125]), the following are common conclusions.... "


What can I do to get academic credit/recognition from my hobby project?

What you should do right now depends on the nature of the improvements that you have made:

If your new algorithm achieves its improvement due to some shift in how you represent or think about the problem, then it's probably worth publishing.  You don't need to be in any special position to publish: anybody can write a paper.  Look at where the competing algorithms that you outperform are published, and how they are presented and evaluated in those papers, and you've got a good template to start from.
If your new algorithm is mainly an improvement because of a whole bunch of little tweaks and optimizations, or because of how you've coded it, then it's probably not worth publishing, but definitely worth sharing as a software engineering artifact. It may not be scientific karma, but it's definitely computer programmer karma.

Getting a Ph.D. is a whole different matter, which involves a lot more than just doing a piece of research (though that's certainly part of it).  If you want to pursue a Ph.D., it will be a multi-year process with a lot more scientific contributions involved.  This work that you have done, however, could definitely be helpful evidence of research ability and help you get admitted to a program.


Should I mention in my SOP for PhD that I was accepted for an MS in the same university earlier?

It is probably irrelevant and won't be determinative. There might be some small effect provided that you make the first cut by showing your overall suitability for the program.

I can't see anyone using it against you under the circumstances and, on the other hand, you are applying for something different and your situation has changed via the other program.

Write the best application you can and mention it or not. Or save it as a talking point if you get invited to an interview.

What the applications committee are looking for is evidence that you will almost certainly be a success in the program. There can be lots of ways to demonstrate that, but it goes beyond GPA and test scores. What have you done. What can you say about your background, outlook, and goals that is interesting in your SOP?


There is a whole science about conducting and structuring interviews, and drawing scientific conclusions from it. If you are unfamiliar with it, then the interviews you will conduct are likely going to be poorly designed, and you may not be able to get out of them what you wanted, or with as much clarity as you hoped. That doesn't mean than it may not be entertaining, or of interest to the public, but it's probably still worthwhile reading up on how to best do interviews.

An entirely separate question is institutional backing. It is not unethical or wrong to conduct interviews as an individual -- journalists do it all the time. But you will need to have the approval of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) if you eventually want to use the interviews for scientific research you want to publish.


In a journal, what's the difference between an "article" and a "monograph"?

The word monograph is derived from "mono" and "grapho", so the implied literal meaning is "writing on a single subject". Monographic sections are thus sections linked by a single theme, and often only have invited contributions. In the specific journal issue, the theme appears to be related to monuments/architecture from the Almohad Caliphate.

A journal that is clearer about what they mean with monographic sections is
Kriterion Journal of Philosophy:

  Monographic sections are small collections of original research papers on a specific topic, with an introductory part, that are, in contradistinction to special issues, published as part of a regular issue together with other articles.


Rather than explaining in the email why you would want to join this particular lab over any other lab, I would simply write an email that says something like

Dear Professor X, I'm in my second year at uni and I am considering
which group to join. I read your recent paper ABC and would love to
learn more about the work you and your group does. Do you maybe have
45min in the next week where we could chat about this in person?
Best, anon.jpg

EDIT: Anonymous Physicist just rightly pointed out that this is for an undergraduate study and not searching for a PhD lab as I had mistakenly assumed. I would still ask for a large enough amount of the profs time though to make the meeting worth while. In my eyes there is no point to meet for such a short time that another meeting would be required. So maybe ask for 30 minutes. If the prof won't find 30 min time, then I think this means this prof is too busy for undergrads in the lab.


In analysing arguments, what are the differences between claims, support and premises?

Formally (see, for example, Campbell and Huxman)

A claim is an assertion.
A reason is the justification for making the claim.
Support is the evidence underlying your claim.
An argument consists of a claim + reason + support.

Let me give you an example of my argument about democracy in the Philippines.

Claim: The Philippines' young, vibrant democracy is facing real challenges in the 21st century ...
Reason: ... because the rule of law is threatened by endemic corruption,  extrajudicial killings and an armed secessionist movement in the south.
Support: Statements about the democracy and the need for the respect of the rule of law, the nature of corruption and its effect on democratic institutions, the moral problem of extrajudicial killings, etc.

Formally (see Aristotle's Organon), a premise is a statement from which a conclusion in drawn. This is nicely demonstrated in classic syllogisms:

Premise A: All men are liars.
Premise B: Socrates is a man.
===========================================
Conclusion C: Therefore, Socrates is a liar

In the syllogism above, A and B are premises. From both premises, the conclusion C follows.

Premises, by themselves, are virtually meaningless because they act as unreasoned or unsupported claims. For example, if I made the premise,

"The Philippines' young, vibrant democracy is facing real challenges in the 21st century."

and left it there, you would ask such questions as

what are your reasons for this statement?
what evidence do you have to support this premise?
what are the implications of this claim?


Is it too late to contact prospective PI's at grad schools I applied to?

I think contacting Profs is only helpful if you are genuinely interested in their works and have good questions to ask. If you are contacting Professor because you think they can help your application get accepted, it might not help at all. Profs are smart, they can easily recognize that.


Switch PhD program: how to contact possible PhD advisors when already enrolled in PhD program?

Email, honesty and avoid burning bridges.

You can freely email (and otherwise) contact potential PhD advisors, of course remembering that they are always busy, so you need to be concise and have something of interest to offer.

You need to be honest about your current situation. If you are not and then the potential new advisor finds out about it, it will look bad and will likely ruin your chances.

Do not quit your current situation. That would look worse than wanting to change/improve your circumstances. And if you fail to find a new position, you'll be left with nothing.


Failing is part of research! We all fail; those that haven't are surely not trying hard enough.

If you're failing too frequently, then

Search for easier problems
Discuss ideas with peers
Find a mentor
Collaborate with another student
Work more closely with your supervisor
Attend seminars and conferences
Study textbooks on the research process at PhD level