Contacting an academic researcher by an outsider

I am not aware of any specific protocol, nor do I think there needs to be.   I think that every academic is somehow responsible for the work in their published papers, and that responsibility includes at least some degree of responsiveness to questions about those papers.  But, as usual, some ways of going about this will do better in eliciting responses.  For me, I would want to know that the person who is contacting me about my paper (i) actually understands it, at least to a sufficient degree and (ii) that corresponding with them about my work will actually be helpful.  This includes some degree of knowledge of what they want to do with the work in question.

[I should say though that I work in parts of pure mathematics in which it would take a truly brilliant mind to find direct industrial applications.  So most of my correspondence is from students, other mathematicians, or people who aspire to be one of the above.  For people who work in more applied fields, please discount this answer accordingly.]

  Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?

If you mean "I am asking this question on behalf of my work for Company X": I think so, yes.  When correspondents do not identify themselves in this way, I am less likely to respond at all, and if I do, I will usually ask for some identifying information.

  Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'?

Does anyone want to answer a question which is framed in that manner?  I would help out a good friend who came to me in this way, but not a stranger.

In general, asking for help from an academic and not being willing to be forthcoming about what it is used for doesn't sound right to me.  If you are just prevailing on the goodwill of an academic to publicly explain her work, then have the good grace to say what you need it for.  If on the other hand you are actually trying to extract further expertise or information used for some proprietary purpose, then just writing to ask for it doesn't sound appropriate to me.  If you want to use someone's professional expertise for some proprietary purpose -- or really any purpose other than just advancing your own knowledge -- then you should invite the professional to enter into a paid consulting relationship, it seems to me.  In such a relationship, how much information about the use of the professional's expertise will be provided is something to be negotiated in advance.


Wait.

You aren't refused until they say so. It may be that you aren't first in line, but you are certainly still in line. They have no advantage in stringing you along. But they may be waiting to hear from others. That can take a while.

The time has actually been very short. The institution probably has rules about contacting candidates other than officially.


How could a postdoc look competitive against a tenured professor?

You are a serious candidate

You are. That is why the university is interviewing you. It would be a complete waste of time and resources otherwise. They liked your application materials and want to know more.

Candidates must have good potential

Generally, academic hires are made not on the basis of what you have done but on what you have the potential to do. This is why the job doesn't automatically go to the person with the most publications.

Search committee members know how academia works

Of course the tenured professor has more publications than you! Of course they have more teaching and advising experience, and of course they have more contacts and a wider network within the field. The search committee knows this, and they don't expect postdocs to have all of these things. But perhaps the postdoc looks like they have the potential to blossom into a better scholar than the tenured professor. Perhaps the tenured professor will just stagnate. Which brings me to my final point...

You have seriously incomplete information

You have basically no knowledge which could help you figure out your odds. Here are some possible scenarios:

The tenured professor (who I'll call P for brevity) is not actually serious about this job, but just wants an offer so that she can have a counteroffer from her current institution to get a nice raise.
P is fleeing from a toxic department; she is on bad terms with her current department chair.
P is leaving her current department because she is effectively being pushed out due to a scandal involving an affair with a student and misappropriation of research funds. This is hot gossip among the more senior members of your field but no one knows the full details.
P is applying for the position to live close to her ageing parents. She thinks that she will easily get the job because she is from a prestigious university and this job is at a mid tier school, however her arrogance poisons the interview and no one likes her.
P is the best candidate on paper, but just doesn't "click" week with the current faculty, so they vote to hire someone else.

We can go on like this for all the candidates, including you. Then we can invent scenarios of what the search committee is looking for, pet peeves of individual members, and so on. But the fact is we just don't know, and even if we did know then there's nothing you can do about it.

Get back to work

Quit worrying. Use that nervous energy to polish your talk, to practice answering questions, and to do research about the school. The job goes to the best candidate, and that could be you.


Do you let Google Scholar index popular science articles, conference abstracts, etc.?

Personally, I think that it is important to let one's Google Scholar index all of one's work.

When I am assessing a colleague, I will often exclusively use their Google Scholar page, since every other search method I am currently aware of is either a) badly cluttered with not-their-work or b) tends to leave out significant "non-traditional" works such as white-papers, standards documents, workshops, and books.  I use both the "Cited By" and "Year" orderings, the first to see if they have made an impact and the second to see how active they currently are.

When I see a lot of recent publications, I do not expect them to be much cited, particularly given potentially long publication delays and the fact that most scientific work draws little citation, even if it is good.  Many publications, after all, are "bridging steps" that are important for building the foundations of high-impact publications but which may not be of interest outside of a very narrow group indeed.

What I would expect to see in a highly active researcher, then, is a couple of recent "hits" and a lot of recent publications with minimal citation.  If, in fact, I saw a person who seemed to only have "hits" in their Google Scholar record, then I would find it very curious and think they might be engaging in strategic non-publication.

Obviously, I apply these standards to myself as well.  Even if somebody can't be bothered to scroll down far enough to get to last year, they're at least likely to notice the recent citation statistics bar chart.  Bottom line: I think that it is a good tradeoff to risk giving a mis-impression those few excessively careless readers in favor of giving a better impression to the more careful ones who are likely to actually be interested in the full list.


Aren't YouTube captions good enough not to violate the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990?

No, auto generated captions are gibberish. Try watching a complicated lecture on a scientific topic but turn down the volume and only look at the automatically generated captions. Not only is there a high error rate but there is no punctuation.

Note: the DOJ findings letter is online  (mirror) and you can see the legal rationale behind  the findings of law.

It should be noted that other universities followed the law when they implemented their MOOC programs and captioned their videos from their videos from the start. UC Berkeley was warned by its own academic accommodations committee in 2012 that the way they were implementing their MOOC was not only a violation of their own policies but would probably result in a violation of the ADA, especially given their status as a public university.

Furthermore, contrary to media reports Berkeley was not "forced" to take down the videos. The complainants from the very beginning (circa 2014) wanted to engage in an interactive process that would ensure access, even if over time. Berkeley declined to engage which resulted in the complaint being escalated to the DOJ. However, even the DOJ letter did not request a takedown. This was entirely the decision of UC Berkeley's senior administration


Will taking the math GRE subject test be a plus point for admission in MS/PhD in computer science?

It would be easy enough to ask any department to which you are considering applying whether they would give consideration to math subject exam GRE scores.  They shouldn't penalize you for asking (and at any rate it would be worse to send the scores without asking first).

However, I am inclined to agree with @aeismail: the fact that they formerly had GRE subject exams in CS and no longer do must say something about what at least many of the departments are looking for.

Perhaps I should mention that I was involved in making the math subject GRE exam a required part of the application to the PhD program in my department...but my department is a mathematics department.  Still, after four years of doing graduate admissions I have some experience that seems relevant: in doing admissions one really wants to "compare apples to apples" whenever possible.  For instance this meant getting everyone's understanding that after making the math subject exam a requirement we really would seriously downgrade any application that didn't include it.  The reason for this is that when the exam is optional, a lot of students take it but don't send the scores if they are not strong enough.  This is obviously unfair to the student who turns in a lower percentile score: they are being penalized for their honesty and for following the rules.  I think similar considerations apply in the other direction: presumably very few or no other applicants to CS PhD programs are submitting this score.  So if you turn in a pretty good math subject exam score, what is the committee supposed to make of it?  How do they compare it with everyone else's application?

Considerations like the above make me think it is unlikely that you will be told that your scores will be considered as part of the application.  But there is no need to take my word for it: ask them, see what they say, and if you can, come back and tell us about it.


Can people in western countries do graduation and post graduation in two completely different fields?

Some universities require students to have similar bachelors degree, some other do not require similar degree and do not have specific policy on this; while others need a related or so near bachelors field. For instance, for a masters in engineering degrees; one with bachelors in applied mathematics or physics will also be able to study masters of an engineering field.

Answers to your question varies in fields and countries, and different education systems. My general advice to you would be to see the minimum requirements of the university you want to apply for to see whether their admissions office have any regulations on having related bachelors degree to the masters or not. If they are not providing you information on this, I recommend you to contact them by email and ask your questions.


Is it common practice to insert images at the top of a page?

You are asking a question about page layout. What is common may not be what is best for readers to understand. One of the issues with having a picture in the middle of text is that you often end up with a few lines of text above or below the figure. As a consequence, the eye often has difficulty distinguishing between what's part of the figure and what's part of the regular flow of text. That's particularly awkward if it's just one, two, or three lines of text. This does not happen if you put figures at the top or the bottom of the page, and consequently that's what most style guides recommend.


Undergraduate research field different from PhD field

You can definitely apply in a different field than your undergraduate. Some major fields of research don't even exist as undergraduate majors in most colleges (e.g., neuroscience), so it's understood that many students will come from different backgrounds.

The more similar your major is to the new topic, the easier the learning curve. If your major is significantly different you may want to take some post-bachelors undergraduate courses before beginning the PhD program to bring yourself up to speed.


How much does a professional qualification e.g. CChem add to applications for permanent academic positions or early career fellowships?

I'm a PhD physics student so have limited experience with this, but just based on careers talks and discussions I've had with postdocs and professors in my University, it's not worth very much.

Chartered status (CPhys) is meant to recognise that a working physicist is still keeping in touch with ground-breaking research, as well as having an ethical code and exercising leadership.

  Chartered status stands for the highest standards of professionalism, up-to-date expertise, quality and safety, and for capacity to exercise leadership and undertake independent practice. As well as competence, the title denotes commitment to keep pace with advancing knowledge and with the increasing expectations and requirements for which any profession must take responsibility. Source: Institute of Physics

This is very useful in industry to prove that you have not stopped learning after your degree or doctorate. However, in academia, I think this is somewhat superfluous because as a researcher you are always learning and will have to keep in touch with advancing knowledge to keep your job.

In summary, if you have all the necessary competencies and proofs already, it might be a nice shiny badge to pin on your jacket, but it doesn't carry a lot of professional weight in academic circles.

If you do leave the academic world and want recognition of your progress, then it would be very valuable.


If a student graduates with a Bachelor majoring in IT, is it ok to continue with a Master and a PhD?

It depends, for example if we follow the ACM standard of what is an IT career you will find that it is oriented, mostly, to the technical part and not so much on the theoretical part of technology. In case, that you would want to attract students for pursuing higher academic careers in the IT field, you will have to include theoretical courses considering the computing curricula of ACM in the field of Computer Science.
The part that you mentioned that an IT graduate is to get quickly into the job market is true. They do not need to know the caveats of the theoretical foundations of CS, but they do have to know which TI tools are "hot" in the market and how they have changed from previous version.

In some parts of the world the IT term refers to any career related to technology, so that it could comprise also fields such as CS or SE, so it the students have followed these foundations they can go to higher degrees.

Personally, I have some colleagues that came from pure IT careers and then pursue a MSc in CS and for being honest; they passed thru very hard times, because they lack the knowledge of specific parts needed for their masters such as Algorithms, Advanced Data Structures, etc; also they needed to show proficiency in at least one programming language, but they lack that also.

Hope you find this information useful.


What to do if a co-author is delaying announcement of results?

I think you should push harder to get the paper onto arXiv. The important thing is to have a rational discussion with your co-author where you discuss your worries and try to address them. Here are some additional arguments you can try to use to convince your co-author:

If someone discovered your main results and puts it on arXiv right now, you lose potentially a lot. (Though not everything; if the result is reasonably deep posting your paper one or two days after the other group will result in recognition as "simultaneous discovery" at least.)
If you posted your paper and someone else derived good applications from it, you still gain some increases in your h-index (probably).
Posting things on arXiv does not mean the paper is immutable. You can continue to think about further applications and revise the paper as necessary. It is only after you submitted the paper at a journal for review that you really have to start worrying about making big changes to the manuscript.

But absent you finding out exactly why it is that your co-author is reluctant to post the manuscript on arXiv, the brainstorming sessions with strangers on the internet can only go so far.

I probably am not familiar with your subfield of mathematics, but this mentality of "In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable, papers are sometimes turned down if the result itself is too technical but there are no applications in sight" is foreign to me. In PDEs frequently a technique is developed to solve one or two problems initially. And the originators then work very hard the next few years to extend the technique to apply to many different problems. It is surprising that you are still worrying about the number of applications when you already have five!


Is it acceptable to ask for course notes ahead of time?

I suppose there might be exceptions, but I think in general it is fine to ask. But explain your reasons as you have done above. On the other hand, don't expect that you will necessarily get anything back. Many people create the notes on the fly as needed, rather than in advance. That will depend on the course and the lecturer.

In my case I prepared a set of written notes that were printed and bound. Students purchased them for the cost of preparation. But I seldom had them available much before the start of the term as they were updated for each running of the class.

Often the class notes aren't a lot of use without the lectures they accompany, so you might not get as much out of them as you hope. The lecturer will probably not be happy with you if you also ask a long stream of questions about them prior to the course.

I doubt that many would consider it inappropriate or giving yourself an unfair advantage. Most would appreciate your enthusiasm.


Should I send an email back after getting rejected for a Master Project?

You never lose by being polite - especially to people who can possibly help you in the future. I would suggest sending an email, or even postal mail - a bit more formal.

The email/note should be short. Thanks for your consideration of my application. I appreciate your help and hope to be able to work with you in the future.

If you need a project from another professor, you could also ask him/her for any advice or recommendations they might have.

Don't burn your bridges. Don't let them fall into disrepair. Keep them tidy and well swept.


A professor has only proofread my paper. Should I include him as author?

I would thank him in the acknowledgments. Although there is no set standard for what is required to be an author, it is generally accepted that they must make a research contribution. Proofreading definitely doesn't meet that criterion (or any of the other criteria that I have seen).

I did this in one of my recent papers. I just said:

  We would also like to thank Bob Bob for his helpful feedback on a draft of the paper.


Tons of People Cheating on Exams which hampers my grade

If you can get perfect marks (10), then the cheaters don't really hamper your grade. They don't, in the short term, inconvenience you at all. You are doing the work to learn and your marks show that. All is well. Long term, you might be competing in some marketplace with unethical people, of course.
I suggest two options. Direct and indirect.
The direct action is to find a few people in the same situation and make a joint appeal to administration. They are likely aware of it, of course. But you can point out "how" people are cheating without getting in to the "who". Ask for steps to be taken. No guarantee of success. But this is something for group, not individual action.
The indirect action is to spend some effort becoming known to faculty for your hard work and skills so that they are assured that you are there to learn, not cheat. If you are successful at this, then you will have access to good support in those marketplaces, including, especially good letters of recommendation.
I highly recommend the second (indirect) action. I only point out the first.


Before proposing reviewers, should I notify them?

I never asked them and never heard of anybody doing so. It’s the journal who is responsible to organise peer review, not you, and they have to and will humbly ask¹ potential reviewers anyway. By asking potential reviewers yourself, you cause the following problems:

Not every reviewer you suggest will be chosen by the editor. For a reviewer who will not be chosen to review, deciding upon your request will be a waste of time.
Even a reviewer who is eventually chosen will waste a little time by responding to the same request twice.
If a potential reviewer declines your request and you do not suggest them, the editor may still choose them on their own (most editors to whom I have talked make a point of choosing at least one reviewer who was not suggested). In that case, the potential reviewer may think that you ignored their wish.
Asking reviewers directly is a first step to breaching the independence of peer review as it opens up the path for manipulating peer review: “Sure I will review your paper [favourably] – provided that you will do the same thing for my next paper.” Some oppose even the mere option to suggest peer reviewers for this reason.
If you know only a limited list of potential reviewers for your paper, removing those who deny your request may make the list smaller than what is requested by the journal. If those reviewers only refuse when asked by the journal, you still did your duty of suggesting sufficiently many potential reviewers (and this may not even be a problem, if the journal requests a list that is longer than the number of actual reviewers).
You waste some of your time by asking the potential reviewers and waiting for their response may delay the actual submission.
If you show your paper to your potential reviewers privately, they have an advantage in the rare case that they try to steal your ideas or commit other dishonesties. By contrast, peer reviewers are often bound to terms of non-disclosure and similar and also the journal serves as an independent register of who had knowledge of the manuscript. This point does of course not apply, if you trust all potential reviewers or published a preprint of your paper anyway.

¹ Except perhaps for some journals with a questionably demanding demeanor.


Changing fields in postdoc. Whether or not to pursue another postdoc at 35

Ask yourself what the trade-off is. There are basically three possible outcomes: (i) You quit now and do something else. (ii) You take the postdoc but don't get a faculty position after that, so do something else. (iii) You take the postdoc and do get a faculty position after that.

The way you describe it, you love doing what you do. So options (ii) and (iii) involve doing something you really enjoy, with the possibility of being able to do that for your entire life. In the worst case, you only get to do it for a few more years.

Options (i) and (ii) involve having to find a different job. The only reason why (ii) would seem to be a bad choice would be if you think that the job you can get after another postdoc is worse than what you could get now. But I don't really see why that would be so. So the long-term prospects for (ii) are no worse than for (i), but (ii) involves doing something you enjoy.


How do universities (particularly medium sized ones) plan their master course schedule?

At my institution, this planning is done separately by each department, which reduces the number of courses from "hundreds" to "dozens".

In my department, it's done by hand, by the chair and a couple other experienced faculty members, with the aid of some spreadsheets.  They are familiar with the requirements of the degree programs offered within the department, and some of the most common conflicts with other departments.  (For example, calculus is taken by many first-year physics majors, so we try not to schedule it at the same time as the intro physics lab.)

Over time, various courses have settled into "traditional" time slots which are known to work reasonably well together, so we use caution when deviating from tradition.

This does mean that students with more unusual programs (double majors, etc) may find conflicts between required courses which can be difficult or impossible to resolve.   These have to be handled case-by-case; in some cases the department may waive or modify requirements that can't reasonably be satisfied.


Are university lawyers usually faculty members or “just” support staff?

Large or well-funded universities have dedicated general counsel like any other corporate entity, and they function in the same way that corporate general counsel do. Their job is to protect the university's legal interests, which includes things like negotiating with unions, damage control and prevention for legal problems, and defense during litigation, which is often contracted out to a specialist law firm depending on the nature of the litigation. In particular, they will often be on the other side of the table from faculty, so it would be problematic if they were faculty as well.

I suppose technically the office of general counsel is "support staff," but it's a bizarre way to refer to an office that works at the very top of the administrative hierarchy.


Is it possible to work full time in an industry position while on sabbatical?

Every university has a policy for addressing these matters, and it is best that you obtain the specific policy from your own institution -- a general survey of what goes on at other places will likely not be informative to your present situation.  Federal funding sometimes can be used to cover the other part of your salary -- but, again, it depends on the funding source and the rules of your institution.


Writing an email to a professor for teaching assistantship for the second time

This is a highly personal opinion due to an individual's emailing habits, but I would not attach pre-existing email on something more than a month old.  If you talk to the professor about the opportunity in the future, just add relevant information to the current email.  No need to add the entire backstory, unless it has important information that cannot be conveyed otherwise.

"Hello, I had previously inquired about such and such back in the Fall and nothing came of it.  I was wondering about any potential such and such for the upcoming semester."


How to cite when true publication date differs from journal's claimed year?

With the advent of "online first" and "just accepted" publication streams, this dilemma is becoming even more common.  It is now frequently the case that a publication will become available and begin gathering citations well before its "official" publication date.

As noted in the answer by Wrzlprmft and Jim Oldfield, publication dates serve two purposes:

Extra meta-data to help with a search for the reference
Establishing priority between competing researchers

The citation that you write only needs to do the first.  Thus, my practice when dealing with multiple publication dates is to write whichever is the "most persistent".  For example, I have had citations like "published online June 2012" doi:XXX", then in another later work cited the same paper as something like "34(4), pp 1-10, January 2013, doi:XXX" once it's progressed in the publication queue to actually receive a final volume/issue/date.

Regarding the question of priority: that's not really your job in a mere citation.  If order of precedence is actually important to your discussion, you should be discussing it in the text, and not just leaving it to the reader to infer from citation dates, because the real story is often more complicated.  That's why in the actual text of many publications, you will see multiple dates in addition to the final publication date.  In the most extreme cases, you will see a long string like: "Submitted Date1, Revised Date2, Accepted Date 3, Published Online Date 4."

In short: don't sweat the precedence issue.  In the citation, use the date that will be most useful in obtaining the full publication, and let precedence questions be handled separately.


If you make changes to paper after initial conference submission, should you present updated version at conference?

I believe you should do what is better to the audience.

In some disciplines/communities it is strongly assumed that conference participants read the abstracts/papers before the presentation, and expect the discussion to follow precisely the material that is published. In this case, of course, you could only comment briefly on the recent changes you've made.

In other fields (such as mine), the abstracts are used only as a means to (roughly) describe the topic of the presentation. It is quite normal to extend the actual talk beyond the scope of the abstract, or reduce the role of some pieces of research advertised in the abstract. In this case, I'd advise you to make a talk that is simply interesting for you and the audience. It can probably include both the original design and your contribution to its recent development. Make sure people in the room understand why  the changes were needed, how you have worked them out, and what is the benefits of your new architecture.


Open access journal for long-form publication

Plos One do not have an explicit word count limit, and computational biology should be on-topic for them:

  There are no explicit restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information, although we encourage a concise and accessible writing style.

For further info see http://plosone.org/static/guidelines

Also, have you seen that Plos Computational Biology has two types of articles, Research articles and Software articles, and that the 3500 word limit only applies to the latter (see http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/guidelines). For Research articles they only say:

  Although we have no firm length restrictions for the entire manuscript, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely.


How to get recommendation letters for graduate admissions when my social anxiety makes it difficult for me to make connections?

I can see this is a difficult spot for you.  After all, to be good at your work doesn't necessarily require you to love interacting with people, but to get into the field you require letters of recommendation, which are best achieved by... interacting with people.

A few thoughts:

Are you more comfortable communicating over email?  If you can combine a good email correspondence with good course work, I think there's a path to overcoming this.  You can easily email your professors (using the less verbose style of your revised OP!) and ask about graduate school, research interests, and finally letters of recommendation.
Have you taken classes with the same professors repeatedly?  This is one piece of advice I give to undergraduates a lot.  Each good semester with a professor helps reinforce the positive impression.  Assuming you still have one semester left before finishing, I would prioritize doing this again.  Speaking for myself, student's names I only see once are often quickly forgotten unless I've gotten to know them in person well, but student's names I see repeatedly start to stand out regardless, especially if they've done solid work.
Related to 2, have you taken only very large classes with the professors you want letters from?  If so, and if it's possible, you might try to get into a smaller section they're teaching even if it's of less (but not unrelated) interest to you academically.
You would be surprised how far showing up to office hours with good questions will get you, I think.  You said you've managed to overcome your anxiety enough to do this, and I don't think you should underestimate the benefit.

In summary, find alternative ways to build relationships with the professors, through repeated interactions and electronic communication.  You don't have to be chumming it up regularly with your letter writers in person to get good letters of recommendation, though even the few visits to office hours you have managed will have likely helped.  Also make sure you read the posts others have linked in the comments regarding mental health issues and PhD admissions.

Good luck!


How to report to journal when work published in it has already been done by some other researcher?

For the case of the "forgotten" reference to previous similar work, I'd say you should assume good faith: maybe they just missed it. If it's not plagiarized then it's not really fraudulent. Re-discoveries happen all the time and it's not generally expected that all papers cite all the relevant literature. It can however be frustrating to the authors of the original paper.

If your intention is to notify the community that a very similar work exists, which can be very useful, then you could write a letter to the editor. These are often published if the journal find they are of value. Word it without hinting that you suspect the omission was made on purpose as this will not achieve anything.

For the large number of citations to seemingly unrelated papers from a given author, again it might just be a coincidence. But you cannot exclude a "citation ring" scheme. What you can do is communicate your concerns privately to the journal. If you gather enough evidence of an organized fraud you can also make it public through post publication review-websites (pubpeer.com, etc.). Do not hold your breath though, it's very possible that it will have no consequences whatsoever.


Can we put some documents which are not listed as required documents for jobs

A cover letter is probably fine, provided that the application system will accept it. Some online systems can be strict about what they will accept. If they want a SoP (Statement of Purpose), they probably expect to see there what you might otherwise put in a cover letter.

But avoid including a lot of unasked for documents. The institution knows what it wants to see and wants all applications to be similar in structure just to ease the work of evaluation.

In required documents you can sometimes point to the existence of other things that people might want to see if you are seriously under consideration. But wait until you are asked to send those extra things.


Revising dissertation for publication – anxiety about revision process

But I am now worried that some people might feel that I should have done this in my dissertation already to do these articles full justice.

It's probably unlikely anyone would compare the two, and if they did notice a difference, most likely they'd appreciate the fact that you improved it in the published version.

But even if they do think your dissertation could have been better, so what?  You can't do anything about it.  What's the alternative?  Don't improve the published version?  That would clearly be worse.  The published version is what 99% of readers are going to see, and you should make it as good as you can.

  I know that the dissertation is just a draft of sorts (that is what I was often told) and I should probably put it behind me and get on with my publications.

Yep, do that.


If I am willing to relocate, is it true that Pure Functional Analyst very hard to land a tenure-track faculty position?

Tenure-track positions are hard to get in any area of mathematics. I don't think that functional analysis is any different in this regard. The question you should ask yourself (and your adviser) therefore is more whether (i) you are good enough to compete for them, and whether (ii) you are doing what is necessary to make sure you get a chance to compete. The latter, for example, involves writing papers, going to conferences, talking to colleagues, etc.


Is it unethical to not able to complete a journal review within provided time ?

Will it have any impact on my reputation as a reviewer in future?

As @darijgrinberg said in a comment, referees are quite often late with reviewing assignments. As an example, on one occasion (the only one I can remember) when I was unable to get a paper reviewed by the deadline I committed to, I sent an apologetic email to the editor a couple of days before the deadline explaining that I will be sending my report a week or two late. His sarcastic reply suggested that he found my apology very amusing and unusual, and he was in fact very pleased that I would be only a week or two late...

So, I think it’s not so much that your reputation will suffer because of this incident; rather, it’s more accurate to say that you have missed an opportunity to set yourself apart from all the other late reviewers - that is, it’s not a negative efffect but the absence of a positive one. But in any case I assume you will have many more opportunities of this type in the future, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

As for the ethics, again as Darij said, ethics has to do with willful acts. To forget things or be negligent or put yourself in situations where you are unable to deliver on a promise may be characterized as unprofessional (only a little bit in this particular case) and is certainly undesirable, but this has nothing to do with ethics.


Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?

Yes. It is quite easy to do, once you know how.

First, go to the References tab, then click on Insert Citation and Add New Source.

Next, fill out the information as appropriate.

When you want your References List produced, go to Bibliography.

This is extremely helpful when you need to change some detail (say publication date) and you have many citations to the same material. Change it in one place and Word will update all of the in-text citations as well as the references list.


You’re overthinking things (but not by much, and in a way that is both typical and understandable given your current situation and vantage point on the job market for academic math positions).

The main things you need to know are:

You don’t need to make any decisions until you get an offer.
You don’t need to do anything “special” when applying for jobs other than follow the application instructions, and there isn’t much else you can do to gain an advantage, other than obvious things (like proving a major result, winning a major award, and having strong visibility in giving talks at various places, especially departments where you’ll be applying).
Your chances of getting a tenure track offer straight of your PhD at a very good (say, top 50 R1) US university are pretty low, assuming you are an average person who meets your description of yourself in the question.
Your chances of getting a tenure track offer at one of the top math departments in the country (like the one you mentioned in the comments) straight out of your PhD are extraordinarily low, again assuming you are an average person who meets your description of yourself, and even assuming you are quite a bit above average. Of course, there is a possibility that you are a person for whom this is a realistic prospect, but if so then I would say you have been rather modest in your description of yourself.

The bottom line is that at the moment your optimal strategy is the obvious one, which is to apply to any place/position where you think you have a realistic chance of getting an offer (and if it doesn’t embarrass you too much, even places where you don’t think you have a realistic chance). Once you get some offers, you may or may not be faced with a minor dilemma of the kind you seem to be worried about. But there’s a good chance that won’t happen (e.g., you’ll get a few postdoc offers and it will be fairly obvious which one is best for you). And even if it does, I think it will become fairly clear in due course what is the right choice. Trying to preemptively make strategic decisions of the kinds you are thinking about long before those decisions are even applicable and when you don’t have all the information is pretty much a waste of your time and mental energy.

Good luck!


Why do some individuals who are productive PhD students at leading Western institutions, then publish infrequently as faculty in their home country?

The problem that faces faculty at second- (and lower-) tier institutions including those in foreign countries is that research is often not valued or not given the resources necessary to flourish.

For example, at many national universities  faculty have considerable responsibilities other than research, including teaching and national and local service. They may not have enough (or any) quality graduate students to help with teaching,  to inspire them to explore new research areas, or to conduct research together.  They may also have much more administrative duties with much less administrative support.

Finally, there may be little incentive for them to do or publish research. They may have civil service salaries that are not adjusted for research output. External consulting or tutoring may be more lucrative than doing work within the university.


I'm only going on my own experience here but I believe:

Location of the journal should only be taken into consideration after some other, more important, factors.

You should choose a journal that is a good fit for the topic, length and style of your paper.
You should pick a journal with at least one editor who will know roughly what you are talking about.
You should aim for as good a quality journal as is reasonable for the quality of the paper (this will most help your career).
There may be certain journals you just prefer to avoid (obviously junk/scam journals, but also eg. many mathematicians avoid Elsevier).
You need to consider any publishing costs (eg. for open access journals) and any rules you must follow (eg. UK open access requirements).
Where your field allows, avoid sending multiple papers to the same couple of journals (which could suggest one or two editors happen to like you).

Once you have a short list that meets these requirements, you could reasonably choose a local journal in favour of a non-local one. I think the other requirements will avoid the suggested negative impacts, when your work is viewed as a whole.


Is it difficult to get into graduate school for applied math with a computer science degree?

There's no reason why you couldn't get into an applied math graduate program with a CS bachelor's degree.  Some parts of some applied mathematics programs are called computer science in other programs (and vice versa).  Many applied mathematics students come from engineering, physics, CS, and other undergraduate programs.


undergraduate research experience should go for 'depth' or 'width' in terms of graduate application?

As long as you have something, than that is good enough.  You will be working on a new problem during your Ph.D. and it will be very different in the amount of time spent (full time, versus an "extracurricular").  Your grades, test scores, and letters are more important.  Nobody is expecting you to be an independent researcher at this point.  They are much more interested in scientific potential than results when rating undergrads.

I would do what you like the most. (Life is short and then...)  But if you force me to vote only based on your application, then spending more time on the initial problem and getting a publication (or more pubs) is the higher return on your time.


Waitlist Game Theory - am I just overthinking?

I don’t think you’re overthinking, you’re just... thinking. But basically, you’re thinking about things that are beyond your control, so in that sense any amount of thinking does not benefit you in any practical sense.
For what it’s worth, many departments hold events allowing admitted students to visit the department (virtually, these days) and meet with faculty. My own department’s event is today and tomorrow, and I had a pleasant meeting with several of the visitors. So I expect many students will be making decisions soon after attending such events. Keep in mind they don’t all know ahead of time their precise order of ranking the different programs (unlike what your intuitive “model” seems to assume), but instead go through a due diligence process where after getting admitted to several schools, they find out more information about each one and then make a decision. There is no reason why this can’t happen well ahead of April 15, and I believe it often does.
Good luck!


"With editor" means an editor has been assigned, but no reviewers have been invited yet. "Decision in process" means the editor has made a recommendation to the editor-in-chief.

I'm guessing that the editor-in-chief disagreed with the editor, and either assigned a different editor or sent the manuscript back to the editor. I would say wait, although if it goes another ~1 week without the status changing I would write to the journal asking for an update. Two weeks should be sufficient for the editor to either make a decision, or to invite reviewers.


Can we study University level subjects without getting admitted into a university?

This is a response that takes various comments of the OP into account rather than an explicit answer to the question asked - but it is too long for a comment, and I really think that the OP should be made aware of the following points.
@OP:
I do not intend to be rude, but I would strongly advise you to recalibrate your expectations and your perception of how research and academia work. For instance,

you say that you never managed to get good grades in highschool, but your question focusses on "advanced topics like general relativity, quantum mechanics";

you are worried (in some of your comments) that you won't be admitted by any university, but your question focusses on places like MIT;

in another question you mention research of yours (which I find a bit odd, anyway, since you write you're a highschool student) and don't seem to be particularly convinced of its quality, but in a comment here you claim that you wish to "interact with greatest minds of this world".

Now, it is important to note that none of your goals is completely unreasonable in itself: there are, of course, a lot of potential reasons why a smart student might have poor grades in highschool, and might anyway master theoretical physics later on; it is, as mentioned by others, also absolutely possible to do your undergraduate studies at a respected but not-at-all famous university, and then do your graduate studies at a very well-known place; it is also possible to start out with not particularly good research and to improve quickly and considerably, so that the "greatest minds of this world" would like to discuss your research with you.
However, the only way to achieve any of this is to keep a realistic perspective and to move forward in small and down-to-earth steps.
Currently, your contributions here merely focus on extremes ("bad grades in highschool vs. studying advanced topics in theoretical physics"; "not admitted to any university vs. admitted to MIT"; "research of low quality, produced as a highschool student, vs. interacting with the greatest minds of this world.")
Here are a few suggestions of a more realistic approach:

If you had difficulties to earn good grades in highschool, make a thorough (and honest) analysis of the reasons, and try to figure out what you can do to improve this situation when you attend a university. In order to get any degree you will have to pass exams, too, and if you want to have any chance of your dreams coming true, you will have to do very well in most of them.
If you had poor grades in highschool, this might also indicate (though it is not sure, of course) that you don't know well some of the material from highschool. No matter whether this might not be your fault or what the precise reasons are - it might still pose a problem when you want to study topics in physics at university level. So please try to find out whether you have, for instance, serious gaps in your highschool knowledge of mathematics or physics (and maybe also some other subjects that could be relevant), and if you find some, try to close these gaps before you're heading towards more advanced topics.
(Please note that much more basic physical topics than general relativity and quantum mechanics - for instance, classical Newtonian mechanics - require mathematical knowledge which goes far beyond the mathematics taught in highschool.)

If you intend to become, in a few years, a graduate student in one of these "top-tier" universities, try to make choices right now which can help you get admitted then. For instance, make an effort to find out which kind of undergraduate experience (for instance, research experience, but also other things) are considered advantageous for the admission decision, and then try to choose a university for your undergraduate degree where you have good chances of acquiring this experience.

Getting involved with research early is certainly a good idea of you have ambitious plans - but the most reasonable way to do this is within the setting of a college or university and in collaboration with other people who already have experience in doing research.

Please try to inform yourself about some details of the academic system. For instance, you write in one comment that you are considering self-studying, then to write a few good research papers and to get a PhD in Cosmology. As mentioned by other users, this is a very unrealistic plan:
First, being admitted for graduate studies seems to be very unlikely if you do not have an undergraduate degree. So if you want to do a PhD, there is most likely no way around getting admitted for undergraduate studies first.
Second, producing good research and getting it published in reputable journals is very, very difficult if you do not have any formal education (= education at a university) in your subject and no senior colleagues that support and advise you. Producing really excellent research and getting it published in top journals (which would fit your, in some respects extremely ambitious, goals) is literally impossible without the aforementioned prerequesits.

Now, all these suggestions certainly come across as much less glorious and prestigious than getting admitted to MIT, or studying general relativity as soon as possible, or interacting with great minds. However, please be aware that even the greatest minds spend a considerable amount of their time with completely non-glorious, down-to-earth routine tasks (like advising students, marking exams, writing grant proposals, and so on).
Also, even if someone is born as a genius, a degree from a top university, a solid understanding of theoretical physics and the possibility to work with great people do not simply come to them out of the blue - even the smartest people have to work long and very hard for this, and they do it by taking many - maybe amibitious, but most often still small and realistic - steps. So precisely this is my advice for you.


Is it ever appropriate to correct a non-native teacher's English?

It depends on how much interest she has expressed in being corrected or trying to improve and how close your relationship with her is.  Any corrections should be generally mentioned to her respectfully and in some form of one-on-one conversation.

If she has asked in class for mistakes to be pointed out, then I would not hesitate to offer the occasional correction.  Frequent corrections are probably not welcome.

If she has not expressed interest in being corrected, I would only mention corrections if the mistake could potentially lead to misunderstandings either in message tone or content.

A gray area might be if the mistake is in formal communication (e.g. grant applications) and you work closely with her.  In that case, use your own judgement.


Convincing professors to help with the founding of new university

There are a number of issues here:

The new university probably isn't accredited (yet?) and is for-profit (at least that's how I interpret "this does not mean it is non-profit").  In principle a for-profit, unaccredited university could be innovative and wonderful, but it will face a lot of prejudice because most such universities are not.
Joining a new venture like this involves putting a lot of trust in the people who are running it.  If they turn out to be crazy or dishonest, then everyone involved will look bad.  It's difficult to reach this level of trust, and almost impossible starting with e-mail from a stranger.
Advising research students takes time and effort.  It's not just a matter of proposing a topic and waiting for the thesis to come in; instead, there's a lot of advising and mentoring.  This is a major commitment, and I wouldn't want to have my name associated with something like this unless I was doing everything necessary to help the students succeed.  Some of your comments (such as "virtually no need of professors until it comes to marking theses" or "we need academics associated with the university for the sake of the application, even if its only in name") sound like I would be setting students up for failure or misleading them as to my level of involvement.
Time is a major limiting factor.  If I had all the time in the world, then I would cheerfully volunteer to help with all sorts of things.  As it is, though, there are a lot of students at my own institution who seek supervision, and working with them in person is more satisfying and productive than supervising someone over the internet.  If I maintain my current level of engagement with students in person, and add internet activities, then what am I going to cut?  It's not enough to make a case that participating in this new university is valuable.  Instead, you have to make the case that it is more valuable than whatever I might be doing instead, such as research or family time.
What you describe comes across as saying professors aren't really necessary except for validating research output and ought to be willing to do that for relatively little money.  This philosophy won't be popular with many professors, who would like to believe they engage in plenty of crucial activities.  If this isn't the impression you would like to convey, then you need to modify your sales pitch.


What to do when you find out someone else presented your research without crediting you?

You clearly said that your paper is published and has your name on it. No matter who presents this paper or this work, your name will be forever there. Everyone who will lookup this paper to find out more about this research will see that you are a co-author, regardless of who actually presented it.

TL, DR; I would not worry too much about it.


Undergraduate European Computer Science Schools and their application process?

If you believe in university rankings here is the one from QS. According to it, the following nine European universities belong to the world top 50 in Computer Science: Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), ETH Zurich (CH), Imperial College London (UK), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH), École Normale Supérieure, Paris (FR), University of Basel (CH), University of Amsterdam (NL), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (UK). Basically, I would say that all universities in the world top 200 list are good.

Moreover, depending on what are in Computer Science you prefer, it might be a good decision a university outside of this top 50/200 if they are specialised in the area you like.


My essay has been plagarized in a journal article - what to do?

Contact the editor of the journal, present your suspicions, and be prepared to submit evidence supporting your claim.


Resumé – how to include grant awarded to my undergraduate project but is part of a bigger grant?

My immediate reaction is that if you weren't involved in the writing of the grant, you aren't responsible for the awarding of the grant; rather, you were hired to a position that happened to be funded by that grant. Therefore it would be misleading/unethical to list the grant on your CV/resumé, but you can and should list this position, along with your responsibilities, skills you learned, any results or publications, etc.

(Incidentally, it would be a terrible idea to list the full amount of your PI's grant. Not only is it unethical, but it would look laughable that an undergraduate had been awarded a six- or seven- or eight-figure grant. The result would be that the committee would view your entire application with suspicion.)


Can I write the diversity statement around my ADHD?

Look around, but I think @Anonymous Physicist is right that this isn't about you but about how you will handle diversity in your interactions with the university community you are likely to encounter if you are hired as a PhD student at this school (and maybe as a Teaching Assistant (TA)). See, for example, Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching's definition of what their Diversity Statement expectations are.
In that case, I would say that you should weigh your own personal experiences as a person with ADHD against others who are different races or from other countries or ... against what you have experienced before bringing it up. It's unlikely to be considered relevant, in my opinion.


How long is it?

If short put it in the paper
If long put it in the appendix

Can your paper stand with-out it?

If so, then it is supplementary, so goes with the supplementary materials, i.e. in the appendix
If not, then it needs to be in the paper.

If it is both Long and Required, then perhaps you are writing overly detailed pseudocode. I know the formal pseudocode I learnt in high school was detailed to the point of being executable -- which defeats the purpose of pseudo-code -- if it can be written clearly in a language that is in common use in your area (E.g. R for statisticians, Matlab for signals engineers) you can just write it in that language and avoid any ambiguity.

If on the other hand it is short and not required, it can go anywhere (Possibly even in a footnote). Though its still not required.

A common pattern, I've seen a few times is to have pseudocode, or just textual descriptions of the algorithm in the main text. Then an implementation in a real programming language in an appendix; And/Or a footnote linking to the authors website/github where it can be downloaded


Can you change the Ph. D. supervisor but continue with the same job, regardless of the opinion of the previous supervisor?

In general, yes

There's nothing that would prohibit you from pursuing the same research direction with another supervisor, or with no supervisor at all, should you choose to. However, there are some specific hurdles that may apply.

Co-authorship requirements

It may be that for your current unpublished research (which would be your next published paper) your current supervisor meets the criteria for co-authorship e.g. substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work. If it is so (it'll depend on your field) then it would be required to include them as a co-author (and get their approval!) when publishing that research, and if you have a sour relationship, then that may become a problem. It's possible that in this way you may lose a paper in progress which you won't be able to publish in time, but you can proceed with other, further research in the same direction.

Bureaucratic requirements

It may be that your local university won't allow you to switch supervisors if the previous supervisor objects sufficiently - either because of some official criteria or unofficial influence, e.g. it's quite possible that in certain institutions certain faculty have sufficient clout to ensure that such a change doesn't get approved or that the new supervisor is forced not to accept you.

Funding requirements

This was the first thing that came to mind as the "same job" was mentioned in the title. Depending on your institution and the conditions your particular employment, it may well be that the funding for your position comes from a grant or some other project of your current supervisor. In that case, that supervisor has a budget for a grad student to work on research direction X, and if you leave them, you'll also "quit the job" and lose the funding which they'll be able to spend on someone else. It's possible that the new supervisor might like to work with you, but they might not (at the moment) have the budget for you, or alternatively they may have an available funded position for a slightly different research direction Y - in which case the funding for that position would require you to change your research direction.

It's quite likely that none of these scenarios apply to you. But those are the things that you'd have to verify, most likely by asking your (potential) new supervisor who'll know the specifics of your institution.


Do universities favor experimentalists over theoreticians?

Potential for grants is surely something that universities consider, but I think your analysis is too simplistic to lead to the conclusion "universities prefer experimentalists".

For one thing, a department typically needs to offer a range of courses involving both theory and experiment, so they need faculty who are qualified to teach them.  The decision to hire in a particular field is more likely to be driven by academic needs, and so the question of whether to hire a theoretician or an experimentalist probably doesn't often arise as such.

Another point is one you raised yourself: Experimentalists need more money than theoreticians.  This cuts both ways.

Suppose they hire an experimentalist.  First of all, she is going to need a big start-up package from the university in order to get her research to the point where she can get grants.  There's a risk that she won't ever get to that point, in which case the university's investment doesn't pay off.  And maybe she does bring in some big grant money for a while, but years down the road, maybe her funding dries up.  Maybe her research area just isn't as hot anymore, or funding agencies are preferring to go in a different direction.  Without major funding, she can't do her research at all, and now the university is stuck with an unproductive faculty member.  So hiring an experimentalist may be high reward, but also high risk.

By contrast, a theoretician doesn't need a large short-term injection of funds, and they know that she will be able to be productive regardless of what happens to her funding.


Why do universities announce interviewees for positions as lates as possible?

The people who are interviewing for these positions have existing, usually high level, positions at other universities, and care greatly about not having their current employer know that they are looking for other opportunities, to the extent that this can be helped. So the interviewing institutions do the best they can to keep the shortlist candidates’ identity hidden for as long as practically possible.

Thus, balancing out this need for secrecy with other practical considerations leads to the practice you are describing.


What to include in a letter of support for an academic assessment?

I would suggest by starting with a general statement about your colleague as an academic (quality of work, productivity etc. relative to others, in general, in the specific sub-discipline) following that you could exemplify this with the points you mention. Tiyr second paragraph could almost be copied into such a letter but with some more detail. A second item may be to set the last year performance in perspective of the longer term. This seems not to be asked for but I think it is a valuable step to set the year's performance in perspective both relative to what has been achieved earlier and relative to what can be expected visavi the person's job siuation (teaching load, admin load etc.. For tenure, I suppose personal traits and activities within the department are not of interest since they would be known internally. Other wise such points should be included.


If a paper has co-first authors, is the next author after the first authors considered the second author?

In this case, first authorship is being used for some sort of competitive ranking.  As such, if there are two first authors, then in the typical custom of competitive ranking there is no second author: the next author is the third author.

If this is being defined and used for a specific purpose by a specific institution, however, it is possible that institution has its own interpretation of rankings, which can only be determined by consulting the appropriate people or documentation at that institution.


Job Market Cover Letter - Mention undergrad experiences?

Don't do this. It will appear as though you're padding, as you said, or it will appear as though you're defensive about where you went to grad school. (Also, your undergrad institution is higher ranked in what sense? While e.g. Yale is a very highly ranked school, many state schools have a better reputation for particular subjects at the postgraduate level.) The search committee can see where you attended undergraduate by looking at your CV.

How does what inspired you to enter the field relate to your ability to excel in the jobs you are applying for? Why is this information in your cover letter?

The only reason to mention your undergraduate experience in your cover letter is to address possible issues of "fit" or institutional culture. For example, if you have a PhD from an R1 but are applying to a SLAC, it can be advantageous to point out that your undergraduate institution was a similar SLAC and you therefore have an understanding of the institutional norms and mission of such schools. (Be sure that your school's really are equivalent though before you make such a comparison!) In other cases, I don't see much reason to mention your undergraduate institution in a cover letter.


Submitting a new paper just after another was accepted by the same journal

With one paper every two years I don’t think you will be seen as gaming the system.

Go ahead and submit.


I don't think there's a single "default" answer here. However, I would suggest that if you are planning to publish in B's journal, that you do both kinds of extension: provide both additional explanations that were in the original material, plus present different results (if possible) than what was in conference proceeding A. You should also avoid direct repetition of material, where possible.

However, before agreeing to this, I would also consider asking the journal editor to provide you some examples of what he or she considers "extended versions" of other proceedings, and review them to see what you think of the extensions. If you're not comfortable with the changes (in that they're not expansive enough to be a "new" paper), then you're free to tell the journal you're not interested.


How to respond to my name being included in acknowledgements of incorrect/misleading paper whose authors ignored my recommendations?

How acknowledgments work is always a bit of a judgment call, but to me the following principle seems reasonable.

  You are free to acknowledge anyone in any paper as long as what you acknowledge them for is factually accurate.  If you have any reason to believe that the acknowledged party might take issue with the factual accuracy of what you write in your acknowledgments, it would be honorable to show them a draft of the paper and ask for their blessing on the wording of the acknowledgment.  If this causes them to ask to be omitted from the acknowledgments, then it seems reasonable to honor this request unless you feel that removing this acknowledgment compromises academic integrity.  (For instance, if you are including significant work of the acknowledged party, then just because they don't want you to mention that does not necessarily make it okay to do so.  This creates a sticky wicket that other questions and answers on this site have addressed.)

I believe it follows from the principle that whether acknowledgments are acceptable depends more on what they acknowledge you for than whether they drop your name or not.  For instance, suppose they thank you for "helpful conversations".  If you did in fact speak (or write...) to them about their work, then if they say the conversation was helpful, how can you argue?

I think that most savvy academics understand that just dropping someone's name in the acknowledgments does not mean that the paper contains their imprimatur.  Nevertheless it is shady to acknowledge someone -- especially someone very famous and eminent -- purely for the cachet that their name may convey to less than savvy readers.  Here is a famous review of Marilyn vos Savant's book on Fermat's Last Theorem that calls out the author along these lines: she acknowledged some very famous mathematicians, who when contacted by her surely did not say anything to indicate that the material in her book was correct (not only does it contain errors, but it contains errors that any practitioner or serious student of mathematics would regard as bizarre).

In the case at hand: I think the OP would be within her rights to mention that she would rather not be acknowledged in the paper.  Whether she wants to indicate that this is because she still finds the work to be significantly flawed depends on all kinds of social and political factors beyond the scope of this answer.  As to that I would only say: in my opinion, simply very politely asking for your name to be removed from the paper without getting into why is probably a higher percentage strategy than indicating that the work is still problematic.

Added: Let me add that the principle above is meant to be on the minimalist side.  In practice, if you think that someone is not going to appreciate being acknowledged in your paper for whatever reason, then unless there are academic integrity issues involved in omitting the acknowledgment it seems wise to do so.  Once I acknowledged a friend of mine in a preprint in a way which was factually accurate but nevertheless embarrassing to him: he simply did not want to be associated with something that he viewed as intellectually trivial.  I took his name out of the later drafts of the paper.  This incident has made me think more carefully about how acknowledgments will be received by the acknowledged party.


How can I secure a solo-authored paper as a PhD student, while working with a supervisor who has reputation of forcing coauthorship?

Does your superviser deserve an authorship? Check the following:

Have they contributed to the research design, in form of suggesting a topic to investigate, advising on methodology, suggesting literature?
Were they involved in evaluation of results, in form of checking them and contributing an opinion on whether the work is going in the right direction?
Have they contributed to writing a paper, in form of contributing an introduction or abstract, or editing the manuscript?
(*) Have you used any of the facilities or financial streams (e.g. stipendship) funded from your supervisor's research budget?

If any of the above is true, then your superviser may actually deserve an authorship.  You can also check Nature Authorship Guidelines or a similar document in your university.

If you answered no to all of the above, then it is absolutely appropriate for you to publish on your own. Simply use the Authorship Guidelines to politely explain to your supervisor why you believe that they should not be included as an author. You may want to discuss your position with a dedicated unit in your University/Department, such as Research Office or the Head of the Department.

UPD: (*) As many people commented (and I agree), criteria (4) is controversial. In many areas providing funding on its own does not qualify for an authorship (see e.g. Vancouver protocol). However, in many departments it is a norm to always include the Head or Director of the Lab as the last author, and it may not be easy to challenge this agreement for a PhD student, particularly if you benefit from this funding.


Academic postdoc: Interview process time insights

The time can be highly variable as there may be several people who need to give approvals and they may not all be available in a given time frame. There may be administrative issues that they need to resolve, etc.

I suggest that you wait as long as it takes, but ask for an update after two or three weeks. But, if you have other options, don't give them up and continue any necessary process in case it doesn't happen after all.

Keep a positive, but slightly skeptical attitude until you sign formally.


Can a bad last semester prevent me from getting into grad school?

Admissions decisions will be made based on your application materials and any sort of interview process that a given program uses; this will all likely happen before the semester is over so you won't have any grades finalized before then.
If you're accepted, you will get an offer that states reasons the offer can potentially be withdrawn. It's likely there to be some sort of clause that indicates the offer is conditional on completion of your current degree, and it may be written more broadly to something like "satisfactory academic progress". So yes, if your bad semester prevents you from graduating, it likely will prevent your admission. There's a chance possibility that a poor semester that doesn't prevent graduation could also affect your admission, but that will be entirely up to the program and nothing can be guaranteed. Given the ongoing pandemic I'd guess programs would be more forgiving of a recent slide. However, you'll want to make sure that you are able to be successful in the program, and if you are in courses now that will be relevant to your future you'll need to be sure you're staying on top of the material, no matter what your assessments look like. You also may see this as an opportunity to polish your time management skills, as these will be important in graduate school as well as in your current courses.


If one wants to generate several papers from a single research project, what is a reasonable way to do so?

There is one trend that I see around me, which is in some cases to split a piece of work in two pieces: a high-impact letter, and follow-up full paper with all the details.

There are many reasons why this might be a good idea. Increase in number of publication is one of them, but there are others:

If you work in a rapidly developing and highly competitive field (i.e. you risk being scooped if you wait 3 more months to publish your idea), this allows you a fast publication of the idea and first results (proof of concept, if you will). Also, letters tend to be reviewed more rapidly, which also decreases publication time. Then, you will publish all the details, influence of method parameters, etc.
If your work would be interesting to a wider community, it allows you to deliver two different messages (or at least, the same message at two different levels) to two communities. This increases the overall impact of your research.


What non-research activities are most valuable when applying for faculty positions in mathematics?

What is valued around here is to show independent work (not just papers with your advisor, have your own research grants). Show involvement with the relevant community (organize conferences, attend conferences, get invited to talk about your work).


How do weekly seminar speakers get picked by a STEM department?

As has been noted, everywhere will have its own procedures, but I think my department is fairly typical of what I've seen elsewhere:

One or two junior faculty are responsible for organising the main seminar series
Every few months they solicit suggestions for seminar speakers from the other faculty. Nominations come in different forms, e.g.:

"I think Prof. Jones work is cool, we should invite her sometime"
"Prof. Jones is going to be visiting me for two weeks in March, perhaps she could give a talk"
"Prof. Jones emailed me to say she's going to be in our state for that conference in May, maybe we could get her up here too?".

The seminar organisers then try and assemble a programme, balancing many factors (breadth of topics, speaker availability, diversity considerations, political clout of nominator...)
The department expects to pay some travel and a night or two's accommodation for anyone scheduled in the main seminar series. Sometimes speakers will decline this (e.g. if they were in town anyway); sometimes individual faculty will supplement it (e.g. to enable someone to stay for a whole week).

In addition to this main seminar series, individual faculty members may arrange 'special seminars'. Typically this occurs when someone happens to be visiting for other reasons, and there isn't a convenient empty slot in the main seminar series. Special seminars may not be as widely-advertised or attended as the main series. Any costs are typically borne by the hosting faculty member (out of their grants/etc), rather than the department (but they are often minimal, as the speaker was invariably in town anyway).
I think it is pretty uncommon to specifically offer to contribute to the department's main seminar series. However, it is very common to contact acquaintances with messages like "Hi Prof Smith, I'm going to be in town next month. If you have time, it would be nice to catch up and I can show you my new proof of the Basketweaver Theorem. Of course, I'd be happy to make it into a talk!". In such circumstances, you should not then expect any reimbursements, though often you will at least get taken out for lunch/dinner.


Evaluation of professors: publications vs. teaching quality

I used to work in a university, one of the largest and most research intensive, where they recognised that academics had different drivers. They created three designations:

teaching-focused academics had targets based on teaching outputs
research-focused academics had targets based on research outputs
balanced academics had targets that were a mixture of both

Performance reviews and tenure decisions were tied to these targets.


Accessing a "forgotten" Google scholar account

I have found an answer: think hard about whether there are other Google accounts that I might have and through which I could have authorized the Scholar account.

In my case, there is a long forgotten "temporary" Google account which was created for me by Goolge during that period when they decided to merge all of its services under the Goolge+ umbrella.


Avoiding plagiarism without citing every sentence

You could quote a block literally and cite once. You could then use your own words to summarize if you think it needed. This separates your words from the original.

For long runs of literal citations you could use indented blocks and block shading/coloring (if allowed) rather than just quote marks.

You could also use the paragraph structure. Start a new paragraph with "We learn from AJ Smythe that" ... followed by your paraphrasing of good ol' AJ. Then end that paragraph with your citation(s).

Think about what you would do if you had to provide a translation of Smythe from the original Hungarian instead of a paraphrase. Quoting with quote marks isn't quite the right thing, but indented blocks might be.


Should I edit reviewer quotes (typos, etc.) in a response to reviewers?

Put yourself in the editor’s perspective:
They want to go through the reviewer’s points one by one and see whether you addressed them, having the reviewer’s comments available for comparison. They cannot rely on your interpretation of the reviewer’s comments but need to refer to the original. Suppose you misunderstood the reviewer’s intentions at some point. If you distort the quote, this is causing a lot of confusion. At worst, you evoke the appearance of cheating yourself through peer review by tricking the editor into thinking that the reviewer wrote something more benign than they actually did. Even if you make clear that you changed the quotes, this causes extra work as the editor has to refer to the original report when in doubt. (Or they just return it immediately and request that you quote accurately.)
Something similar holds for the reviewer’s perspective. If they get to see your response to them, any misquote may cause confusion or worse. They will probably also not be happy about you nitpicking their language.
The general paradigm of never distorting quotes without marking this applies here as well. And if your quotes of the reviewer are riddled with square brackets, this will arise suspicions.
The only reason where I would change a quote (with a mark) is if the reviewer made an obvious mistake in a reference or quoting your manuscript, where the exactness is crucial to understanding what happened and it would be overkill to write an extra sentence like: “We presume the reviewer meant …”. For example, I once received a minor comment along the lines of this:

Change “stochasticity” to “stochasticity” in line 42.

Taken as it is, this doesn’t make much sense. However, in line 42, I had written “stochastsicity”. Thus my reply went:

Change “stochast[s]icity” to “stochasticity” in line 42.

Fixed.


Is it ok to put old papers on the arXiv?

Yes, this is in general OK. The main limitations on posting old papers to the arXiv are (1) copyright considerations (i.e. you must either hold the copyright, or have permission from the copyright holder to post the e-print) and (2) the approval of your co-authors, or at least the corresponding author, which can put you in a hazy gray area if you can no longer find them or they explicitly deny it. You seem to be OK on both counts.

The criteria for publishability on the arXiv are lower than a journal, and there is no previous-publication requirement or disbarment. From the arXiv primer,

  Material submitted to arXiv is expected to be of interest, relevance, and value to those disciplines. [...] Submissions are reviewed by expert moderators to verify that they are topical and refereeable scientific contributions that follow accepted standards of scholarly communication (as exemplified by conventional journal articles).

There is no requirement that work be unpublished; indeed, post-publication posting is an integral part of the self-archiving, green open access model in the post-print variety, often with a specific embargo dictated by the publisher.

That said, each community uses the arXiv in subtly different ways, and someone who repeatedly posts old papers may get called out on it (either positively or negatively!), so if you're nervous, find someone in your field who is very active on the arXiv and ask, or simply look for precedent - it's a bit tedious but not terribly hard. For example, arXiv:1601.06054, first published in June 2014, is currently on the cond-mat front page.

One thing you should do is make sure that your metadata is pristine and complete, and to get it right the first time. This includes the DOI and journal reference - you're not there to hide anything, you're there to make your research more accessible and discoverable, and the way you do that is by having good metadata. A comment saying that this is a late posting of an old paper would not go amiss - it will defuse the people who see the posting and think it's new and would otherwise be disappointed or annoyed.

And, of course, if you're looking to make your research discoverable online, think carefully through your online presence - arXiv, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Dissemin, Mendeley, or whatever services you choose to use - and make sure that they're all what you want them to be.


Discussing avoidable flaws in my work in a master's thesis

"if it matters, the data was obtained from a published paper" -- I would say that it matters a great deal. Talk about the issue, but spin it as a strength of your research (it uncovered a bias in the existing literature -- which is one of the things that subsequent research is supposed to do) instead of a weakness that you need to be apologetic about. If anyone should feel apologetic, it should be the authors of that paper and the referees who didn't notice the problem. You should feel proud about that aspect of your work. I don't know your advisor, but I wouldn't be surprised if he is impressed by this rather than critical of it.


Which arXiv license to use for archiving an ACM CSUR journal?

Unless you pay for author-pays Open Access, the only license that does not conflict with the ACM authors agreement is the nonexclusive distribution license. Depending on when you signed your copyright forms, submitting to ArXiv may not be allowed at all - it was only allowed starting with the revision in January, 2016.

Assuming you have the new version of the author rights, you will need to add a special text block into the paper that contains a set phrase and the DOI of the full, published article. You can get this version by adding the authorversion flag in LaTeX (\documentclass[acmsmall,authorversion]{acmart}) and adding the DOI to the relevant field of the LaTeX document. If you do not yet have a DOI, the situation is a bit more dicey, and I don't think there is a generally accepted way to upload this to ArXiv - either wait for the DOI, or just upload without it (ACM is not in the habit of suing authors, as far as I know).

Edit: I was just reminded that the paper is not yet accepted. In that case, the situation is both more and less complicated. Since you have not signed anything yet, you can, on principle, upload the paper under whatever license you choose. However, once you do sign the copyright transfer statement, the license compatibility issues above apply, so your best choice is to either budget now for the more than $2000 you usually pay for author-pays open access and submit under a creative commons license, or choose the limited license mentioned above.

The DOI issue does not apply, you can simply upload it as a preprint, with a note that it is under submission. Once the paper is accepted, you can update the preprint with the final version of the paper (the version you submit to ACM for the digital library that incorporates all feedback from the reviewers) and the DOI, as described above. Note that you are not allowed to just download the version from the ACM digital library and upload that PDF, you need to generate the ArXiv version yourself - but since ArXiv prefers it if you upload your LaTeX sources in any case (and will even enforce this as a strong requirement if it can tell that the PDF was generated by LaTeX), this should not be a problem.


Why should a P.I be motivated to write a strong LOR even if that means losing a undergraduate from his/her lab?

When I am evaluating a research group leader, one of the most important things I examine is where their former students work.  If their former undergraduates have moved to PhD programs at excellent universities, that makes the group leader look like an excellent mentor who teaches their students well.  This improves the group leader's reputation and helps them recruit new students.

A savvy letter writer also knows that a letter which literally says "This student has excellent achievements x, y and z." implicitly says "I am a good supervisor for helping the student achieve x, y, and z."


Is anything wrong with hiring TA as a private tutor?

As a lecturer, I would feel that my TA possibly has a conflict of interests if they are also working as a tutor for one of my students. Among other things, TAs are often asked to solve through the final exam, to check correctness. So even if they are not involved with marking, they have access to confidential materials, and they can inadvertently leak some of this knowledge to the student they tutor.


My supervisor published our work without informing us. Can we retract the paper from the conference in anyway?

Disclaimer: IANAL.

As you evidently realized yourself, your supervisor had no right to do that. It is a completely unethical kind of behaviour which breaches academic rules to a great extent.

First, you must carefully weigh your options. In particular if you and your partner are still in this department and plan to stay there doing your PhD for example, be aware that your actions might have serious consequences for the people in this department (especially the supervisor obviously, who would face disciplinary sanctions), and they might resent you for that; it could damage your chances there.

If you decide to proceed, I would suggest to contact an appropriate instance at the level of your institution (not your department, since it proved useless). I'm not sure which one is the most relevant: I would probably start with a students representative or union, otherwise ethics board or legal office. I'm assuming that they would support you and in the end force the supervisor to retract the paper.

If this doesn't work for any reason, you can raise the issue directly with the editor. IEEE is likely to take this kind of issue very seriously, they will check your evidence and probably ask the supervisor for explanations. If they are convinced the paper will be retracted. In this case the consequences are probably worse for the reputation of the supervisor, the department and the institution: this a public sanction by a renowned editor, as opposed to the official author asking themselves to retract it.


Will these "errors" in my advisor's letter raise red flags when I apply for academic faculty positions?

If I were your advisor, I would fix these typos before sending out any more letters (i.e., to other schools).  If there is an online system where I can instantly and unobtrusively replace a letter with a fresh copy, then I would do it.  Otherwise I would let it go.

These are not serious enough for you to worry about.  The impression that this will make on the reader is that your advisor is a human being, perhaps a human being who is rather busy.  Ideally your advisor will be someone whose reputation is known to the readers, so cannot be spoiled by a few careless typos.

  One of the positions uses the online application system where I am able to open the letters of recommendation and read them.

This concerns me...but you didn't ask about it.

Added: I missed at first this part of your question:

  [W]ill these errors give me enough reason to not to use my advisor's letter? I am contemplating not to list my advisor as one of my references, and I have read the responses to a question similar to mine in this forum, so I understand I am taking a risk and I will have to explain it if I choose not to list my advisor as one of my references.

Heck no.  Not getting a letter from your advisor upon graduation is a very bad idea in almost all cases.


Research statement and dissertation abstract

I have never seen this done, though sometimes people include abstracts to their work on their webpages.  The reason it doesn't make sense to me is that they serve very different functions.

For abstracts, you want to briefly explain the contents of your paper to experts, or at least people in your field, quickly so they can ascertain whether they want to take a closer look at your paper.

For research statements, you don't want to be terse.  You want to provide background context and motivation for your work, and you're not trying to convince people to read your work, but rather that your work is good and interesting and they should hire you.  Also, you want to convince people you can explain your work well. (Depending on the kind of position you're applying to, your research statement will either be written for non-experts experts.)

Of course, you can say basically the same thing as what you would in an abstract in an introductory paragraph, perhaps being more informal, but I definitely would not set it off as an "Abstract" block inside the statement.


In what kind of research should I analyse its possibility, necessity and feasibility?

The introduction of articles usually explain why are you doing what you are doing, i.e., the necessity. You don't see feasibility analysis because they are, obviously, possible, since they have been done. On the other hand, grant proposals do it: they have to convince the committee that the research they propose is possible, useful, and can be done on time. You could ask your supervisor for some of his grant proposals as an example. This is not always done because this is in general a difficult analysis to do.

Furthermore, MSc thesis are often used as feasibility analysis on their own: the professor gets someone to work for a few months on a topic, and can (hopefully) discover most of the problems in advance. If the results are promising, it will be offered as a PhD or postdoc project.

By making you do the literature review in advance he is making you get up to date with the field, something that everybody has to do when starting a new research topic. Bear in mind that this section will have to be expanded and rewritten as you advance your research and discover that you need other tools.


Is there a difference between an "update" to a scientific paper vs. a "new" paper in a scientific journal?

Recently, I have had a very similar situation occur.  The original paper discussed and explained the theoretical and practical aspects of a scientific technique that we adapted; the second discussed and explained the programming automation of the technique.

My advisor and co-author advised me at the time that each paper has got to be unique, taking the lead from the previous one and adding new information, techniques etc.  The journal that I published in are quite happy to take on a follow up article, just as long as it is sufficiently unique.

So, in answer to your questions - it would most likely be a new paper for publication, make reference to the previous one, but place the emphasis on the new developments.


Referring to a movie concept in Statement of purpose

You "can" do what you want in a Statement of Purpose, but if you hope that this remark will inspire the committee, or show how inspired you are, it will likely miss the mark.

Generally, I have the impression that you may misunderstand what the Statement of Purpose is for - but you are not alone. From browsing Academia.SE, it is clear that the SOP is easily the most misunderstood part of the application package. I encourage you to browse through the questions here related to SOPs, and gauge how senior professors feel about it. Particularly, look at this excellent resource.

To summarize:

See it as a freeform document where you can document anything that is easy to miss in your CV or letters, or which may need further explanation. Do not see it as a place to sketch your "journey so far", discuss your lifelong dream to become a scientist, or explain how you feel the strong urge to change the world. See it from the perspective of a critical reviewer of your application and what they look for. Will them knowing how a Spielberg movie motivated you to pursue AI make you more likely to succeed in grad school? It's highly unlikely, so why would they care? Better to spend the short attention span that every application gets on what relevant previous research experience you had.


How to acknowledge contributions of anonymous referee in new paper?

From my understanding of the details of the situation, the editor is not acting well in refusing to pass along your invitation to the referee.  Doing so does not violate anonymity in any way (I am confident that the review process was not "double blind" -- i.e., the referee knows the author's identity -- in my experience, no mathematics papers are reviewed in this way.)  Maybe what the editor is thinking is that in order to accept your offer the referee would have to violate anonymity.

However, is this an ethical issue?  I have always held it to be the case that a referee can disclose her identity to an author at any time, and I have done this more than once as a referee.  I can vaguely see some ethical problems which might arise if this process of referee-self-disclosure were very widespread, but it seems like a bit of a stretch.  I would be very interested if someone can explain to me why this is a real concern.

Against the highly nebulous previous paragraph one must balance the ethical issue that academic ideas are not gifts that one person can freely bestow upon another.  I wrote the previous sentence in full awareness of the fact that mathematics in practice does have some degree of noblesse oblige: one often encounters very eminent and senior mathematicians giving ideas away to younger / less experienced / less eminent mathematicians without wanting anything in return: in mathematics we are inculcated to have a view that certain contributions are "below our level" and thus not worth taking credit for.  That is fine if "not taking credit" means not becoming an author on a paper.  But if it means not disclosing your contribution at all -- with the consequence that the begifted junior mathematician gets "too much credit" for work that had a significant component that was not his own -- well, that is hardly a victimless crime in our current highly competitive job-market.  In fact it seems to be a form of plagiarism.

[The situation brings to mind Karl Iagnemma's short story "Zilkowski's Theorem".  This was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories of 2002.  Remarkably, this was only one of two short stories in that anthology in which the main character was a practitioner of the mathematical sciences.  The other is Leonard Michaels's "Nachmann from Los Angeles".  Both were excellent!]

Perhaps you should write back to the editor to express these ethical concerns.  Getting the editor-in-chief of the journal involved (if this is not already the editor you are dealing with) is also a good idea at this point.

If you really don't know the identity of the author, then you need to indicate clearly the circumstances in whatever paper you write.  You may also want to make it known in your circles that you would very much like to know the identity of the mathematician who helped you write your next paper.  Depending upon how small / tightly knit your particular subcommunity is, you may have more or less luck with that, but it's certainly worth a try.