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What makes a good chalkboard?
I've encountered lots of chalkboards through my career, and they vary widely in quality.  Some write smoothly and erase cleanly; for others, the chalk squeaks and the eraser just smears.
I assume there are differences in the materials they use, the construction techniques, how the surface is prepared or treated, and so on.  But I'm clueless as to what these differences might be, and how they affect the quality.  If I'm looking for a "good" one, what questions should I ask?
(Academics are one of the few groups these days that use chalkboards on a regular basis, so I hope this question is suitable for this site.  Please note that I'm not asking for specific product recommendations, just general information.)

In my opinion: the best chalkboard is a whiteboard!

@F'x: Should we step outside to settle this? ;-)  Actually, I could ask the very same question about whiteboards.

In my opinion: The best whiteboard is a chalkboard!

The contrast on whiteboards can be too high, so I prefer a chalkboard as well. Furthermore, ink is shiny as it goes on, and makes viewing at wide angles difficult. Not to mention turning off the lights at the front of the room to use the projector simultaneously with the whiteboard.

Remember: no chalkboard can be good without good chalk!

@F'x:  Have you ever tried writing on a whiteboard in chalk?

There was a question What's so great about blackboards? on mathoverflow.

"If I'm looking for a good one, what questions should I ask?" Hmmm... Why don't you just try it? If you can write and dry-erase without trouble 10 times using both white and color chalk, it should last forever. If not, it won't work regardless of anything else. Just bring some nasty chalk for experiments (especially the color one).

@fedja: That would certainly be ideal.  Unfortunately procurement contracts sometimes mean we have to buy stuff like this sight unseen.

I my experience (long ago by now, chalkboards have all been replaced by whiteboards, except in one classroom) the quality of the board is relevant, but what is absolutely critical is the quality of the chalk.

For cleaning: some boards are to be cleaned using a wet towel (not a dry whatever). For chalk compatibility: some boards work better with the very hard chalks, some with the softer ones.

The good chalkboards appear to be made of porcelain enamel fused to a steel core. See this site for more details on the manufacturing process. As JeffE mentioned in a comment on another answer, cheaper chalkboards are made by painting wood or chipboard with a special chalkboard paint. Although these are good for crafts, they are NOT the kind you want to have in a classroom. They have to be primed with chalk before the first use and after being cleaned with a damp cloth. Also they will often have to be given another coat of paint after being used for a while.
For non-squeak writing, break long pieces of chalk in half--this will usually take care of the problem! I have noticed that regular, i.e. daily, sponging with an all-purpose cleaning solution also helps to prevent smearing while writing/erasing.

Are these chalk boards made of porcelain enamel cheaper as compared to wooden chalkboard? Can schools and other educational institutions be able to afford it?

Although I don't know exactly what the price range would be for the porcelain enamel versus the wooden chalkboards, the wooden boards are usually cheaper--and they act like it! Can schools afford porcelain enamel? I guess that depends on just how limited your budget is, but they shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. They might be hard to find, though. Whiteboards are taking over...

The best chalkboard, if you can afford it, is slate. It is the combination of grain consistency and durability that allows the consistent accretion of chalk on the surface of the board. The only reason it is not used is that it is prohibitively expensive and either heavy or fragile, depending on the depth of the slate. I suppose this could be improved with a non-flexible backing.

Certainly the best chalkboards I've ever used have been slate. Dark background, high contrast (even with colored chalks), reliable surface and good erasing. Now if only I didn't end up with chalk dust all over everything. But they are expensive.

@dmckee Do you have any brands?

@AlJebr No. I'd search for blackboards and then read to find out who can actually deliver slate. Or the porcelain mentioned above though I have never used those.

Just a partial answer, since I am not discussing materials and building techniques but only giving a couple of tips.
Chalk squeaking should depend on its length; break it into two parts to avoid it. Not sure if this has been studied rigorously, but it seems to work in my experience.
As for erasing, I am personally a fan of using a damp towel rather than dry-erasing. It takes some more work and preparation, but the results are much better.

Doesn't damp erasing remove the dry foundation of chalk, and thus require the board be re-finished with chalk?

Some cheaper chalkboards are really just painted wood (or chipboard); erasing these with water is a bad idea.  Good chalkboards don't have this problem.

So are good boards made of slate or something similar? I suppose I've never used a good board.


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Summer plans for first year computer science grad student?
I've worked at the same place for the past two summers doing software development, and very much enjoyed the work and practical experience.  I was recently asked if I would consider a 1-2 year contract position. If they would have asked a year ago, I probably would have said yes... but I began graduate school this year.  So instead they are offering me a summer position.
I'm waiting to hear back from an internship and my advisor, but neither seemed particularly hopeful last I checked.  I am currently doing research part-time in AI, so this job would not really be relevant to that at all.  But, it's a job, and I like the place.  So my question is, should I accept (conditionally, if the internship does not work out), or continue looking for something more relevant?  Is it "okay" to work in an unrelated area your first summer as a graduate student?

This will obviously vary by country and subject.
I'm not familiar with the idea of graduate students taking summer off from study. That's OK for undergraduates, but not for higher degrees. A multi-year higher degree is a full-on commitment, and doesn't leave time, space or energy for summer jobs.
But I'm going to take a leap here, and read a little more into your question than you've written. Now, this may apply to you, or it may not. It will apply to someone in the future who reads this question and might have asked the same thing themselves. It sounds like you're questioning whether you should be continuing this further degree, or getting out there into the workforce.
So, it's time for you to review, with your advisory / supervisory team, and with your trusted friends / family, whether to continue the degree, or to join this company as a full-time employee.
Only you know what your reasons were for starting a higher degree.
But if it was to help you land the sort of job you're now being offered, then perhaps it's already served its purpose - in which case, you're done with it.
If it was for much longer-term reasons, if it has to be done now rather than later in life, if it's the love of pure research, if you're considering a career in academia rather than industry - then your research degree is much bigger and more important than this job offer.

It is somewhat standard (here, in the US at least), for first and second-year students to take internships for the summers, because they're still doing classes and not full-time research.  So that in itself is not unusual (in fact, my adviser has pointed me to apply to several already, because he may not have summer funding).

(cont.. oops)  I do want to continue the degree, which is why I didn't just accept the job.. I'm just wondering if it is a good idea to take this for the summer or decline and keep looking for something more relevant. There's also some personal reasons involved too for being there over the summer which may be clouding my judgment a bit.  so, thanks for the reply :)

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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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What does the "final published version" refer to in copyright?
I'm trying to figure out if I can put a PDF that I give Springer on arXiv.
Note that this PDF has had further changes made to it after it has been already accepted by a conference; it's not the same as the conference submission.
Springer's copyright transfer form says:

Prior versions of the Contribution published on non-commercial pre-print servers like ArXiv/CoRR and HAL can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with Author’s accepted version.
  The final published version (in pdf or html/xml format) cannot be used for this purpose.
  Acknowledgment needs to be given to the final publication and a link must be inserted to the published Contribution on Springer’s website, by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence:
  "The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]".

...but I can't tell what "the final published version" refers to.
Does it include the final PDF that I submit to them for publishing?
Or is it only the official PDF that they actually publish on their site?
(I presume the two could be different, since they could make their own edits?)
My guess is that it's only the latter, since they seem to imply the final version is the one with the DOI, but I'm not sure.

The usual workflow with Springer is:

You prepare your paper, and submit it as a PDF file to the conference.
The conference reviews the paper, and you get the acceptance notification + conference reviews back.
You revise your paper, and submit the source code to Springer.
Springer does copyediting, and you get the page proofs back.
You check the page proofs and submit your corrections to Springer.
Springer prepares the final PDF and posts it on their web page.

(Note that steps 1–3 involve work from you + research community. Steps 4–6 involve some added value from the publisher.)
The "author-created version" refers to your output after step 1 or 3. This is what you can self-archive.
The "final published version" refers to Springer's output after step 6. This is a version you cannot self-archive.
(IANAL, etc.)

I had a clarification. I saw something about a 12-month restriction regarding my latest submitted version. However, I don't see anything regarding that in the form I have linked to (which is the form that applies for my situation). Is it only a journal thing and not applicable for my situation, or am I missing something?

As in any legal doubt, you should ask a real lawyer, not a bunch of more or less random gals and dudes on the 'net. In this case, if in doubt ask your Springer contact for clarification.
I believe Jukka's answer covers this specific case quite nicely, but obviously doesn't address the wider question it implies, what can an author legally publish when transferring some rights to a publisher (of a conference, journal, or book).

Can you elaborate on the last sentence? What is the wider question that is implied?

@Mehrdad, expanded to explain what I had in mind. Thanks!

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How to design an undergraduate internship project?
I am postdoctoral fellow working on computer science and bioinformatics, and it seems I might have the possibility soon to supervise some undergraduate internship students. Internships should last around 3 months.
To do this, first I have to design some undergraduate internship project proposals to make available for these candidate internship students.
I never did this previously, so I do not know very well how to design these project drafts. There are many question marks: what should I expect from these students? What should I expect from these projects? what amount of work should I expect? What skills should I suppose the students have before joining the project? What should be the goals of these projects, both for the students and for the advance of science?
In the end, in case you were a potential supervisor, what's a good way to design an undergraduate internship project proposal?

The number one thing that I would advise you to expect is the unexpected.  The skills and performance of undergraduates is almost impossible to predict, because their work with you is likely to be one of their first deep technical experiences.  Among the key implications of this:

their true skills and background vary greatly and are often not well indicated by transcripts (and they often have little ability to self-evaluate)
their motivation and ability to act professionally varies wildly and is very difficult to judge before they are actually working on a project (they often do not really know themselves)
there is often little possibility of obtaining a meaningful reference for them

Given this, I have found that the following are very useful to do when designing a project for an undergraduate:

Do not put them on anything critical path.  Choose an interesting side project that you've wanted to get around to, but won't be sad if nothing happens on.
Create a set of milestones that starts with simple "warm-up" work, and then builds sequentially.  Make sure they will see a concrete result that they can feel proud of at each milestone.
A good rule of thumb is to plan assuming that 1 week of work for you will be 1 month of work for the undergraduate.  A really good one, though, may progress much, much faster, though, so...
Also add a set of "stretch goals" that will give a really good undergraduate a chance to do some really cool things, rather than running out of work after the first few weeks.

Every undergraduate is a roll of the dice.  Many will simply waste your time.  Many will be marginal in value at best.  But the good ones really make up for all the rest, and may become your future colleagues.

I know this sounds kinda cruddy, but maybe 50% of these times I see too many grad students focus too heavily on the very temporary undergrads "helping them" in a lab, to their own despair. The situation usually severely cuts the productivity of the grad student, or in this case the post doc. I'm in no way insulting undergrads in labs, I've met many who have made immeasurable contributions. But generally they are not around long enough to get enough training to make progress. The situation usually stems from the PI w little to know management experience.   Just a thought


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What are tutorials in conferences?
In addition to the main sessions, the workshops, and the special sessions, many conferences provide also some tutorials, usually the day before the beginning of the event or the day after the end of the event.
Computer science NIPS conference, for example, is one of these.
I've attended some of them, and I know what they are. But, if I talked with colleagues about tutorials, each of them would give a different definition of this conference aspects.
What actually are tutorials in conferences?
Are they specific lectures for young attendees of the conference?
Are they specific talks to give the guests the opportunity to explain and advertize a particular aspect of their research?
Or are they just a way to add one day to the conference schedule?

I think of a tutorial as an extended lecture, or series of lectures, intended to give a broad view of a particular area of research, rather than being focused on the speaker's own contributions.  But each conference organizer and/or speaker may have different plans.

I think this varies a lot from field to field. In High-performance Computing and Scientific Computing, tutorials are very likely to be a set of lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions giving attendees instruction in how to use a computer, API, or other software. This could include "Programming for Intel Xeon Phi", "Introduction to Computing System X", "Python for HPC", etc. (many of which I have personally been involved in teaching). These kinds of tutorials are typical of conferences like Supercomputing and IEEE Cluster.

At the conferences I attend, the tutorials tend to be sort of an oral survey of a topic, introducing practitioners (young or old) to a coherent body of work likely to be of interest to them.  For example, a person might give a detailed "how to" introduction to a new (or newly imported) set of methods that many people are interested in applying, or might present a coherent picture of important results within a subfield.


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Why do people organize summer schools?
I have been in the computer science academic community for at least five years, and I noticed that there are several so called summer schools organized every year everywhere.
I have been knowing just few people attend them.
These summer schools are addressed mainy to MS and PhD students, last around 3-7 days, and may include a final exam. They often include important international speakers coming from overseas.
I have been thinking about them, and there are two issues that concerns them, in my opinion.
The first problem I notice is that is very very hard to make students learn something important in just 3-7 days. They should have more time to re-process all the things that they learned, do some practice, and think about. They include a hipe of subjects that is sometimes very large.
The second issue is that, since the students are studying their own courses, why should they spend their time and money to go to a summer school instead of attending a course at their own university? It's not clear to me.
So, in the end, why do some people organize summer school?
Is it just teaching passion?
Or is it a way to advertise the organizers and their university?
Or is an occasion for networking?
Or, is it something that I am missing?

I found your question a bit confusing. Speakers and organisers are two very different things. Speakers are invited by the organisers to give a talk. So is the question: why people give talks in summer schools or why people organize summer schools?

I have some experience with summer schools in mathematics. They are a little different from what you describe in CS, but I can post an answer if you are interested.

If you have education model of pouring knowledge in heads, true - a week is little. But if you think that education is about inspiring students to learn by themselves, then an intensive week may be worth more than a few months of doing standard coursework.

It seems to me like we could change the question to "why do people organize conferences?" The motivations Suresh and Nate give in their answers are very much analogous.

But summer schools and conferences are organized for very different reasons (in CS). In other communities, the similarity might be greater.

@seteropere I don't think my question is confusing. Maybe you should re-read the content and the title.

@StephanKolassa I don't think so. Conferences are very different from summer schools. Maybe there are some little common aspects, but they are two different things.

A summer school is usually a way to have a focused series of lectures on a specific topic. The best analogy I can think of is that of a master class for musicians. The audience are students who are usually sufficiently adept that they can handle the intensity and focus of a short program taught at a high level. For example, if you're just starting out in grad school in computer science, a summer school in specialized aspects of (say) deep learning might not be very useful. This at least partially answers your first question.
Summer schools are useful because they can bring a set of experts on a topic together in one location, at a venue where this expertise might not otherwise exist. In computer science, this might also be part of the explanation of why there are so many summer schools in Europe: since many topics in the field are dominated by the US, it makes sense to have summer schools in Europe for the reason above.
The speakers of course get the opportunity to travel and teach a focused group. It's a prestigious thing to be invited to such an event. The organizers make their mark (and benefit their institution) by organizing such an event. The students learn about a topic that they might not otherwise get exposure to, from the experts in the field. And that is an answer to your second question.

Thanks for replying. What do you mean for "master class for musicians"?

There's a tradition of master classes for musicians, where performers who have talent of their own take a class/set of classes under a famous artist: the goal here is to hone some technique, or learn some advanced skills. Such a class is useless for the beginner.

There are similar summer schools in mathematics, though there are some differences from what you describe.  I've helped organize a summer school so I'll try to answer some of these questions.
The math summer schools I know about are somewhat longer, usually 2-4 weeks.  They don't provide formal academic credit and there are no exams.  They are aimed at PhD students who are at least a couple of years in, though often postdocs and junior faculty are also welcome.  Usually there are several lecturers, each of whom is a well-known expert on a particular topic, and their lectures are tightly focused on that topic.  The lecturers may come from all over the world; they are not just faculty at the institution hosting the summer school.  Sometimes there is also time set aside for students to give short talks on their own research.
As to your first question, it is true that this is a short amount of time; it's an intensive learning experience.  (I'd agree that 3-7 days would seem too short; that's more like what mathematicians call a "short course", which is usually organized in conjunction with a conference rather than as a standalone event.)
I don't think it's expected that the students will absorb all the material right away.  Rather, they will gain exposure to the topic and its main ideas.  For an in-depth understanding, they'd be expected to study related books and papers on their own over months or years, but the summer school will give them a place to start and some preparation for the task.  There would certainly be advantages to a longer program, but the logistics would become prohibitive.
For your second question, you must realize that a summer school course fulfills a very different purpose than a regular graduate course.  Regular courses typically give you a broad view of a subject (e.g. probability theory) and focus mainly on its basic techniques and classical results.  They provide a foundation for research on any topic in the subject.  A summer school course covers only a specific topic (say, random walk in random environment), which is usually the focus of active research, and tries to acquaint the student with the state of the art.  Very few universities would offer a regular course like that.  (At best, if they happened to have an expert on that topic on their faculty, they might occasionally give a one-time "topics course".)  At the summer schools I knew, students were expected to already have taken 2-3 semesters of standard graduate probability theory, which is all that most universities would offer.
As to money, summer schools often have their own funding.  Students do not pay tuition and usually receive free housing, and may also have some of their travel expenses reimbursed by the summer school (and hopefully their home institution provides some travel funding as well).  So students usually pay little or nothing out of their own pockets.  And regarding "time", these are summer schools. At least in the US, most graduate programs don't offer regular courses in the summer, so the student isn't sacrificing regular coursework to attend.  They may be sacrificing research time, but the hope is that the summer school provides new ideas that will ultimately make them more productive.
Networking is a consideration as well.  A summer school gives students the opportunity to meet renowned experts who they might otherwise never come in contact with.  Just as importantly, they get to make connections with other students with similar interests from around the world, with whom they may someday form collaborations.
Finally, they are fun!  You get to travel to a new part of the world and meet interesting people.  There are usually social events, outings, hikes, etc.
I think the main motivation for summer school organizers is to create a program that will ultimately benefit and build the research community in a discipline.  Exposure for the institution, networking opportunities for the organizers, funding, etc, are also nice, but secondary.


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In a research group, is it better to have few post-docs and many PhD students, or viceversa?
I work in computer science, and am wondering what is the right balance between PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in a lab.
In the previous research group I was, there were one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), zero post-doctoral fellows, and nine PhD students.
In my current research group, there is one principal investigator professor, one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students, and no researchers.
I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, ten post-doctoral fellows and two PhD students.
What do you think is the best ratio between the number of PhD students and the number of post-docs in a research group? Why?
Would you prefer to spend your funding for having more PhD students or more post-docs? Why?

Better for what purpose? In what field?

And better for who?

Why was the question "put on hold"? Answers involve mainly expertise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A starting postdoc is more productive than a starting PhD student, because the postdoc has much more experience. The balance evens out toward the end, but there's no doubt that a starting academic wants a few postdocs rather than just PhD students.

@xLeitix Thanks for replying. What do you mean for "glorified PhD student mode"?

@xLeitix It's not so obvious that having many postdocs and few PhD students is a bad thing, like in the 3rd example. If we can consider postdocs as skilled "almost researchers", and PhD students as "debutante researchers", having many postdocs could be a strong advantage.

@DavideChicco.it yes, but they do different things. As a postdoc, a significant amount of time has to go into career development. I might be skilled now, but I sure as heck don't have much time to do actual research.

Some financial considerations that may have a strong influence on the composition of the research group:

The costs for post-docs and PhD students are different; it is not uncommon to get 2 PhD students for the cost of a post-doc.
Different funding sources may pay for one or the other. For example, I recently got funding that was restricted to PhD students only.

On terms of productivity, I would expect a postdoc to start producing something after 6 months, while PhD students can easily take a couple of years to get something publishable. I would trust a post-doc to co-supervise 1-2 PhD students, but never to be a senior supervisor. You may get a postdoc to be involved in more projects, but then they would not have enough time to progress in their own research.


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Student asking to see recommendation letter
A member of my lab is applying for STEM PhD positions in Europe. They asked me to write a letter of recommendation, and I am happy to write one. But they insist to see the contents of the letter first. They said if they don't agree with the letter they wouldn't want the letter to be sent. This troubles me, but I'm having difficulty explaining to them why this is a problematic behavior. How can I succinctly explain that this is not how recommendation letters work?

I am in agreement with Adam Přenosil's response, but want to add that you are under no obligation to write a letter at all.  I decline to write letters for students who do not waive their right to see the letters.  (I'm in the United States.)  And I note that you should decline to write a letter that would not be positive, also.

"How can I succinctly explain that this is not how recommendation letters work?" Note that in some countries (e.g. Denmark) this is exactly how recommendation letters work, and employers can only ask for letters through the applicant. It is a colossal PITA when recruiting internationally.

Be aware, if this person applies to the UK, they can get a copy of the letter via a Freedom of Informationen request and this right cannot be waived, even if the student wanted to.

You have to learn your legal situation. There are circumstances where you cannot refuse writing a recommendation letter and where the student can get access to the content of the letter.

@BobBrown What do you do with students applying to EU countries, where for most if not all mechanisms exist to see these letters ? Do you just refuse ? "I won't help you to apply outside the USA", while your prerogative, seems to be terribly unfair. If you take on EU students do you tell them at the start, that if they want to return to their home country they are on their own ? I really don't understand the US attitude. Most of Europe seems to be doing just fine under  "the student might (most of them don't check) be able to see my letter" policies, so it can't be critical.

@Marianne013 True, but by this point the recommendation letter would already have been sent.  The student does not have the legal right to see the letter in advance, as far as I know.

@Marianne013  It's simple.  You follow the law where you are.  More important, see the remark from cooperised.

@Marianne013 are you sure? How would Freedom of Information come into this if there isn't a public authority involved? I can see how it might be possible if the OP is working for a public university, but not under any other circumstances I can think of  (and, of course, IANAL, so I could be completely wrong).

@TimRias I would love to understand the logic behind this, as this de facto means letters of references are not confidential.  Can the referee be legally liable for writing a "poor" (or at least not strong enough) letter?

@ZeroTheHero I don't think so, unless what you wrote is actually slanderous. But I don't know the logic or reasoning behind this. I just have to deal with the consequences.

@cooperised There are definitely academic job applications in Europe which would require that the applicant upload the LOR themselves, therefore they would have access to the file before the application has been fully submitted.

Boy -- lot's of frame challenges in the answers.  The question was not "Are my feelings about confidential letters correct?"

@ZeroTheHero Yes, poor letters can be legally attacked in Germany, as far as I know. This causes letter writers to use "codes" to indicate certain issues with the candidate and if someone does not know these codes, they can inadvertently write a counterproductive letter for someone they intended to praise. Not sure about the laws in the US on that matter, though.

FYI. This is after I told them that I would have refused to write the letter if it were not going to be positive. Indeed the norm seems to be different in some countries.

@terdon It's not actually FOI that applies here, it's GDPR. The student can make a Subject Access Request to find out any or all information that the institution holds on them, which would include the letter of recommendation. (I think. IANAL either ;-))

How can I succinctly explain that this is not how recommendation letters work?

The recipient of the letter expects to read an honest account of the student's strengths and weaknesses from someone who has worked closely with them. This is where the value of the letter comes from. Showing letters of recommendation to students reduces this value, because then the recipient cannot know to what extent the letter is accurate and to what extent its contents were skewed by the (conscious or subconscious) pursuit of some other goal, such as flattering or not offending the student.

They said if they don't agree with the letter they wouldn't want the letter to be sent.

You could ask the student if there is something in particular that they are worried might appear in the letter. The student should not be trying to micromanage the contents of the letter, but I think it's fine for them to inquire whether you intend to mention such and such in the letter (say, an instance of very minor academic misconduct) and ask you not to submit the letter if you do.
On the other hand, I imagine this is more likely to be just an instance of general anxiety over the fact that two people are openly discussing the student's professional strengths and weaknesses and they have no control over what they are saying to each other. In that case I would try to convey the idea that (1) it's understandable that this is making them uncomfortable because this may be the first time they are faced with this experience, but (2) this is something that is normal in the professional world and something that they should try to come to grips with emotionally on their end.

Very good points about the student "coming to grips" with this aspect of reality... and being sympathetic to the (inescapable) stress...

I asked a few professors to recommend me around a year ago and they agreed, and I expected to never see what they wrote. To my surprise, one of them sent me a copy of their letter and said that it was "my right" to know what was in it. This was in the US. As I said, I was surprised but pleased.

In some countries, and I don't know about the US, a person will have a legal right to see a letter of recommendation you have written about them. Interestingly, the right usually only comes into existence after the letter has been received by the recipient; before then, whether the writer has communicated honestly with the recipient (or not) is only a hypothetical. But under various kinds of privacy legislation, the letter will constitute "personal information" thus creating the right of access. And the subject of the letter may have recourse to redress in circumstances.

But isn't this very similar to the situation where you grade a student? I mean, if you give a D to a student, he/she might also be offended, and you might be unconsciously biased to give a C because that particular student always complains about the grades. And assuming the general consensus that you should not write particularly negative recommendation letters, why do you want to treat them differently to other ways of evaluating the students knowledge and ability?

@JFabianMeier Yes, this is a similar phenomenon, though it is far pronounced in the case of LoR's, since a grade is just a letter/number based on largely objective data (the student answered X out of Y questions correctly -> they get a B), while a LoR is based on more on personal impressions. "Why do you want to treat them differently to other ways of evaluating the students knowledge and ability?" Because, as it says in the name, it's a letter. A personal communication from one person to a committee. It's not something that's a matter of public record, like the student's grades.

Also, to clarify my position, I am not endorsing either culture. I don't really care much myself. Both are ok as long as everyone is on the same page as to what the expectations are. I am just trying to state the (imo reasonable) justification for the practice as clearly as possible in the answer, since this is what the OP requested.

I want to point out that there is probably a different cultural expectation at play here. I know that in the US it is generally assumed and even enforced that people do not get to see the recommendation letters written about them. There are good abstract reasons for this convention but it is not universal.
You wrote that the candidate wants to apply to positions in Europe and the general attitude on this topic is a lot more relaxed. Recommendation letters may be secret from the subject of recommendation but there could also be an expectation that these letters are jointly written by the letter writer and the subject of recommendation. It depends on country and context.
You can of course still refuse to show them your letter but please be aware that this could be unusual for the specific position that your student is applying to. The university might assume that every candidate knows their recommendation letters and evaluate them accordingly.

While it might be appropriate for them to ask whether your letter would be positive, it isn't proper for them to demand to see the result. Some people are happy to share such letters with some applicants, but it isn't a requirement to do so.
To force sharing makes such letters largely meaningless and if the recipient knows that such sharing was required, would likely discount what was said in them.
It is to the candidate's benefit that the recipient has the sense that what is said is honest and not influenced by social or other pressures.
My response to such a demand would be to refuse to write the letter, telling the person to look elsewhere. In effect they want the power to write their own letters.

I liked Prenosil's response and this, but personally, this one would be my way to go. I do not like to be and would not recommend to let oneself being strongarmed, not even just because of anxiety. This threatens to just be the initial ignition of a fuse. Politely decline and exit left.

Not only is it proper, but IMNSHO the whole mechanism of evaluation-behind-person's-back is what's improper. "To force sharing makes such letters largely meaningless" <- No. " what is said is honest and not influenced by social or other pressures." <- The fact that the person being recommended does not know the contents does not guarantee honesty nor non-influence by pressure.

I second that. I'd probably refuse to write a letter for someone who makes such extreme demands.

@einpoklum the fact the the person being recommended does not know the contents does not guarantee honesty, no. However, the fact that the person recommended does know, pretty much guarantees dishonesty. Most of us will be affected if we know the letter's subject is going to read it. I'm sure most of us will still try to be as impartial as possible, but the tone and style is very likely to be slightly different if you know you are writing publicly. Perhaps only subconsciously, but some effect will be there.

@terdon: "but the tone and style is very likely to be slightly different if you know you are writing publicly. " <- As well it should be in a letter of recommendation, which is what the student is asking for.

@einpoklum There is a difference if the letter is visible by default (as I used to see often in some countries, because the person has to themselves add the letter to the submission) or if they insist to see it. In one case, the expectation is clear, in the other it is ambiguous. It is not neutral to the candidate's demand. This means that in countries with open references, there are positive-sounding codes for bad traits. Both, sender and receiver, agree on this as the referee has plausible deniability vis-a-vis the candidate. But in OP's case, this is not the default.

@einpoklum This means that, the referee in OP's case, has the option to make the context very clear to the recipient, could add one sentence at the beginning or the end of the letter, saying: "The candidate insisted on reading the reference letter before I would submit it." It is open, honest, public, as you propose, but you can imagine what message it sends even if (or especially!) the letter contains a glowing reference. In short, by keeping it open, you make the task harder for the referee to be honest while not being open for litigation and harder for the recipient to read.

@einpoklum the only reason to demand to see the reference before submission is if you distrust the referee. Then, why pick this referee at all? Outside of a true lack of options, this should really be the absolute exception. In short, open references (I have seen both kinds) create a big bunch of problems and do not provide much of an advantage. And yes, I would be happy for my candidates to see my references, as I never write references I do not believe helpful - but I still think they are far more effective when concealed.

@CaptainEmacs: That argument can be flipped: The only reason to hide the contents of the letter is if you want to sabotage their application by having them transmit a letter detrimental to the application. Doesn't sound very convincing, does it? Anyway, while concealed recommendations may perhaps be more effective - that would be effectiveness in convincing of their contents; and the student needs to know what that contents is, to decide whether to convey the letter or not.

@einpoklum Actually, the argument is not flipped. Frankly, if the letter is open, as often in Germany, people use codes unknown to inexperienced people. "communicates openly" -> "argues a lot" "not afraid to speak their mind" -> "offensive and insulting" "hardworking" -> "puts in a lot of effort without results". Guess what "sociable" or "friendly with colleagues" means, if you do not know the code. And legally safe.Additionally, requesting to approve a recommendation (because that's what it is when open recommendations are not the default) is an act of open distrust. Legitimate, but not nice.

@CaptainEmacs: "requesting to approve a recommendation is an act of open distrust" <- the recommender is expected to provide the letter to the person requesting the recommendation, so there is no request to approve a recommendation. The act of distrust is doing something other than giving the requester the letter.

@einpoklum Again, I am looking at the default. In Germany, the default used to be open letters. Then, of course, the requester can choose not to forward the reference, with the referee none the wiser. No problem. However, if in a culture where the letter is not usually passed through the requester, the latter demands to decide whether the referee can send it, personally, as referee, I would say if they do not trust me to write a good letter, they should not ask me in the first place. Without reason to suspect that the referee will write a bad letter, it is essentially...

@einpoklum ...a sign of distrust, in fact, disrespectful, and, frankly, while it has not happened to me, if it did, I would then suggest that they choose a referee they have more trust in rather than waste my time. A reference is a favour, not a duty, although I consider it a duty to write to people who I think deserve it. In many academic communities, much depends on goodwill.If the fact that there are bad players around means that one treats everyone as a potential bad player, one will lose a lot of goodwill, very quickly. If the community is known to be toxic, though, I am ready to concede.

"if in a culture where the letter is not usually passed through the requester, " <- That's a valid point. I wonder, though, if the student's cultural background is the same.

This troubles me

It shouldn't. If anything, it is behind-the-back evaluations that should trouble you.

I'm having difficulty explaining to them why this is a problematic behavior.

Of course you are, as the student's expectation of receiving the letter is not problematic. It is either a case of disagreeing norms, or, to judge more harshly - an unjust norm to which you subscribe. Yes, I know it's common in some parts of the world - but it's certainly not universal, and many regard it as inappropriate. As some commenters suggest, it is patently illegal in some places.

How can I succinctly explain that this is not how recommendation letters work?

You can present some of the points in other answers to this question; but - they're not very convincing, unless one tends to accept the basic legitimacy of these behind-the-back evaluations. So, you can explain the rationale, but I would claim you cannot convincingly explain it.

Now, some might object and ask "wait, how are we supposed to prevent the student from skewing the evaluation in their favor, without keeping the recommendation letter confidential?"
... and my answer is: You are not evaluating the student; they have asked you for a recommendation, not an evaluation. Whenever someone applies for some position, or grant, or prize, they try to make the best case in their favor. Even if letters were confidential - they would approach people who are very likely to write positive letters, and avoid people who are likely to write more negatively; and they would otherwise avoid disclosing parts of their record which are detrimental to their application. If you don't feel comfortable supporting the student making their best case - then don't write them a letter of recommendation.

Nicely put. Upvoted ... because I think you have managed to articulate something that I did not succeed in doing.

@CrimsonDark: It's even more troubling that the vast majority of 'answerers' on this thread cannot grasp this blatant instance of unfairness. The 'argument' that a letter of recommendation should be confidential to present a fair evaluation of the student is so ridiculous as to be laughable. You want to be fair? Then subject all students to the same exact test! Some students may give all sorts of benefits to their supervisor to write them a glowing (but not very honest) recommendation, and so the only thing that confidential letters achieve is to increase the rich-poor divide!

@user21820: It's not ridiculous and laughable, it's based on assumptions that we don't share. I can see understand the logic of it, I just don't accept it.

@einpoklum: I can understand why many people are irrational. It doesn't make it any more logical. But since you claim you can 'understand the logic of it', please explain what you think their assumptions about fairness are and how they yield the conclusion that we must keep recommendation letters confidential in order to uphold fairness. I am genuinely surprised and curious about such a claim. Thanks!

@user21820: They consider recommendation letters as a mechanism of consultation in an impartial(ish) evaluation process of candidates. So, instead of a recommendation, you are just facilitating the link between two senior academics. They will not speak frankly about you in your presence, or with you listening/resdig

@einpoklum: I presume you missed the last sentence of my initial comment. Please tell me how your point addresses that fact. Having recommendation letters that say all the bad things about the student seems to hurt the genuinely hardworking but non-conforming students more than any other group.

Don't make the mistake of conflating one issue (showing or not showing the letter to the student) with a separate issue (sending it, or not).
I would never think of writing a letter that I wasn't willing to show the student. Indeed, having been asked to write a letter of recommendation, I find myself more often being in the position of arranging a time to show the letter the student and discuss it with them, than being in the position of the student asking to see it!
However, my feeling is that when you are asked for a letter of recommendation, you should take the description at face value. If you can't recommend the person, then you can't write a letter of recommendation! Instead, tell the student that you can write a description of what you perceive to be their strengths and weaknesses but that you would find it difficult to recommend them.
If, after all this honesty, the student is willing to throw in their lot with your advice, then write your letter, show it to them, discuss it with them ... and send it!

In some ways, your two conflated separate issues are less separate than you make them out to be.  There should be no letter sent in if the requester and writer can't agree on the terms both can be comfortable enough with.

They said if they don't agree with the letter they wouldn't want the letter to be sent.

This shouldn’t actually be problematic if carried out in a transparent way that doesn’t compromise your integrity. You might answer the student:

Dear Student,
I can send you the letter to review and decide if you want me to send it. In that case, to ensure transparency I will include the following notice at the top of the letter: “At student [name]’s request, I shared the letter with them and they have reviewed it and approve of its contents.”
Please confirm you are still interesting in reviewing the letter and I
will send it to you.

You can perhaps add that a letter carrying such a notice may be discounted by the recipients; indeed, in the US and potentially other countries where there is a strong norm of not disclosing the content of letters of recommendation to the student, the letter may be dismissed as completely worthless. (By contrast, as others have commented, in certain European countries the practice of showing the letter to the student is viewed as less problematic or even pretty normal. To be clear, I have no way to tell what the effect of the notice would be in those locations, but it's potentially still worth cautioning the student about a possible effect.)

I think the fact that the student is asking for a veto on the letter makes it very problematic, although use of "approve" in your draft mitigates that somewhat..

@BobBrown It’s “problematic” in the sense that the student is deeply misguided about the feasibility of getting into grad school while insisting on such vetos. OTOH it “shouldn’t be problematic” in the sense that OP can accede to the student’s literal wish without compromising their ethics or integrity, by following my suggestion.

@BobBrown I do admit mu suggestion is a bit tongue in cheek and I’m not sure I would follow this advice myself, but perhaps saying something like this could be a way to get the student to understand the issue by addressing it indirectly instead of a more direct, finger-wagging sort of approach.

@BobBrown by the way, I wrote “approve of”, not “approve”. I would never imply that I allowed a student to approve the contents of my letter.

I missed that and apologize for my error.  However, in the current case the student is precisely requesting to approve the letter.  :-)

This is accurate within the US context and just assumes this is universal. It is not. You are free to disagree with conventions that assume recommendation letters are known to the student but belittling a student for that is not appropriate. And yes, I agree that the convention of secret letters is overall better but that does not imply that it is practiced that way everywhere.

@DanRomik I don't see the difference here. It seems the student is being given the chance to approve the contents of the letter (or not) by saying "yes, please send this letter" (or "no, please don't send it"). You're not allowing them to improve the contents, but that's different.

@EspeciallyLime The difference is that the student can either have an impactful letter with unknown content, or a worthless letter with positive content. Using Dan's method, the only outcome that helps the student and which the student wants, i.e. an impactful letter with positive content, can only be achieved by agreeing to a confidential LoR.

@Grumperson Sorry for not being clear. I understand (and agree with) the answer. What I was asking about is the distinction made in the comments between "approve the letter" and "approve of the letter". It seems to me that the student is doing both, in this scenario.

@EspeciallyLime I see what you mean. That's a fair point.

@quarague thanks, I agree with what you said and edited the answer to take your comments into account.

Adam Přenosil's answer covers the reasons.   It looks like you are in the United States.  FERPA (Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act) makes such letters "education records," which the student is entitled to see.  It is possible for a student to waive that right, and your institution's registrar can provide the necessary form.  In the absence of such a waiver, you should decline to write a recommendation.
If you receive a waiver and write a letter, I recommend closing the letter with the following:

The information contained in this letter is confidential and protected by United States Federal law. This information should not be disclosed to [name of student] or anyone in your organization who is not involved in the decision process regarding this individual. The information may not be disclosed to anyone outside of your organization without the consent of [name of student].

(I made this an answer rather than a comment because the FERPA implications are important in the United States.)

It is not clear to me who has any obligation to provide a copy of the letter to the student, nor that it is genuinely an educational record.  If, for example, the student requests a letter of recommendation from someone who is not affiliated with a public educational institution, the copy produced by the letter writer is not an educational record.  It might become an educational record when it is submitted as part of an application to some educational program, but then the receiving institution would be the party responsible for providing it to the student.

Additionally, if an instructor or other academic mentor is writing a letter for a student, my understanding is that there is almost nothing that the writer can say absent a FERPA waiver (e.g. you can't talk about how a student performed in your class without such a waiver).  So there definitely are FERPA implications, but I am not clear on where, exactly, they fall, and who is responsible for them.  If you can expand on this, it might be helpful.

@XanderHenderson  Well, I am not a lawyer, etc. and your own registrar is a better source.  That said, there is a specific exemption in FERPA that allows disclosure to a school to which the student has applied, so you don't need the waiver for an application to grad school.  You do need it for employment, security clearance, and other references.  And your letters are not confidential without that waiver.

@XanderHenderson  I see that I only answered your second comment.  OP has written "a member of my lab" which strongly implies that he or she is a faculty member.  FERPA applies to U.S. education institutions.  A letter written by a faculty member is an "education record" and so falls under FERPA.  The "waiver" I wrote about is a waiver of right to see the letter.  There's also a "release" that's sometimes called a waiver, that permits faculty to do things like give an employment reference.  They are different things.

I wouldn't recommend to go legal here but in this instance the US law you quote may be in direct contradiction to European data privacy laws. The letter clearly contains personal information about the student so the student may have a legal right to see it under GDPR rules. If OP is that worried about protecting the letter from the student they should just decline to write a letter at all.

@quarague  It looks like OP is in the United States.  If that's the case, he or she must follow U.S. law, which does not require that a student pre-approve a recommendation letter.  The issue here, and the crux of the question, is a student seeking pre-approval, effectively veto power.

If the student is an EU citizen (which I don't know but seems quite possible from context) and has the letter send to a university in the EU they can just claim GDPR rules. That the sender of the letter is outside of the EU would be totally irrelevant for that law. The argument is that OP is a EU citizen and the university has personal information about OP. But as I wrote, I wouldn't recommend to argue this on legal basis, it will just turn into a mess that doesn't help anyone.

@quarague it's not clear to me what the outcome of such a request would be, since the contents of the letter is personal information on two people. The university has to balance the GDPR subject access rights of one with the GDPR data protection rights of the other.

@quarague: I suspect all of that is moot, given that OP's student wants to see the letter before it is sent.

Depending on the country in which you, and the corresponding university, are in, you might not have a choice in whether the student gets to see the letter should you write one.
Many countries, such as the UK, have the concept of a Subject Access Request whereby a person can request a copy of any data/correspondence that an organisation holds on them. This would include any letters of recommendation that were sent. So they'd be able to get hold of it anyway.
Honestly, I don't see why you even feel as though you shouldn't let them see it. You shouldn't be writing anything in a letter of recommendation that you wouldn't say to a student's face. If you don't feel as though you can be honest about someone's weaknesses openly with them then maybe take a look at why you feel that way.
I also don't think it's unreasonable for a student to request a few letters of recommendation and then only submit the strongest. That's no different to guessing which professors are going to give you the best references and asking them to do it except it removes the guesswork and the chance of the student being torpedoed by a prof who's having a bad day.

"request a few letters of recommendation and then only submit the strongest" is objectionable because it wastes writers' time.

@BenVoigt - I don't mean like carpet bombing your whole dept, just if you need two, asking for three and discarding the worst

@ScottishTapWater to the person wasting time on the unsubmitted letter, how many are discarded doesn't really make a difference.  If a student expects honest communication with me, I expect honest communication from them.  I wouldn't write a letter if I was told this is the student's practice in advance, and would feel lied to if I wasn't told

@ScottSeidman - Alright then, I could agree with that if you were willing to discuss openly with them what the content of the letter would be

You touched the limits of "recommendations". In industry, this does not exist anymore (usually) because the recommendation is extremely subjective. Or it exists on an informal plane.
I was once asked to provide recommendation contacts for a position, I gave three of my friends who said that I was the incarnation of [you choose your deity], mixed with a genius-level professionalism. Since that company had old-fashioned ways of hiring, my friends also dropped that I of course have a weakness which is to be too hard-working (or something like that). Usefulness for the company: zero.
Academia believes in integrity and this is nice. The reality of the world is that you can be very good, but chemically incompatible with the person the jury expects a recommendation from. And that person can be an asshole.
This is to say that, as a European, I completely support your students. Either the letter chants their marvelousness, or it should be trashed. The receiving institution should have its own criteria and checks to decide about a candidate and not rely on sheer luck.

I would sit down with the student and explain/discuss what I would write in the letter completely honestly and in fairly specific terms, offer to answer any questions, and then just tell them that you only do confidential letters, if that is your personal pref.  The student can then decide if they still want your letter.  If they still want your letter, then write one, adhering as closely as you can to what you told the student you would write.

First of all, you do not need to explain anything to such a student. Since it is he/she who requests a favor from you, the game should be played on your terms or not played at all, period.
Second, the request for the letter would normally come directly from the hiring institution, and you are under no obligation to follow the student advice on whether to send the letter or not once you have written it.
So, what I would do is just to say something like "I'll be happy to write a letter for you, but then I'll send it regardless of what you think of it even if I show it to you. This is a take or leave offer, your choice. End of message." and then stick to these words no matter what.
Whether to show a letter to the student or not is entirely up to you. Sometimes I show some parts of the letters I write to the people I recommend to check that I haven't misstated some of their results or that my idea of what to emphasize in their work is not too far from theirs, but you are under no obligation to promote them unless you want to and under much less obligation to be led by them during that process in any way. It is customary to refuse to write anything for people you do not want to recommend for whatever reason rather than to write some killer stuff, but, again, the choice is yours. Once the request arrives, you are the sole authority as to what and how to write and you are solely accountable for your opinions. That should be communicated clearly to the students from the beginning and after that it should be their headache whether to add you to the list of potential reviewers or not. Don't overthink it!
Just my two cents, as usual :-)

If this conversation takes place before the student submitted their applications (with names of letter-writers included), then, if the student does not like what they see in your letter, the student most likely simply will not include your name in the application as one of the letter-writers. For what you describe to work, you would have to have such a conversation after receiving a request for a letter.

@MoisheKohan "if the student does not like what they see in your letter, the student most likely simply will not include your name in the application as one of the letter-writers" The conversation should occur before you write any letter whatsoever, and you shouldn't bother to write anything (or, at least, to inform the student that you did) before you get a request :-)

It doesn't seem right to send it in once the student sees it and asks that it not be sent in.   In fact, it seems downright mean.  It's much kinder to say "I only write confidential letters, so, with apologies for your inconvenience, I'm not able to write you a letter".  An even better way to go about it would be to state your condition of confidentiality when asked to write the letter, just to avoid putting the student in the situation of trying to dig up last minute recommendations later.

Another reason you can tell the student: the letter is likely to contain comparisons with other students. Even if these comparisons are indirect ("This student is in the top 10% of students I've ever supervised"), it's still improper for a student to read information that sheds light on other students' performance.

If it is improper for the student to have that information, it is also improper for the recipient of the letter, and vice-versa. Down with this cabal mentality.

@einpoklum The recipient has a valid reason to have the information--to help make admissions decisions. The applicant has no such valid reason.

The interest in making more informed admission decisions does not lend rights of access to students' information. I mean, I wan't to do research for curing cancer which would be helped by detailed information about people's daily habits. So can I get access to traffic and security cameras because of my "valid reason"?

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text:
Is conpher.com / conpher legit?
Does anybody know if conpher is a trustworthy organization?
I have recently received a couple of emails from jm@conpher.com. The email body says:

Congratulations on your new article! We are a group of researchers
gathering feedback on your journal publishing experience in order to
share with colleagues around the world. I know you are really busy,
but it takes less than 90 seconds to share your advice and it could
help save a colleague months of stress with future submissions.

followed by a URL to their website with the DOI and my email as arguments. I am very suspicious since I do not see any relationship between conpher and PLOS where the specific article they linked is coming from. In fact, I believe their business model is similar to yelp, except for shopping for journals & publishers.
From their privacy policy, stated in https://conpher.com/privacy-policy/, they seem to want me to evaluate journals and articles.

When you make a review of a journal, we collect the information you state in the review, including which journal you review, which article(s) the review concerns, and how you evaluate the journal.

I'm not familiar with the site, but at a first glance it seems to have goals similar to SciRev. If so, I don't think the lack of an apparent association with the journal you submitted to is a red flag in itself. On the contrary, if it is a legit review site independence is likely a positive.

I work for Conpher.
Conpher was started by 35 postdoc researchers who want to share journal article publication experiences in order to share advice on where best to publish your research. Conpher is a is free platform available for all to search.
We are independent of all journals and publishers.
We launched in June 2020. Colleagues in over 30 countries have already shared their experiences. Sharing one's experience should take less than 90 seconds.
We display publication times, acceptance times, quality of peer review, quality and timelines of editorial/publisher communications and recommendations from past authors.
All reviews are validated in order to provide you with genuine advice which can help you determine the best journal for you to publish your research in.
We also add journal data such as CiteScore, Acceptance Rates, OA Licences and recent samples of articles published.

Conflicts of interest should be explicitly stated.

Welcome to Academia.SE. I edited your post a bit to make it more specifically address the question, and to read less like an advertisement. Feel free to make further edits if needed, but note that "spam" is subject to deletion.

All reviews are validated how?

@John Marshall Did you or your company also post the second, very badly styled and heavily promotional answer that has been deleted?

@henning--reinstateMonica You mean, this one? No, Satyajay Mandal has been at this for a while.

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text:
Researchers' names in titles of papers
I wonder if Mathematics is the field that has the highest ratio of researchers' names in the title of papers?
In the mailing I received from the arXiv this morning there are 14 papers that cite
earlier mathematicians:

Title: A Green's function proof of the Positive Mass Theorem
Title: Busemann functions in asymptotically harmonic Finsler manifolds
Title: Inverse Gauss curvature flow in a time cone of Lorentz-Minkowski space
Title: A survey of the Thurston norm
Title: A proof of Kosniowski conjecture
Title: Band width and the Rosenberg index
Title: The Nirenberg problem on half spheres: A bubbling off analysis
Title: The Ambrose-Singer Theorem for general homogeneous manifolds with
Title: Uniformization of branched surfaces and Higgs bundles
Title: Linear bounds for constants in Gromov's systolic inequality and related
Title: An Invitation to Tropical Alexandrov Curvature
Title: Approximating spaces of Nagata dimension zero by weighted trees
Title: The Dirichlet-to-Neumann map, the boundary Laplacian, and H""ormander's
Title: Benjamini-Schramm convergence of periodic orbits

And 12 titles that do not mention a name:

Title: Combinatorial $k$-systoles on a punctured tori and a pairs of pants
Title: Piecewise circular curves and positivity
Title: Volume bounds for the canonical lift complement of a random geodesic
Title: Uniform hyperbolicity of nonseparating curve graphs of
Title: Zero-sum cycles in flexible non-triangular polyhedra
Title: Distributional solutions to mean curvature flow
Title: On certain irreducible finite group actions on surfaces
Title: Counting essential minimal surfaces in closed negatively
Title: Pullback coherent and squeezed states and quantization
Title: Distance one surgeries on the lens space $L(n,1)$
Title: Slope norm and an algorithm to compute the crosscap number
Title: Comments on the cosmic convergence of nonexpansive maps

Of course this is hardly a random sample, depends on the day and the fields I follow.
But I wouldn't be surprised if Mathematics stands out in this regard.
I would be interested in any less-anecdotal data.
And speculation on: If true, why?

Is much speculation really required? Math tends to name theorems, postulates, etc after the people who published them and there really isn't another logical way of doing it.

@BryanKrause I think your word choice "published" is astute. As per the Arnold principle, "If a notion bears a personal name, then this name is not the name of the discoverer.". And according to the Berry principle, "The Arnold Principle is applicable to itself.".

Can you clarify your question? Do you want to know IF mathematics has the highest number of names in titles, WHY mathematics has the highest number of names in titles, or are you just surprised and is this not really a question? I understand your curiosity but I am voting to close this question because it is either a very specific research question or not a question at all IMHO.

You could answer this, of course with a comprehensive literature search over all fields and all of history. But what would the answer give you? And the answer today might be invalid tomorrow. Is there an "action item" here?

While this is an interesting question in its own right, it is not on-topic on a forum dedicated to the topic of Academia at large. Please see our FAQ for more details.

Math is arguably the field that deals with the most abstract kind of subject matter. Mathematical objects often have no immediate counterpart in the real (experienced) physical world, hence their names cannot be derived from such objects, and one uses the researchers'names instead.

@lighthousekeeper: Yes. But interestingly, the same is not true in theoretical computer science, which is equally abstract. Maybe because of the shorter history of publications in CompSci. But also some cultural difference, I think.


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Is it appropriate to request letters of recommendation from professors a second time?
I received three letters of recommendation for applications to this spring semester, but I chose to decline admission for personal/financial reasons. I am now applying for fall admission, and I would like to ask the same professors for letters of recommendation again.
Is it appropriate to request additional letters of recommendations from professors to new universities for the second time? With no other prospects, I need their recommendations in order to be accepted. Should that desperation be included or excluded in the request?

Yes.
Writing recommendation letters is part of our job as professors.  It is perfectly ethical to request that we do our job.
Conveying desperation in your request is neither necessary nor productive.  You have nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for.
On the other hand, anyone can (and should!) turn down your request in good conscience if they feel that they cannot write you a strong recommendation letter.  If someone says that they can't write you a strong letter, believe them and ask someone else.  You really don't want a weak letter in your file.

Just remember to thank your referee the day you get that offer/position/job/tenure.

Writing a letter of recommendation is very time consuming.  Submitting or sending a small number of recommendation letters is not very time consuming.  If your letter writers still have your letter on file and if minimal changes would need to be made to the letters, then asking them to submit letters on your behalf a second time is a very reasonable request.  You should explain to them why you are asking them for another letter, but you do not need to convey desperation.  Most recommendation writers are happy to help people in your situation.

Except if it happens three years later, you'd better think of what they can add to the original version. Nowadays, when everyone applies everywhere, the comparison of your postdoc application letters 3 years ago and your current TT ones is often as easy as click-click-click. If the changes are too minor, you are toast ;).


text:
What is the likelihood of getting tenure?
What fraction of new assistant professors end up receiving tenure at the institution that they started at? This of course varies by field and rank, so please include the area and range of ranks you are thinking of when you answer. (i.e. "Computer Science, top 25 but not top 10", etc.)
It seems hard to find hard statistics on this question. When you get official statistics for how many people come up for tenure and are denied, you get an overly rosy picture, because people who are not going to get tenure often leave before they come up for it.

Your approach will give an overly negative picture, since anyone who leaves their first job will be counted as not receiving tenure.

This is exactly my criticism of the Science paper cited in @eykanal's answer; it doesn't distinguish between people who got tenure elsewhere and people who didn't get tenure anywhere.

Related (or duplicate?): http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/568/what-percent-of-assistant-professors-generally-receive-tenure-and-how-does-this

Corollary: most statistical analyses of academic life are done by people who should know better and don't (see NRC rankings)

I think questions like this are counterproductive.  If you're awesome, your chances are pretty good.  If you're not, then they're not. It's not like tenure cases are decided by drawing colored marbles from a bag.

@m0untain: I know plenty of awesome researchers who never got tenure, and plenty of idiots who have tenure in highly reputed universities.

This varies by country. Getting tenure is known (or reputed) to be a competition in the US, but here in Canada, at least in the 2-3 universities where I have any knowledge of the process, if you don't screw up badly you get tenure. They don't hire people that they don't intend to keep. I've heard anecdotal evidence of similar practices in some places in the UK. (all this in computer science)

This question was the topic of a recent article in Science. Briefly, around 50% of tenure-track faculty will actually remain to become a full professor. This varies with gender, discipline, and year (e.g., its harder to obtain tenure now than it was 20 years ago). I strongly recommend reading this Ars Technica article, which explores the aforementioned Science paper in depth.

Which basically means that, considering the risk vs. monetary benefit ratio, academia is a complete loser.

It depends... if you get a PhD in Physics and get hired as an analyst at an investment bank for a starting salary of over a million dollars plus bonuses, then even those you "lost" in academia, you're doing quite well for yourself.

@RoboKaren Those numbers are completely absurd. Even high quality people with years of experience rarely get a salary in that range. Alexey Poyarkov had +10 years of experience, math olympiad gold and management experience - he makes $750.000. A top physics PhD would make around a third of that, and very rarely in an investment bank. https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/284413/hedge-funds-hiring-top-quants

I think the 50% number is misleading without context (and context is omitted in this answer). The median time to departure was 10.9 years which means that many of those 50% people stayed for a long time (and probably got tenure) before leaving. 64% were promoted to associate at the same institution, which implies tenure, but doesn't include people who were offered and took tenure somewhere else.


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Automatically building a database of forward and backward citations
My goal is to produce a graph showing the linkages (and lack there of) between several fields that share a common subproblem by showing who cites whom.  There are many databases that show citations between papers: ISI Web of Knowledge, Microsoft Academic Research, and Google Scholar.  However none allows me to download even part of their database.  Is there some database I have overlooked?  Has someone written a scrapper for one of these websites?
For reference, the fields I'm considering are Mechanics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Signal Processing, Geophysics, and several others.

I've always wondered why google scholar doesn't provide the functionality to see "who has this paper cited" in addition to "who has cited this paper".

After 8 years, it seems like a number of these databases are now public. See, e.g., the list of sources for inciteful.  This tool seems to implement the desired search functionality.

Does this answer your question? Download automatically all articles from references in a pdf file or on a journal website

Our WikiCite project uses Wikidata to store bibliographic information including citation information. The data from Wikidata is free under CC0 license and you are able to access the data via XML dumps, RDF dumps, the web API and the Wikidata Query Service with a SPARQL endpoint.
While the bibliographic data in Wikidata is certainly not complete as of October 2017, Wikidata editors have done considerable work so Wikidata now contains over 8 million scientific articles and over 36 million citations. The coverage may be somewhat ok'ish for a start in Magnetic Resonance Imaging while quite bad in fields such as Mechanics, Signal Processing and Geophysics.
The Wikidata Query Service is used in our Scholia webservice to aggregate and display scholarly information in tables, plots and graphs, including citation graphs. Scholia, via the Wikidata Query Service, allows you to zoom in on a topic and create co-author graphs and co-occuring topics graph with respect to a topic. For instance, for the machine learning concept of "embedding" you can see the graphs here: https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/topic/Q29043227. Small partial citation graphs are displayed on the 'work' pages, see, e.g., https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/work/Q21090025.
It is possible to extract the bibliographic data with the Wikidata Query Service. For a co-author graph of the big connected component I used a SPARQL query against the Wikidata Query Service and Gephi on the downloaded results. The resulting image - and the SPARQL queries - are available here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scholarly_co-author_graph_via_Wikidata,_2017-05-26.png
You can read more about the approach of using Wikidata for scientometrics work in this paper: "Scholia and scientometrics with Wikidata", https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04222

Scraping Google Scholar
I found this:
https://github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/blob/master/R/googleScholarXScraper/googleScholarXScraper.R
I also wrote something a while back, though it's not pretty:
https://github.com/ketch/scinet/blob/master/gss.py
Using either of these you could trace citations forward through the literature.
Note that Scholar will block you if you hit it too many times, too quickly.

You can download thousands of records at a time from Scopus, if you have access:

Run a search.
Tick the box to select all documents.
Click "create bibliography".
Export to desired format.

However, this doesn't include citation information, so it's probably useless to you.

scraping Google scholar is against the EULA, you might not get caught if you do a little bit, but there are decent consequences if you do get caught (I had a colleague who got his lab in trouble with such an approach) and your librarians can't save you.

@ArtemKaznatcheev That link leads to a stackoverflow question which has a dead link to (supposedly) the EULA.  So I can't find evidence supporting your claim (though I suspect it is true).

My Google-fu has not been sufficient to find a new ToS, this might be due to Google's recent unified ToS approach. I asked a question here.


text:
Should the distinction between bibliography and reference be maintained when writing a paper?
There is a small difference between a bibliography and a reference: the former includes all works consulted and the latter only those that are cited in the paper. Should we maintain this technical distinction when writing a paper?
Some journal templates require the title of the last section to be 'References'. Does this mean all the references must necessarily be cited in the paper?

There is a small difference between a bibliography and a reference — Not in my field, there isn't.

just for curiosity, are you aware of any field which adopts this distinction between References and Bibliography?

@seteropere: In thesis templates, it is usually Bibliography rather than References, so perhaps not all cites need to be mentioned inside the thesis.

From a practical point of view, whenever you send your paper for a peer review, they check if you have all citations both in your text and in sources. It means that "yes" they must be cited.
Saying so, there is normally clear advise from a journal how to cite and produce bibliography. You should do what it says.
At last you can always solve the problem by adding one sentence in your text: "Additional information about ... can be found in [your references]." With this sentence everyone should be happy.

Yes, they are different and should be marked as such.  For my thesis, I am required to have both a list of works cited and an annotated bibliography.  As mentioned, the list of works cited (reference list) should only contain references that match-up to citations in the text.
Additionally, my thesis also has an annotated bibliography as an appendix.  Essentially this is where I can place works which may have influenced my paper, but may not necessarily have been cited in the text.  Each entry also has an annotation describing how it is relevant to the paper itself.
An example of this, is that one of the books (which I read while doing research for my thesis) provided insight I used to prototype the testing framework for my project.  I did not end up actually using anything from the book for the written portion.  But, it did influence the project overall.  Therefore I put it in my annotated bibliography, but not in my list of works cited.

This doesn't answer the question. The question is about writing academic papers, not about what your university requires in a thesis.

I think this is just a misunderstanding about what a bibliography or reference is. If you insist on this difference perhaps you can cite a more reputable source on academic writing. In a paper, references on a subject that you think are useful to the reader, from which you are not citing specific results, also need to be introduced in the text (often footnotes are used for this). How else would a reader know what they are or why they should look at it. It is quite common to write for example: "For a great introduction on the subject of ... we recommend [1]."

Yes, all references must be cited. To skip the citation process is to engage in plagiarism. If you put a reference in your reference list but you do not cite it in your text, then you must ask yourself why is it in your references (since you actually do not reference them)?
In my field (business) you would never add a publication to your reference list unless you actually cited (in the text) from that publication. To do so would be to produce a bibliography which I've never seen anyone outside of primary and secondary school require.

"then you must ask yourself why is it in your references (since you actually do not reference them)?" - because it provides further information that is generally related to the topic, without being related to any specific statement from the text. The counterpart of this is the habit followed by some people of learning about a topic by just looking at the references of a paper to find interesting works related to a topic (without reading the actual paper text).


text:
Is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?
During most of an aspiring academic's schooling one (at least in my experience) is repeatedly told that quoting/reproducing other works is fine, if given credit. As long as you cite your sources, all is good. And of course this is true, in the sense that you will not get penalized for plagiarism.
But today I was left wondering... is it true? I had a think and in my field (computer science) I can not recall any quotations or reproductions of graphs/tables in essentially any of the works I have read, other than perhaps some quotes at chapter starts for entertainment value.
Whenever one references another work in my field one always seems to reword or summarize the reference, even if a direct quote is perfectly functional. Which leaves me wondering, is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?

In STEM fields generally, we tend to focus on meaning in the given context, not the actual wording. In fields like history or literature, I see how direct quotes are inevitable, however, in other fields, there is little need. About your remark that quote would be OK, too: I do not think that in any field writing based on a patchwork of quotations is particularly encouraged. In another word, if you can tell it yourself, that is the default not copying from others. No one cares what Einstein said about something if it was trivial.

Adding to what @Greg said, one might even argue that abstraction is an inherent feature of CS as a field. Spelling out exact wording with quotation marks distracts from the (abstract) essence of whatever is referred to.

I'm not sure that quotes often are "perfectly functional" as you say. More often than not it is simply more efficient to summarize or paraphrase, as this gives you more leeway to express that which you actually want to say in your paper without distraction.

We tell our students that direct quoting, where its the idea that is important, not the exact words, suggests the writer does not have a sufficient understanding of the topic to write the idea in their own words.

Remember, we don't only make citations to provide proper credit, we do it to build an argument. Every true statement in a paper is necessarily either (1) an established fact that can be cited, (2) a direct observation made by the authors, or (3) a logical consequence of other true statements in the paper. Providing references allows the reader to follow the “chain of evidence” back through the literature.
Most of the time in the sciences we don't quote the exact words of the original author, we restate the (presumed) true statement that was made, using our own words to keep the flow of the text. It is the true statement, not the words to express it, that are important. We generally only use direct quotation when the actual words are important, or particularly felicitous. Maintaining standards in programming languages is “how to win big”, as Dick Gabriel would say.
In the humanities, we tend to use direct quotations more often because the true statement we are making is the fact that the statement was made by the other author, rather than the particular claim that the author is making. For example, even if someone so eminent as Bertrand Russell says that “mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence”, one need not agree in order to quote it.

This does not answer the question.  It's a yes or no question.

Yes, but it is better described as an "unwritten custom" instead of an "unwritten rule."


text:
What to do after being denied tenure?
What do you do if after 6 years of being an assistant professor, you come up for, and are denied tenure?
How hard is it to get a job in industry, when you are middle aged and have no relevant work experience? How hard is it to get another job in academia? Who wants to hire someone who was denied tenure at their home institution?

This is very discipline and field specific. A historian has very different prospects than someone who does macroeconomics.

First, I hope this has not already happened, but is only a potential concern.
Thus, I'd first address "how to avoid having this happen". As with failing oral prelims and such things, this results primarily from failed communication between the junior person and one or more relatively senior people. Ignoring for a moment department-politics-motivated tenure-vendettas, which do occur, departments are not collectively happy to deny tenure, since it reflects a kind of failure on their part, as well. Although the details of the expectations are different at "research universities" versus "small colleges", departments have expectations. Usually these expectations are communicated fairly clearly, although sometime not too forcefully or formally.
A pre-tenure person should have senior people to talk to about their situation in the department, about expectations, and about progress-so-far. Unfortunately, often there is no systematic implementation of this sort of mentor relationship, and the default is that the dept chair has a yearly talk with pre-tenure faculty. If this defaults further into an absolutely pro-forma, content-free interaction, there is potential danger, especially with a pre-tenure person who is oblivious to exactly these issues.
The worst cases I've witnessed, apart from those involving some political motivations, involved pre-tenure people who were surprisingly disconnected from the department in which they worked. Plausibly doing worthwhile work, but not interacting with local people.
Another kind of disconnection is that the pre-tenure person does receive fairly blunt advice from the dept chair, but decides to ignore it, as though some abstract notion of "virtue" would supercede the dept chair's recommendation!
Nevertheless, even if one has paid attention, it might be that one's research program just didn't quite measure up to hopes... Or there might be political/scientific shifts in the dept which (rightly or wrongly) marginalized your field/work "out from under you". In such cases, the external perception usually is fairly well informed, and the stigma is not too great, and there is hope for other academic opportunities.
If one hasn't paid attention, and, in some sense "rightly" was denied tenure, then this situation is externally understood, too, and it is in this case that one's academic prospects are dim.
Although I've had the good fortune to not need to look for non-academic employment, my several students who have deliberately (or due to vagaries of the job market, grudgingly) found non-academic positions emphasize that it's possibly not your specialized knowledge that you can "sell", but the point that you can learn very complicated things, and do things with them.

As with anything, it depends:

How hard is it to get a job in industry, when you are middle aged and
  have no relevant work experience?

Is that really true ? It of course depends, but academics even in very theoretical disciplines have skills of value to industry (witness for example the number of math PhDs getting jobs on Wall Street). Of course, if one presents oneself as having no relevant work experience, it's going to be very hard to find an industry job, but I question the premise. Maybe the right fit is not obvious, and maybe it will take some networking and talking to people to find the right niche, but it's more a matter of repositioning one's skills. It's easier said than done, but it's possible.

How hard is it to get another job in academia? Who wants to hire
  someone who was denied tenure at their home institution?

I know of many people who get faculty jobs after being denied tenure elsewhere. Universities don't operate on the same scale or with the same criteria or needs. It might need some time (again) to reposition oneself, and it might require some digging into the circumstances leading to tenure denial in the first place (painful, but sometimes yielding useful information).
It's by no means a definite thing, but it can be done. It will take some time though, also because without a job, one lacks leverage to dangle in front of another institution.
p.s The question was asked in the abstract, and the answer is thus necessarily vague. The real point is that every case is different, and there are always ways to move forward, if not exactly in the direction one is hoping for.


text:
Electronic journals with 'print on demand'
We're thinking of starting a journal for undergraduate research.  I'm vaguely aware that some electronic journals have a 'print on demand' capability, so that someone who wants a printed bound copy can get one.  Can anyone point me to a journal that does this?

According to their website, the "Journal of Academy of Medical Sciences, a publication of Osmania Medical College, is a peer-reviewed online journal with Quarterly print on demand compilation of issues published."

Using a search engine with the terms "journal" and "print on demand" will yield more results: Journal of Cranio-Maxillary Diseases (craniomaxillary.com), Journal of Basic and Clinical Reproductive Sciences (jbcrs.org),
Advanced Biomedical Research (advbiores.net), Indian Journal of Otology (indianjotol.org), Journal of Clinical Neonatology (jcnonweb.com), Avicenna Journal of Medicine (avicennajmed.com), Tropical Parasitology (tropicalparasitology.org), Indian Journal of Oral Sciences (indjos.com), Thyroid Research and Practice (thetrp.net), Imam Journal of Applied Sciences (e-ijas.org), etc

It hasn't begun operating yet, but Cambridge University Press's Forum of Mathematics will work that way.  The journal will launch later in 2012.

Journals of the American Diabetes Association (found this through the second hit via Google):
http://www.diabetesjournals.org/site/misc/AdvertisingRates.xhtml

I don't think American Journal of Neuroradiology does this yet, but here is an editorial from their Editor-in-Chief, discussing the merits of such a system.